just got complete works along with aristotle. i thought it would be good to see where philosophy came from before seeing where it went.
Good for you! Enjoy!
“All philosophy is footnotes to Plato.” – Whitehead
When you go into the moderns later, philosophy will never again seem so sane…except for maybe those dialoges of Plato which are on paradoxes.
The Greeks and Romans always seemed more down-to-earth to me than the moderns.
mrn
Yeah, The Dialogues of Plato are a pretty good place to start. That is where I am starting, at least. Then, it’s on to Spinoza’s Ethics.
That’s where I started…
heh, I wouldn’t take that to mean too much though.
Yes and Aristotle…good job- you’ll be ahead of the pack.
Personally I’d recommend Dr.Seuss and bad foreign soaps. But don’t listen to me - I gotta problem with reading in general.
Brilliant place to start but I would say take a peek at the pre-socratics from time to time, much much underreated guys and they give you a nice idea of where Plato was coming from (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes) a good book is ‘The Presocratic Philosophers’ by G S Kirk.
Plato nips goat stones, screw that old sot.
Aristotle is the classic, next to Socrates.
PtahHotep is another good one, for early, early pre-Socratics. Good advice on going back to pre- era, Anaximenes is a favorite.
For Western Philosophy, Plato, along with Aristotle, is the essential start. Although, like Rieux mentioned, getting some knowledge of the Pre-Socratics is helpful as well, as you will begin to see the majority of every Greco-Roman philosopher was influenced by such figures as Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Democritus, etc. Also, take a look at Marcus Aurelius, Cicero and Seneca.
Welcome to the wonderful world of philosophy, where nothing is what it seems, depending on your definitions of where, nothing, is, what, it and seems. 
i don’t really care for most of the Greeks, although i am reading through all of Plato’s works for my comprehensive exam prior to graduation. And, i’ll go out on a limb and suggest that Socrates never really existed. Yes, without any evidence because the web is a big place with lots of information.
Actually, Socrates was also known by and written about by a pupil Xenophon, and bio’ed by Diogenes Laertius. According to Laertius, Socrates did not approve of all of Plato’s uses of him as a character. He also mentions Plato spent time with other teachers as well.
As well I’m pretty sure that it was recorded somewhere that Socrates traveled to visit the oracle of delphie where he received the famous message the he was the smartest person on earth.
That is to say of course that Socrates, upon hearing this news, realized he knew nothing at all.
The Oracle told him that he was the wisest man because wisest is he who knows that he knows nothing. It’s all part of the same point (Socrates pretending to be dumb because it makes people trust him more, a rhetorical device used by Plato, the cunning bastard).
As to the title question - no, Plato is an awful place to start with philosophy because his prejudices and mistakes are already rife in the tradition (hence the ‘footnotes’ remark). Start with Thales, make sure that you get a good grasp of Protagoras, Parmenides and Heraclitus before tackling Plato. Then try to read Aristotle as soon after Plato as you can to purge yourself of the stench.
As you can probably tell I don’t think much to Plato as a philosopher. He is to be treated with the utmost contempt, as the sophistical hypocrite that he is. Anyone who renounces writing as a bastardised form of speech and then goes on to write thousands upon thousands upon thousands of words on almost every available philosophical topic is either telling a very lengthy joke (my preferred reading, where Socrates was an ageing comic, Plato the young pretender, the sexual relationship between them only making it all the more farcical) or has some deep personal problems.
I have to say that if you really want to consider reading some of Plato’s dialogue,here is some of my favorite top 5. 
1.Cratylus
A topic of great interest on the subject of nominalism.Socrates questions his friend Hermogenes on alot of tedious subjects of correctness of names.Be prepared to deal alot of etymological references meanings to alot of words. 
2.Parmenides
Kinda a hard to read,and note that Socrates is not the leading interlocutor in this one but instead,Parmenides.Socrates was young at the time,i think.Guest starring,Parmenides’s bitch Zeno. 
Pay attention to the ‘third man aguments’,it is something that i believe most 20th century analytic philosophers is quite baffled with.
3.Timaeus
Good,for the practice of rhetorics.
4.Republic
If you like statecraft,i sure do,you will enjoy this.
5.Euthyphro
Most of the argument is about piety,and this was the prelude to “Apology.”
Funny Euthyphro said he had some esoteric knowledge of the gods and as usual,Socrates questions him till he come to the complete unsatisfaction as usual.
I have to say that if you really want to consider reading some of Plato’s dialogue,here is some of my favorite top 5.
1.Cratylus
A topic of great interest on the subject of nominalism.Socrates questions his friend Hermogenes on alot of tedious subjects of correctness of names.Be prepared to deal alot of etymological references meanings to alot of words.
2.Parmenides
Kinda a hard to read,and note that Socrates is not the leading interlocutor in this one but instead,Parmenides.Socrates was young at the time,i think.Guest starring,Parmenides’s bitch Zeno.
Pay attention to the ‘third man aguments’,it is something that i believe most 20th century analytic philosophers is quite baffled with.
3.Timaeus
Good,for the practice of rhetorics.
4.Republic
If you like statecraft,i sure do,you will enjoy this.
5.Euthyphro
Most of the argument is about piety,and this was the prelude to “Apology.”
Funny Euthyphro said he had some esoteric knowledge of the gods and as usual,Socrates questions him till he come to the complete unsatisfaction as usual.
That doesn’t make him any more real than the characters of Jesus, Abraham, and Moses.
Strange how one could assert the absence of Plato’s lover, and then fully assert that Plato himself existed.
Either you believe that neither of them were real, there is no reality, or that Plato suffered from schizophrenic “self-intercoursing” episodes.
Which is it then?
(Personally, I would say that the last option is best when discourse concerns Plato. If he didn’t, he certainly should have considered such action.)
Whilst that’s true, I do think there is a fair amount of evidence pointing towards the real existence of Socrates. Not only do a wide range of classical writers from Greece and Rome as well as much farther affield, we contemporary artistic representations of him which we don’t have for the others. We also have people other than Plato cite Socrates as one of their tutors as well as official records of Socrates existence and his teaching. Though what I would say is that it is almost certain that the Socrates of the later dialogues is a literary construct of Plato’s and not the views of a real person. But I think all modern historians and, hopefully, philosophers accept that there is this ‘Socratic problem’ in deciding exactly what was one of Socrates’ views and what wasn’t.
Congratulations your already on the success ladder in philosophy (don’t mind mastriani and SIATD 
) i believe that Plato’s best work and the best place to start is with the “Allegory of the Cave”, truly the most beautiful and sophisticated philosophical literature there ever was
Which is why i never asserted Plato’s existence. i’ll accept that somebody wrote some dialogues under the name “Plato.” i’ll call that guy “Plato” even though his “real” name could have been “Zeno,” “John,” or “Socrates.”
That sounds like the best option in my opinion.