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As an individual, and a company, a key mission at Plato is creating this environment for growth. We believe the two are intertwined. We embrace failure, learn from our mistakes - sharing them openly, and we delight in those unexpected moments of clarity that come from it. Move fast. We trust our fellow team members to try out new ideas, and we believe in taking ownership over those ideas. Olivier Pomel. Looking for logos, founder headshots, or press info?

We've got you covered right here. We are Plato. All people first People are at the heart of all we do at PlatoпїЅthey are the fuel that makes this organization run. Always be growing We wholeheartedly believe in the power of potential - in having a curious mind and always moving forward. Thomas Baretto VP Engineering. Jason M Lemkin Founder. Lois Monier Head of Data Science. Most of them purport to be the outcome of his involvement in the politics of Syracuse, a heavily populated Greek city located in Sicily and ruled by tyrants.

We are of course familiar with the dialogue form through our acquaintance with the literary genre of drama. Nor are they all presented in the form of a drama: in many of them, a single speaker narrates events in which he participated. As a group, they form vivid portraits of a social world, and are not purely intellectual exchanges between characterless and socially unmarked speakers.

However, it must be added that in some of his works the speakers display little or no character. See, for example, Sophist and Statesman пїЅdialogues in which a visitor from the town of Elea in Southern Italy leads the discussion; and Laws , a discussion between an unnamed Athenian and two named fictional characters, one from Crete and the other from Sparta.

In many of his dialogues though not all , Plato is not only attempting to draw his readers into a discussion, but is also commenting on the social milieu that he is depicting, and criticizing the character and ways of life of his interlocutors see Blondell Some of the dialogues that most evidently fall into this category are Protagoras , Gorgias , Hippias Major , Euthydemus , and Symposium.

Plato was not the only author whose personal experience of Socrates led to the depiction of him as a character in one or more dramatic works. Furthermore, we have some fragmentary remains of dialogues written by other contemporaries of Socrates besides Plato and Xenophon Aeschines, Antisthenes, Eucleides, Phaedo , and these purport to describe conversations he conducted with others see Boys-Stone and Rowe So, when Plato wrote dialogues that feature Socrates as a principal speaker, he was both contributing to a genre that was inspired by the life of Socrates and participating in a lively literary debate about the kind of person Socrates was and the value of the intellectual conversations in which he was involved.

Evidently, the historical Socrates was the sort of person who provoked in those who knew him, or knew of him, a profound response, and he inspired many of those who came under his influence to write about him.

But the portraits composed by Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato are the ones that have survived intact, and they are therefore the ones that must play the greatest role in shaping our conception of what Socrates was like. At any rate, no one certainly not Xenophon himself takes Xenophon to be a major philosopher in his own right; when we read his Socratic works, we are not encountering a great philosophical mind. But that is what we experience when we read Plato.

No doubt he in some way borrowed in important ways from Socrates, though it is not easy to say where to draw the line between him and his teacher more about this below in section But it is widely agreed among scholars that Plato is not a mere transcriber of the words of Socrates any more than Xenophon or the other authors of Socratic discourses. He makes no appearance in Laws , and there are several dialogues Sophist , Statesman , Timaeus in which his role is small and peripheral, while some other figure dominates the conversation or even, as in the Timaeus and Critias , presents a long and elaborate, continuous discourse of their own.

Symposium , for example, is a series of speeches, and there are also lengthy speeches in Apology , Menexenus , Protagoras , Crito , Phaedrus , Timaeus , and Critias ; in fact, one might reasonably question whether these works are properly called dialogues. The closest we come to an exception to this generalization is the seventh letter, which contains a brief section in which the author, Plato or someone pretending to be him, commits himself to several philosophical pointsпїЅwhile insisting, at the same time, that no philosopher will write about the deepest matters, but will communicate his thoughts only in private discussion with selected individuals.

Whether Plato wrote it or not, it cannot be regarded as a philosophical treatise, and its author did not wish it to be so regarded. In all of his writingsпїЅexcept in the letters, if any of them are genuineпїЅPlato never speaks to his audience directly see Frede and in his own voice.

Strictly speaking, he does not himself affirm anything in his dialogues; rather, it is the interlocutors in his dialogues who are made by Plato to do all of the affirming, doubting, questioning, arguing, and so on. Whatever he wishes to communicate to us is conveyed indirectly. Since he does not himself affirm anything in any of his dialogues, can we ever be on secure ground in attributing a philosophical doctrine to him as opposed to one of his characters?

Did he himself have philosophical convictions, and can we discover what they were? Or, if we attribute some view to Plato himself, are we being unfaithful to the spirit in which he intended the dialogues to be read?

Is his whole point, in refraining from writing treatises, to discourage the readers of his works from asking what their author believes and to encourage them instead simply to consider the plausibility or implausibility of what his characters are saying? Is that why Plato wrote dialogues? If not for this reason, then what was his purpose in refraining from addressing his audience in a more direct way see Griswold , Klagge and Smith , Press ?

