[curious_yogurt]

Indeed, questioning assumptions is a part of what hopefully comes out of a careful reading of Plato's dialogues. But it is much more than this. Plato not only tries to figure out which questions are worth asking, but embeds a plethora of different approaches and ideas in his dialogues. Many of these approaches and ideas are specific to the type of question under discussion—part of why we have different classes of arguments for different topics.

I do agree with you that you should not expect to uncover some magical idea in Plato's works. But this is certainly not what Plato intended us to do. Instead, what Plato is trying to do is encode philosophical practice. This entails not a collection of ideas (magical or not), but rather an approach to philosophical discourse and hence to the world. Curiosity and scepticism, as you correctly point out, are important and are recurrent themes. But this just scratches the surface.

[astazangasta]

Questioning assumptions is hardly what Plato conveys - rather the opposite. Most of his arguments are constructed of blank suppositions which we're meant to take at face value, usually because the social burden of contravening them in the back-and-forth flow of dialog is so difficult - Thrasymachus was right, Socrates is simply a bully. This is how the Republic is able to take us to such, frankly, asinine places (like a ban on fast-tempo'd music) - because Plato doesn't even attempt to unpack most of his (rather conservative) assumptions.

[westoncb]

> But this just scratches the surface.

I'd be curious to hear about any others.

Additionally, my understanding is that his actual argumentation is generally pretty bad and he's really just trying to convince people of things that the thinks would be effective for them. That's mostly coming from reading Bertrand Russel, but the fact that his arguments are bad (structurally, not just because of the data he's missing) seems to be uncontroversial from what I can tell.

[curious_yogurt]

It seems to me that the claim that Plato's "actual argumentation is generally pretty bad" is something that might be challenging to defend. It is a very sweeping claim, and it also assumes the argumentation of the author is reflected by the characters in the dialogues. Even if we were to weaken this to say that the actual argumentation of the characters in the dialogues is generally pretty bad, I think that it would be challenging to defend this claim. I'm not saying it's not possible; but it would be interesting to see if it could be sustained. My guess is that it would not be possible to sustain such a general claim.

Bertrand Russell, of course, is a master of logic. But if you are drawing from his History of Philosophy, I'm not sure that is a particularly good source for views on ancient philosophy. I tend to think the best way to justify a claim is to look at the primary sources themselves (if we have them—which in the case of Plato we are pretty sure we have everything he wrote and then some extras).

In terms of scratching the surface, much of what Plato contributes is ways to approach particular problems. For example, if you look at the treatment of universals in the Parmenides and the Philebus, the approaches in the arguments here (severally considered) have a lot of staying power: in particular, you find related arguments being made regarding universals by Aristotle and on, going all the way up to the present day (including, for example, Bertrand Russell). What is going on here is not merely philosophical scepticism (though there is that), but also approaching and techniques that need to be solved in order to make progress on a particular problem. So, that is an example of how the dialogues go beyond simple scepticism. There are so many other examples: the dialogues are packed with them — which is part of the reason why treatments of many modern philosophical problems and approaches can be traced back to Plato.

[westoncb]

Thanks for the replay curious_yogurt. As far as going back to primary sources, I did that initially but it seemed to me like he was making flawed arguments—either that or I just was totally failing to follow the logic. That's where I ended up going to places like Russel's History of Western Philosophy (as you guessed), and Durant's The Story of Philosophy. You can see even on this thread though, others echoing what I came to understand to be the case: it's relatively accepted that the intrinsic logical merit of Plato's arguments is not very high.

That said, when you pointed out the universals qeustion it reminded me of the thing that probably impressed me the most in reading Plato. The level of abstraction he reached just skyrocketed things. It's there in a certain sense with the pre-Socrates with general statements like 'everything is flux' or whatever, but some of Plato's stuff does feel remarkably modern.

That said, I think my original point still holds: impressive for his time, but there are far better things to be reading now (unless you're looking specifically for historic content). Or maybe there's still something I'm missing?

