This paper examines Plato's dialectic method as it operates across three major dialogues: the Phaedo, the Republic, and the Symposium. It analyzes the Phaedo's proofs of the soul's immortality and the philosophical complications surrounding the simplicity of the Forms. It then considers the Republic's moral doctrine and its vision of the ideal state as a model of ethical education. The Symposium is explored through its typology of lovers and the defense of Socrates against charges of corrupting Athenian youth. The paper concludes by tracing the development of dialectic from the early aporetic dialogues through the middle and late dialogues, arguing that Plato consistently situates philosophical discussion under the horizon of an ideal dialectic not yet fully achieved by any participant, including Socrates himself.
The paper demonstrates close philosophical textual analysis, a technique central to academic philosophy. Rather than simply summarizing Plato's views, it engages with interpretive disputes — for example, whether the Forms are "simple" — and adjudicates between competing readings by returning to the original Greek terms (suntheta, asuntheta, monoeides, polueides) and their contextual implications. This models how philosophy students should engage primary sources.
The paper opens with a targeted analysis of the Phaedo's final proof of immortality, then broadens into the metaphysics of the Forms. It transitions to the Republic's ethical and political theory before turning to the Symposium's treatment of love and Socrates' reputation. The conclusion draws all three dialogues together under the question of how dialectic evolves across Plato's corpus, providing a retrospective frame that unifies the preceding analysis.
The heterogeneous senses of being explain the unsatisfying conclusion of the proof of immortality in the Phaedo. The proof ends with a statement of the kind of thing the soul is, but it cannot establish that a certain soul always exists. Individual existence as such remains in the realm of body and thus of chance. To the extent that this is the case, the "proof" of imperishability can only be an assertion or a hope.
Given its position in the dialogue and its manifest inadequacy, the final proof suggests the unavailability of a single cause of all coming into being and passing away — a cause that could make intelligible the perfect harmony of humanity and nature. Moreover, it shows Socrates distancing himself from the core of his orthodoxy: the doctrine of separate Ideas in this, the last argument of his life. The final argument thus confirms the uncertainty that precipitated Socrates' turn to the speeches of humans. Accordingly, Socrates concludes the final argument of the Phaedo with the recommendation that the "initial hypotheses" — the existence of the Ideas themselves — be examined. The conclusion of the final proof of immortality directs us back to the ascent characteristic of Socratic rationalism. In this conclusion we see the rationale for the last proof of immortality: it is, at least potentially, a solvent for any sectarianism that might arise on the basis of Socratic orthodoxy.
The Phaedo has often been construed as a dissertation by Plato on the immortality of the soul. In it, Socrates claims that the soul does not die and supports the claim through argument with himself and his friends. One finds "proofs" that have been repeated many times since: that living is a kind of dying, the surrender of bodily interests for the interests of the soul; that life is followed by death and death by life; that the soul and body are incomparable; that the soul remains the same throughout life while the body is constantly changing; that the soul is not the function or harmony of the body and so does not cease when the body dies, because the soul controls the body while no harmony controls its instruments; and that the soul is simple and, unlike the body, uncompounded — for only compounded things can lose their identity.
There remains, for those who see mathematics as the spiritual source of middle-dialogue paradigmatism, a significant complication in treating arithmetical and geometrical Forms as paradigm cases. It is maintained that the Forms are simple. How, then, can Duality be a pair of units, or Equality be two or more perfectly equal entities, or the Triangle itself have three sides or angles or countless points? A key passage in support of the simplicity of the Forms is Phaedo 78bc, where, in response to Simmias' fear that the soul may at death be scattered, Socrates asserts that such a thing would happen to suntheta whereas asuntheta would not suffer dissolution. Socrates then (78de) equates these asuntheta with the Forms and the suntheta with sense particulars. If one takes suntheton to mean "composite" or "having parts" and asuntheton to mean "incomposite" or "having no parts," then one is left with the conclusion that the Forms are simple — that is, have no parts. Further support is sometimes seen in the Forms being described (at Phaedo 80b, for example) as monoeid? (uniform) in contrast to particulars as polueid? (multiform), where monoeides, as at Theaetetus 205d, may be taken as implying being without parts.
