Cross-Examining Socrates : A Defense of the Interlocutors in Plato's Early Dialogues

This book is a rereading of the early dialogues of Plato from the point of view of the people with whom Socrates engages in debate. Existing studies are thoroughly dismissive of the interlocutors and reduce them to the status of mere mouthpieces for views that are hopelessly confused or demonstrably false. This book takes interlocutors seriously and treats them as genuine intellectual opponents whose views are often more defensible than commentators have generally thought. "This book is a re-reading of Plato's early dialogues from the point of view of the characters with whom Socrates engages in debate. Socrates' interlocutors are generally acknowledged to play important dialectical and dramatic roles, but no previous book has focused mainly on them. Unlike existing studies, which are thoroughly dismissive of the interlocutors and reduce them to the status of mere mouthpieces for views which are hopelessly confused or demonstrably false, this book takes them seriously and treats them as genuine intellectual opponents whose views are often more defensible than commentators have standardly thought. The author's purpose is not to summarize their positions or the arguments of the dialogues in which they appear, much less to produce a series of biographical sketches, but to investigate the phenomenology of philosophical disputation as it manifests itself in the early dialogues."--Jacket This book is a rereading of Plato's early dialogues from the point of view of the characters with whom Socrates engages in debate. Socrates'interlocutors are generally acknowledged to play important dialectical and dramatic roles, but no previous book has focused mainly on them. Existing studies are thoroughly dismissive of the interlocutors and reduce them to the status of mere mouthpieces for views which are hopelessly confused or demonstrably false. This book takes interlocutors seriously and treats them as genuine intellectual opponents whose views are often more defensible than commentators have standardly thought. The author's purpose is not to summarise their positions or the arguments of the dialogues in which they appear, much less to produce a series of biographical sketches, but to investigate the phenomenology of philosophical disputation as it manifests itself in the early dialogues. This book is a re-reading of the early dialogues of Plato from the point of view of the people with whom Socrates engages in debate. It takes these interlocutors seriously and treats them as genuine intellectual opponents whose views are often more defensible than commentators have standardly thought. The term "interlocutor" is standardly used in referring to the people with whom Socrates converses in the early dialogues.

a Re-reading Of Plato's Early Dialogues From The Interlocutors' Point Of View.