Nonfiction / Philosophy
576 Pages
ISBN: 0-910055-90-4
Cloth: $39.00

Plato's dialogues in condensed translations preserve the flavor of the original Greek, and enable the general reader or student to easily follow the thread of Plato's arguments, which are the source of our ideas on: romantic love, immortality of the soul, heaven and hell, divine judgment, social contract, political science, felicific calculus, penal reform, equality of women, child rearing (including prenatal care and the importance of rocking infants), universal education (divided into kindergarten, elementary school, and high school), eugenics, behavioral conditioning, professional military, urban planning, marriage counseling, regulation of environmental pollution, and state mandated care for the aged and insane . . . to name only a few. This book will appeal to students, teachers, and readers studying Plato who want to easily follow his arguments but at the same time gain insight into the characters of the dialogues and their lives.

• Each dialogue is placed in its historical context, enabling the reader to see Plato's arguments as attempts to address the burning issues of his time.
   
• Biographical sketches of the principal characters, including an account of their personal and political relationships to Socrates and Plato.
   
• All events and persons (historical and mythical) mentioned in the dialogues are covered in footnotes.
   
• All dialogues include the Stephanus numbers for easy referral back to the complete dialogues.
   
• Plato's mathematics explained clearly in footnotes.
   
• Biographies of Socrates and Plato:
• Among other things, the biographies show:
  .how Socrates rose from rags to riches.
  .that Socrates did not seek moral truth but sought to prove that such .knowledge is impossible.
  .that Socrates was a religious mystic and intellectual "godfather" of the bloody .oligarchy that overthrew Athens' democracy in 404 B.C.
   .how the crimes of Plato's relatives foreclosed his political career in Athens, forcing him to pursue politics through his Academy, and the role of the Academy in political intrigues and coups across the Greek world.
   
• Plato's attempt to use the dialogues to rehabilitate the reputation of his disgraced family.
   
• Plato's deliberate misrepresentation of Athens' democracy and how this delayed the rebirth of democracy for another two thousand years.