But one need not read these expressions in the way required by the simplicity interpretation. At Phaedo 78c it is stated that a suntheton will be suited by nature for dividing (diairesis) in the same way it was compounded (taut?(i) h?(i)per suneteth?): it has at a given time been put together and so is at risk of being pulled apart. Eternal composite objects are not touched by this consideration, a fact borne out by the very next section, which says that the unchanging qualify as asuntheta and the changing as suntheta. This shows that it is having been compounded — having undergone a change at a given time — which is relevant. Things eternal and unchanging, whether composite or not, are asuntheta in this sense. Furthermore, another interpretation may be given of monoeides. The contrast with polueides may best be seen at Symposium 211ab, where the Form of the Beautiful is monoeides, or uniform, because when viewed as it is in itself it does not appear in many forms — as a face, hands, a logos, or a piece of knowledge. The particular beautiful things, the multiform or polueid?, have the many "forms" that the Form may take when copied or, as a universal, instantiated. There is no implication for the simplicity, or otherwise, of this one Form. There can be a multitude of "forms" — that is, many different sorts of particulars — for a uniform yet composite Form.
When Plato explains at Phaedo 101c why nothing can become (genesthai) two other than by participating in Duality, this must be interpreted in the light of 95e, where we are told that we are looking for the causes of coming into being and perishing. As regards "effects," our universe of discourse is limited to non-Forms. Also, at 100c it is agreed that if anything besides the Form of the Beautiful is beautiful, it is so because it partakes of that Form. Therefore, at 101c we are getting an explanation of why things other than the Form of Duality are two. They could be two by resembling the Form as a paradigm case. Nevertheless, although we do have self-exemplification at 100c in the case of the Beautiful, there is no compelling reason to extend this feature to Duality; we therefore have no basis to suppose that this Form is being presented as a paradigm case of Twoness.
There is, moreover, an important sense in which Duality is prior to anything being two, including the paradigm instance. Any instantiation presupposes the Form as a universal, and unless we have Duality as a universal we cannot have a paradigm instance of it. But Wedberg cannot appeal to this principle to exclude Duality as such from being two. The reason is that if we take Duality at Phaedo 101c as limited de facto to its function as a universal, this has no consequences for the additional postulation of Duality as a paradigm case. Such a position may appeal to grounds quite extraneous to the non-exhaustive dichotomy at 101c between the generated duos and Duality as the universal nature in which they participate. What Wedberg's reasoning amounts to is the patent truth that, for all entities including numbers, universals in themselves are not paradigm cases. The arithmetical Forms were thus viewed by Plato as collections of units, and both arithmetic and geometry may have provided the models for the more general postulation of ideal particulars.
It should be emphasized that this doctrine does not require that mathematical paradigm-case Forms should predominate in the middle dialogues. In no such dialogue is Plato undertaking a systematic presentation of his theory of Forms or discussing its genesis. For example, at Phaedo 65d and 74b the Forms are introduced as something with which the interlocutor is already familiar. Also, the primary topics — the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo and the relation of justice to happiness in the Republic — will determine which Forms are actually involved, for instance, Life (and Death?) in the Phaedo.
Of Plato's moral doctrines, the most important are the following: that, independently of other ends, virtue is to be pursued as the true good of the soul and the proper perfection of human nature, the power by which the soul fitly accomplishes its existence, whereas vice is a disease of the mind arising from delusion or imperfect apprehension of our proper interests; that the real freedom of a rational being consists in an ability to regulate conduct by reason, and that everyone not guided by reason encourages insubordination in the mental faculties and becomes the slave of caprice or passion; and that virtuous conduct, apart from its benefits to society, is advantageous to the individual practicing it, inasmuch as it ensures that regularity of the imagination, that tranquility and internal harmony, which constitutes the mind's proper happiness. Throughout, and with great power, Plato contends for the earnestness of a virtuous mind in the attainment of truth, and advocates the pursuit of the ordinary pleasures of life only insofar as they are subservient to, or compatible with, humanity's higher and nobler duties.
Plato conceived that there were two great causes of human corruption: bad or misdirected education, and the corrupt influence of the body on the soul. His ethical discussions therefore have for their object the limiting of the desires and the cure of the diseases they produce in the soul, while his political discussions have for their immediate object the laying down of right principles of education and enforcing them through the constitution of laws and the power of the state. His two great works, the Republic and the Laws, may be considered theories and plans of civic education rather than schemes of legislation and details of laws. The former inquires more particularly into the principles on which a right government may be formed; the latter presents a systematic view of the principles of legislation. Both works, comprising so much matter of a purely intellectual and ethical character, compel us to conclude that their primary object is the improvement of human nature through social institutions expressly formed for that purpose.
