EDWARD'S LECTURE NOTES:
More notes at http://tanguay.info/learntracker
C O U R S E
Reason and Persuasion Through Plato's Dialogues
John Holbo, National University of Singapore
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C O U R S E L E C T U R E Plato, Socrates, Dialogues, and Masks Notes taken on April 9, 2015 by Edward Tanguay |
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Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)
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his complete works are like a Matryoshka doll
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you open Plato and you find mostly Socrates
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Socrates is the substance
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Plato is like a shell that keeps Socrates safe and preserved for posterity
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but you also find many other characters than Socrates
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Anytus
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Euthyphro
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Apollo
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Meno
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Cephalus
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Polemarchus
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Bendis
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Thrasymachus
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these people were Greek but from all over the Mediterranean
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in Classical Greece, you were Greek if you spoke Greek
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this cosmopolitanism of the Greek world is important to Plato's dialogues
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but perhaps Plato was doing less reporting on what these characters said and did but was doing more creating of they said and did
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Nietzsche: All that is profound wears a mask.
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any deep truth is a hidden truth
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any deep truth is two-sided
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any deep truth goes against what people think
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Plato wasn't the only one writing Socratic dialogues
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it was a minor literary genre
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"Socrates said" has some of the same problems as "Confucius taught"
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perhaps conventional as a point of literary modesty to attribute your own thoughts to the master
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three groups of dialogues
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early
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Socrates is the central character, and is believed to be expressing his own views, hence these are known as the Socratic dialogues
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Apology (Death of Socrates)
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Crito
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Charmides, or Temperance
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Laches or Courage
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Lysis, or Friendship
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Euthyphro
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Ion
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middle
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Plato begins expressing his own views, in the guise of Socrates, the Symposium and Republic are the most important works in this period
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Gorgias
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Protagoras
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Meno
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Euthydemus
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Cratylus
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Phaedo
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Phaedrus
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Symposium
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The Republic
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Theaetetus
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Parmenides
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late
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deeper developments of the philosophy expressed in the earlier ones, the most difficult of Plato's works
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Sophist
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Statesman
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Philebus
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Timaeus
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Critias
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Laws
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The Seventh Letter
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Socrates (470BC-399BC)
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never wrote anything
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Plato wrote what Socrates said
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sometimes called Platonic dialogues
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sometimes called Socratic dialogues
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what do you say, Plato argues? Socrates argues?
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sometimes it's obvious
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didn't have positive views, or not many
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he took other people's ethical views apart
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dialogue
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a cross between a play and a problem set
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Plato and Socrates existed as did most of the interlocutors in the dialogues
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semi-fictional, details are probably mostly fictional