Plato: A Very Short Introduction Book

Annas focuses on providing as nonintrusive an introduction to Plato as possible for the beginning reader. He does not try to cover the vast array of topics that the prolific Plato has touched on but instead tries to give a general structure on how to approach the dialogues. Annas conveys the difficult yet rewarding nature of reading Plato: that Plato is intensely concerned both with unbiased argument and also with with bold and assertive ideas - creating a subtle contradiction that pervades his technique. The book wants the reader to accept very early on that Plato is diverse in a way that is hard to capture without simplification. One almost feels that Annas is chiding the reader for picking up a VSI on such a thinker as Plato.

The strength of this introduction to Plato then is that it does not attempt either to cover all of Plato's ideas or to provide a recipe for interpreting him, but rather aims to introduce the reader to long-term engagement with Plato. This is done by carefully showing the nature of Plato's approach towards Philosophy - one of a careful avoidance of dogma.

Plato takes great pains to avoid any pretense towards having a final solution in almost all of his dialogues. As Plato makes a respected older philosopher say to Socrates, in the Parmenides, 'the further work the theory needs is to be found in the practice of argument'. And this advice of Plato is what this VSI asks the reader to keep in mind as they embark on their own exploration and a lifetime of discussion and engagement (hopefully).