Literary Works of Plato: Critical Essay

This essay attempts to present a critical analysis of the literary works of Plato. Plato's literary work span is wide containing issues pertaining to justice, social life, specific virtues, good ruler's knowledge, value of justice, love and many others. The philosophical tones of Plato resembled very much with that of Socrates addressing the similar issues in his own Platonic version of dialogues. The Republic and the citizen played an important role in his work in addressing to the various social issues and intricate understanding of the human nature of human responsibilities in a republic. Plato's parents were wealthy and influential Athenian who chose Socrates as a teacher of Plato. After the death of Socrates, Plato undertook travel journeys to Egypt and Italy and analyzed the life specific issues alongside the students of Pythagoras spending several years advising the ruling family of Syracuse. Plato was a literary fellow who had established his own philosophy school trying to convey the teachings of Socrates. His works included Scoratic thinking style and mathematical learning.

The literary works of Plato were highly inspired from Socrates' teachings. He presented the ideas through poems, drama, rhetoric and upbringing the various social issues to be addressed in the society. The dialogues of Plato are the most famous for their bold remarks, conversational interactions and as a great source of understanding the intricate delicacies of complex situations. Plato's early works of dialogues addressed investigations of a single issue and one criticism in this respect is that these early works lacked concluding remarks. Euthyphro has also raised significant doubts regarding defining the morally right action in light of the d...

... middle of paper ...

...d justice. His rightly justified his differences between kinds of poetry from an epic to tragedy, lyric to comic and abided by the rules of literary works. Plato discussed poetry with great depth limiting his thoughts to the dramatic dialogues that he considered to be poetic in nature. Plato criticized poetry upbringing the deep public and literary interests but the same give an impression of being a quarrel between poetry and philosophy. Plato was against mere rhetoric and in his dialogues he presents an ongoing quarrel between philosophy, rhetoric and sophistry.

WORK CITED

Annas, J. and C.J. Rowe, eds. (2002) "New Perspectives on Plato, Modern and Ancient"

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002.

Plato, Complete Works ed. By John M Cooper and D.S. Hutchinson, Hackett (1997 p. 15)

Great Dialogues of Plato, tr. By W.H. Rouse (Signet, 1999 p. 25)