For the long version of this review, see my notes and highlights. For the short version of this review: feel free to skip the early dialogues, and read for cultural weirdness and prompts to thinking rather than "wise Plato will tell me how to be virtuous" or the equally understandable and equally useless counter-reaction of "wow look at how bad Plato's opinions are."

(I didn't read any of these as closely as they deserved - though I did make a daily discursive meditation practice out of it, which is another valuable thing I got from this - and I tried to stay away from secondary literature, because you only get to go in blind once. Both are reasons to revisit many of these dialogues, obviously.)

For the medium version, a few themes that stuck out at me.

The division of labor
The economics of the division of labor play a central role in all of the most seminal thinkers of the transition to modernity - Smith, Marx, Weber. I was surprised to find that this was true of Plato as well, because it seems incidental in just about every dialogue other than Laws (which no one reads) and Republic (which, to be fair, everyone does.) But you read every dialogue and it looms in every single one, I think it's fair to say that there's something going on. Socrates asks some variation of "is this knowledge like the knowledge of a medical doctor?... of a ship's pilot?... of a cobbler?" so consistently that there are even meta-jokes around it, like a TV show where the writers start responding to the fans' memes.

Plato's position as an aristocrat in a sort-of-democratic society with a huge slave population and a booming commercial economy is the obvious background here. He's got snobbery towards manual workers of all kinds and especially towards the enslaved, whose capacity for virtue is constantly impeached (and not as an overt condemnation of slavery, though you could probably develop it in that direction.) He's got a hierachical model of metaphysics (and love) that matches this vertical principle. But the division of labor, and its creation of bonds of mutual dependence, exists in a constant dialectical tension with this. The specialized knowledge of the philosopher and of virtue is constantly adduced from examples to specialized knowledge in other fields, as is the need to always defer to the relevantly specialized person. In Republic, most prominently, the need for specialized production forms the basis for civilization as such, no less than in Smith (and, no less than in Marx, a multitude of evils flow from the establishment of class society, though that is glossed over) and "justice" comes to be defined as everyone sticking to their own place.

Form, medium, and irony
From the beginning, when Socrates protests to the criminal court that he's at a loss because he lacks natural eloquence and launches into a highly eloquent and stylized speech, to written condemnations of writing, to sophistical refutations of sophists, Plato is really interested in form-content tensions. And dialogues are great at this, because (1) while a wholly written form they are one more obviously in imitation of speech than other genres, and (2) by placing the words in the mouth of another, you get more critical distance between what is said and what Plato thinks.

That said, despite or rather alongside all the critical comments on writing, you can see the shift from a more "speakerly" style in the beginning to a more "writerly" one later on, one that redounds to the benefit of the subtlety and interestingness of the dialogues. That is, the most frustrating thing about the early dialogues is how, with granted a bit of stylistic smoothing over, they seem like the sort of philosophical conversation Socrates might have had with real-life Athenians - something that would be more satisfying if they weren't constantly leaning on the fact that people are a lot easier to lead around, and a lot less capable of spotting a contradiction, in spoken than written word. The problem with the early dialogues, then, is that Socrates has few worthy opponents, and so his tripping them up doesn't lead to many interesting conclusions.

Later on, we shift from this to worthier opponents, longer speeches, and more abiguous and subtle claims, which increasingly take the form of myths. And the myths are just great. (Can you spot the structural parallels/inversions between the Ring of Gyges and the Cave?) And I suspect they are great largely because they force you to do what the early "Socrates" doesn't, which is read charitably.

The power of words
This is perhaps an expansion of the above, but Plato is very concerned with the power that words have, and the ability to derive truth value from discourse or dialectic alone. This is clear in his two most consistent opponents - the Sophists, who argue cynically, too unfaithfully to dialectic - and then the worthy opponent, Parmenides, who speaks seemingly too faithfully to dialectic, so constrained that he can't speak of anything but a metaphysical abstraction. Both of these are temptations to "Socrates" and Plato's entire project of arriving at a not merely instrumentally practical (as the sophists') and not merely self-consistent (as the Eleatics') form of dialectic.

Numerology
There's something going on with the number four in Plato, with it signifying, maybe, completion? Is this a Pythagorean thing??????? idk guess i should get around to that secondary reading

5 stars - What an incredible body of work. Well-written, wide-ranging, thought-provoking.

Reading Plato is a humbling experience. The words and sentences were not overly complex, but-wow-the ideas they expressed certainly were. I am confident that I grasped only a fraction of his genius. Nevertheless, I appreciate the depth of thought and the duration of these works through the ages.

