Dialogues

“Plato himself, shortly before his death, had a dream of himself as a swan, darting from tree to tree and causing great troubles to the fowlers, who were unable to catch him. When Simmias the Socratic heard this dream, he explained that all men would endeavour to grasp Plato’s meaning. None, however, would succeed, but each would interpret him according to their own views.”

Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy 1.29–37

Genuine

1. I. Alcibiades Disputed A dialogue between Socrates and Alcibiades on self-knowledge, virtue, and the care of the soul. →
2. II. Charmides A dialogue between Socrates, Charmides, and Critias on the nature of temperance and self-knowledge. →
3. III. Laches A dialogue between Socrates, Laches, and Nicias on the nature of courage. →
4. IV. Lysis A dialogue on the nature of friendship, narrated by Socrates. →
5. V. Euthyphro A dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro on the nature of piety. →
6. VI. Apology The defence of Socrates before the court of Athens, on wisdom, virtue, and the examined life. →
7. VII. Crito A dialogue between Socrates and Crito, in prison on the eve of his death, on justice, the laws, and whether he ought to escape. →
8. VIII. Phaedo Phaedo recounts the last hours of Socrates and the conversation on the immortality of the soul, ending with his death. →
9. IX. Ion A dialogue between Socrates and Ion the rhapsode, on poetry, interpretation, and whether the praise of Homer comes by art or by divine inspiration. →
10. X. Lesser Hippias Disputed A dialogue between Socrates, Hippias, and Eudicus on Achilles and Odysseus, truth and falsehood, and whether he who errs voluntarily is better than he who errs involuntarily. →
11. XI. Hippias Major Disputed A dialogue between Socrates and Hippias on the question, What is the beautiful?—testing and rejecting the beautiful as a fine maiden, as gold, as the fitting, as the useful and beneficial, and as the pleasant through sight and hearing. →
12. XII. Protagoras Socrates recounts his encounter with the Sophist Protagoras at the house of Callias, and their debate on whether virtue can be taught and whether the virtues are one. →
13. XIII. Gorgias A dialogue between Socrates, Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles on rhetoric, justice, and whether it is better to do or to suffer wrong. →
14. XIV. Menexenus Disputed A dialogue between Socrates and Menexenus, containing the funeral oration which Socrates attributes to Aspasia, in praise of the Athenian dead. →
15. XV. Euthydemus Socrates recounts to Crito his encounter with the eristic brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, whose dazzling display of contentious argument frames the question of what true wisdom is. →
16. XVI. Cratylus A dialogue between Socrates, Hermogenes, and Cratylus on the correctness of names—whether they belong to things by nature or by convention. Socrates, half in earnest and half in play, unfolds a long train of etymologies, then shows that names, being imperfect images, cannot be the ground of knowledge: things must be known through themselves. →
17. XVII. Meno A dialogue between Socrates and Meno on whether virtue can be taught, introducing the doctrine that learning is recollection, shown by drawing geometry from an untaught slave boy. →
18. XVIII. Symposium Apollodorus recounts the speeches in praise of Love given at Agathon's banquet by Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, and Socrates—who reports the teaching of Diotima—ending with Alcibiades' praise of Socrates. →
19. XIX. Phaedrus A dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus by the banks of the Ilissus, on love as a divine madness, the soul, the art of rhetoric, and the superiority of the spoken to the written word. →
20. XX. Republic Socrates and his companions search for the nature of justice and build in words an ideal city, ranging over education, the philosopher-king, the Form of the Good, and the immortality of the soul. In ten books, with Jowett's Introduction and Analysis. →
21. XXI. Theaetetus A dialogue between Socrates, Theodorus, and the young geometer Theaetetus on the question, What is knowledge?—testing and rejecting knowledge as perception, as true opinion, and as true opinion with a reason. →
22. XXII. Parmenides The young Socrates meets the aged Parmenides and Zeno; the elder philosophers probe the theory of Ideas, and Parmenides then unfolds his dialectical exercise on the consequences of the One being, and not being. →
23. XXIII. Sophist An Eleatic Stranger and Theaetetus hunt the definition of the Sophist through successive divisions, and in doing so resolve the puzzle of Not-being—showing it to be not the opposite of Being but the other, so that falsehood, and the Sophist, can exist after all. →
24. XXIV. Statesman The Eleatic Stranger and the Young Socrates pursue the true Statesman by the method of division, correcting their course through the myth of the reversed cosmos and the pattern of weaving, until they distinguish the one scientific art of royal rule from its many imitations. →
25. XXV. Philebus A dialogue between Socrates, Protarchus, and Philebus on whether pleasure or wisdom is the chief good. Analysing the kinds of pleasure and of knowledge, and the four elements of all things, Socrates shows that the good life is a mixture in which measure, beauty, and truth give wisdom the higher place, and pleasure only the fifth. →
26. XXVI. Timaeus Timaeus of Locri recounts the creation of the cosmos and of man by the divine Craftsman—the world-soul and the harmony of its intervals, time as the moving image of eternity, the four elements and their geometric forms, and the frame, senses, and diseases of the body—set within a summary of the ideal state and the ancient tale of Atlantis. →
27. XXVII. Laws Plato's last and longest work: an Athenian Stranger, with Cleinias the Cretan and Megillus the Spartan, frames the laws of a new colony, ranging over education, music, marriage, property, offices, punishment, religion, and the nocturnal council. In twelve books, with Jowett's Introduction, Analysis, and Excursus. →

Spurious

1. I. Eryxias A dialogue of the Platonic school, by a later imitator, on the nature of wealth—whether riches are a good, what money is, and whether the wise are the truly rich; an early anticipation of the questions of political economy. →
2. II. Alcibiades II A dialogue between Socrates and Alcibiades on prayer—how, not knowing what is truly good, men pray for things that harm them, so that one needs knowledge before the gods can rightly be asked for anything. →
3. III. Cleitophon A short dialogue in which Cleitophon explains his praise of Socrates’ exhortations to justice, and presses the complaint that Socrates rouses men to virtue but never says what justice itself is or does. →
4. IV. Epinomis A sequel to the Laws: the Athenian Stranger, with Cleinias and Megillus, asks what knowledge makes a man wise and happy, and finds it in the science of number and the astronomy of the divine heavenly bodies. →
5. V. Hipparchus A dialogue between Socrates and a companion on the love of gain—what it is to be covetous, whether all men love gain, and whether the profitable is the good. →
6. VI. Lovers A dialogue in which Socrates, between two rival lovers of a youth, inquires into the nature of philosophy—whether it is the learning of many things, and how it stands to justice, self-knowledge, and the good. →
7. VII. Minos A dialogue between Socrates and a companion on law—what law is, whether it is the finding-out of what truly is, and on Minos, the ancient lawgiver of Crete. →
8. VIII. Theages A dialogue between Socrates, Demodocus, and the young Theages on wisdom—what the youth desires to learn, the perils hidden in that desire, and the divine sign of Socrates. →