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Summary: I know this review is extraneous, but...
Review: I can't help myself. Plato is one of the most insightful and complex thinkers in Western history, and Cooper and Hutchinson do a fine job editing his works. There isn't much filler in the editorial comments, which is how I like it; the introductions are succinct and help the reader gear up for each individual section by providing an overview and asking a few questions to mull over while reading. Great translations, great editing, and most importantly, Plato, all in one volume - there's not much left to say. Definitely worth the investment if you've got the money to spend and a serious interest in Plato.
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Summary: I'm no expert but...
Review: I don't pretend to be a specialist or anything but I think it would help to have another translation as well as this. I've noticed that in reading some of Jowett's translations that there is more of a consistency of terms. A lot of the dialogues in this edition are translated by different people, which might make for a less consistent picture, but could make for some contrast which might also be helpful. I've found it a great help next to Jowett's translations, yes.
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Summary: Plato was a Master
Review: I have not read every narration and account in this huge book yet but so far I am extremely happy with it. First, Plato's works are wonderful and somehow maintain a freshness even after reading through several in a row. The threads of logic woven through these works are a delight and I have found myself laughing aloud occasionally at the near sarcasm I feel I'm reading - Socrates often comes across as a quick-tongued smart-A**.The translation is free-flowing and up-to-date. If you can read English, buy this book. If not, learn to and then buy this or have someone read it to you. It is that good and that important.
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Summary: Socrates is da MAN!!
Review: I purchased this book, to learn the art of persuasion; I'm not sure where i got this idea, but somewhere in my head, it was planted that Socrates is the king of perusasion. Anyway, reading the book, I was right; he really is the king. However, in his time, I guess he was too over-the-top for average hypocritical people to understand and he was accused of many wrong doings, and was subsequently executed. Somewhat ironic. I wanted to read this book, but one thing I was unsure of was, how easy of a reading it would be. Afterall, most philosophy books are quite dry. Quite the contrary. This book is very fast-paced, and very entertaining. I think the dialogue format is what makes it so fun to read. If you're remotely interested in this topic, read it. The fact that you're reading this recommendation shows that you're remotely interested in this topic, so you should read it!
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Summary: One of the great books of all time
Review: In ancient times, Plato was regarded as one who writes most beautifully, and even in translation his mastery comes forward. Reading this book, you are at the beginning of philosophy. There are beautiful dialogs concerning the most profound questions anyone can ask. An advantage of this particular book is that for a reasonable price you can own Plato's complete works in modern scholarly translations. The volume is skillfully edited and there are handy notes. Plato is one of the few philosophers who can be read for pleasure. His influence on Western thought is immense. As Whitehead says, subsequent Western philosophy is just footnotes to Plato. Here are some of the works collected in this volume - Apology - Socrates defense of his life Phaedo - a defense of the immortality of the soul Euthyrpo - a criticism of the Divine Command theory of ethics Republic - the ideal commonwealth, what is justice, theory of ideas Meno - the recollection theory of knowledge Timaeus - Plato's story of the creation of the universe, his cosmology
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Summary: "Super Translation, Marvelous Compilation"
Review: John M. Cooper's "Comlete Works of Plato" is the best single volume anthology of Plato around. Shrouded within the eighteen hundred pages of this book lie many treasures of abundant proportions. This edition for the first time exposes these new translations: Cratylus, Alcibiades, Second Alcibiades, Hipparchus, Rival Lovers, Theages, Lesser Hippias, Menexemus, Clitiphon, Timaeus, Critias, Minos, Epinomis, Definitions, On Justice, On Virtue, Demodocus, Sisyphus, Halcyon, and Eryxias. Also the introduction makes accessible techniques while reading Plato to give a more profound sense of the dialouges in order to distinguish Plato's ideas as a whole. Another point of interest is the section on definitions, which is a dictionary of 185 important philosophical terms that developed throughout the Socratic era. I am very happy to have purchased this volume and I hope you find the same joy in buying it for yourself.
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Summary: Required Reading for Anyone Interested in Western Civ.