There are other important questions about the particular shape his dialogues take: for example, why does Socrates play such a prominent role in so many of them, and why, in some of these works, does Socrates play a smaller role, or none at all? Rather than commit oneself to any hypothesis about what he is trying to communicate to his readers, one might adopt a stance of neutrality about his intentions, and confine oneself to talking only about what is said by his dramatis personae.

It is equally correct to point out that other principal speakers in that work, Glaucon and Adeimantus, accept the arguments that Socrates gives for that definition of justice. Perhaps there is no need for us to say moreпїЅto say, for example, that Plato himself agrees that this is how justice should be defined, or that Plato himself accepts the arguments that Socrates gives in support of this definition.

Should we not read his works for their intrinsic philosophical value, and not as tools to be used for entering into the mind of their author? We should not lose sight of this obvious fact: it is Plato, not any of his dramatis personae , who is reaching out to a readership and trying to influence their beliefs and actions by means of his literary actions.

We need to interpret the work itself to find out what it, or Plato the author, is saying. Similarly, when we ask how a word that has several different senses is best understood, we are asking what Plato means to communicate to us through the speaker who uses that word. Penetrating the mind of Plato and comprehending what his interlocutors mean by what they say are not two separate tasks but one, and if we do not ask what his interlocutors mean by what they say, and what the dialogue itself indicates we should think about what they mean, we will not profit from reading his dialogues.

Furthermore, the dialogues have certain characteristics that are most easily explained by supposing that Plato is using them as vehicles for inducing his readers to become convinced or more convinced than they already are of certain propositionsпїЅfor example, that there are forms, that the soul is not corporeal, that knowledge can be acquired only by means of a study of the forms, and so on. Why, after all, did Plato write so many works for example: Phaedo , Symposium , Republic , Phaedrus , Theaetetus , Sophist , Statesman , Timaeus , Philebus , Laws in which one character dominates the conversation often, but not always, Socrates and convinces the other speakers at times, after encountering initial resistance that they should accept or reject certain conclusions, on the basis of the arguments presented?

The only plausible way of answering that question is to say that these dialogues were intended by Plato to be devices by which he might induce the audience for which they are intended to reflect on and accept the arguments and conclusions offered by his principal interlocutor. If preludes can educate a whole citizenry that is prepared to learn from them, then surely Plato thinks that other sorts of written textsпїЅfor example, his own dialoguesпїЅcan also serve an educative function.

This does not mean that Plato thinks that his readers can become wise simply by reading and studying his works. On the contrary, it is highly likely that he wanted all of his writings to be supplementary aids to philosophical conversation: in one of his works, he has Socrates warn his readers against relying solely on books, or taking them to be authoritative.

In those face-to-face conversations with a knowledgeable leader, positions are taken, arguments are given, and conclusions are drawn. If we take Plato to be trying to persuade us, in many of his works, to accept the conclusions arrived at by his principal interlocutors or to persuade us of the refutations of their opponents , we can easily explain why he so often chooses Socrates as the dominant speaker in his dialogues.

Furthermore, if Plato felt strongly indebted to Socrates for many of his philosophical techniques and ideas, that would give him further reason for assigning a dominant role to him in many of his works.

More about this in section Of course, there are other more speculative possible ways of explaining why Plato so often makes Socrates his principal speaker.

Plato could have written into his works clear signals to the reader that the arguments of Socrates do not work, and that his interlocutors are foolish to accept them. But there are many signs in such works as Meno , Phaedo , Republic , and Phaedrus that point in the opposite direction.

And the great admiration Plato feels for Socrates is also evident from his Apology. The reader is given every encouragement to believe that the reason why Socrates is successful in persuading his interlocutors on those occasions when he does succeed is that his arguments are powerful ones.

The reader, in other words, is being encouraged by the author to accept those arguments, if not as definitive then at least as highly arresting and deserving of careful and full positive consideration. When we interpret the dialogues in this way, we cannot escape the fact that we are entering into the mind of Plato, and attributing to him, their author, a positive evaluation of the arguments that his speakers present to each other.

There is a further reason for entertaining hypotheses about what Plato intended and believed, and not merely confining ourselves to observations about what sorts of people his characters are and what they say to each other. When we undertake a serious study of Plato, and go beyond reading just one of his works, we are inevitably confronted with the question of how we are to link the work we are currently reading with the many others that Plato composed.

Admittedly, many of his dialogues make a fresh start in their setting and their interlocutors: typically, Socrates encounters a group of people many of whom do not appear in any other work of Plato, and so, as an author, he needs to give his readers some indication of their character and social circumstances.

