Plato 
Gorgias and Timaeus 

Two major works by one of history’s best known and most widely read and studied philosophers. In
Gorgias, an exploration of the proposition that it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong, Socrates debates with an amoral young sophist and assets that it is preferable to endure someone else’s bad conduct than to be the source of bad behavior.
Timaeus relates a creation myth that concludes with the birth of humanity, in which Socrates demonstrates that morality is based on cosmic order. True morality, he maintains, is neither the product of human evolution nor an exercise of will, but an external manifestation of the soul’s order and harmony. B. Jowett translation

About the author

Plato ranks among the most familiar ancient philosophers, along with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle. In addition to writing philosophical dialogues — used to teach logic, ethics, rhetoric, religion, and mathematics as well as philosophy — he founded Athens’ Academy, the Western world’s first institution of higher learning.