Tyranny and Wisdom

In the Ancient world, one began the study of Plato with two dialogues: the Greater Alcibiades and the Gorgias, which depict Socrates' first conversations with two famous men: Alcibiades, the Athenian statesman, general, and traitor-and the great sophist Gorgias, who taught ambitious young men like Alcibiades how to rise as their society declined around them.

Greg Johnson's Tyranny & Wisdom leads you carefully through these dialogues and demonstrates that the Ancients were right: together, they are an excellent introduction to Plato. Here we encounter Plato's most challenging ideas, threaded together by a highly dramatic conflict between two ways of life: the pursuit of power vs. the pursuit of wisdom.