We are not to suppose that Plato, in his Republic, had in view the actual foundation of a state. He presents rather an example of the most perfect life — public as well as private — free from those impediments that all existing governments and laws throw across the path of the virtuous. Thus, in the Laws (bk. VII), he says: "Our whole government consists in the imitation of a most excellent and virtuous life," and again, "these excellent things are rather as wishes stated in a fable than actual facts, though it would be best of all if they could exist in all states." He thought that as philosophy is the guide of private life, elevating it to the knowledge of the true and the good, so it was also seated on the throne of government, exhibiting the eternal ideas of social good and truth and modifying society after their pattern. Hence, as Aristotle observes in the second book of his Politics (Chapter 2), Plato overlooks impossibilities in his arrangements and sacrifices everything to the one great object of sketching the idea of the good as a social principle, apart from the evil influences of society.
The Republic of Plato is a development of the analogy between the ideas of the perfect man and the perfect state, the two principles being elaborated throughout the dialogue in perfect harmony and mutual dependence. Plato exhibits the image of perfect and consummate virtue, such as ought to be seen in the whole life of a human being — whether in private capacity, as a sentient and moral agent, or in public position as a member of a state. As human beings have certain special social relations and social functions, he considers them collectively as part of a state, and is led to inquire into the best or pattern form of a state. This proceeding is quite in keeping with the custom of the Greeks, who treated politics rather as a branch of ethics than as a separate science. This dialogue, one of that splendid group that includes the Timaeus, the Critias, and the Laws, comprises two subjects constantly connected and cohering: the contemplation of the perfectly good person on the one hand, and on the other the perfectly good state, composed of many members in different classes performing their respective functions. Justice — the principle, cause, and uniting bond of all the other virtues, and essentially political in character — forms a very suitable introduction to this dialogue. The refutation of incorrect or inadequate definitions of justice occupies a large portion of the first book, and Socrates then proceeds, with the aim of drawing out an abstract definition of justice, to explain his notion of a perfect state as one in which all ranks of its members accurately fulfill their respective functions, dwelling together in harmony.
The understanding of the Symposium has sometimes been hampered by failure to recognize the vital distinction between the second and third types of lover. Comparison with the Phaedrus, which is also largely concerned with the subject of love, confirms the existence of this distinction. There, too, we are presented with the same three types: the purely sensual, those called "lovers of honour" in the Phaedrus, and the lovers of wisdom. The second type, who have not entirely passed beyond physical love and who correspond to the nobler lovers of Pausanias, are not condemned in either dialogue. In the Phaedrus it is positively stated that these lovers are capable of growing wings that may lift them again into the eternal world of the Forms which the soul once inhabited. Such lovers may have trouble subduing their physical desires and may never rise above the level of the "lover of honour," but they are infinitely to be preferred to the merely sensual lover, who is severely indicted. They have made some progress towards the state from which they fell at birth. The best type, however — the lover of wisdom — though he may still feel some pleasure in the things of sense, will never allow them to divert him for an instant from the pursuit of real beauty. It is to be remembered that the first impulse to that pursuit, even in his case, is provided by the physical beauty of particular persons.
The early dialogues are, typically, centered on the attempt to provide a definition of a virtue of a kind that meets Socrates' conditions for a dialectically adequate definition. Despite the aporetic form of the discussion, it is possible to form some view about Socrates' conception of the conditions required to provide such a definition. The definition of any one virtue seems to require a synoptic understanding of the nature of virtue in general and of the relationship between, for instance, virtue and knowledge. Achieving such an understanding seems to require not only a secure grasp of concepts and logical relationships, but also the state of ethical character that is correlated with this synoptic understanding. The nature of these conditions, combined with the very open cast of personae in the early dialogues, goes some way towards explaining why the type of "shared search" presented in these dialogues does not reach a determinate outcome in the shared possession of the required combination of understanding and character.
You’re 62% through this paper. Sign up to read the remaining 1 section.
Sign Up Now — Instant Access Already a member? Log inAlways verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.