Plato's Socratic Conversations: Drama and Dialectic in Three Dialogues

Professor Stokes sets out a new way of reading Plato's dialogues. Why should Plato have written dialogues at all, rather than treatises? The argument of the dialogues lies in their drama - in the interplay of personality, profession and belief, and in the cut-and-thrust of Socratic dialectic. By examining systematically where each party to the argument stands at each successive stage of the discussion, the author shows that each of these dialogues under discussion has a single-minded consistency of purpose and that the literary passages help to form and convey the philosophical message.