Plato
Phaedo
In Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates spends his final hours examining whether the soul survives death and what philosophy asks of a life. Arguments about knowledge, identity, and causation meet searching objections, offering a model of reasoned inquiry and a demanding account of wisdom, virtue, and mortality.
9 chapters
The Republic
Plato’s Republic asks whether justice is valuable in itself or only for its rewards. By building a model city and comparing it with a soul ruled by reason, it examines education, philosopher-rule, regime failure, pleasure, art, and the soul’s fate. Its value lies in clarifying how political arrangements and inner character shape one another.
7 chapters
The Symposium
Set at an Athenian banquet and recalled through layers of testimony, Plato’s dialogue asks what Love is and what makes it worth pursuing. The speeches connect love with courage, ethical conduct, cosmic balance, and lost wholeness; Socrates recasts it as desire for lasting good, creative renewal, and beauty. Alcibiades tests that ideal through his attachment to Socrates.
9 chapters