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I find the earlier/Socratic dialogues, from Symposium to Apology, much easier to read, more fluid and dynamic - that probably has to do with the character of Socrates himself.

Works such as the Republic are a bit too heavyweight / scholarly for me..

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You make an interesting observation. By way of example, those who were taught rightly by Gautama Buddha apparently were trained to prefix their accounts with "I heard that…". The reason was that they were told when they say something they don't know then it makes karma in themselves which obscures their view of reality and can also come to ruin themselves. Simply put, if 51% of your knowledge is falsehood then if you were to try to teach others, it would make you change for the net worse by accumulating falsehood. So karma is something in a person which tries to make itself exist through its own activities and comes from what happened to that person, and makes a person see 'what was' instead of 'what is'. Anyway, I notice a lot of people saying Plato was a terrible person. He may have had an idealistic streak due to lack of specific training (the limitation of Socrates, perhaps). I believe it's true that idealism can kill. But suppose he had just stuck to reporting what happened during the trial and during the actual conversations with Socrates (and perhaps even himself). Do you suppose there would be nearly the surface area upon which to mount a campaign against Plato (culminating in accusations of being complicit in inciting totalitarianism etc) if Plato had said "I heard that…"?

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