For example, in Phaedo 73a-b , Socrates says that one argument for the immortality of the soul derives from the fact that when people are asked certain kinds of questions, and are aided with diagrams, they answer in a way that shows that they are not learning afresh from the diagrams or from information provided in the questions, but are drawing their knowledge of the answers from within themselves.

That remark would be of little worth for an audience that had not already read Meno. Several pages later, Socrates tells his interlocutors that his argument about our prior knowledge of equality itself the form of equality applies no less to other formsпїЅto the beautiful, good, just, pious and to all the other things that are involved in their asking and answering of questions 75d.

Laches : what is courage? Charmides : What is moderation? Hippias Major : what is beauty? Evidently, Plato is assuming that readers of Phaedo have already read several of his other works, and will bring to bear on the current argument all of the lessons that they have learned from them. He will introduce new ideas and raise fresh difficulties, but he will also expect his readers to have already familiarized themselves with the conversations held by the interlocutors of other dialoguesпїЅeven when there is some alteration among those interlocutors.

Meno does not re-appear in Phaedo ; Timaeus was not among the interlocutors of Republic. Why does Plato have his dominant characters Socrates, the Eleatic visitor reaffirm some of the same points from one dialogue to another, and build on ideas that were made in earlier works? If the dialogues were merely meant as provocations to thoughtпїЅmere exercises for the mindпїЅthere would be no need for Plato to identify his leading characters with a consistent and ever-developing doctrine.

For example, Socrates continues to maintain, over a large number of dialogues, that there are such things as formsпїЅand there is no better explanation for this continuity than to suppose that Plato is recommending that doctrine to his readers.

Furthermore, when Socrates is replaced as the principal investigator by the visitor from Elea in Sophist and Statesman , the existence of forms continues to be taken for granted, and the visitor criticizes any conception of reality that excludes such incorporeal objects as souls and forms. The Eleatic visitor, in other words, upholds a metaphysics that is, in many respects, like the one that Socrates is made to defend. Again, the best explanation for this continuity is that Plato is using both charactersпїЅSocrates and the Eleatic visitorпїЅas devices for the presentation and defense of a doctrine that he embraces and wants his readers to embrace as well.

It is, in fact, a difficult and delicate matter to determine, on the basis of our reading of the dialogues, whether Plato means to modify or reject in one dialogue what he has his main interlocutor affirm in some other. One of the most intriguing and controversial questions about his treatment of the forms, for example, is whether he concedes that his conception of those abstract entities is vulnerable to criticism; and, if so, whether he revises some of the assumptions he had been making about them, or develops a more elaborate picture of them that allows him to respond to that criticism see Meinwald In Parmenides , the principal interlocutor not SocratesпїЅhe is here portrayed as a promising, young philosopher in need of further trainingпїЅbut rather the pre-Socratic from Elea who gives the dialogue its name: Parmenides subjects the forms to withering criticism, and then consents to conduct an inquiry into the nature of oneness that has no overt connection to his critique of the forms.

Does the discussion of oneness a baffling series of contradictionsпїЅor at any rate, propositions that seem, on the surface, to be contradictions in some way help address the problems raised about forms?

That is one way of reading the dialogue. And if we do read it in this way, does that show that Plato has changed his mind about some of the ideas about forms he inserted into earlier dialogues? It is not easy to say. But we cannot even raise this as an issue worth pondering unless we presuppose that behind the dialogues there stands a single mind that is using these writings as a way of hitting upon the truth, and of bringing that truth to the attention of others. If we find Timaeus the principal interlocutor of the dialogue named after him and the Eleatic visitor of the Sophist and Statesman talking about forms in a way that is entirely consistent with the way Socrates talks about forms in Phaedo and Republic , then there is only one reasonable explanation for that consistency: Plato believes that their way of talking about forms is correct, or is at least strongly supported by powerful considerations.

If, on the other hand, we find that Timaeus or the Eleatic visitor talks about forms in a way that does not harmonize with the way Socrates conceives of those abstract objects, in the dialogues that assign him a central role as director of the conversation, then the most plausible explanation for these discrepancies is that Plato has changed his mind about the nature of these entities.

It would be implausible to suppose that Plato himself had no convictions about forms, and merely wants to give his readers mental exercise by composing dialogues in which different leading characters talk about these objects in discordant ways. It is noteworthy, to begin with, that Plato is, among other things, a political philosopher. For he gives expression, in several of his writings particular Phaedo , to a yearning to escape from the tawdriness of ordinary human relations.

Similarly, he evinces a sense of the ugliness of the sensible world, whose beauty pales in comparison with that of the forms. Because of this, it would have been all too easy for Plato to turn his back entirely on practical reality, and to confine his speculations to theoretical questions. Some of his worksпїЅ Parmenides is a stellar exampleпїЅdo confine themselves to exploring questions that seem to have no bearing whatsoever on practical life.

