The Dialogues of Plato by Plato

First transcribed: 399-347 b.c.e. (English translation, 1804)

Type of work: Philosophy

Principal Personages

• Socrates, the Athenian philosopher
• Gorgias, a Sophist
• Protagoras, a Sophist
• Crito, Socrates’ contemporary, an aged friend
• Phaedrus, a defender of rhetoric
• Aristophanes, a poet and playwright
• Theaetetus, a hero of the battle of Corinth
• Parmenides, the philosopher from Elea
• Philebus, a hedonist
• Timaeus, a philosopher and statesman
• Plato, Socrates’ pupil

The Work

The Dialogues of Plato rank with the extant works of Aristotle as among the most important philosophical works of Western culture. The extent of Plato’s influence is partly due to the survival of his works, unlike those of earlier Greek philosophers, as well as to the fact that at various times in the history of the Christian church, his ideas were used in the process of constructing a Christian theology (in this respect, however, Aristotle’s influence was greater). The principal cause of Plato's continuing effect on human thought is the quality of his work.

The distinctive character of Platonic thought finds adequate expression in the dialogue form. Although Plato, like all philosophers, had his favored perspectives from which he interpreted and, consequently, saw the world, he realized better than most philosophers that philosophy is more an activity of the mind than the product of an investigation. This is not to say that philosophy does not, in some legitimate sense, illuminate the world. In the process of making sense out of experience, the philosopher is restless: No single way of clarifying an idea or a view is entirely satisfactory, and there is always much to be said for an alternative mode of explanation. When distinctive Platonic conceptions finally become clear, they do so against a background of penetrating discussion by means of which alternative ideas are explored for their own values and made to complement the conception that Plato finally endorses. As an instrument for presenting the critical point-counterpoint of ideas, the dialogue is ideal, and as a character in control of the general course and quality of the discussion, Socrates is unsurpassed.

Socrates was Plato’s teacher, and it was probably out of respect for Socrates the man and the philosopher that Plato first considered using him as the central disputant in his dialogues. Reflection must have reinforced his decision, for Socrates was important more for his method than for his fixed ideas, more for his value as a philosophical irritant than as a source of enduring wisdom. The Socratic method is often described as being designed to bring out the contradictions and omissions in the philosophical views of others; better yet, it can be understood as a clever technique for playing on the ambiguities of claims so as to lead others into changing their use of terms and, hence, into apparent inconsistency.

The extent to which Plato uses the dialogues to record Socrates’ ideas and to which he uses Socrates as a proponent of his own ideas will probably never be conclusively answered. The question is historical, but in the philosophical sense it makes no difference whose ideas found their way into the dialogues. A fairly safe assumption is that it was Socrates who emphasized the importance of philosophical problems of value, knowledge, and philosophy itself. He probably argued that it is important to know oneself, that the admission of one’s own ignorance is a kind of wisdom possessed by few individuals, and that virtue is knowledge.

Certainly Socrates must have had a devotion to his calling as a philosopher and critic. He did not regard philosophy as a frivolous game because he remained in Athens to face the charge that by philosophy he had corrupted the youth of Athens; and he refused a chance to escape after having been condemned to death. Socrates’ courage and integrity are recorded with poignant power in the Apology, the dialogue in which Socrates defends himself and philosophy against the charges brought against him; the Crito, in which Socrates refuses to escape from prison; and the Phaedo, in which Socrates discusses the immortality of the soul before he drinks the hemlock poison and dies.

Of the ideas presented in the dialogues, perhaps none is more important than Plato’s theory of ideas or forms. This theory is most clearly expressed in the Republic, the dialogue in which the problem of discovering the nature of human justice is resolved by considering the nature of justice in the state. Plato distinguishes between particular things, the objects experienced in daily living, and the characters that things have, or could have. Goodness, truth, beauty, and other universal characters—properties that can affect a number of individual objects—are eternal, changeless, beautiful, and the source of all knowledge. Although some critics claimed that Plato is speaking metaphorically when he talks, through Socrates, about the reality of the forms, the dialogues leave the impression that Plato considers the forms to exist, in some sense peculiar to themselves, as universals or prototypes that things may or may not exemplify.

A survey, however brief, of the range of questions and tentative answers to be found in the dialogues provides no more than a bare inkling of Plato’s power as a philosopher. Only a careful reading leads to a true appreciation of the depth of Plato’s speculative mind and the skill of his dialectic. Only a reading, moreover, can convey Plato’s charm, wit, and range of sympathy. Whether the final result may be in good part attributed to Socrates as Plato’s inspiring teacher is irrelevant. Socrates as the subject and Plato as the writer (and philosopher—in all probability more creative than Socrates) combine to create an unforgettable image of the Hellenistic mind.

