Plato is outstanding among philosophers, more or less inventing philosophy as we know it in the West. In the "Reoublic" he begins with the question "what is Justice?", but the question soon boardens into the investigation of what is real, and how we can know it, so defining the main three areas of philosphy - the ethycs, the metaphysics and the epystomology - for the next 2000 years and more. BUt Plato is remarkable also for the beauty of his writing. The alegory of The Cave at the beginning of the Republic Book 7 is among the most powerful images in the history of literature. And in Pytagoras and Gorgias his portraits of the intelectual elite of the greek world in the fifth century BCE are without parallel.

Selected and with an introduction by Tom Griffith.