Plato's dialogues offer a multitude of questions for the reader to consider, often without ever providing any concrete solutions. Mirroring in part Socrates' method of helping his students achieve philosophical insight, Plato's use of dialogue allows for his characters to engage in honest and open conversation.
Because Plato's characters are often named after or based on historical figures, it is easy to entertain that Plato simply recorded conversations he heard, waiting for the opportunity to transcribe them, or wrote down conversations that had been relayed to him. However, as Kenneth Sayre rightly points out early on in his essay "Why Plato Wrote Dialogues," many of the figures Plato mentions lived well before he was writing, and Plato makes it a point to make himself an absent or peripheral character in his dialogues (5). This leads one to the conclusion that Plato crafted each dialogue as a piece of aesthetic literature, as well as philosophy. In that case, what is Plato's motivation to frame the dialogues with actual people, most notably Socrates?
Plato deliberately chooses to blur the line between actual occurrence and invented circumstance. In his attempt to understand truth through the content of his dialogues, Plato also explores the intersection of truth and fiction in the form of his writing. Certainly, the names of the characters in each dialogue have significance in terms of how the reader should understand them, but Plato could have achieved that without drawing on actual people. Perhaps these figures were so known in the common consciousness that Plato's use of them would have added new layers of meaning to the dialogues for Plato's initial audience. It is an interesting choice, nonetheless.
I imagine we'll spend a lot of time in class getting to know the historical characters--the context can radically alter the meaning of a given dialogue. I wonder to what extent dialogues actually rely on this kind of context, if a dialogue lacks something without a direct line to philosophy's history.
ReplyDeleteI think the framing of the dialogues is a way that Plato worked through complicated questions. His characters were used, to me anyway, as an outlet to propose questions and attempt to refute or defend them. Because it is two people having a conversation, the reader is more likely to think deeply about the context like they are also in the conversation. A very deliberate and interesting choice by Plato.
ReplyDeleteDo you think Plato actually meant for them to be taken as actual conversations he recorded? Sager mentions that there is a very small chance that Plato was present at Socrates' discussions and the timing of some make it downright impossible. I think that it's a very easy and natural conclusion to make but it probably isn't the best way to frame Plato's works.
ReplyDeleteNo, I don't think we're meant to take Plato's dialogues as actual conversations at all. My post was partially intended to make that clear. However, the characters Plato uses are named after actual historical figures, so my main question was regarding the reasoning behind that decision.
DeleteAn interesting reading of Sayre’s Why Plato Wrote Dialogues. It also would seem that the choice of Socratic dialogues as a literary medium lends itself well to the introduction of drama into the text, and allows Plato to produce interesting dynamics between his characters. The liberty that dialogues afford Plato in his characterizations of different speakers also allows a bit of playful caricaturing of these revered philosophical figures. The result, I have found, is a philosophical discourse which is particularly well suited for both comedy and drama, one that is perhaps more critically accessible than speeches or essays, and one which honors the greatest philosophical legacy of Plato’s mentor: the Socratic dialogue.
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