I read the following dialogues in this order:

1. Euthyphro - Short, easy to understand, I'm feeling very confident in my ability to tackle Plato.

2. Apology - A must read, also easy to understand, I am outraged at the treatment of Socrates.

3. Crito - Easy to follow, starting to ask the hard questions now.

4. Phaedo - {Sound of screeching brakes} Wait, what have I gotten myself into? Hard and long and weird. Important to read because its discussion of the Forms (one of the weird things) will come up again and again.

5. Theaetetus - Another long and hard one. Circular arguments and no conclusion.

6. Sophist - I'm a little skeptical of the usefulness of the "definition by division" method, but at least it is orderly on the heels of Theaetetus.

7. Symposium - One of his best known works, so I guess it's important to read, but I did not enjoy it. Strong child predator vibes.

8. Phaedrus - Still more pedophilia than I would prefer.

9. Protagoras - Am I getting better at reading Plato or is this easier to read than the last few dialogues? Maybe some of both.

10. Gorgias - Never mind, this is still pretty challenging.

11. Meno - Good length, logical, understandable. I think I can finally distinguish between Plato's ridiculously complex works and those of normal Plato difficulty like this one.

12. Republic - 5 stars to me for finishing all 10 books of the Republic. It really is magnificent. The Republic reads like a Magnum Opus and is clearly set apart from the other (already pretty great) works of Plato. I think a lot of people read the Republic as their first introduction to Plato, but I would not recommend that. It references ideas that the other dialogues discuss and that he expects the reader to understand already. I would also not recommend reading only sections of the Republic, because part of its beauty is the way it puts down and picks back up threads of discussion.

Ok, been throwing myself in at the deep end with this one.

I know, Plato/Socrates are best known by quotation.
Still, my absolute lack in knowledge of philosophy had me hesitant, since I tend to read cover to cover (and everything in between)....
But hey, a gift, nice hard cover, inviting typeface, sound introduction.
(and my weak spot for 'big' books, sorry to iPad)

I will surely re-read much of this tome.
In the first place because of its unrivalled value as a dictate of humanity.
Also, because I can finally make sense of all those references to ...
I don't feel ignorant anymore ;-)
But not in the least because it is good and fun reading, Socrates is amiable, the standards, vices and virtues, of the time are relieving as set off to our own.

To cut the crap; Plato is a mastermind of an age bygone, but an absolute inspiration for me in the present one.

Other than the Bible, I'm not sure there's a collection of writings that have influenced Western civilization more than Plato's.
Given it's cumbersome size, I had recently read many of the dialogues here in other translations in volumes of more manageable size. I read all the dialogues in this collection that I had not yet read elsewhere.

In Greek literature, there are many authors who are excellent and a smaller subset whose ideas and technical literary skills are simply breathtaking. Purely in terms of influence -- by which I mean the degree to which a particular author has reconfigured the intellectual landscape for future generations -- it is undisputed that the two greatest writers in the Greek literary tradition are Homer and Plato.

Homer is the poet’s poet. His vivid descriptive power, dramatic scene building, timeless characters and storytelling power are utterly unrivaled. It has been famously observed that all Western philosophy is but a footnote to Plato. Likewise, all Western literature is but a footnote to Homer.

Plato took philosophy to an entirely new level, and few if any philosophers who wrote subsequently have matched the extraordinary artistry that marks everything he touched.

He was of course intimately familiar with the entire literary tradition that preceded him, and chose the dialogue as the vehicle for expounding his ideas. The dialogue is by definition a dramatic medium, and Plato exploits its possibilities in many ingenious ways.

Plato wrote at a time when human knowledge had yet to become fragmented, and this is what makes reading his work so exciting. He was interested in a wide range of subjects that today go by the names of psychology, sociology, metaphysics, ethics, political science, education, linguistics, epistemology, anthropology, jurisprudence, and much else besides.

This much, if nothing more, must be observed about Plato: he is a consummate literary artist, and his prose is the best there is in Greek. The give and take between speaking participants and the soaring flights of his most awe-inspiring passages hold up well in translation, and this volume in particular contains versions that are faithful to the original Greek without being stilted or prosaic.

We associate Plato with arcane bullshit and boredom, but that says more about philosophy teachers than Plato.

Plato was a good author. In his better texts he uses plot and myths to maintain the readers interest while discussing an idea.

Plato seems to revel in annoying people, he feels triumphant when he (in The Republic) advocates eugenics, a propagandist rewrite of Homer, child-care and philosopher kings, he obviously liked to annoy people. We have the same wealth of emotion in The Symposium, where he unapologetically writes about all kinds of love.

I guess it is clear that I like Plato, but it is hard to pin down any ideas that he expressed best. He writes about many topics, but for each one of them some later author always did so with greater finesse.

