King of the Americas
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Upon Plato: From: http://www.classics.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/faculty/pubs/platothewriter.pdf
"“When Socrates tackles an issue,” writes Thomas Szlezák,“it comes to a de nite result—the discussion takes no false turns,leads down no blind alleys.” In other words, Plato’s principal way of composing precisely the sequence of action and thought that he wished to present to the reader was to insert into that action a conversational maestro whose baton could direct the entire orchestra of ctional voices that the reader gets to hear.
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Plato, by contrast, is not working with a live audience, but writing the script for the entire dialogue:its dialectical bouts,its mythical narrative, and everything else besides. It is not just the writing of myth, then, that constitutes for Plato what the telling of my this for Socrates; rather, it is the writing of an entire dialogue that builds his domain of freedom."
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Plato,unlike Socrates, was a philosopher running a school; he was, in his way, what we would now call an academic politician, much concerned about turning institutional ideas into reality. Certainly, Plato could agree that, were the issue of feasibility not to be ad- dressed, the account of Callipolis would not lose any of its value as an account of the paradigm city. But he would not suppose it equal in value to an account that, in addition, did address the issue of feasibility. That much is clear from his having ensured that, in the book he chose to write, the issue was indeed addressed. The further fact that he arranged for it to be addressed with conspicuous airiness by Socrates is what shows the reader how Plato takes himself to be addressing it with adequate commitment.
"“When Socrates tackles an issue,” writes Thomas Szlezák,“it comes to a de nite result—the discussion takes no false turns,leads down no blind alleys.” In other words, Plato’s principal way of composing precisely the sequence of action and thought that he wished to present to the reader was to insert into that action a conversational maestro whose baton could direct the entire orchestra of ctional voices that the reader gets to hear.
&
Plato, by contrast, is not working with a live audience, but writing the script for the entire dialogue:its dialectical bouts,its mythical narrative, and everything else besides. It is not just the writing of myth, then, that constitutes for Plato what the telling of my this for Socrates; rather, it is the writing of an entire dialogue that builds his domain of freedom."
---
Plato,unlike Socrates, was a philosopher running a school; he was, in his way, what we would now call an academic politician, much concerned about turning institutional ideas into reality. Certainly, Plato could agree that, were the issue of feasibility not to be ad- dressed, the account of Callipolis would not lose any of its value as an account of the paradigm city. But he would not suppose it equal in value to an account that, in addition, did address the issue of feasibility. That much is clear from his having ensured that, in the book he chose to write, the issue was indeed addressed. The further fact that he arranged for it to be addressed with conspicuous airiness by Socrates is what shows the reader how Plato takes himself to be addressing it with adequate commitment.
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