Originally posted by juanruiz:
quote:
Just finished The Symposium and The Apology. Why did Plato write in dialogue form? It seems that it took forever to get to his points. Was it to be more familiar with his readers, or was it that someone was taking notes when he would sit and speak?
The Socratic Method consisted in a battery of questions; for each answer there was another question. The dialogue form is conducive to that method. Plato generally sets up the person questioned as a straw man, sort of the way Nicodemus is portrayed.
You may want to read Eric A. Havelock,
Preface to Plato, Harvard U P, 1963. As for the
Republic,the Cornford ed. (Oxford U P) is pretty good.
