Collected Dialogues of Plato

I had as my first intellectual (as opposed to getting rid of some belly fat) goal of the year getting done with my studies of the New and Old Testament with the corresponding Yale courses. However, someone gave me the idea of starting earlier and rereading some Greek philosophy first. Actually, they just mentioned Plato, it was I that realized that I had not read Plato, and a whole lot else in philosophy, since I was 22 – 25 or so. That is, I had not touched Plato since I was what I would consider now, and for most people, an immature ignoramus.

So I have decided to go through my Plato again. I might redo some lightweight Aristotle, but I am not slogging through his entire corpus. Essential, very essential collections, with commentary or something. Aristotle is not something you read on the shitter! Not that I would, but I have a lot on my plate!

That said, I fear I have to do the same thing with Plato. I dusted off my Collected Dialogues of Plato today, the big 1600+ page Hamilton collection. I don’t have time for all this. I want to hit some new spots this time around. I completely skipped over Kierkegaard,

for example. Aquinas only blurbs in history and a few arguments. Actually I don’t think I covered much in medieval philosophy outside of their proofs of God, and Occam’s razor – just the stuff you would get out of a history of philosophy text.

So I have made a list from memory of what I think the essentials are.

Parmenides, Apology, Crito, Meno, Gorgias, Symposium, Republic (portions, especially book 2), Timaeus.