(December 16, 2016 at 10:47 am)Mudhammam Wrote: @Em
That's awesome! I won't lie, the Phaedo's ending almost (ALMOST!) moved me to tears the second time I read it!
Check out Euthyphro, Apology, and Meno too! They're among the more "essential" dialogues.
Once you move on from Plato, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is great. And Epicurus' letters are pretty good too. Those are just a few suggestions to start scratching the surface, and include what you would likely cover if you took an ancient philosophy course in college.
Yeah me too... almost tears but not quite... just very moving and involving... like being a direct witness at a pivotal moment in history. I have the feeling I'm going to be reading it many times in the future; I want to really understand the arguments in depth, and see what arguments I'd put against it in a thorough refutation. My main objection is that it seems to take too much for granted... essences for instance are things I've only ever really thought about in neuroscientific terms (because it is neurons that 'extract' the essences of things they represent... that's what they do... so all this talk of categorisation, classes etc seems to me to be only describing how the brain works rather than talking about anything objective), and absolutes of beauty, truth, goodness etc again are things that I see as essentially arbitrary perceptions in the mind... that might be different, or non existent, or replaced with something else in different animals. So I don't take any aspect of perception for granted even if it appears to be something that is objectively 'out there'. But by reading this stuff more thoroughly I'm hoping I'll get a better and more foundational understanding of all this causes, essences, absolutes stuff and see if it really is at odds with my understanding of the mind, or whether I'm just conflating the two and there's room for both interpretations to co-exist.
Anyway, thanks for your further reading list
I'll try and read them in roughly the order you suggest. At the moment I've got a 'complete works' compendium of Plato's to go through... you can't really argue with 49p for all of that on Kindle... so that should keep me busy 
and what's cool is the one I've got has got a lot of analysis and commentary as well, so that'll be very helpful in getting the very most out of each one
