Hi All,Rummaging through my father’s papers (John Van Doren, Class of 1947), I found this lecture by Scott Buchanan, How to Read a Platonic Dialogue.
Daniel Van Doren
“In my lifetime, the reading of Plato has undergone a most extraordinary change. I think the first time I ever read Plato through from beginning to end was with an adult group at a restaurant in New York on Saturday nights. And even in those days, (that was the late twenties), Plato was still the great Liberal philosopher. And what do we see him being called now? He is the Fascist; he is the Communist; the totalitarian.
And, as with most Great Books, I can read him that way, and I’m not going to tell you what the right one is.
