"Make the assumption that Plato was a smart guy (A. N. Whitehead once wrote that all western philosophy is but a set of footnotes on Plato's dialogues...) and, if you find some place where there is a dumb way of reading the text and a smart one, assume Plato had the smart one in mind"<p>So if Plato is misunderstood, it is because he failed to make himself clear by clearly stating that an easy way of misunderstanding him is not what he actually meant.<p>"most of what is good in Aristotle is Plato's, often ill digested; but if you haven't heard of Aristotle yet, you are lucky and enjoy your luck as it last, and forget about Aristotle; only be aware that even if you don't know it, Aristotle had a great influence on our way of understanding the world, and contributed to instilling in our mind the wrong notions about Plato, this picture of Plato as an idealist dreaming in a world of "ideas" or "forms" unconnected with the real world).<p>So the author believes that Aristotle was part right in his philosophical beliefs and part wrong, and that the parts he got wrong, Plato got right. And that the modern world follows Aristotle, and so we need Plato to correct our beliefs.<p>I wonder what the author's metaphysical and political beliefs are, and how they would stand up against critiques from Aristotle and also various modern philosophers if the author presented them as such in a well-organized fashion. My guess is they would fair quite poorly, and he hiding behind Plato as a way of keeping this from happening.
My favorite is to read Plato as a set of advertisements for the Academy. "Come to the Academy," they say, "and partake in conversations like this!"<p>(This is why Phaedrus ends with Socrates arguing that you cannot learn anything by reading, only through discussion with a teacher.)
This guy says ignore the scholars, then says, this is the order the dialogues were meant to be read, and lists "tetralogies." Nobody knows what the order of the dialogues is or how they are grouped, if at all. The best way to group the dialogues is probably the dramatic order, for instance Theatetus-Sophist-Statesmen-Apology-Crito-Phaedo, but there are other ways to group the dialogues too. For instance, some dialogues are narrated by Socrates (Lovers, Charmides, Menexenus), others are narrated but not by Socrates (Theatetus, Symposium), others are straight dialogue (Crito, Euthyphro) etc etc. There are a lot of ways to look at it and the best way is probably just to pick up the Apology and start reading it.<p>Second, he says that the dialogues should be examined as a whole. Well, how would we understand the entire corpus of dialogues without first understanding each individual dialogue on its own, and vice versa? An individual dialogue is easier to understand on its own, that's probably where we should start.
If you're interested in Plato and Platonic thought, I highly recommend looking into the work of Pierre Grimes and the Noetic Society. Pierre has done dozens of lectures on Plato, see this channel[0].<p>[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwpMRCoVgSJ-rKyV1yhWljg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwpMRCoVgSJ-rKyV1yhWljg</a>
I find the earlier/Socratic dialogues, from Symposium to Apology, much easier to read, more fluid and dynamic - that probably has to do with the character of Socrates himself.<p>Works such as the Republic are a bit too heavyweight / scholarly for me..
Check out:<p><a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/eidos/" rel="nofollow">http://www.patheos.com/blogs/eidos/</a><p>The author is currently writing a series of articles on his reading of the Republic.
Recommendation for <i>Plato at the Googleplex</i> by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. A very fun set of thought-experiment/narrative dialogues exploring why philosophy (still) matters.
The author’s conclusion that Plato was working for the betterment of humanity is simply laughable. He was an Athenian aristocrat, deeply resentful of his loss of social standing by the newfangled invention of democracy. Like many of Socrates’ students, he was disloyal to democracy (his uncle Critias, also a Socrates associate, was the leading member of the quisling Thirty Tyrants imposed by the Spartans when they defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War).<p>That’s why Socrates was executed, for treason really but under different charges because of an amnesty on collaborators imposed by Sparta in exchange for the restoration of democracy. And why Plato was exiled to Syracuse, where he failed to worm his way into Dyonisios’ favor with his transparent flattery.<p>The Spartan-inspired political system advocated by Plato in The Republic is totalitarian beyond the wildest dreams of a Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot. It does suggest philosophers ought to be the supreme rulers, which may explain that useless profession’s fondness for the guy, and the excuses they make for him.<p>Far better to read Karl Popper’s “The Open Society and Its Enemies”, volume 1, “The Spell of Plato” to understand how abominable Plato’s influence has been for mankind.
> Make the assumption that Plato was a smart guy (A. N. Whitehead once wrote that all western philosophy is but a set of footnotes on Plato's dialogues...) and, if you find some place where there is a dumb way of reading the text and a smart one, assume Plato had the smart one in mind, even if Aristotle tried to make us believe he had the dumb one, ...<p>This is not starting off well. The first rule is to interpret him in the most favorable way possible... (And the second rule btw is that Plato is better than Aristotle—which incidentally also makes up most of the first rule.)<p>I've read some plato and been very impressed with what he was doing <i>at his time</i>. That said, I've run into a number of folks who insist that he is <i>still</i> one of the most important philosophers to read (in the sense of being capable of benefitting modern readers)—but I can never get them to say what any particular idea(s) he has that's useful or true/important but not already well known. And any ideas I came across in my own reading were either easily demonstrable to be incorrect (and which someone as intelligent as Plato never would have espoused if he lived with our modern knowledge), or I'd already run into them in other contexts.