The Literary Form of Platonic Dialogues

Platonic dialogue offers, mixed to varying degrees, three aspects: it is a drama, it is mostly a discussion, it sometimes contains a continuous exposition.

First, a drama: sometimes the place, the time, and the circumstances are marked with precision, as in the Protagoras (309-310 a); the dialogue itself is often, as in the Symposium (172-174), inserted into a narrative; sometimes, on the contrary, and this is more frequent, as Plato progresses, the dialogue begins ex abrupto. (3) There are dialogues whose dramatic aspect is particularly visible through the life of the characters and the twists and turns that keep the reader in suspense; There are others from which dramatic life has almost disappeared, although there is none, even the most arid, Philebus or Sophist for example, which does not contain some traits of humor and satire (4). The characters are first Socrates, then those with whom Socrates had relations, foreign sophists or philosophers, young men from the noble families of Athens, politicians of the city; in any case, as in the comedies of Aristophanes, characters known to all, several of whom are still alive, many of whom have family ties with Plato. It is only in his dialogues of old age that fictitious and not very lively characters are introduced, like the stranger in the Sophist and the Laws, or Philebus.

We know with what predilection he portrayed Socrates, the Socrates of the Protagoras, still young and without authority among the rich and renowned sophists, the Socrates fully aware of his moral and social mission in the Apology, the one who disturbs the conscience of Alcibiades (Symposium) and who, revealing his ignorance to Meno, numbs him like a torpedo, the “midwife of spirits” of the Theaetetus, finally the defender of the philosophical life in the Gorgias and the Meno. Then Socrates disappears, and with him, the dramatic life of the dialogue; it is unlikely that the young Socrates, who in the Phaedo (97 c. sq.), educates himself by reading Anaxagoras, or, in the Parmenides (128e sq.), submits the doctrine of ideas to the old philosopher of Elea, is other than Plato himself.