Review: Plato, Complete Works is a must for the bookshelf of anyone interested in philosophy. Cooper's and Hutchinson's edition contains all Plato's known works and even some that might not be his, but are associated with him in some way. The translations are generally well-written and their style more up-to-date and readable than some older translations. As reviewers said before, this book is necessary if you want to understand philosophy and its history. Except for some of the shorter works, (Euthyphro, Apology, Symposium), Plato's works are not easy to read. Some works are so dense and difficult that you can't see the point of his argument (e.g., Parmenides). If you need some help interpreting Plato, a good introduction to his work is G.M. Grube's Plato's Thought. It provides clear exposition on a number of subjects, including the theory of ideas, the nature of the soul, education, and statecraft. One needs to decide whether Plato's thought is vital today or just historically important. Those who treat Plato as important today fall into one of two groups. There are those who think he is the source of that evil called Western Civilization. Post-modernists see modern philosophy as a series of rhetorical tropes started by Plato. They hold him responsible for the metaphysical nonsense espoused in philosophy today about reality, objectivity, and knowledge. If you think Plato is total nonsense and think his characters Protagoras (man is the measure of things) and Thrasymachus (might makes right) are largely correct, you might want to compare his work to Derrida or Nietzsche. Then there are the Hellenists. They think that Plato said it all and nothing (or not much) more needs to be said. You usually get Alfred North Whitehead's quote here about philosophy being a series of footnotes to Plato. If you are so enthralled, you might want to try Allen Bloom, Stanley Rosen, or Leo Strauss. Personally, I think both readings are wrongheaded for the same reason. In the 19th and 20th centuries especially, philosophy has made conceptual advances on Plato. Frege's logic, Kuhn's history of science, Peirce's communitarian pragmatism, and Wittgenstein's later language theory step beyond Plato. If Plato is important today, it is for what he started, not what he says. He began the philosophical fields that are still popular areas today, including metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics. And he invented the character of Socrates, through which he developed the notions of dialectic and definition. For these reasons alone, Plato's works should be read carefully and often. The fact that you get all of them here in one relatively inexpensive book (at least in terms of price per work) should be incentive enough to buy it.
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Summary: The best extensive collection. At least its "complete"....
Review: The main improvements, as far as I can tell, that Cooper has made, in comparison to Hamilton & Cairns' popular collection, are in not using any translations by Cornford or Jowett and in "completing" the "Platonic" corpus, i.e. by including Alcibiades I, Alcibiades II, Cleitophon, Hipparchus, Minos, Lovers, and Theages. But I don't know how much readers of the Hamilton & Cairns collection missed any of these (or even whether they *should* have missed any of them), except Alcibiades I and *perhaps* the Cleitophon, since (except for these two) they are mostly agreed to be spurious. Two other good points of Cooper's text are his Introduction (which is refreshingly unbiased with respect, e.g., to the question of the chronology of the dialogues) and the Index. On to some criticisms: The translations are not particularly good, except Rowe's rendition of the Statesman (though I think Seth Benardete's was better). I should say, though, that it is a great relief finally to see the end of the reign of Jowett's and Cornford's awful and inaccurate translations, many of which were included in Hamilton & Cairns' collection. (When I say "good", I mean mostly *literal*.) But it doesn't help that there has been little or no effort put into getting the various translators to agree on how to translate of important Greek terms, or even into getting a single translator to translate important terms consistently: Cooper explains, "...No general effort has been made to ensure consistency in the translation of recurrent words or phrases across the vast extent of Plato's works (that would intrude too greatly on the prerogatives and the individual judgment of the translators to whose scholarly expertise we are indebted for these _Complete Works_)..." (xxviii). And there are *many* translators; with a few exceptions (notably Grube's translation of Apology, Crito, Euthyphro, Meno, Phaedo, Republic), there is practically a different translator or pair of translators for each dialogue. Also, aside from new translations of the spurious works, most translations of the genuine Platonic works in Cooper's text have been previously published, mostly by Hackett. The only new translations of (probably) genuine Platonic works are those of the Alcibiades I, Cratylus, Epinomis, Hippias Minor, Menexenus, Critias, Timaeus. And "new", of course, doesn't necessarily (or even usually) mean *better*. Cooper makes a very telling comment about his expectations of translation: "When we English-speaking readers turn to Plato's texts, we want to find a Plato who speaks in English--our English..." (xxvi). This is easy to grant in one sense: we of course want an *English* translation. But Cooper's comment seems to suggest that we readers want Plato to SPEAK LIKE WE DO. I don't know that this is something that we *should* expect. After all, Plato spoke and thought in a language that is very different from our language, and almost 2 dozen centuries separates us from the man himself and the ideas he expresses: we cannot expect him to talk or think like us, and if we try to make him do so then we will likely turn Plato's words into bland expressions of things we already know are true or things we already know are false. We should expect much more from one of the greatest minds of all time. Cooper has preserved the Thrasyllan arrangement of the dialogues. I can't think of any good reason why he did so, other than for the sake of preserving tradition (see his pp. x-xi). That arrangement does not agree with most modern views on the actual order in which the dialogues where written. I can appreciate why Cooper didn't try to arrange them in accordance with any modern view. But as a student, I find the Thrasyllan order continually frustrating: I just can't get accustomed to the arrangement (the farthest I've come is to understand that the Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo are somewhere in the beginning of the book); I find myself regularly having to consult the table of contents to find the dialogue I'm looking for. For easier reference I would much rather have the dialogues simply arranged alphabetically (keeping the "Letters" and the clearly spurious works in the back). Lastly, the physical book itself (particularly the binding) is not very durable. The pages are very thin, as I'm sure they must be to keep the volume to a manageable size, a little over 2.25 inches thick. But the binding on mine came unglued not too long after I started using it. I guess it's good in some sense--convenient--to have the entire "Platonic corpus" all in one volume. But in many cases, I have found myself still using (and buying) translations that are superior to the ones Cooper has included in this collection. But for those who want most or all of Plato's works without having to buy many separate volumes, this is the best one-volume collection available.
