Scan barcode
casparb's review against another edition
3.0
My 100th book this year?
Described as the most difficult dialogue and I agree, from those I've read. At times it reads like a Gertrude Stein poem, without the flowers or lyrical brilliance.
So most of Plato is quite straightforward, in my experience. Of course, it can be enriched by the classroom experience, but I wouldn't say that's essential to understanding. Parmenides is the exception. This one needs a companion or somesuch.
It felt like an awful lot of this is collapsed by Kant's old maxim about existence not being a predicate. I'm neither a Kantian nor a Platonist so I'm not really capable of interrogating this.
Described as the most difficult dialogue and I agree, from those I've read. At times it reads like a Gertrude Stein poem, without the flowers or lyrical brilliance.
So most of Plato is quite straightforward, in my experience. Of course, it can be enriched by the classroom experience, but I wouldn't say that's essential to understanding. Parmenides is the exception. This one needs a companion or somesuch.
It felt like an awful lot of this is collapsed by Kant's old maxim about existence not being a predicate. I'm neither a Kantian nor a Platonist so I'm not really capable of interrogating this.
jackdziatkowiec's review against another edition
challenging
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
slow-paced
3.0
Plato here writes like the Mad Hatter. This book is a maze with no exit. It's a puzzle, but all the pieces look the same. It's uroboros eating itself; it goes around in circles. I enjoyed it for it's absurdity.
br0k3nglass's review against another edition
5.0
Part I is great. Part II is a lot of work and I don't understand it yet.
zmb's review against another edition
3.0
I enjoyed The Adventures of Teen Socrates and his discussion with Zeno. But the later part, the discussion between Parmenides himself and Aristotle(s) on the One, was quite tedious. For one, it's not a dialogue in the least, echoing Sophist and Statesman. And its quasi-theological discussion of the One just didn't interest me.