Understanding Plato

Socrates takes the first steps toward discovering the meaning of justice in the city-state and the place in the city where it is most likely to be found. He puts forward two analogical arguments to p...

28 Sep 202117min

Glaucon asks Socrates if he can provide a defense of justice (right conduct) that will show not only that justice is good for the sake of its consequences but it is good in and of itself. In one of t...

22 Sep 202131min

In the second part of Republic, Book 1, Socrates agrees with Thrasymachus that in the precise sense of the word "ruler," a ruler never makes mistakes. But he points out that in the precise sense, a ru...

14 Sep 202116min

It is in Book 1 of Plato's dialogue Republic that political philosophy begins. The character Socrates begins by asking a pivotal question "What is justice?" He receives and disposes of two weak defin...

7 Sep 202121min

This episode is about the death of Socrates. The reading is from the last pages of Phaedo, the final book in the Socratic dialogues, without commentary by the reader. The interlocutor is Phaedo, a f...

31 Aug 20219min

Socrates believes he has solved Meno's Paradox by denying that a person can never know that they have found what they are inquiring about. Socrates theorizes that if inquiring about what one does not...

24 Aug 202114min

Meno suggests that there will never be a solution to the question "What is virtue?" because one either knows what virtue is or one does not know this. If one knows what virtue is, then there is no po...

17 Aug 202115min

The scene of this episode is a discussion between Socrates and a young aristocrat named Meno. The first part of the discussion is not unlike an earlier discussion between Socrates and Euthyphro. Soc...

10 Aug 202112min