Plato: Writing Philosophy After Socrates

100 Lives That Shaped the World · Episode 25

• Historical Biographies
• 41 min
• Ages 12–99
• 10 chapters

About this audiobook

A biography of Plato that connects aristocratic Athens, Socrates's death, dialogue writing, the Academy, political experiments, and the long argument over ideal rule.

Why it's worth a listen

It shows philosophy as a literary and institutional practice while confronting hierarchy, censorship, slavery, and authoritarian possibilities in Plato's politics.

A question to keep

How did Plato turn the shock of Socrates's death into dialogues, a school, and a political imagination that still attracts and alarms readers?

Based on the book by Emma's Library, published by Emma's Library

Chapters

1. Socrates Becomes a Character
2. An Aristocrat in a Wounded City
3. What Can Be Known of Plato
4. Inventing the Dialogue
5. The Academy
6. Forms, Knowledge, and Education
7. Justice and the Republic
8. The Sicilian Test
9. Late Laws and Human Limits
10. Platonisms Rather Than One Plato