The Socratic Dialogues: Early Period

Summary

Here, in this second collection of Socratic Dialogues from Plato's Early Period, read by David Rintoul as Socrates with a full cast, are contrasting six works. Often, as with Gorgias, which opens the recording, Socrates combats the popular subjects of sophistry and rhetoric, in direct conversation with Gorgias (a leading sophist teacher), and with one of his pupils, Callicles.

In Meno, Socrates encounters another Gorgias pupil, Meno, and a debate on 'virtue' ensues. Virtue is also the topic in Protagoras, though this dialogue is largely narrated by Socrates (David Rintoul), who 'reports' the conversation which had taken place shortly before.

Euthydemus is one of the most entertaining of all the Socratic Dialogues, with the two vastly overconfident brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, supposedly capable wrestlers, boxers and musicians, who have come to Athens to teach sophistry. They enter into philosophical debate with Socrates, who at times is almost amazed by their brash sense of superiority.

The Lesser Hippias dialogue considers issues of morality, truth and lies, with reference to Homer's great characters Achilles and Odysseus, while the Greater Hippias enquires into the nature of beauty.

Translation: Benjamin Jowett.