Learning

From here, you can navigate through the rest of the content on the website.

Out of the 30 Platonic Dialogues, there are 8 here with analysis to work through, and one key analogy. These are more than enough to get you into a Philosophical mindset and give you a solid method for thought and discussion, which you can engage more in with the Questions section once you’ve gone through at least one dialogue.

As a general warning, Socrates never answers any abstract question. He always brings up a few key points/criteria that are true, but there are rarely any concrete answers.

Phaedrus

A young man comes to Socrates after receiving a nihilistic and emotionally removed love letter that focuses on the erotic. Socrates covers a variety of topics, including romantic love, rhetoric and speech making, the human soul and erotic love.

Euthydemus

Socrates tells a friend of his about how he disproved the intelligence of two Sophist brothers. Socrates contrasts his own philosophy to the Sophist’s way to discredit them, so the topics have a rough focus on rhetoric and other non-critical philosophies.

Meno

A man asks Socrates if there is a definition of virtue. After questioning if virtue can be taught, they delve into the nature of learning itself, where Socrates brings up one his only concrete theories, the theory of the Forms, to justify his answer.

Symposium

A number of esteemed guests make a series of speeches in honour of Love itself at a banquet. A few different people tell their perspectives on love, and its effect on other aspects of life.

Lysis

Socrates tries to wingman a young man as his crush, Lysis, loves debate, but ends up trying to define the nature of philia (brotherly love that can sometimes be erotic) to a crowd instead.

Philebus

Socrates debates with a man who believes that the pursuit of pleasure is the most important part of life. Socrates makes the discussion about the difference between “lower” and “higher” pleasures, and how a person should find the balance

Crito

After Socrates is sentenced to death, after refusing to renounce his teachings, he is visited at his cell at night by a friend who has a fool-proof plan to break him out of the city. Socrates says that he will only leave his cell if it is morally just to break the Laws. The dialogue goes into topics such as judgement and social contracts.

Analogy of The Cave

The Republic is Plato’s largest work, but is too long, complex, and irrelevant for this website. What is perfect to wrap up the content is Plato’s best analogy from that dialogue, the Cave Analogy, or the Shadows on a Wall Analogy. It tells in a very succinct way, how we can be too stuck in our perspectives too acknowledge greater truths that may be out there, and it is the main justification/explanation of Plato’s Theory of the Forms, his main belief.

Questions

Once you’ve gone through some dialogues, why not do some self-guided study and just think out a question for a while. They aren’t meant to stump you, they’re made to push you to realize things about yourself you might not have thought about before.