Plato Books in Order

Socrates and a religious expert examine what makes actions pious.

Socrates defends his beliefs and conduct before an Athenian jury.

Socrates considers whether escaping prison would be just.

Socrates questions whether a poetry performer’s skill comes from knowledge.

A discussion of military training becomes an inquiry into courage.

Socrates examines whether deliberate wrongdoing is worse than accidental wrongdoing.

Socrates and Meno examine whether virtue can be taught.

Guests at an Athenian dinner party discuss love and desire.

Socrates examines what it means to have self-control.

Socrates contrasts the search for wisdom with winning arguments.

Socrates examines persuasion, power, and the demands of justice.

Socrates examines what makes one person a friend to another.

Socrates recites a funeral speech praising Athens and its dead.

Socrates argues that the soul survives the death of the body.

Socrates and a teacher debate whether goodness can be taught.

Socrates examines justice in the city and the soul.

Philosophers examine how many things can share one nature.

Socrates and Phaedrus discuss love, the soul, and persuasion.

Socrates and a young mathematician examine what knowledge means.

Three speakers debate whether names reflect nature or human agreement.

An Athenian recounts a war between ancient Athens and Atlantis.

An inquiry into falsehood asks what separates sophists from philosophers.

A dialogue examines the knowledge needed to govern well.

A philosopher explains the universe as a work of order.

Socrates questions a young man's readiness to lead Athens.

Three men discuss laws for founding and governing a city.

Socrates examines pleasure and thought as foundations for a good life.

Begin with a short, focused conversation that makes Socrates' questioning method immediately clear.

Continue to Socrates' defense, where his reasons for living an examined life become personal.

Follow the trial with a compact examination of justice, obligation, and respect for law.

Complete this connected sequence with a more demanding discussion of death, philosophy, and the soul.

Turn to lively dinner speeches for an inviting exploration of love and philosophical desire.

Now explore how questions about virtue lead into deeper problems about learning and knowledge.

Return to a manageable discussion of courage to practice following Socrates' tests of definitions.

Build on questions about virtue through a lively debate over education and moral understanding.

Extend those ethical questions into a forceful examination of persuasion, political power, and justice.

With Socratic ethics familiar, tackle the expansive inquiry into justice, education, knowledge, and political life.

Revisit love and persuasion with greater attention to the soul and responsible philosophical speech.

Move into sustained questions about knowledge after meeting their ethical and political importance.

Continue the connected discussion with harder questions about falsehood, being, and philosophical distinctions.

Follow Sophist with its companion inquiry into political expertise and the art of governing.

Bring these more technical habits of thought back to pleasure, intelligence, and human flourishing.

Broaden the inquiry from human life to an ambitious philosophical account of the cosmos.

Read this unfinished continuation directly after Timaeus to keep their connected setting and themes together.

Approach this long discussion of legislation after gaining context from Plato's other political inquiries.

Reserve this exceptionally demanding examination of unity and plurality until abstract argument feels more familiar.

Explore the specialized question of names once Plato's concerns about knowledge and reality are familiar.

Revisit the shorter ethical dialogues with this elusive investigation of self-control and self-knowledge.

Continue these smaller investigations with friendship, where familiar experiences resist an easy philosophical definition.

Add this brief inquiry into poetic expertise as a focused supplement to larger discussions of knowledge.

Read this comic encounter with argumentative trickery after becoming comfortable distinguishing inquiry from verbal competition.

Leave this unsettling short argument until you can follow Socratic reasoning without expecting straightforward conclusions.

Save this unusual funeral speech for later, when Plato's treatment of rhetoric offers useful context.

Finish with this traditionally attributed dialogue on leadership and self-knowledge, whose authorship remains disputed.