Plato's Dialogues/Introduction

Ancient Athens

Athens is the modern capital of the country of Greece, but has existed for millennia.

Modern culture owes considerable debts to the ancient Athenians.

Still, we must be careful not to think ancient Athenian culture was just like ours.

Socrates

Among the citizens of Athens was Socrates. Today we know him as the protagonist of (most) of Plato's Dialogues. He was not the first philosopher in Greece, but he is perhaps the most important: we usually refer to those other philosophers as the "Pre-Socratics!"

Unlike the Pre-Socratic philosophers, however, Socrates wrote nothing that survives today. All we know about him, his thought, and his story comes to us through texts that feature him as a character, especially the works of Plato, but also the plays of Aristophanes and the memoirs of Xenophon. It is difficult to know these details, and impossible to know them with certainty. We are told that he was born to Athenian citizens in 470 B.C.E. He was a veteran from the Peloponnesian War against the city of Sparta. He was considered physically unattractive but very intelligent: he spent much of his time studying the legal tradition of Athens.

He was not content to learn only the laws and norms of Athenian government, however. He was unwaveringly interested in the principles that he believed were the foundation of all our practices and thoughts. He was not concerned so much with examples of good, just, and faithful things, as much as what Goodness, Justice, and Faithfulness are in and of themselves. He attempted to discuss these foundational ideas with other citizens by continually questioning what he and others thought they knew about good, just, or beautiful things. This method of questioning is often called the "Socratic Method."

Socrates' conversational style of philosophy won him many admirers, but he also annoyed many others. Like a child who discovers that asking "why?" always elicits further response, Socrates frustrated many other Athenians who felt undermined by the realization they knew less about the things dearest to them than they previously believed. In 399 B.C.E., Socrates was executed on charges of corrupting the youth of Athens and in rejecting the worship of Athenian gods.

Plato

Despite Socrates' death, the youth of Athens continued in his corruption. One author who embraced Socrates' methods and ideas was Plato. This younger philosopher kept the memory of Socrates by founding the Academy, a school for those who wished to study philosophy in the common and conversational manner pioneered by Socrates, and for educational purposes he wrote the Dialogues.

The Dialogues

The Dialogues are the principle works of Plato and our main source for understanding his and Socrates' philosophy.

Though the Dialogues are not exact recordings of Socrates' teachings, and often raise more questions than they answer, they are still influential for their demonstration of how to think critically.

Plato's works—his Dialogues as well as his Letters—were collected by an ancient Greek scholar named Thrasyllus, who divided the works into nine groups of four called "tetralogies." These collections were primarily thematic, rather than presenting one continuous narrative. Today, scholars usually organize the dialogues in the order they argue Plato wrote them. However, this course uses the organization of Thrasyllus, though the Dialogues can be studied in any order.

An important note is that modern scholars believe some of the dialogues and letters Thrasyllus collected were not actually written by Plato. Thrasyllus also collected works which claimed to be written by Plato but which he believed were later works. The important question for this course is not, however, "what did Plato believe?" but "How should we think about philosophy?" This latter question is less interested in questions of authorship, and that question is therefore outside the scope of this course.