But it is remarkable how few of his works fall into this category. Even the highly abstract questions raised in Sophist about the nature of being and not-being are, after all, embedded in a search for the definition of sophistry; and thus they call to mind the question whether Socrates should be classified as a sophistпїЅwhether, in other words, sophists are to be despised and avoided. His tribute to the mixed beauty of the sensible world, in Timaeus , consists in his depiction of it as the outcome of divine efforts to mold reality in the image of the forms, using simple geometrical patterns and harmonious arithmetic relations as building blocks.

The desire to transform human relations is given expression in a far larger number of works. He does not want to escape from the everyday world but to make it better see Allen He presents himself, in Gorgias , as the only Athenian who has tried his hand at the true art of politics. Similarly, the Socrates of Republic devotes a considerable part of his discussion to the critique of ordinary social institutionsпїЅthe family, private property, and rule by the many. The motivation that lies behind the writing of this dialogue is the desire to transform or, at any rate, to improve political life, not to escape from it although it is acknowledged that the desire to escape is an honorable one: the best sort of rulers greatly prefer the contemplation of divine reality to the governance of the city.

And if we have any further doubts that Plato does take an interest in the practical realm, we need only turn to Laws. A work of such great detail and length about voting procedures, punishments, education, legislation, and the oversight of public officials can only have been produced by someone who wants to contribute something to the improvement of the lives we lead in this sensible and imperfect realm.

For example, on any plausible reading of Republic , Plato evinces a deep antipathy to rule by the many. Socrates tells his interlocutors that the only politics that should engage them are those of the anti-democratic regime he depicts as the paradigm of a good constitution. And yet in Laws , the Athenian visitor proposes a detailed legislative framework for a city in which non-philosophers people who have never heard of the forms, and have not been trained to understand them are given considerable powers as rulers.

Plato would not have invested so much time in the creation of this comprehensive and lengthy work, had he not believed that the creation of a political community ruled by those who are philosophically unenlightened is a project that deserves the support of his readers. Has Plato changed his mind, then?

Has he re-evaluated the highly negative opinion he once held of those who are innocent of philosophy? Did he at first think that the reform of existing Greek cities, with all of their imperfections, is a waste of timeпїЅbut then decide that it is an endeavor of great value? And if so, what led him to change his mind?

Answers to these questions can be justified only by careful attention to what he has his interlocutors say. But it would be utterly implausible to suppose that these developmental questions need not be raised, on the grounds that Republic and Laws each has its own cast of characters, and that the two works therefore cannot come into contradiction with each other. According to this hypothesis one that must be rejected , because it is Socrates not Plato who is critical of democracy in Republic , and because it is the Athenian visitor not Plato who recognizes the merits of rule by the many in Laws , there is no possibility that the two dialogues are in tension with each other.

Against this hypothesis, we should say: Since both Republic and Laws are works in which Plato is trying to move his readers towards certain conclusions, by having them reflect on certain argumentsпїЅthese dialogues are not barred from having this feature by their use of interlocutorsпїЅit would be an evasion of our responsibility as readers and students of Plato not to ask whether what one of them advocates is compatible with what the other advocates.

If we answer that question negatively, we have some explaining to do: what led to this change? Alternatively, if we conclude that the two works are compatible, we must say why the appearance of conflict is illusory. Many contemporary scholars find it plausible that when Plato embarked on his career as a philosophical writer, he composed, in addition to his Apology of Socrates, a number of short ethical dialogues that contain little or nothing in the way of positive philosophical doctrine, but are mainly devoted to portraying the way in which Socrates punctured the pretensions of his interlocutors and forced them to realize that they are unable to offer satisfactory definitions of the ethical terms they used, or satisfactory arguments for their moral beliefs.

For example, it is sometimes said that Protagoras and Gorgias are later, because of their greater length and philosophical complexity. Aristotle describes Socrates as someone whose interests were restricted to only one branch of philosophyпїЅthe realm of the ethical; and he also says that he was in the habit of asking definitional questions to which he himself lacked answers Metaphysics b1, Sophistical Refutations b7. By contrast, in Apology Socrates says that no one knows what becomes of us after we die.

Phaedo is often said to be the dialogue in which Plato first comes into his own as a philosopher who is moving far beyond the ideas of his teacher though it is also commonly said that we see a new methodological sophistication and a greater interest in mathematical knowledge in Meno.

Having completed all of the dialogues that, according to this hypothesis, we characterize as early, Plato widened the range of topics to be explored in his writings no longer confining himself to ethics , and placed the theory of forms and related ideas about language, knowledge, and love at the center of his thinking.

The focus is no longer on ridding ourselves of false ideas and self-deceit; rather, we are asked to accept however tentatively a radical new conception of ourselves now divided into three parts , our worldпїЅor rather, our two worldsпїЅand our need to negotiate between them.

