A short history of Plato scholarship
Plato's thought is often compared with that of his best and most famous student, Aristotle, whose reputation during the Middle Ages so completely eclipsed that of Plato that the Scholastic philosophers referred to Aristotle as "the Philosopher."
One of the characteristics of the Middle Ages was reliance on authority and on scholastic commentaries on writings of Plato and other historically important philosophers, rather than accessing their original works. In fact, Plato's original writings were essentially lost to western civilization until their reintroduction in the twelfth century through the Persian and Arab scholars who not only maintained the original Greek texts of the ancients, but expanded them by writing extensive commentaries and interpretations on Plato's and Aristotle's works (see Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes). These were eventually translated into Latin and later, into the local vernacular.
Only in the Renaissance, with the general resurgence of interest in classical civilization, did knowledge of Plato's philosophy become more widespread. Many of the greatest early modern scientists and artists (with the support of the Plato-inspired Lorenzo de Medici) who broke with Scholasticism and fostered the flowering of the Renaissance saw Plato's philosophy as the basis for progress in the arts and sciences. By the 19th century Plato's reputation was restored and at least on par with Aristotle's.
In more recent times, a number of Western philosophers have been more critical of Plato's work. Nietzsche attacked Plato's moral and political theories and Heidegger has proposed critical "readings" of Plato that diverge from traditional academic views, with their own philosophy as a basis. Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), argued that Plato's proposal for a government system in the dialogue The Republic was prototypically totalitarian. While many critics reject such readings on a variety of grounds, they remain widely discussed.
Bibliography
Below is a list of works by Plato, marked (1) if scholars don't generally agree Plato is the author, and (2) if scholars don't generally disagree that Plato is not the author of the work. Most of the works are widely available in paperback, either individually or in collections and anthologies.
The most complete translations of Plato's extant works into English, still in print, are
- The Collected Dialogues of Plato (Bollingen Series LXXI), edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, 1961
- Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson, 1997
Oxford University Press publishes scholarly editions of Plato's Greek texts in the Oxford Classical Texts series, and some translations in the Clarendon Plato Series. The hardbound series Loeb Classical Library, published by Harvard University Press, publishes Plato's extant works in Greek, with English translations on facing pages. Their volumes are listed below:
- Volume I. Euthyphro. Apology. Crito. Phaedo. Phaedrus ISBN 0-674-99040-4
- Volume II. Laches. Protagoras. Meno. Euthydemus ISBN 0-674-99183-4
- Volume III. Lysis. Symposium. Gorgias ISBN 0-674-99184-2
- Volume IV. Cratylus. Parmenides. Greater Hippias. Lesser Hippias ISBN 0-674-99185-0
- Volume V. The Republic, Books 1-5 ISBN 0-674-99262-8
- Volume VI. The Republic, Books 6-10 ISBN 0-674-99304-7
- Volume VII. Theaetetus. Sophist ISBN 0-674-99137-0
- Volume VIII. Statesman. Philebus. Ion ISBN 0-674-99182-6
- Volume IX. Timaeus. Critias. Cleitophon. Menexenus. Epistles ISBN 0-674-99257-1
- Volume X. Laws, Books 1-6 ISBN 0-674-99206-7
- Volume XI. Laws, Books 7-12 ISBN 0-674-99211-3
- Volume XII. Charmides. Alcibiades 1 & 2. Hipparchus. The Lovers. Theages. Minos. Epinomis ISBN 0-674-99221-0
