Product Description

In this new edition, two of Plato’s most accessible dialogues explore the question of what exactly makes good people good.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #865624 in Books
• Published on: 1957-01-30
• Original language: Greek
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

About the Author
Plato (c. 427–347 BC) founded the Academy in Athens, the prototype of all Western universities.

Adam Beresford teaches philosophy and classics at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

Lesley Brown is Centenary Fellow in Philosophy at Somerville College, Oxford.

Customer Reviews

A stellar translation
I am not a philosopher but who says only philosophers can read Plato's texts and come out with an understanding of what he is up to? Thanks to Adam Beresford's translation of the Protagoras and Meno, I can ask this question now. I've tried reading stilted translations of Plato's texts and they have felt like breaking rocks. I've wondered of those translations if they are in English at all. Reading Beresford's translation was a joy to my imagination and mind. I can now ask myself what being good is and find a way to engage this concept in my own life in a way that I couldn't when being good is translated in many texts as a virtue. In a way Beresford has taken philosophy back to where it belongs, to the butcher, farmer, storekeeper, beekeeper, taxi driver and to an African woman like me. I do not want to sound like his translation is only aimed at the common person. His translation is layered and is apt to be read both by experts in the academy and people like me. This is a new vision, a new way to translate Plato and to bring it back to where Socrates would recognize, to the common person. L.T.

Excellent New Translation
Adam Beresford's wonderful new translation of these two Platonic dialogues from the middle period, Protagoras and Meno, struck me, because they captured better than any other translations I've ever read of any other dialogues, the campiness that is so essential to Plato's witty irony, and so often overlooked. I never realized how essential these asides were to his philosophy until I read Beresford's translation. Furthermore, the modern translation, colloquial and clear (and accurate!) makes difficult philosophical arguments - as for example, what makes a man good - easier to follow than translations past. Past translations have obfuscated some of these arguments and even at times rendered them unintelligible. Beresford's work clears up many of these problems.

Pleasantly surprised

When I saw that I had been assigned Plato I have to confess I worried if the book might be a bit too dry and heavy for my tastes. I was therefore pleasantly surprised at the accessible, readable and indeed rather enjoyable nature of Protagoras and Meno.

The two dialogues are concerned with the nature of being 'good'. A central theme is the question of whether virtue (or 'being good') is something that can be taught. In both dialogues the central figure is Socrates. He is engaged in debates with the two eponymous figures Protagoras and Meno.

Protagoras is the most famous sophist in Greece but Socrates is sceptical as to what a sophist can achieve. Protagoras believes that the job of a sophist is to teach people how to be good. Socrates then sets out to show that virtue cannot be taught. This dialogue ends rather unsatisfactorily. Socrates cuts short the debate as both speakers had become confused -- arguing the opposite of what they originally intended.

The thoughts developed by Socrates in Protagoras are rounded off in Meno. Here, Socrates concludes that virtue is not teachable. This is because so many great sophists are unable to teach their own sons how to be good. As virtue is not teachable, nor can it be a form of wisdom.

Instead, Socrates contends that virtue comes when people are "inspired" -- it is "a gift of god". Earlier on, Socrates had brilliantly demonstrated that knowledge can be innate by leading one of Meno's slaves through a geometric puzzle without teaching anything.

As an economics graduate, I particularly appreciated the sections of the dialogues where Socrates contended that people do not set out to do bad things. It is easy to see how this Benthamite argument influenced J. S. Mill.

All-in-all I found this a very interesting book. It is a remarkably breezy read for a text that was originally written in Greek around 2,400 years ago. Full credit must be given to the translation which helps make Plato an absolute pleasure to read.