[curious_yogurt]

The idea that Plato was "impressive for his time," but with the inference that he is not now, is something certainly held by some modern-day philosophers. But it is not a generally accepted view. The reason is that philosophy is (for the most part) not a subject that sheds its skin — whereby the "old sources" are discarded in favour of the new, generally speaking.

I say "generally speaking," because there are parts of philosophy like this; in particular logic, where the development of formalization in predicate logic, in the nineteenth and twentieth century eclipsed the categorical formalizations of Aristotle and the propositional formalizations of the Stoics. But Plato's argument against instantiated universals in the 5th century crops up when anyone wants to do serious work on universals—and this holds up to the present day. Or, for example, anyone serious about the notion of knowledge would do well to carefully examine many of the arguments in the Theaetetus to discover where the blind allies are when it comes to giving a rigorous definition of knowledge.

Of course, knowing Plato will help you with historical context. But that historical context reaches across the centuries and informs present day conversations in philosophy. The reason is that philosophy is a particular practice and way of approaching the world, rather than a body of doctrine. In turns out that the way Plato approaches a particular problem will shed light and spur new ideas about how to approach that problem—such that we can juxtapose, say, Plato's conception of universals with D. M. Armstrong's conception of the same. Or Plato's conception of knowledge with that of Bacon or Karl Popper.

So, I take issue with the claim that there are "far better things to be reading now." There are many great things to be reading now; but that does mean that Plato's work has been eclipsed, or that we have nothing to learn from reading his work beyond satisfying historical curiosity.

[malloryerik]

Curious_yogurt, do you have any opinion about the order in which Plato should be read? I believe the author of the linked article is suggesting the order that was believed correct in antiquity? But then there is also the question of the authenticity of the first book listed, Alcibiades I. It can seem odd to begin with a book whose authorship is in question.

Might you have any comments?

[curious_yogurt]

I think it is a rather bizarre suggestion that one should read Plato in the order believed correct in antiquity. For one, it seems to me that the ancients were incorrect about that order. And, as you say, there are several dialogues the authenticity of which are in doubt and so should probably not be read before other (usually more central) dialogues the authenticity of which are not in question.

In terms of order, you can do worse than begin the five traditional "death of Socrates" dialogues. These are the Apology (Socrates' trial speech and the nature of the philosophical life), the Crito (the nature of law and implicit political contracts with the state), the Euthyphro (the nature of piety), the Meno (the nature of virtue and knowledge), and the Phaedo (the afterlife and universal objects).

These five dialogues are from different periods in Plato's writing: the Apology is probably quite early and is a good introduction to Socrates; the Euthyphro is a nice "what is x?" dialogue which comes to no resolution, which is typical of early one-on-one exchanges, and although fictional might be the sort of thing the actual Socrates went around doing; the Crito is probably a late-early dialogue, and mixes in some more serious concerns about the nature of the state that will capture Plato's attention in his later writings; the Meno starts out as a "what is x?" dialogue, but the second half transitions to consider the nature of knowledge and how we can know anything (if at all); and the Phaedo is a full-blown middle-period dialogue where Plato deploys his account of universals called the Theory of Forms (which he arguably discards or submerges in the late period, but is generally what people think of when they think of Platonic doctrine).

After the Phaedo, I would hit the other big middle-period dialogues that are classic Plato: the Republic, the Symposium, the Phaedrus. The Republic may very well be the greatest piece of philosophy ever written; if not, it is up there in the top five-to-ten. It ostensibly deals with the nature of justice, but it covers huge areas including knowledge, beauty, truth, education, and more. It develops some of the themes from the Phaedo. The Symposium is a collection of beautiful speeches on the nature of love, again developing some of the themes of the Phaedo, but also the Republic. The Phaedrus looks at the nature of love and the nature of rhetoric, picking up themes from the Republic and the Symposium.

That's a lot of stuff. If you want one and only one thing to read that's short, go for the Apology. If you want one and only one thing to read that's all-encompassing, go for the Republic.