30:08 / 395 words

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Note: After a long hiatus, we will be running philosophy lectures on Wednesdays again. This installment, like that last, has a somewhat choppy quality in places because of extensive discussion, much of which was not picked up by the microphone and was thus edited out. At the beginning I misspeak. It is Callicles who claims to be a hedonist, not Gorgias.

In August of 1999, I started an eight-week lecture course called “What Socrates Knew: Plato on Art, Wisdom, and Happiness.”

The main texts were Plato’s Gorgias and Alcibiades I, but I also used excerpts from the Euthydemus, Apology, Theages, and Symposium. I have recordings of all eight lectures, with excellent sound quality so far. I will serialize this course at Counter-Currents in 15 parts.

The lectures were as follows:

1. 
   
2. August 24: Introduction: Thirty Socratic Theses (Euthydemus, excerpt)
   
3. August 31: Socratic Ignorance, Eros, and the Daimonion (Apology, Theages, and Symposium, excerpts)
   
4. September 7: Alcibiades I
   
5. September 14: Gorgias, Introduction and Conversation with Gorgias (beginning-461b, pages 25-43)
   
6. September 21: Gorgias, Conversation with Polus (461 b-481 b, pages 43-70)
   
7. September 28: Gorgias, Callicles, I (481b-494b, pages 70-87)
   
8. October 5: Gorgias, Callicles, II (494b-510a, pages 87-108)
   
9. October 12: Gorgias, Callicles, III (510a-end, pages 108-129)
   

The readings for the class are:

• 
  
• Plato, Gorgias, trans. James H. Nichols
  
• Plato, Alcibiades I, in The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues, ed. Thomas L. Pangle
  
• The excerpt from Plato’s Euthydemus is from: Plato, Euthydemus, trans. Rosamond Kent Sprague. An online version of a different translation is here.
  
• The excerpts from Plato’s Apology are from: Plato and Aristophanes, Four Texts on Socrates: Plato’s “Euthyphro,” “Apology of Socrates,” “Crito,” and Aristophanes’ “Clouds”, ed. and trans. Thomas West and Grace Starry West
  
• The excerpts from Plato’s Theages are from: Plato, Theages, in The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues, ed. Thomas L. Pangle
  
• The excerpts from Plato’s Symposium are from The Symposium and the Phaedrus: Plato’s Erotic Dialogues, trans. William S. Cobb
  

If anyone is interested in producing a transcript of this lecture, we will gladly publish it. Ideally, we would like one person to do a draft transcription and then place it online to allow other listeners to offer corrections. Please contact Greg Johnson at mailto://editor@counter-currents.com before starting work, so we can prevent wasteful duplication of efforts.

Greg Johnson

Editor-in-Chief