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We wholeheartedly believe in the power of potential - in having a curious mind and always moving forward. As an individual, and a company, a key mission at Plato is creating this environment for growth. We believe the two are intertwined. We embrace failure, learn from our mistakes - sharing them openly, and we delight in those unexpected moments of clarity that come from it. Move fast. We trust our fellow team members to try out new ideas, and we believe in taking ownership over those ideas.

Olivier Pomel. Looking for logos, founder headshots, or press info? We've got you covered right here. We are Plato. All people first People are at the heart of all we do at PlatoпїЅthey are the fuel that makes this organization run.

Always be growing We wholeheartedly believe in the power of potential - in having a curious mind and always moving forward. Thomas Baretto VP Engineering. Jason M Lemkin Founder. Plato was not the only author whose personal experience of Socrates led to the depiction of him as a character in one or more dramatic works. Furthermore, we have some fragmentary remains of dialogues written by other contemporaries of Socrates besides Plato and Xenophon Aeschines, Antisthenes, Eucleides, Phaedo , and these purport to describe conversations he conducted with others see Boys-Stone and Rowe So, when Plato wrote dialogues that feature Socrates as a principal speaker, he was both contributing to a genre that was inspired by the life of Socrates and participating in a lively literary debate about the kind of person Socrates was and the value of the intellectual conversations in which he was involved.

Evidently, the historical Socrates was the sort of person who provoked in those who knew him, or knew of him, a profound response, and he inspired many of those who came under his influence to write about him. But the portraits composed by Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato are the ones that have survived intact, and they are therefore the ones that must play the greatest role in shaping our conception of what Socrates was like.

At any rate, no one certainly not Xenophon himself takes Xenophon to be a major philosopher in his own right; when we read his Socratic works, we are not encountering a great philosophical mind. But that is what we experience when we read Plato. No doubt he in some way borrowed in important ways from Socrates, though it is not easy to say where to draw the line between him and his teacher more about this below in section But it is widely agreed among scholars that Plato is not a mere transcriber of the words of Socrates any more than Xenophon or the other authors of Socratic discourses.

He makes no appearance in Laws , and there are several dialogues Sophist , Statesman , Timaeus in which his role is small and peripheral, while some other figure dominates the conversation or even, as in the Timaeus and Critias , presents a long and elaborate, continuous discourse of their own.

Symposium , for example, is a series of speeches, and there are also lengthy speeches in Apology , Menexenus , Protagoras , Crito , Phaedrus , Timaeus , and Critias ; in fact, one might reasonably question whether these works are properly called dialogues.

The closest we come to an exception to this generalization is the seventh letter, which contains a brief section in which the author, Plato or someone pretending to be him, commits himself to several philosophical pointsпїЅwhile insisting, at the same time, that no philosopher will write about the deepest matters, but will communicate his thoughts only in private discussion with selected individuals.

Whether Plato wrote it or not, it cannot be regarded as a philosophical treatise, and its author did not wish it to be so regarded. In all of his writingsпїЅexcept in the letters, if any of them are genuineпїЅPlato never speaks to his audience directly see Frede and in his own voice. Strictly speaking, he does not himself affirm anything in his dialogues; rather, it is the interlocutors in his dialogues who are made by Plato to do all of the affirming, doubting, questioning, arguing, and so on.

Whatever he wishes to communicate to us is conveyed indirectly. Since he does not himself affirm anything in any of his dialogues, can we ever be on secure ground in attributing a philosophical doctrine to him as opposed to one of his characters?

Did he himself have philosophical convictions, and can we discover what they were? Or, if we attribute some view to Plato himself, are we being unfaithful to the spirit in which he intended the dialogues to be read?

Is his whole point, in refraining from writing treatises, to discourage the readers of his works from asking what their author believes and to encourage them instead simply to consider the plausibility or implausibility of what his characters are saying?

Is that why Plato wrote dialogues? If not for this reason, then what was his purpose in refraining from addressing his audience in a more direct way see Griswold , Klagge and Smith , Press ?

There are other important questions about the particular shape his dialogues take: for example, why does Socrates play such a prominent role in so many of them, and why, in some of these works, does Socrates play a smaller role, or none at all?

Rather than commit oneself to any hypothesis about what he is trying to communicate to his readers, one might adopt a stance of neutrality about his intentions, and confine oneself to talking only about what is said by his dramatis personae. It is equally correct to point out that other principal speakers in that work, Glaucon and Adeimantus, accept the arguments that Socrates gives for that definition of justice.

Perhaps there is no need for us to say moreпїЅto say, for example, that Plato himself agrees that this is how justice should be defined, or that Plato himself accepts the arguments that Socrates gives in support of this definition.

Should we not read his works for their intrinsic philosophical value, and not as tools to be used for entering into the mind of their author? We should not lose sight of this obvious fact: it is Plato, not any of his dramatis personae , who is reaching out to a readership and trying to influence their beliefs and actions by means of his literary actions.

