Five Dialogues

What Hacker News says

1. kashyapcMar 2024
   It's that time of the year again.

   Newport (a relentless marketer, a bit like Tim Ferris) has been on a contract to churn out these filler "books" based on the same bloody theme for years. I've been harping on it since 2019[1].

   As I noted here[2], "for a guy advocating 'minimalism', he churns out [far] too much needless crap. The irony seems definitely lost on him."

   More comments on this tiring topic here[3]. Stop wasting your money buying his crap. What's the alternative? Again, as I've noted in the past[3]:

   "The alternative to the empty books [...] is to read the original classics, and the actual scholars who did the work (Csikszentmihalyi, Kahneman, Richard Thaler, Timothy Wilson and many others)."

   Edit: You can also get far more value by reading one of Plato's dialogues from 2000 years ago, instead. (Start with the excellent "Five Dialogues" selected by Hackett Classics.)

   [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20082125

   [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36024139

   [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29035998

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2. kashyapcDec 2021
   Michael Polanyi[1] introduced the topic of tacit knowledge in his short book (100 pages), "The Tacit Dimension". The blog series only mentions Polanyi in passing in its third article. And only indirectly references his book in a dismissive tone, because "this blog is a practitioner's blog: it is interested in what is useful, not what is `true`". Well, regardless of what the author's blog is about, it is still important to grapple with the original idea.

   In his book, Polanyi also uses the idea of tacit knowledge to tackle a question from Plato's famous Socratic dialogue, 'Meno': "can virtue be taught?"

   You can find an excellent English translation of 'Meno' in Hackett's "Five Dialogues"[2] publication. A superb short book with a great selection of five short Platonic dialogues; reading it gives a richer picture of Polanyi's ideas. It[2] also serves as a great intro to Plato.

   [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Polanyi

   [2] https://www.hackettpublishing.com/five-dialogues

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3. kashyapcJun 2021
   > Walking through my school library many years ago, I walked past a copy of Plato’s Republic, walked back, picked it up, and started reading.

   If you've never read Plato before, I'd suggest not to start with the Republic — it is diving into the deep end of Plato. I'm saying this as someone who has recently completed Republic[1], and thoroughly enjoyed it (and fumed at it in some places).

   Instead, get familiar with some of the earlier, and famous, Socratic dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology (this is referring to a "formal defense", i.e. apologia; not regret), Crito, et al — they're shorter, give you a great flavour of Socrates, and will prepare you for the Republic. An excellent English translation here is the Five Dialogues[2], a fine selection by Hackett Publishing. I'm happy that I started with this.

   [1] There are many English translations; I'll strongly recommend the "Reeve Edition". This translation recasts the entire dialogue as direct speech, this makes it easy to keep track of the speakers. Ensure it is this Reeve-only edition (because Reeve also revised an earlier translation by Grube): https://www.hackettpublishing.com/republic

   [2] https://www.hackettpublishing.com/five-dialogues

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4. curious_yogurtJul 2018
   I think it is a rather bizarre suggestion that one should read Plato in the order believed correct in antiquity. For one, it seems to me that the ancients were incorrect about that order. And, as you say, there are several dialogues the authenticity of which are in doubt and so should probably not be read before other (usually more central) dialogues the authenticity of which are not in question.

   In terms of order, you can do worse than begin the five traditional "death of Socrates" dialogues. These are the Apology (Socrates' trial speech and the nature of the philosophical life), the Crito (the nature of law and implicit political contracts with the state), the Euthyphro (the nature of piety), the Meno (the nature of virtue and knowledge), and the Phaedo (the afterlife and universal objects).

   These five dialogues are from different periods in Plato's writing: the Apology is probably quite early and is a good introduction to Socrates; the Euthyphro is a nice "what is x?" dialogue which comes to no resolution, which is typical of early one-on-one exchanges, and although fictional might be the sort of thing the actual Socrates went around doing; the Crito is probably a late-early dialogue, and mixes in some more serious concerns about the nature of the state that will capture Plato's attention in his later writings; the Meno starts out as a "what is x?" dialogue, but the second half transitions to consider the nature of knowledge and how we can know anything (if at all); and the Phaedo is a full-blown middle-period dialogue where Plato deploys his account of universals called the Theory of Forms (which he arguably discards or submerges in the late period, but is generally what people think of when they think of Platonic doctrine).

   After the Phaedo, I would hit the other big middle-period dialogues that are classic Plato: the Republic, the Symposium, the Phaedrus. The Republic may very well be the greatest piece of philosophy ever written; if not, it is up there in the top five-to-ten. It ostensibly deals with the nature of justice, but it covers huge areas including knowledge, beauty, truth, education, and more. It develops some of the themes from the Phaedo. The Symposium is a collection of beautiful speeches on the nature of love, again developing some of the themes of the Phaedo, but also the Republic. The Phaedrus looks at the nature of love and the nature of rhetoric, picking up themes from the Republic and the Symposium.

   That's a lot of stuff. If you want one and only one thing to read that's short, go for the Apology. If you want one and only one thing to read that's all-encompassing, go for the Republic.

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