The main thing I learned from Plato is historical. In Plato I see something about the ancient Greeks, that the kind of sin Nietzsche idolized actually was a rife in Greece, joyful insolent free thought and hedonism. Reading Plato builds erudition, it does not give theories (you will already have absorbed them from somewhere else), instead Plato gives you data which you can use as support for new theories, or to disqualify them. It just so happens that data about the ancient Greeks are important. Their mental vigor is a historical anomaly, their tiny population did more in 100 years than the entire Mediterranean did under Roman rule in as long time, or as Christianity did in 500.

One of the great things we get from Plato is the historic account of Socrates, which I guess inspired the gospels. Socrates was a martyr. He spent his life ticking of people by questioning them, eventually he was put on trial for corrupting the youth, he had the chance to escape punishment, but chose martyr-ship, in part to show that philosophy is worth dying for.

You can just ignore him when he gets arcane. All authors have flaws which you can just skip, or use to meditate on the flaws of the greats. For instance everyone should read Noam Chomsky, he is great at poking holes in mainstream beliefs, but you should not trust him - he is a crackpot, and empirically a terrible predictor. For instance he believed that capitalism would be a disaster for India and China; and his political beliefs do not seem to sway when new evidence comes in.

P.S.
One of Plato's big hobby horses was this thing about universals. He figured that all concepts had a real existence independent of human experience, that our ideas of goodness are approximations of real true goodness, our ideas of what a dog is approximations of true doggines. There is a seed of truth to that idea, in that some concepts are genetic. It seems quite clear that humans are born with a kind of knowledge of what predators, babies, women, men, snakes, sea monsters and food is, and we are born with a foundation on which we "grow" language, food-taboos, general morality, incest-rules. Some concepts have a sort of basic meaning to us, because they exist in our genetic code. Plato seems to have had a hunch that concepts had some out-of-this-world depth to them, but explained it by metaphysics instead of philosophy. Essentially he believed the world was a computer-program, where individual dogs where instantiates of a class dog, which was a subclass to mammals et cetera. Predator-ness works like a platonic notion, but vanilla-ice-creamness does not.

I'm a philosophy major. Every philosopher I've ever read is really only writing a response to this.

Vista l'edizione di pregio, ho parlato di questo volume nel video Libri e fumetti | edizioni amene.

تقریبا 3 سال طول کشید اما بعد از تمام شدنش مطمئن بودم که هنوز هیچی نفهمیدم ...

Many reviewers have noted how this book is the Bible of Plato. They are correct.

I recommend this book for anyone who plans to study Plato in-depth. Containing all the extant works of Plato, this book will not disappoint those who want to experience all of Plato's thought. Most pages have footnotes explaining unclear references to historical places, or other important concepts.

The introduction is superb, providing details to approaching the writings of Plato. It is a helpful guide for those who are unfamiliar with Plato or the study of philosophy.

Alfred Whitehead once said, "the European Philosophical tradition consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." After reading the works of Plato contained in this volume, it will be clear as to why he made this statement. Plato explores nearly all the major branches of Philosophy. In fact, he defines them. Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, and Aesthetics are all included in Plato's philosophy. Only formal logic is absent. Those looking for the historical foundations of logic will need to turn to Aristotle.

Plato's philosophy is not without flaws. For instance, his political philosophy argues for a society that would restrict much of the freedoms and individuality of its citizens. A society ruled over by a so-called "philosopher king." And, while his metaphysics are profound, they also contradict much of the findings of modern science. However, it is important for the reader to reach his own interpretations of the text. One of the greatest gifts of Plato and any good philosopher are their ability to make you question your preexisting notions of the world. Regardless of whether I think Plato is right or wrong on these issues, the reader should carefully consider Plato's words and decide for himself. Having done this, most diligent first-time readers will begin to question and think like a philosopher.

Overall, I highly recommend this volume.

Roughly five years ago I read my first platonic dialogue, guess it was The Republic, and it has been one of my greatest pleasures ever since. Some of it is surprisingly modern, as in, could have been written today, other aspects are hilariously outdated and seems to us naive. Originally I could not understand why Plato would still be on the curriculum, it seemed insane to claim that something that was written 2400 years ago, in a widly different context, could still be relevant to us, but it is. Parts of Plato's philosophy touches upon, and for the first time, makes explicit, certain parts of universal human nature, as such, it is timeless, sure to enlighten every generation. Platonic ideas, his courage in the face of death, the drunked exposition of love, his wisdom and practical philosophy, will stay with me for life. Some dialogues have already been mostly forgotten, which is fine too. I didn't think I would eventually read all of it, but I'm glad that I did. It has been highly valuable, and it taught me not to underestimate our ancestors. While it is easy to critisize some of it now, large parts of Plato's work stands the test of time, a testimony to its sublimity, magnificence and timelessness.

There is no rush. Let the dialogues seep in. I’m really glad I gave myself the gift of going patiently through the grand philosopher king’s collection.