Plato: Complete Works

“Plato: Complete Works” stands as the single best edition of complete works of Plato currently extant. There are alternatives, but I caution buyers against those, because they are, so far as I am aware, all compilations of the public domain translations. For the casual reader who would like to have a cursory knowledge of the dialogues, and who also doesn’t mind a little roughness to the translation, those compilations are fine, and by no means bad for that purposed. One such example, which used to be my primary source, was The Great Books of the Western World’s edition of Plato, volume VI of the set, if I remember correctly. The difference between these two mentioned editions ranges from minor to substantial. For instances, “Plato: Complete Works” contains Jowett translations that are altered, because, when Jowett was translating from the Greek, he sought to eliminate homosexual allusions and imagery from the text, so that it was more palatable to Victorian English culture. I have found the translations in the reviewed title to be smoother and the format better (e.g., the GBWW contain two columns on each page, which usually lends to faster reading, but not when it comes to dialogues, for some reason). For a large book, the volume is actually pretty easy to wield, no more difficult than, say, it would be to handle a bible. The quality of the binding is considerable, though I do know that there seems to have been some printings with quite a few defective copies, where the pages are not sewn in very well. Beware of this, when purchasing. Otherwise, I have had no problem and use my volume quite often.As a plug for the content of the book, over and beyond this particular edition, I can’t say how important it is for the intellectual mind, the well-informed individual, the human being, i.e., layperson searching for meaning, and the scholar to read Plato and Aristotle. So much of the whole of history is a continual recapitulation of these thinkers’ ideas, and so it is extraordinarily difficult to truly appreciate subsequent original thought, when one hasn’t the least idea about what it is, exactly that a thinker has said that is new. The tone was set by Plato in many areas of thought: aesthetics, epistemology, science, ontology, cultural and literary critique, etc. With so many histories having historiographically embraced Plato and Aristotle as the originators of ideas the humanity would wrestle with to present (e.g., “The Passion of the Western Mind” by Tarnas, “The Cave and the Light” by Herman, etc.), Plato’s works comprise much of what is at the core of the human intellectual tradition, and I highly recommend everyone having at least sampled them, from middle school to high school, from undergrad to grad, from layperson to scholar. Alfred North Whitehead once remarked that history [and, really, intelligent thought, in general] is a series of footnotes to Plato. He’s not too far off with the comment, and it certainly can’t be regarded as an exaggeration, by any means.Edition and content recommended to absolutely everyone willing to read it. I suggest putting everything aside, and take the time to read, skim, and peruse this anthology.

This book is awesome! Something that I would like to particularly note is that the book is not painfully thick because the pages are thin (similar to a Bible). Thus, if you plan to annotate then I would suggest getting a pen for Bible annotations. A second thing to note is that this book is beautiful on a shelf. I like to take off the covers so that the hardcover of my books are exposed. This books color under the cover is a deep (not annoyingly being) red with shiny gold lettering. It looks wonderful, it reads wonderful, and the choice of paper helps to keep it a bit lighter. Highly recommend.

I've been reading this edition of Plato's Complete Works cover-to-cover, and I'm almost at the end of reading the dialogue "Laws" of this Complete Works (which is the last major dialogue in this edition, with the rest 100-150 being the spurious writings historically attributed to Plato and non-dialogue works like his "Letters").The translations are pretty readable and nice. But what I like most about this edition is how it's nicely the format is with how it chronologically places the dialogues in a order that best makes sense for someone new to Plato to get introduced to, and how it locates dialogues that make sense to read together, based on their continuation or relevancy to the setting or topic of the dialogue, next to each other. Such as the first 4 dialogues in this edition: "Euthyphro" -- which occurs before Socrates' hearing, "Apology" -- Socrates defense during his trial, Crito -- occurs after his sentence but before his execution, and Phaedo -- which occurs during his execution and death; the first 3 are pretty short and easy to get into if you're relatively new to philosophy, and Phaedo, which makes sense to read chronologically after them, is the start of getting into some of Plato's deeper beliefs that aren't him critiquing the popular topics of his day. Then, after those, the proceeding dialogues are Theaetetus-Sophist-Statesman-Parmenides, which are linked to the same setting, followed by Philebus (which is sort of similar in theme of what is knowledge to the previous 4). Then Symposium and Phaedrus -- both centered on love and beauty. Next comes the First and Second Alcibiades and Hipparchus, which loosely share the theme of vice and greed, which is followed by Rival Lovers and Theages, both based on what kind of education one should focus on attaining. Theages's placement, in my opinion, marks the official start of the discussion of virtue in this edition with the following dialogue, as it's proceeded by Charmides-Laches-Lysis; which are then followed by the Sophist-centered dialogues (Euthydemus-Protagoras-Gorgias-Meno-Greater Hippias-Lesser Hippias) that pretty much talk about the same subject but with Plato's rebuttal of the practices and beliefs of the prominent Sophists of his day. The next chronological dialogues after that and before the Republic are Ion, Menexenus, and Clitophon, all of which center the integrity of orators. Finally, you get to the notorious Republic, which is pretty long and includes various subjects and topics discussed in the previous mentioned dialogues; which is followed by Timaeus and Critias which are continuations in the same setting. Then you get Minos, a fitting introduction dialogue for the theme that is in "Laws", and finally "Laws" -- Plato's longest and perhaps last major work (that we have), that is a more pragmatic-contrasted version of the Republic. Then you have mostly spurious and minor work that has in the past been attributed to him, that, aside from his Letters, aren't that relevant to read if you're focused on his philosophical beliefs alone.This is perhaps the best order to read his dialogues in if you really want to read all them continuously. The only fault I find in it, is the early location of Parmenides in this edition, which I believe, and is notorious for, being the most cryptically-complex and ambiguous dialogue of Plato's, that is best suited to hold-off, or to be re-read at the end.There isn't much commentary or annotation in this edition, which I can't really complain about, as Hackett's main purpose of compiling these translations was probably more aligned as making this more of reference edition for scholars and students to have and flip through for studying particular dialogues, and not a thoroughly connected study textbook for those interested of reading ALL of Plato (which many of people, besides for academic philosophers, probably don't do). So to those who are reading this, who aren't that familiar with Plato and want to read the entirety of his complete works (or a significant amount of it) I highly advise you to first read or become familiar with Homer and Hesiod with their epics, read a little bit on some of the major Pre-socratics and their beliefs, some plays or overview of Greek drama, and some of Greek history (I highly recommend reading Herodotus and Thucydides' Histories), and get something like the Cambridge Companion to Plato as commentary to read afterwards.