Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo (English)

by Plato

Publisher:

Perseus Digital Library

, 1966

Overview

Contents

Top Highlights

“Is there anyone who believes spiritual things exist, but does not believe in spirits? ‘There is not.’” (source)

“Is that which is holy loved by the gods because it is holy, or is it holy because it is loved by the gods?” (source)

“For if I say that such conduct would be disobedience to the god and that therefore I cannot keep quiet, you will think I am jesting and will not believe me; [38a] and if again I say that to talk every day about virtue and the other things about which you hear me talking and examining myself and others is the greatest good to man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living, you will believe me still less.” (source)

“For the state of death is one of two things: either it is virtually nothingness, so that the dead has no consciousness of anything, or it is, as people say, a change and migration of the soul from this to another place.” (source)

“But, gentlemen, it is not hard to escape death; it is much harder to escape wickedness, for that runs faster than death.” (source)

Product Details

• Title: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo (English)
• Author: Plato
• Publisher: Perseus Digital Library
• Print Publication Date: 1966
• Logos Release Date: 2011
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subject: Classics › English--History
• Resource ID: LLS:PLATTET1ENG
• Resource Type: text.monograph.ancient-manuscript.translation
• Metadata Last Updated: 2021-03-03T20:41:02Z

About Plato

Plato (427–347 BC) was born in Athens to an aristocratic family. A student of Socrates until the latter’s death, he also studied the works of Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Pythagoreans. Following the death of Socrates, Plato spent a number of years traveling around the Mediterranean. He eventually returned to Athens and founded a school of philosophy called the Academy (named for the field in which it was located), where he later taught Aristotle.

Plato wrote works on ethics, politics, morality, epistemology, and metaphysics. He is best known for his theory of forms, the theory that the qualities that define a thing’s existence (redness, beauty) exist in an abstract realm of forms, separate from matter. Plato believed that what was true, and therefore real, must be unchanging. Because the material world is in a constant state of change it is not true reality but a mere illusion. Plato taught that love is the longing for the Beautiful in its purest, most abstract, form. Consequently, love is what motivates all the highest human achievements.