The Guardians in Action: Plato the Teacher and the Post-Republic Dialogues from Timaeus to Theaetetus
by William H. F. Altman /
2016 / English / PDF
6.3 MB Download
If you’ve ever wondered why Plato staged
Timaeus
as a kind of sequel to
Republic
, or who its unnamed missing fourth might be; or why he joined
Critias
to
Timaeus
, and whether or not that strange dialogue is unfinished; or what we should make of the written critique of writing in
Phaedrus
, and of that dialogue’s apparent lack of unity; or what is the purpose of the long discussion of the One in the second half of
Parmenides
, and how it relates to the objections made to the Theory of Forms in its first half; or if the revisionists or unitarians are right about
Philebus
, and why its Socrates seems less charming than usual, or whether or not
Cratylus
takes place after
Euthyphro
, and whether its far-fetched etymologies accomplish any serious philosophical purpose; or why the philosopher Socrates describes in the central digression of
Theaetetus
is so different from Socrates himself; then you will enjoy reading the continuation of William H. F. Altman’s
Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the
Republic (Lexington; 2012), where he considers the pedagogical connections behind “the post-
Republic
dialogues” from
Timaeus
to
Theaetetus
in the context of “the Reading Order of Plato’s dialogues.”
