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Plato's Literary Garden: How to Read a Platonic Dialogue

Name: Plato's Literary Garden: How to Read a Platonic Dialogue
Price: 29.23 GBP
Availability: InStock
Author: Kenneth M. Sayre
ISBN: 9780268038762

by Kenneth M. Sayre

Paperback
318 pages
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
15.1 x 22.9 x 1.8 cm

Today‘s price £29.23

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For philosophy students and curious readers

Explains why Plato chose the dialogue format

Gain deeper insight into classic Greek thought

Unlock the secrets of Plato's dialogues by learning how to read them as purposeful teaching instruments.

Our Mission

Equipping you for life's journey with Jesus:

Now a team of 60 – we've been serving the Church since 2004
Together we've raised over £1,000,000 for UK Christian charities
25,000 churches are using the Eden Plus account

Free delivery on orders over £10

Plato's dialogues are universally acknowledged as standing among the masterworks of the Western philosophic tradition. What most readers do not know, however, is that Plato also authored a public letter in which he unequivocally denies ever having written a work of philosophy. If Plato did not view his written dialogues as works of philosophy, how did he conceive them, and how should readers view them? In Plato's Literary Garden, Kenneth M. Sayre brings over thirty years of Platonic scholarship to bear on these questions, arguing that Plato did not intend the dialogues to serve as repositories of philosophic doctrine, but instead composed them as teaching instruments. Focusing on the dramatic structure of the dialogues as well as their logical argumentation, Sayre's study is organized according to the progression of a horticultural metaphor adopted from the Phaedrus. Sayre illustrates each of these metaphorical "stages" with a sustained discussion of relevant dialogues, ranging from the very early Apology to the very late Philebus. In the culminating chapter, he applies the insights gained along the way to a new interpretation of Plato's elusive Form of the Good. In addition to a novel answer to the puzzling question: Why did Plato write the dialogues?, Plato's Literary Garden includes an extended discussion of the considerations that most likely led Plato to write in dialogue form, as well as new analyses of key dialogues such as the Meno, the Symposium