Although many of the dialogues concern themselves with more than one question, and although definitive answers are infrequent so that discussions centering on a certain subject may crop up in a number of different dialogues, certain central problems and conclusions can be isolated in the Dialogues.

Charmides centers on the question “What is temperance?” After criticizing a number of answers, and without finally answering the question, Socrates emphasizes the point that temperance involves knowledge. Lysis and Laches consider, respectively, the questions “What is friendship?” and “What is courage?” The first discussion brings out the difficulty of the question and of resolving conflicts of values; the second one distinguishes courage from a mere facing of danger and makes the point that courage, as one of the virtues, is a knowledge that involves willingness to act for the good. The Ion exhibits Socratic irony at work on a rhapsodist who is proud of his skill in the recitation of poetry. Socrates argues that poetry is the result of inspiration, a divine madness. In the Protagoras, Socrates identifies virtue and knowledge, insisting that no one chooses evil except through ignorance. One of a number of attacks of the Sophistical art of fighting with words is contained in the Euthydemus.

In the Meno, the philosopher Socrates and his companions wonder whether virtue can be taught. The doctrine that ideas are implanted in the soul before birth is demonstrated by leading a slave boy into making the correct answers to some problems in geometry. At first it seems that since virtue is a good and goodness is knowledge, virtue can be taught. But the end result is a conundrum: virtue cannot be taught because there are no teachers of virtue. However, because virtue involves right opinion, it is not teachable. In the Euthyphro, the idea that piety is whatever is pleasing to the gods is shown to be inadequate.

The Apology is the most effective portrait of Socrates in a practical situation. No moment in his life had graver consequences than the trial resulting from the charge that he corrupted the youth of Athens by his teachings. Nevertheless, Socrates continued to be himself, to argue dialectically, and to reaffirm his love of wisdom and virtue. He pictured himself as a gadfly, stinging the Athenians out of their intellectual arrogance. He argued that he would not corrupt anyone voluntarily, for to corrupt those about him would be to create evil that might harm him.

Socrates is shown as a respecter of the law in the Crito because he refuses to escape after having been pronounced guilty. In the Phaedo he argues that the philosopher seeks death because his whole aim in life is to separate the soul from the body. He argues for the immortality of the soul by saying that opposites are generated from opposites; therefore, life is generated from death. The soul is by its very nature the principle of life; hence, it cannot itself die.

The dialogue Greater hippias does not settle the question “What is beauty?” but it does show, as Socrates points out, that “All that is beautiful is difficult.” The subject of love is considered from various philosophic perspectives in the Symposium, culminating in the conception of the highest love as the love of the good, the beautiful, and the true. Gorgias begins with a discussion of the art of rhetoric and proceeds to the development of the familiar Socratic ideas that it is better to suffer evil than to do it, and that it is better to be punished for evildoing than to escape punishment.

The Parmenides is a fascinating technical argument concerning various logical puzzles about the one and the many. It contains some criticism of Plato’s theory of ideas. Plato’s increasing interest in problems of philosophic method is shown by the Cratylus, which contains a discussion of language beginning with the question whether there are true and false names. Socrates is not dogmatic about the implications of using names, but he does insist that any theory of language allow people to continue to speak of their knowledge of realities.

The Phaedrus is another discourse on love. It contains the famous myth of the soul conceived as a charioteer and winged steeds. In the Theaetetus, Socrates examines the proposal by Theaetetus that knowledge is sense perception. He rejects this idea as well as the notion that knowledge is true opinion.

The Sophist is a careful study of sophistical method with emphasis on the problem of being and non-being. In the Statesman, Plato continues the study of the state he initiated in the Republic, introducing the idea—later stressed by Aristotle—that virtue is a mean.

Socrates argues in the Philebus that neither pleasure nor wisdom is in itself the higher good, since pleasure that is not known is worthless and wisdom that is not pleasant is not worth having—only a combination is wholly satisfactory. A rare excursion into physics and a philosophical consideration of the nature of the universe are found in the Timaeus. Here Plato writes of God, Creation, the elements, the soul, gravitation, and many other matters.

The Critias, an unfinished dialogue, presents the story of an ancient and mythical war between Athens and Atlantis. And with the Laws, the longest of the dialogues, Plato ranges over most of the areas touched on in his other dialogues, but with an added religious content: Soul is the source of life, motion, and moral action; there is an evil soul in the universe with which God must deal.

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