by Plato (1973)
A compilation of the essential works of Plato in one paperback volume: The Republic, The Symposium, Parmenides, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo.
Patricia Springborg
This book indicates that Hobbes's legacy was never lost and that he belongs to a tradition of reflection on political theory and governance that is still alive, both in Europe and in the diaspora.
translated and with commentary by Seth Benardete
Some dialogues of Plato are of so various a character that their relation to the other dialogues cannot be determined with any degree of certainty. The Theaetetus, like the Parmenides, has points of similarity both with his earlier and his later writings. The perfection of style, the humour, the dramatic interest, the complexity of structure, the fertility of illustration, the shifting of the points of view, are characteristic of his best period of authorship.
Aristoteles
The Topics is Aristotle's treatise on dialectical argument, a practice perhaps as old as human language, systemized for the first time by Aristotle. This seminal text offers many important insights into his conception of logic, his development of the notion of the predicables (the Five Terms), and his ideas on the method of philosophical inquiry itself. This volume contains a clear and accurate translation of Books I and VIII of Aristotle's Topics, together with a philosophical commentary on these books and additional selections from Books II and III, and from the Sophistical Refutation. These books and selections best give a general view of the main ideas, arguments, and techniques expounded in the Topics. The volume is well suited to the requirements of students, including those who do not know Greek.
Plato
One of the most famous works of literature in the Western world, Plato's Symposium is also one of the most entertaining. The scene is a dinner party in Athens in 416 B.C. at which the guests - including the comic poet Aristophanes and Plato's mentor, Socrates - playfully discuss the nature of eros, or love. By turns earthly and sublime, the dialogue culminates with Socrates's famous account of the "ladder of love," an extended analysis of the many forms of eros. The evening ends with a speech by the drunken Alcibiades, the most popular and powerful Athenian of the day, who insists on praising Socrates rather than love, offering up a brilliant character sketch of the enigmatic philosopher. This Modern Library edition is the authoritative translation by Benjamin Jowett, substantially revised by Dr. Hayden Pelliccia, associate professor of classics at Cornell University. This revised translation takes into account advances in scholarship since Jowett's day and modernizes the Victorian English where it is coy or archaic. The result is a translation neither too colloquial nor too literal, one that is faithful to both Jowett's superb prose and Plato's matchless original.