LATEST SALES & OFFERS: PROMOTIONS

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

$49.99

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

QTY:

Penguin
01 March 1977
Writing in the fourth century B.C., in an Athens that had suffered a humiliating defeat in the Peloponnesian War, Plato formulated questions that have haunted the moral, religious, and political imagination of the West for more than 2,000 years- what is virtue? How should we love? What constitutes a good society? Is there a soul that outlasts the body and a truth that transcends appearance? What do we know and how do we know it? Plato's inquiries were all the more resonant because he couched them in the form of dramatic and often highly comic dialogues, whose principal personage was the ironic, teasing, and relentlessly searching philosopher Socrates.

In this splendid collection, Scott Buchanan brings together the most important of Plato's dialogues, including Protagoras, The Symposium, with its barbed conjectures about the relation between love and madness, Phaedo and The Republic, his monumental work of political philosophy. Buchanan's learned and engaging introduction allows us to see Plato both as a commentator on his society and as a shaper of the societies that followed, who bequeathed to us a hunger for the ideal as well as a redeeming habit of humane skepticism.
By:   , ,
Edited by:   ,
Imprint:   Penguin
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 196mm,  Width: 130mm,  Spine: 38mm
Weight:   550g
ISBN:   9780140150407
ISBN 10:   0140150404
Series:   Portable Library
Pages:   704
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Plato (c. 427-347 b.c.) founded the Academy in Athens, the prototype of all Western universities, and wrote more than twenty philosophical dialogues.

Reviews for The Portable Plato

A skirmish with sentiment which records with few words and with infinite irony the story of Willie Maryngton, who accomplished only in death the two things he had persistently pursued- and consistently failed to attain- during his lifetime. Inheriting a military code which had faded fifty years ago, Willie was a few weeks too young for the first war, a little too old for active service in his regiment with the second war. Living entirely within his club and his regiment, he acquitted himself with credit but without distinction, was thrown over by his first girl, and then fell in love with Felicity, erratic in her affections, sometimes wanton, sometimes distant. And as the years of gentle rebuff break his spirit, he dies of pneumonia, and it is his body which is used for a military strategy of great importance- bearing with it the letter of identification from Felicity with the latterday acknowledgement of her love... A profile in modest failure which is disciplined in its artistry and quite touching. (Kirkus Reviews)


See Inside

See Also