Friedrich Schleiermacher's Platons Werke (1804-28) changed how we understand Plato. His
translation of Plato's dialogues remained the authoritative one in the German-speaking world
for two hundred years but it was his interpretation of Plato and the Platonic corpus set
forth in his Introductions to the dialogues that proved so revolutionary for classicists and
philosophers worldwide. Schleiermacher created a Platonic question for the modern world. Yet
in Schleiermacher studies surprisingly little is known about Schleiermacher's deep engagement
with Plato. Schleiermacher's Plato is the first book-length study of the topic. It addresses
two basic questions: How did Schleiermacher understand Plato? In what ways was Schleiermacher's
own thought influenced by Plato? Lamm argues that Schleiermacher's thought was profoundly
influenced by Plato or rather by his rather distinctive understanding of Plato. This is true
not only of Schleiermacher's philosophy (Hermeneutics Dialectics) but also of his thinking
about religion and Christian faith during the first decade of the nineteenth century (Christmas
Dialogue Speeches on Religion). Schleiermacher's Plato should be of interest to classicists
philosophers theologians and scholars of religion.
