Plato: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito

The dialogues printed in this volume come at the beginning of the Platonic corpus in its traditional arrangement. They have thus entered the European philosophical tradition as an appropriate introduction to Plato's thought. But they can also be read as an introduction to this tradition itself. For 'the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition,' according to Alfred North Whitehead, 'is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.'