Dialogue and Dialectics

Because of their success, the originality of Plato's Socratic dialogues is easily forgotten. More than any other Socratic, Plato invested most of his Socratic dialogues in a historical context that grounds the questions they pursue in a historical reality. Likewise, his dramatic genius in characterization of Socrates and his interlocutors is sometimes overlooked. The opening of the Charmides gives a good example of Plato's early style. Socrates has just returned from Boeotia and the Athenian retreat of 425. He engages in a long conversation on the nature of prudent self–restraint (sophrosyne) with two young men whose courage was yet to be tried, Charmides and Critias, both of whom were to be tested as they emerged as two of the "Thirty Tyrants" in 404. Here historical context, characterization, and Plato's philosophical art of dramatic irony are all in evidence. Unlike the dialogues of the other Socratics, Plato's are polyphonic in that they often involve a large cast of characters.

It has long been thought that Plato's Apology represents what Socrates actually said in court, but it is more likely the posthumous vindication of Socrates' life. There is now a growing commitment among interpreters of Plato to understand the "literary" qualities of the Platonic dialogues in terms of Plato's philosophical intentions. And there is now less of a tendency to see Socrates (or the Eleatic Stranger of the Sophist and Statesman or the Athenian Stranger of the Laws) as a "spokesman" for Plato or, in the case of the earlier "Socratic" dialogues, to take Plato at Socrates' word.

The case of the Republic is an example of the interpretative dangers of mistaking Socrates, who has a great deal to say about the ideal state and the ideal "state" of the individual soul, for Plato, who remains silent and anonymous in all his dialogues. The assent of Plato's brothers, Glaukon and Adeimantus, to the long series of propositions Socrates advances, are easily reversed (as the opening of book 5 of the Republic makes clear). Here and earlier, assent to the odd proposal that the women and children of the guardian class of Socrates' state should be held in common (Republic 4.423B) is called into question and the dialogue is opened suddenly to the prospect of women guardians and a philosopher king (the questions of books 5–7). Like Socratic questioning, the dialogues of Plato are all open ended.

The Socratic method.

The "Socratic method" is often held up as a model for education by educators, but perhaps with insufficient awareness of how complex it is. In Plato's Socratic dialogues, there is no evidence of an interlocutor being moved by Socrates to abandon a vitiated point of view in search for a view that is philosophically superior. In the case of the early series of dialogues that question four Greek virtues, there is no way out of perplexity. The Socratic elenchus or cross examination usually ends up by showing that a general claim made by an interlocutor has exceptions or conceals hidden assumptions that the interlocutor cannot accept. For this reason the examination of self–restraint in the Charmides, virtue in the Meno, courage in the Laches, and the unity of the virtues in the Protagoras, is termed "aporetic." That is, they provide no way (poros) to a solution; yet they provide the stimulus of frustration. These early dialogues test Plato's "audience of second intent" more than they test Socrates' interlocutors. In the dialogues that lead to the Republic, in the Theaetetus (On knowledge), Sophist, and Statesmen, and, indeed, in all his dialogues, Plato seems to be offering a philosophical challenge and training to his readers to come to their own solutions to the problems he raises.

Socrates' maieutic art.

Plato clearly felt that it was impossible in one–on–one conversation or in a conversation with a great variety of possible readers to inculcate philosophical understanding. The most vigorous of Socrates' opponents (Thrasymachos in the Republic, Kallikles in the Gorgias, and Zeno in the Parmenides) refuse to agree with Socrates after a long give–and–take. The genius of the "Socratic method" is that it involves frustration, not inculcation. It prompts in the interlocutor a dissatisfaction with his settled convictions.

At the end of the Theaetetus Socrates represents himself as the son of a midwife who is himself a midwife to the mental offspring of his interlocutors. He can either help deliver a superior conception or induce a kind of modesty in the recognition of one's barrenness. This is his maieutic art (Gk. maieutikos, of midwifery). Socrates recognizes the claims to a knowledge of inspired men of the past and present. They possess a knowledge they can transmit; Socrates can only deliver knowledge already present in the individual. Thus, in the Republic he compares his method to a protreptic turning a companion to the light rather than cramming vision into his eyes. Such are Plato's descriptions of the "Socratic method."