Plato - Middle Period Socratic Dialogues : Prometheus Unbound!! : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive (2024)

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Prometheus Unbound!!

Middle Period, Volume 1
Here are three important but very different Dialogues from the Middle Period. Symposium, the most well-known in this collection, is concerned with the theme of love. In the house of Agathon, a group of friends - each very different in personality and background - meet to consider and discuss various kinds of love. Each one, Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes (the playwright) and Agathon (a prize-winning tragic poet), presents his particular view in a short discourse until Socrates speaks at greater length. This would be the end except that, unexpectedly, Alcibiades (the vain general and controversial statesman) arrives, rather worse for drink, and makes his loud contribution with direct references to his personal relationship with Socrates. Symposium is an absorbing Dialogue, related, however, by one man - Apollodorus. It is read here by Hugh Ross.
Phaedo is a very different Dialogue. It contains the moving account of the last hours of Socrates. Condemned to death by the Athenian court for impiety and the corruption of youth, he has been ordered to commit suicide. Friends gather around him on this last day, but even at such a moment Socrates chooses to spend the time considering the nature of the soul, whether it is immortal and what may happen after death. It concludes with a description of his final moments.
In Theaetetus, Socrates engages with a young mathematician on the definition of knowledge, the examined life, and how the active life compares with the contemplative life.

Middle Period, Volume 2
The remarkable range of Plato's Dialogues is vividly demonstrated by these three works.
It opens with Phaedrus, a highly personal discussion between Socrates (David Rintoul) and the young, love-struck Phaedrus (Gunnar Cauthery). They go for a walk outside the walls of Athens and, under a plane tree by the banks of the Ilissus, talk about love - erotic and 'Platonic'. Socrates endeavours to steer Phaedrus away from infatuation and show him that real love is based on concern for the beloved while also delivering a pointed criticism against lack of clarity in thought and expression!
The subject of Cratylus is the meaning and etymology of names and words - a Dialogue unlike any other. Why is Zeus called Zeus? What is the origin of the names of Pallas Athene, Poseidon, Uranus? And how did psuche come to mean 'soul' and soma body? Attic Greek, the Greek of Plato's day, is prominent here, and care has been taken in the appropriate pronunciation for this recording.
Finally, there is Parmenides, often regarded as the most challenging of all the Dialogues. Cephalus (Laurence Kennedy) repeats a discussion he heard between Socrates, Zeno and Parmenides as Socrates defends pluralist views and the theory of forms against monism.

Middle Period, Volume 3
The Republic is perhaps the single most important, the most studied and the most quoted text of all of Plato's Socratic Dialogues. Through the medium of Socrates, Plato outlines his view and ideas concerning the ideal working of the city-state.
Socrates narrates a conversation that took place the previous day with Cephalus, Glaucon, Thrasymachus and others. The dialogue is organised into 10 books and covers a broad range of topics, including the ideal community, the ideal rulers of the community - philosophers and the philosopher king - and various forms of government, including timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny.
Part of the Ukemi recording of the complete Socratic Dialogues by Plato, it uses the classic translation by Benjamin Jowett and is read with authority by David Rintoul.