Plato's Phaedo A Guide

D.T.J. Bailey here offers a student-friendly guide to Plato's dialogue Phaedo, as part of the Oxford Guides to Philosophy series. In the process of explaining the text, Bailey provides a picture of Plato's metaphysics as revealed by the four major arguments it contains. Offering a concise discussion of Platonic forms--the abstract objects Plato famously proposed--Bailey argues that Plato was thinking carefully about names and naming throughout the construction of the Phaedo. Readers of the Symposium and the Republic, those intrigued by the figure of Socrates, and those who believe in the immortality of the Soul will value Bailey's expert explanation of the thematic diversity contained in the Phaedo.

D.T.J. Bailey read Classics and Philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge. Before coming to CU Boulder in 2007 he was a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is interested primarily in ancient logic, metaphysics, and epistemology, but also in contemporary views on those subjects. He has published papers on the Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics.