Laurence Lampert is professor emeritus of philosophy from Indiana University--Purdue University Indianapolis. He has published several books including Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, How Philosophy Became Socratic: A Study of Plato's "Protagoras," "Charmides," and "Republic, "The Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss, and What a Philosopher Is: Becoming Nietzsche, all with the University of Chicago Press.

• IntroductionChapter 1. Phaedo: The First Stage of Socrates’ Philosophic EducationPrologue: Heroic Socrates as the New Ideal 1. First Words2. A New Theseus to Slay the Real Minotaur3. A New Herakles to Cut Off and Bury the Immortal Head of Hydra4. A New Odysseus to Teach the Safe Way to Understand Cause5. Odyssean Socrates’ Report on His Second Sailing in the Phaedo Measured by the Parmenides6. Odyssean Socrates Ends His Life of Argument7. Socrates’ Last Words: Gratitude for a HealingChapter 2. Parmenides: The Second Stage of Socrates’ Philosophic EducationPrologue: A Socrates for the Philosophically Driven 1. First Words2. At Pythodorus’s House during the Great Panathenaia3. Socrates and Zeno: How to Read a Philosophic Writing4. Socrates’ Solution to What Parmenides and Zeno Made to Seem beyond Us5. Parmenides the Guide6. What Is This Gymnastic?7. Guiding Socrates8. Last Words9. The Socratic TurnChapter 3. The Symposium: The Final Stage of Socrates’ Philosophic EducationPrologue: Socrates’ Ontological Psychology 1. First Words2. Socrates Beautifies Himself for Agathon3. Diotima’s Myth Guides Socrates to the Third Stage of His Philosophic Education4. Diotima’s Logos Guides Socrates to the Third Stage of His Philosophic Education5. Diotima Teaches Socrates What to Teach6. Alcibiades Arrives7. Last WordsNote on the Dramatic Date of the Frame of the SymposiumConclusion: Plato in a Nietzschean History of Philosophy Works CitedIndex

"A breath of fresh air."