We need to interpret the work itself to find out what it, or Plato the author, is saying. Similarly, when we ask how a word that has several different senses is best understood, we are asking what Plato means to communicate to us through the speaker who uses that word. Penetrating the mind of Plato and comprehending what his interlocutors mean by what they say are not two separate tasks but one, and if we do not ask what his interlocutors mean by what they say, and what the dialogue itself indicates we should think about what they mean, we will not profit from reading his dialogues.

Furthermore, the dialogues have certain characteristics that are most easily explained by supposing that Plato is using them as vehicles for inducing his readers to become convinced or more convinced than they already are of certain propositionsпїЅfor example, that there are forms, that the soul is not corporeal, that knowledge can be acquired only by means of a study of the forms, and so on.

Why, after all, did Plato write so many works for example: Phaedo , Symposium , Republic , Phaedrus , Theaetetus , Sophist , Statesman , Timaeus , Philebus , Laws in which one character dominates the conversation often, but not always, Socrates and convinces the other speakers at times, after encountering initial resistance that they should accept or reject certain conclusions, on the basis of the arguments presented?

The only plausible way of answering that question is to say that these dialogues were intended by Plato to be devices by which he might induce the audience for which they are intended to reflect on and accept the arguments and conclusions offered by his principal interlocutor.

If preludes can educate a whole citizenry that is prepared to learn from them, then surely Plato thinks that other sorts of written textsпїЅfor example, his own dialoguesпїЅcan also serve an educative function. This does not mean that Plato thinks that his readers can become wise simply by reading and studying his works.

On the contrary, it is highly likely that he wanted all of his writings to be supplementary aids to philosophical conversation: in one of his works, he has Socrates warn his readers against relying solely on books, or taking them to be authoritative. In those face-to-face conversations with a knowledgeable leader, positions are taken, arguments are given, and conclusions are drawn. If we take Plato to be trying to persuade us, in many of his works, to accept the conclusions arrived at by his principal interlocutors or to persuade us of the refutations of their opponents , we can easily explain why he so often chooses Socrates as the dominant speaker in his dialogues.

Furthermore, if Plato felt strongly indebted to Socrates for many of his philosophical techniques and ideas, that would give him further reason for assigning a dominant role to him in many of his works. More about this in section Of course, there are other more speculative possible ways of explaining why Plato so often makes Socrates his principal speaker. Plato could have written into his works clear signals to the reader that the arguments of Socrates do not work, and that his interlocutors are foolish to accept them.

But there are many signs in such works as Meno , Phaedo , Republic , and Phaedrus that point in the opposite direction. And the great admiration Plato feels for Socrates is also evident from his Apology.

The reader is given every encouragement to believe that the reason why Socrates is successful in persuading his interlocutors on those occasions when he does succeed is that his arguments are powerful ones. The reader, in other words, is being encouraged by the author to accept those arguments, if not as definitive then at least as highly arresting and deserving of careful and full positive consideration. When we interpret the dialogues in this way, we cannot escape the fact that we are entering into the mind of Plato, and attributing to him, their author, a positive evaluation of the arguments that his speakers present to each other.

There is a further reason for entertaining hypotheses about what Plato intended and believed, and not merely confining ourselves to observations about what sorts of people his characters are and what they say to each other. When we undertake a serious study of Plato, and go beyond reading just one of his works, we are inevitably confronted with the question of how we are to link the work we are currently reading with the many others that Plato composed.

Admittedly, many of his dialogues make a fresh start in their setting and their interlocutors: typically, Socrates encounters a group of people many of whom do not appear in any other work of Plato, and so, as an author, he needs to give his readers some indication of their character and social circumstances. For example, in Phaedo 73a-b , Socrates says that one argument for the immortality of the soul derives from the fact that when people are asked certain kinds of questions, and are aided with diagrams, they answer in a way that shows that they are not learning afresh from the diagrams or from information provided in the questions, but are drawing their knowledge of the answers from within themselves.

That remark would be of little worth for an audience that had not already read Meno. Several pages later, Socrates tells his interlocutors that his argument about our prior knowledge of equality itself the form of equality applies no less to other formsпїЅto the beautiful, good, just, pious and to all the other things that are involved in their asking and answering of questions 75d. Laches : what is courage? Charmides : What is moderation? Hippias Major : what is beauty? Evidently, Plato is assuming that readers of Phaedo have already read several of his other works, and will bring to bear on the current argument all of the lessons that they have learned from them.

He will introduce new ideas and raise fresh difficulties, but he will also expect his readers to have already familiarized themselves with the conversations held by the interlocutors of other dialoguesпїЅeven when there is some alteration among those interlocutors. Meno does not re-appear in Phaedo ; Timaeus was not among the interlocutors of Republic.

