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Platons Dialoge: Einführung und Überblick
Niemand prägte die gesamte Philosophie so sehr wie Platon. Mag auch der Ausspruch, die ganze Philosophiegeschichte bestehe nur aus Fußnoten zu Platon, übertrieben sein, so setzte Platon doch den Maßstab, wie philosophisches Denken und Argumentieren beschaffen sein muss. Wie für seinen Lehrer Sokrates bedeutet auch für Platon Philosophie in erster Linie Selbstdenken. Platons Werk besteht fast ausschließlich aus Dialogen. Wichtiger als jede fertige Theorie ist ihm das Philosophieren als solches, das selbständige, unvoreingenommene Denken, Sprechen und Zuhören. Das Buch stellt Ihnen in einfachen und verständlichen Worten sämtliche Dialoge Platons vor und bietet Ihnen damit einen authentischen Überblick über sein Gesamtwerk. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf den Dialogen Symposion (Das Gastmahl), Phaidon und natürlich auf der Politeia (Der Staat). Vorgestellt werden außerdem folgende Apologie, Kriton, Euthyphron, Charmides, Laches, Lysis, Ion, Menexenos, Euthydemos, Hippias maior, Hippias minor, Menon, Protagoras, Gorgias, Kratylos, , Phaidros, Theaitetos, Sophistes, Politikos, Parmenides, Philebos, Timaios, Kritias, Nomoi.
122 pages, Paperback
Published November 29, 2016
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January 27, 2018
To say that
The New Adventures of Socrates
, which I recently read, was the sole reason for me to engage with Plato, would be an overstatement. Plato has long been one of my favorite philosophers of whom I have read nothing. Manny’s book has rekindled these embers. While looking for an overview of Plato’s works, I came across this book. It’s only 100+ pages long and therefore one can not expect deep insights. But it fulfilled my expectations.
After an introduction, which includes a short biography, all of Plato’s dialogues (as far as I can tell) are described in chronological order. For each dialogue the topic and possible goals are mentioned, as well as the participants, before it is summarized. The lengths of the chapters are quite different and proportional to the length of the dialogue in question. The chapter on Politeia (The Republic) is the longest one and further divided into subchapters. For convenience, here’s the complete table of contents:
König’s writing is prosaic, but not boring, terse, but not too much. It’s just about right for a lazy philosophical afternoon (or two or three). There are not many original quotes (in German translation) from Plato, but that didn’t bother me. As far as I can tell, the author doesn’t follow any “agenda” whatsoever. Between the lines, I read a certain admiration for Plato while criticism is rare. That’s to be expected in a book like this.
Now I face a small problem: Which translation of Plato’s texts should I read? I obtained e-book editions of the German translation by Schleiermacher as well as the English translation by Jowett. Although I should probably read in my native language, I find Schleimacher’s style quite convoluted and not much fun. Jowett seems much more accessible, but is it perhaps too simplistic? Schleiermacher gives a short introduction to each dialogue, while those are missing in my Jowett edition. In the end it will probably result in a mix of the two, or maybe even a side-by-side reading.
One thing is clear: When I continue with Plato, this book (as well as Manny’s New Adventures) will be close at hand.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
After an introduction, which includes a short biography, all of Plato’s dialogues (as far as I can tell) are described in chronological order. For each dialogue the topic and possible goals are mentioned, as well as the participants, before it is summarized. The lengths of the chapters are quite different and proportional to the length of the dialogue in question. The chapter on Politeia (The Republic) is the longest one and further divided into subchapters. For convenience, here’s the complete table of contents:
König’s writing is prosaic, but not boring, terse, but not too much. It’s just about right for a lazy philosophical afternoon (or two or three). There are not many original quotes (in German translation) from Plato, but that didn’t bother me. As far as I can tell, the author doesn’t follow any “agenda” whatsoever. Between the lines, I read a certain admiration for Plato while criticism is rare. That’s to be expected in a book like this.
Now I face a small problem: Which translation of Plato’s texts should I read? I obtained e-book editions of the German translation by Schleiermacher as well as the English translation by Jowett. Although I should probably read in my native language, I find Schleimacher’s style quite convoluted and not much fun. Jowett seems much more accessible, but is it perhaps too simplistic? Schleiermacher gives a short introduction to each dialogue, while those are missing in my Jowett edition. In the end it will probably result in a mix of the two, or maybe even a side-by-side reading.
One thing is clear: When I continue with Plato, this book (as well as Manny’s New Adventures) will be close at hand.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Displaying 1 of 1 review