http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
Plato (424/3-348/7 B.C.) stands at the head of the Western philosophical tradition, the first to write on a wide range of topics still discussed by philosophers today under such headings as metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political theory and the philosophies of art, love, language, mathematics, science and religion. He may in this sense be said to have invented philosophy as a distinct subject, for although all of these topics were discussed by his intellectual predecessors and contemporaries, he was the first to give them a unified treatment. He conceives of philosophy as a subject with a distinctive intellectual method, and he makes radical claims for its position in human life and the political community. Because philosophy scrutinizes assumptions that other studies merely take for granted, it alone can provide genuine understanding. Since it discovers things inaccessible to the senses and yields an organized system of truths that go far beyond and frequently undermine common sense, it should transform the way we live our lives and arrange our political affairs. It is an autonomous subject and not the instrument of any other subject, power or creed. On the contrary, because it alone can grasp what is most important in human life, all other human endeavors should be subordinate to it.
Introduction to the study of Plato / David Ebrey and Richard Kraut -- Plato in his context / T. H. Irwin -- Stylometry and chronology / Leonard Brandwood -- Plato's Socrates and his conception of philosophy / Eric Brown -- Being good at being bad: Plato's Hippias Minor / Agnes Callard -- Inquiry in the Meno / Gail Fine -- Why eros? / Suzanne Obdrzalek -- Plato on philosophy and the mysteries / G̀bor Betegh -- The unfolding account of the forms in the Phaedo / David Ebrey -- The defense of justice in Plato's republic / Richard Kraut -- Plato on poetic creativity: A revision / Elizabeth Asmis -- Betwixt and between: Plato on mathematical objects / Henry Mendell -- Another good-bye to the third man / Constance C. Meinwald -- Plato's Sophist on false statements / Michael Frede -- Cosmology and human nature in the Timaeus / Emily Fletcher -- The fourfold classification and Socrates' craft analogy in the Philebus / Verity Harte -- Law in Plato's late politics / Rachana Kamtekar and Rachel Singpurwalla.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 559-591) and indexes.