Why does Plato have his dominant characters Socrates, the Eleatic visitor reaffirm some of the same points from one dialogue to another, and build on ideas that were made in earlier works? If the dialogues were merely meant as provocations to thoughtпїЅmere exercises for the mindпїЅthere would be no need for Plato to identify his leading characters with a consistent and ever-developing doctrine.

For example, Socrates continues to maintain, over a large number of dialogues, that there are such things as formsпїЅand there is no better explanation for this continuity than to suppose that Plato is recommending that doctrine to his readers. Furthermore, when Socrates is replaced as the principal investigator by the visitor from Elea in Sophist and Statesman , the existence of forms continues to be taken for granted, and the visitor criticizes any conception of reality that excludes such incorporeal objects as souls and forms.

The Eleatic visitor, in other words, upholds a metaphysics that is, in many respects, like the one that Socrates is made to defend. Again, the best explanation for this continuity is that Plato is using both charactersпїЅSocrates and the Eleatic visitorпїЅas devices for the presentation and defense of a doctrine that he embraces and wants his readers to embrace as well. It is, in fact, a difficult and delicate matter to determine, on the basis of our reading of the dialogues, whether Plato means to modify or reject in one dialogue what he has his main interlocutor affirm in some other.

One of the most intriguing and controversial questions about his treatment of the forms, for example, is whether he concedes that his conception of those abstract entities is vulnerable to criticism; and, if so, whether he revises some of the assumptions he had been making about them, or develops a more elaborate picture of them that allows him to respond to that criticism see Meinwald In Parmenides , the principal interlocutor not SocratesпїЅhe is here portrayed as a promising, young philosopher in need of further trainingпїЅbut rather the pre-Socratic from Elea who gives the dialogue its name: Parmenides subjects the forms to withering criticism, and then consents to conduct an inquiry into the nature of oneness that has no overt connection to his critique of the forms.

Does the discussion of oneness a baffling series of contradictionsпїЅor at any rate, propositions that seem, on the surface, to be contradictions in some way help address the problems raised about forms? That is one way of reading the dialogue. And if we do read it in this way, does that show that Plato has changed his mind about some of the ideas about forms he inserted into earlier dialogues?

It is not easy to say. But we cannot even raise this as an issue worth pondering unless we presuppose that behind the dialogues there stands a single mind that is using these writings as a way of hitting upon the truth, and of bringing that truth to the attention of others. If we find Timaeus the principal interlocutor of the dialogue named after him and the Eleatic visitor of the Sophist and Statesman talking about forms in a way that is entirely consistent with the way Socrates talks about forms in Phaedo and Republic , then there is only one reasonable explanation for that consistency: Plato believes that their way of talking about forms is correct, or is at least strongly supported by powerful considerations.

If, on the other hand, we find that Timaeus or the Eleatic visitor talks about forms in a way that does not harmonize with the way Socrates conceives of those abstract objects, in the dialogues that assign him a central role as director of the conversation, then the most plausible explanation for these discrepancies is that Plato has changed his mind about the nature of these entities. It would be implausible to suppose that Plato himself had no convictions about forms, and merely wants to give his readers mental exercise by composing dialogues in which different leading characters talk about these objects in discordant ways.

It is noteworthy, to begin with, that Plato is, among other things, a political philosopher. For he gives expression, in several of his writings particular Phaedo , to a yearning to escape from the tawdriness of ordinary human relations. Similarly, he evinces a sense of the ugliness of the sensible world, whose beauty pales in comparison with that of the forms.

Because of this, it would have been all too easy for Plato to turn his back entirely on practical reality, and to confine his speculations to theoretical questions.

Some of his worksпїЅ Parmenides is a stellar exampleпїЅdo confine themselves to exploring questions that seem to have no bearing whatsoever on practical life. But it is remarkable how few of his works fall into this category. Even the highly abstract questions raised in Sophist about the nature of being and not-being are, after all, embedded in a search for the definition of sophistry; and thus they call to mind the question whether Socrates should be classified as a sophistпїЅwhether, in other words, sophists are to be despised and avoided.

His tribute to the mixed beauty of the sensible world, in Timaeus , consists in his depiction of it as the outcome of divine efforts to mold reality in the image of the forms, using simple geometrical patterns and harmonious arithmetic relations as building blocks. The desire to transform human relations is given expression in a far larger number of works.

He does not want to escape from the everyday world but to make it better see Allen He presents himself, in Gorgias , as the only Athenian who has tried his hand at the true art of politics.

Similarly, the Socrates of Republic devotes a considerable part of his discussion to the critique of ordinary social institutionsпїЅthe family, private property, and rule by the many.

The motivation that lies behind the writing of this dialogue is the desire to transform or, at any rate, to improve political life, not to escape from it although it is acknowledged that the desire to escape is an honorable one: the best sort of rulers greatly prefer the contemplation of divine reality to the governance of the city.

