The Socratic Dialogues and Comedies

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This collection of Socratic works presents the dialogues and comedies associated with Socrates in the order of their dramatic dates so as to present a coherent narrative of Socrates’ entire career. For the first time the reader can follow Socrates from his first taste of philosophy with Zeno and Parmenides and his rejection of metaphysics in favor of the pursuit of an ethical philosophy that can be applied to the politics of his time; to the application of his ethics to the future generals and politicians; through his debates with the great sophists; to Socrates on trial and the sacrifice of his life for philosophy. Along the way we also examine Aristophanes comedic attacks on Socrates and the responses in Plato’s and Xenophon’s Symposia.

The idea for this compilation is based on the work of Debra Nails and especially Catherine Zuckert’s Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009) but does not follow their proposed chronologies exactly. Some works are undateable, others have ambiguous dates or contain historical anachronisms. This collection also does not limit itself to Plato’s dialogues. It includes the dialogues of Xenophon and many dialogues of disputed authorship which are rarely translated or reprinted today.