Plato

Philosophy is the Greatest Kind of Music
Socrates speaks of virtue in all the Platonic Dialogues, in various forms, like Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The pattern is the same, but one never get tired of listening to them. So Socrates has a reputation of speaking the same thing all the time.

When one reads Plato, he begins to see a portrait of Virtue that he has never imagined before. The portrait is veiled and opaque, nevertheless it allows him to catch a glimpse of her beauty and arouses in him a desire to purse her. For this reason, Socrates playfully calls himself a pimp.

Plato’s epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy and theology are all logically connected parts of a whole — one might say that they all participate in the One. We cannot make full sense of each subject, unless we take into consideration all other aspects of his philosophy. If anyone rejects the Theory of Forms, which underlies Platonism, his critical analysis would necessarily be deficient, misleading, if not completely useless.

Complete Works of Plato
I Euthyphro Apology Crito Phaedo
II Cratylus Theaetetus Sophist Statesman
III Parmenides Philebus Symposium Phaedrus
IV First Alcibiades Second Alcibiades Hipparchus Lovers
V Theages Charmides Laches Lysis
VI Euthydemus Protagoras Gorgias Meno
VII Hippias major Hippias minor Ion Menexenus
VIII Cleitophon Republic Timaeus Critias
IX Minos Laws Epinomis Epistles

References

      2. There are some differences (in literary style and depth of thought, as far as I can recall) between them and the “canonical” works, but still worth reading, imo.

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