Book contents
- How Plato Writes
- How Plato Writes
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Approaches to the Corpus
- Chapter 1 Plato in His Time and Place
- Chapter 2 When and Why Did Plato Write Narrated Dialogues?
- Chapter 3 Against System
- Part II Argument and Dialogue Architecture
- Part III Myth and Allegory in the Republic
- Part IV Projects, Paradoxes, and Literary Registers in the Laws
- References
- Index
Chapter 1 - Plato in His Time and Place
from Part I - Approaches to the Corpus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 July 2023
- How Plato Writes
- How Plato Writes
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Approaches to the Corpus
- Chapter 1 Plato in His Time and Place
- Chapter 2 When and Why Did Plato Write Narrated Dialogues?
- Chapter 3 Against System
- Part II Argument and Dialogue Architecture
- Part III Myth and Allegory in the Republic
- Part IV Projects, Paradoxes, and Literary Registers in the Laws
- References
- Index
Summary
In this opening chapter, I attempt to situate Plato’s philosophizing and literary production in its historical context. The evidence external to the dialogues that such an enterprise can rely on is either scrappy or suspect, or both. So what I offer here is a series of snapshots. They follow a chronological sequence, from Plato’s relationship with Socrates and the Athens that executed him; through his momentous first visit to Italy and Sicily and its impact on his thinking about politics and philosophy; to the founding of the Academy, Plato’s rivalry with Isocrates, and the birth of the theory of Forms; and ending with the worlds of the late dialogues.
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- Information
- How Plato WritesPerspectives and Problems, pp. 15 - 41Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023