Platons Mythen

Karl Reinhardt is one of the 20th century’s most distinguished classical philologists. In his study on Plato’s myths, published for the first time in 1927, Reinhardt dealt with these famously enigmatic passages which can be traced from the early to the late Platonic dialogues. Reinhardt opened a new chapter in the interpretation of Plato by radically reconstructing the relation of the mythical and the rational. His new interpretation of the myth as poetic self-unfolding of the logos remains an indispensable contribution of undiminished validity for contemporary research on mythology. This new and enhanced edition of Reinhardt´s seminal work of philological erudition makes available again an important contribution to the literature on Plato. In his new afterword, Arbogast Schmitt shows that reading it today still proves very rewarding.