And if we have any further doubts that Plato does take an interest in the practical realm, we need only turn to Laws. A work of such great detail and length about voting procedures, punishments, education, legislation, and the oversight of public officials can only have been produced by someone who wants to contribute something to the improvement of the lives we lead in this sensible and imperfect realm. For example, on any plausible reading of Republic , Plato evinces a deep antipathy to rule by the many.

Socrates tells his interlocutors that the only politics that should engage them are those of the anti-democratic regime he depicts as the paradigm of a good constitution. And yet in Laws , the Athenian visitor proposes a detailed legislative framework for a city in which non-philosophers people who have never heard of the forms, and have not been trained to understand them are given considerable powers as rulers.

Plato would not have invested so much time in the creation of this comprehensive and lengthy work, had he not believed that the creation of a political community ruled by those who are philosophically unenlightened is a project that deserves the support of his readers. Has Plato changed his mind, then?

Has he re-evaluated the highly negative opinion he once held of those who are innocent of philosophy? Did he at first think that the reform of existing Greek cities, with all of their imperfections, is a waste of timeпїЅbut then decide that it is an endeavor of great value? And if so, what led him to change his mind?

Answers to these questions can be justified only by careful attention to what he has his interlocutors say. But it would be utterly implausible to suppose that these developmental questions need not be raised, on the grounds that Republic and Laws each has its own cast of characters, and that the two works therefore cannot come into contradiction with each other.

According to this hypothesis one that must be rejected , because it is Socrates not Plato who is critical of democracy in Republic , and because it is the Athenian visitor not Plato who recognizes the merits of rule by the many in Laws , there is no possibility that the two dialogues are in tension with each other.

Against this hypothesis, we should say: Since both Republic and Laws are works in which Plato is trying to move his readers towards certain conclusions, by having them reflect on certain argumentsпїЅthese dialogues are not barred from having this feature by their use of interlocutorsпїЅit would be an evasion of our responsibility as readers and students of Plato not to ask whether what one of them advocates is compatible with what the other advocates.

If we answer that question negatively, we have some explaining to do: what led to this change? Alternatively, if we conclude that the two works are compatible, we must say why the appearance of conflict is illusory. Many contemporary scholars find it plausible that when Plato embarked on his career as a philosophical writer, he composed, in addition to his Apology of Socrates, a number of short ethical dialogues that contain little or nothing in the way of positive philosophical doctrine, but are mainly devoted to portraying the way in which Socrates punctured the pretensions of his interlocutors and forced them to realize that they are unable to offer satisfactory definitions of the ethical terms they used, or satisfactory arguments for their moral beliefs.

For example, it is sometimes said that Protagoras and Gorgias are later, because of their greater length and philosophical complexity. Aristotle describes Socrates as someone whose interests were restricted to only one branch of philosophyпїЅthe realm of the ethical; and he also says that he was in the habit of asking definitional questions to which he himself lacked answers Metaphysics b1, Sophistical Refutations b7.

By contrast, in Apology Socrates says that no one knows what becomes of us after we die. Phaedo is often said to be the dialogue in which Plato first comes into his own as a philosopher who is moving far beyond the ideas of his teacher though it is also commonly said that we see a new methodological sophistication and a greater interest in mathematical knowledge in Meno. Having completed all of the dialogues that, according to this hypothesis, we characterize as early, Plato widened the range of topics to be explored in his writings no longer confining himself to ethics , and placed the theory of forms and related ideas about language, knowledge, and love at the center of his thinking.

The focus is no longer on ridding ourselves of false ideas and self-deceit; rather, we are asked to accept however tentatively a radical new conception of ourselves now divided into three parts , our worldпїЅor rather, our two worldsпїЅand our need to negotiate between them. Definitions of the most important virtue terms are finally proposed in Republic the search for them in some of the early dialogues having been unsuccessful : Book I of this dialogue is a portrait of how the historical Socrates might have handled the search for a definition of justice, and the rest of the dialogue shows how the new ideas and tools discovered by Plato can complete the project that his teacher was unable to finish.

In doing so, he acknowledges his intellectual debt to his teacher and appropriates for his own purposes the extraordinary prestige of the man who was the wisest of his time. Computer counts have aided these stylometric studies, but the isolation of a group of six dialogues by means of their stylistic commonalities was recognized in the nineteenth century.

See Brandwood , Young It is not at all clear whether there are one or more philosophical affinities among this group of six dialoguesпїЅthat is, whether the philosophy they contain is sharply different from that of all of the other dialogues.

Plato does nothing to encourage the reader to view these works as a distinctive and separate component of his thinking. On the contrary, he links Sophist with Theaetetus the conversations they present have a largely overlapping cast of characters, and take place on successive days no less than Sophist and Statesman. Sophist contains, in its opening pages, a reference to the conversation of Parmenides пїЅand perhaps Plato is thus signaling to his readers that they should bring to bear on Sophist the lessons that are to be drawn from Parmenides.