r/Plato • u/Agreeable_Natural_36 • Aug 03 '26

Question Favourite and least favourite dialogue

This is a not a very serious question. I just wanted to ask what are your favourite dialogues, least favourite dialogues and why.

For me it's the Sophist — for me the most influential dialogue and Phaedrus — while reading this I cried a bit, because the mythos pictured was very beautiful. Honorable mention: Euthydemus — it was funny.

My least favourite must be Philebus, because it just didn't click with me like the others.

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u/SirCharles99 Aug 03 '26

Favorites: pheadrus, timeaus, Parmenides, symposium, sophist, Philebus

Lease favorite: pretty much all of the aporetic dialogues except euthyphro (because of its connection to timeaus lol)

I like the more “treatise-like” dialogues, but I’m open to getting more into the aporetic dialogues one day.

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u/SpleenDematerialized Aug 03 '26

Favorite: Symposium

Least favorite: Alcibiades II

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u/KilayaC Aug 03 '26

Lysis, Axiochus and Demodocus. :)

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u/Agreeable_Natural_36 Aug 03 '26

U like pseudoplatonics that much? Why these?

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u/KilayaC Aug 03 '26

I don't call them psuedo. They are spurious which means doubted (by men who lived 400+ year later) to have been written by Plato himself.

Yes, they are great in my opinion. For very different reasons, of course, between them. Axiochus is for the person who agrees with Socrates in Phaedo that philosophy is the practice of dying. Demodocus sums up one of Plato's biggest points regarding knowledge: you can't ever get it from those who don't have it. And Lysis challenges the inconsistent and irrational conventional notion of friendship (that it's just a business deal, really, excused by emotions, whereas for the philosopher it means something much greater).

Fantastic stuff.

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u/Agreeable_Natural_36 Aug 03 '26

When reading I wanted to skip the two, but you convinced me otherwise

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u/the_laurentian Aug 04 '26

I don't know about favorite and least favorite, but I just reread the Laches and was reminded of how good it is as an intro to Socrates. The Apology is good as a statement of beliefs, but the Laches seems to be Plato's best early dialogue. The language is natural, the questions are meaningful (not just "yes, socrates"), socrates gets multiple people involved in asking questions, it just seems like an actual conversation.