The 4th Tetralogy: Exploring Plato's Middle Dialogues at the University of Evansville examines the fifth century B.C. philosopher's Republic, Phaedrus, Symposium, and Phaedo. The site's name reflects the belief of Bernard Suzanne, one of the site's trio of planners, that Plato intended his dialogues to form seven sets of four interrelated works, or tetralogies, of which the four dialogues which are the site's focus form the fourth. Suzanne argues for this controversial view in his work-in-progress Plato and His Dialogues. (Note: Readers interested in exploring this argument further may do so at Suzanne's site Plato's Tetralogies).
The 4th Tetralogy is intended, in part, as a forum for testing the Suzanne hypothesis. The site's general editor, Anthony F. Beavers, professor of philosophy at the University of Evansville, professes to be "confident that inquiry along [Suzanne's] lines will repay any careful reader, even if his theory should prove false." While he does not embrace every aspect of Suzanne's thesis, Beavers tells visitors in an introduction to the site that both he and Suzanne "remain convinced that the four dialogues belong together as a set and that, whatever their eventual arrangement may turn out to be, the important thing is that we use these theories of interpretation more as avenues into Plato's thought, rather than for untying his motives and unlocking the structure of his craft. We wish to learn from Plato, not to consign him to history as an artifact of an age long past." Dr Beavers uses the site as the sole "textbook" for his upper-division course Philosophy 351: Plato's Middle Dialogues
To accomplish this broad goal, The 4th Tetralogy offers visitors a self-decribed "virtual learning environment" which begins with full modernized hypertext versions of the classic 1870-71 Benjamin Jowett translations of the four dialogues. These well-designed, interactive texts are a significant addition to the primary philosophy texts available on the Web, and they are supplemented with hyperlinks to two other versions of the dialogues, one in English and the other in the original Greek. The possibility of juxtaposing the versions enables readers to compare how the translation of key passages may affect their meaning.
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