Dialogues of Plato

By Plato

Published in 1767-1780

Reference #0873-0877

“The Dialogues of Plato,” First Collected Edition into English in five volumes, translated by Floyer Sydenham from original Greek. Title-pages of individual dialogues dated variously from 1759 to 1780. Plato wrote extensively and most of his writings survived. His works are in the form of dialogues, where several characters argue a topic by asking questions of each other. This form allows Plato to raise various points of view and let the reader decide which is valid.

Plato expounded a form of dualism, where there is a world of ideal forms separate from the world of perception. Each dialogue in these volumes is “preceded by an Argument and accompanied with very copious and erudite explanatory notes (printed as footnotes).” The “set in the context of the intellectual and discursive tradition of the era, Sydenham’s Platonism seems to have expanded Lord Shaftesbury’s teleological views of human nature and moral rationalism against empiricism and moral egoism.”

Works By Plato