LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Plato: Dialogues
built 643 days ago
The exact order in which Plato's dialogues were written is not known, nor is the extent to which some might have been later revised and rewritten. However, according to modern linguistic theory there is enough information internal to the dialogues to form a rough chronology. The dialogues are normally grouped into three fairly distinct periods, with a few of them considered transitional works, and some just difficult to place. Friedrich Schleiermacher, whose translation of Plato into German still stands uncontested in Germany, is very likely the first to have divided Plato's dialogues into three distinct periods. However, his ordering is quite different from the modern one, and rather than being based upon philology, he claims to have traced Plato's philosophical development. Schleiermacher divides the dialogues ...:
Source:
Plato was a superb writer, and his works are part of the world's great literature. His extant work is in the form of dialogues and epistles. Some of the dialogues and many of the epistles attributed to him are known to be spurious, while others are doubtful. In the various dialogues he touched upon almost every problem that has occupied subsequent philosophers. The dialogues are divided into three groups according to the probable order of composition.
Source:
Plato had a love-hate relationship with the arts. He must have had some love for the arts, because he talks about them often, and his remarks show that he paid close attention to what he saw and heard. He was ... a fine literary stylist and a great story-teller; in fact he is said to have been a poet before he encountered Socrates and became a philosopher. Some of his dialogues are real literary masterpieces. On the other hand, he found the arts threatening. He proposed sending the poets and playwrights out of his ideal Republic, or at least censoring what they wrote; and he wanted music and painting severely censored.
Source:
Plato's philosophical views had many societal implications, especially on the idea of an ideal state or government. There is some discrepancy between his early and later views. Some of the most famous doctrines are contained in the Republic during his middle period, as well as in the Laws and the Statesman. However, because Plato wrote dialogues, it is assumed that Socrates is often speaking for Plato. This assumption may not be true in all cases.
Source:
If Plato went through a period of open-ended experimentation, this stage was definitely over when he wrote the Republic, the central work of his middle years. That there is a major change of mind is indicated already by the dialogue's dramatic means. The aporetic controversy about justice in the first book is set off quite clearly against the cooperative discussion that is to follow in the remaining nine books. Like the Gorgias, the first book of the Republic presents three partners who defend, with increasing tension, their notion of justice against Socrates' elenchos. Of these disputes especially the altercation with the sophist Thrasymachus has received a lot of attention, because he defends the provocative thesis that justice is the right of the stronger and that conventional justice is at best high-minded foolishness. The arguments employed by Socrates at the various turns of the discussion will not be presented here.
Source:
Plato wrote 26 dialogues on various philosophical themes, with Socrates as the main character in most of them. The exact ordering of the dialogues is not known, but they can be roughly assigned to three periods, the early, middle, and late. The early dialogues, begun after 399 B.C., are seen by many as memorials to the life and teaching of Socrates. Three of them, the Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito, describe Socrates' conduct immediately before, during, and after his trial. The early writings include a series of short dialogues that end with no clear and definitive solution to the problems raised. Characteristically, Plato has Socrates ask questions of the form "What is X?"
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Dialogues