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How To Read Plato

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title How To Read Plato
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Richard Kraut
SeriesHow to Read
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:128
Dimensions(mm): Height 197,Width 130
Category/GenreWestern philosophy - Ancient to c 500
ISBN/Barcode 9781847080325
ClassificationsDewey:184
Audience
General

Publishing Details

Publisher Granta Books
Imprint Granta Books
Publication Date 1 August 2008
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

'The unexamined life is not worth living.' - Plato Plato is the foundational thinker of European speculative thought. He was the first Western writer to undertake a comprehensive and rigorous study of the fundamental categories of reality and value, and few philosophers have escaped his influence or rivalled the depth of his works, many of which have remarkable dramatic power and literary beauty. His writings range over ethics, politics, religion, art, the structure of the natural world, mathematics, the human mind, love, sex, and friendship. Richard Kraut explores the intellectual milieu that gave rise to Plato's thinking and emphasises the influence of Socrates, whose devotion to the examined life and death at the hands of Athenian democracy are memorialised in many of Plato's writings. The full extent of his moral and political thought and its metaphysical underpinning are investigated. Kraut argues that Plato's theory of forms is grounded in common sense, and that his critique of democracy and search for a rational religion continue to be of vital importance.

Author Biography

Richard Kraut is Morrison Professor of the Humanities at Northwestern University. He is the author of Socrates and the State, Aristotle on the Human Good, What is Good and Why, and the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Plato.