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Summary: best translation, excellent commentaries
Review: The translations are more neutral than previous translations, the translators are not trying to slant the presentation toward any particular beliefs or trends, as some previous translations have. Still, with this translation and editorials we can see more clearly that Plato himself slanted the presentations. We see a dfference between Plato's earlier writing, which was more directly memories of actual discussions he witnessed involving Socrates, and Plato's later writing in which the character "Socrates" is just a puppet for speaking Plato's own beliefs. Socrates seems to have embraced "essence" as he calls it, so that serving others was a greater concern than his own self importance. When the dialogues seem to show Socrates being sarcastic, then, or proving a point, we should be suspicious if these were truly Socrates' words, or Plato's. The man, Socrates, seems not to have come to create forms of governing, laws, or build a new "Philosophy" as we now know the word. In Socrates' words, a philosopher is simply someone who has embraced essence, and therefore naturally lives in a way that demonstrates virtuous qualities effortlessly. He simply questioned people to find if their beliefs were congruent with their behaviors. He was more of a non-judgmental talk therapist than what we now think of as a "philosopher." Socrates would never try to make someone wrong, or appear foolish. We must read between the lines. I give thanks for the editors whose unbiased translations and probing inquiries into Plato's own thrust, which make it so much easier to discover the man, Socrates.
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Summary: Timeless, just like life
Review: This is the most up-to-date and complete translation of Plato's work available. In an attempt to express some higher notion of Being or Greekness, many of the older translations are abosolutely horrible. They read worse than the King James version of the Bible. I cannot stress how important fresh translations are. Believe it or not, THEY MAKE THE TEXT. If you don't believe me, find a cheap thrift edition of any dialogue published in the 70s and compare it to this book - the difference will baffle you.
This edition has the further virtue of containing many apocraphal dialogues that Plato may or may not have written: including the Minos, Epinomis, Demodocus, Eryxias, and Axiochus. Most rigorous Plato scholars now deny that these dialogues were written by Plato, but they are nevertheless Socratic in form or style. And regardless of who wrote them, they are valuable expositions on Truth, Beauty and Goodness in their own right. Thus, the editor been conveniently added them.
Moreover, this edition has good introductions. I am not a big fan of introductions that dabble in exegetical interpretation, as most readers would rather form their own interpretations and opinions. However, when introductions attempt to contextualize the text, explain the translation, or locate the text historically, they can be helpful. Cooper's introductions are just that. They clarify translation issues that might concern a serious Plato scholar who never learned Ancient Greek. (I tried and quit.) For an example of what you don't want in a Plato introduction, see The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Editor Edith Hamilton's introductions might well have been written by a martian.
As for the actual content of the text, there is no substitute. Plato is perhaps the most influencial philosopher who ever lived. Alfred North Whitehead said something to the effect of "Every philosopher since Plato has merely been a footnote to his writing." And when you his works, you will no doubt discover that Whitehead was right - all philosophical disscussions lead back to the fountainhead, Plato. I would not go so far as to say that Plato was the first and last word in philosophy, but his style, power, and inquisitive nature have never since been duplicated. More so than than many contemporary philosophers, his thought is still relevent.
Lastly, this book has is the complete package. You can spend a lot of time and money hunting down individual dialogues, but why waste your time? After reading the Apology, the Crito and the Phaedo, you will surely want to continue on to the Republic and many of his other famous dialogues. Thus, it is very convenient to have EVERYTHING gathered together under one cover. For all the reasons cited above, this is the book to buy.
GOOD TRANSLATIONS, GOOD INTRODUCTIONS, QUALITY BINDING, FAIR PRICE
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