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cryo_guy's review against another edition
2.0
Well this is another one where Hackett let me down. Them and Dorothea Frede. I've really liked her husband's work on Plato, but she exposes her inert analytic bias in her preface. And her constant footnotes really distract from the dialogue at hand. Once again, exactly like reading Hackett's Zeyl's Timaeus, I had to grab Waterfield's translation to read the preface so I could dismiss the miasma of traditional analytic philosophy. It's surprising, because Waterfield himself is rather traditional. But he's traditional in the good ways and his preface was a balm. Anyway, if you have this, throw it away and get Waterfield's. I'm only giving it two stars because the translation is fine and I shirk at the mere suggestion of a one-star rating for Plato.
What of the dialogue? Well I've slacked so much since reading this that I recall it is about the life of pleasure versus the life of knowledge. It's a late dialogue and it suffers for that, but it's not terrible. I don't think I gleaned any esoteric Pythagorean truths out of it though, so it's clearly a failure as a Platonic dialogue. I digress; I'd read it again if I'm put on the spot but there are a lot of those annoying arguments you find in Plato that go something like, "I know this isn't true or even that accurate, but let's adopt it as a schema and see where it leads concerning x." This is of course unsaid and the schema is adopted *as if* it were true. A decent formula for speculative discussion, but not that great for any particular topic at hand (ah yes well hello, one of the hallmarks of a late Platonic dialogue, I seem to have just described you).
What of the dialogue? Well I've slacked so much since reading this that I recall it is about the life of pleasure versus the life of knowledge. It's a late dialogue and it suffers for that, but it's not terrible. I don't think I gleaned any esoteric Pythagorean truths out of it though, so it's clearly a failure as a Platonic dialogue. I digress; I'd read it again if I'm put on the spot but there are a lot of those annoying arguments you find in Plato that go something like, "I know this isn't true or even that accurate, but let's adopt it as a schema and see where it leads concerning x." This is of course unsaid and the schema is adopted *as if* it were true. A decent formula for speculative discussion, but not that great for any particular topic at hand (ah yes well hello, one of the hallmarks of a late Platonic dialogue, I seem to have just described you).
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