Abstract

With this book Professor Weingartner has added to that portion of Plato-interpretation which attempts to illuminate the fact that "Plato wrote dialogues." His central claims are two: 1) Plato’s argumentation cannot be understood outside the dialogue form within which Plato himself never appears; and 2) the unity which suffuses each of the dialogues can render potent the argumentation which would be otherwise either inaccurate or inadequate. Correlative to these theses, he argues, perhaps too briefly, against those who would try to ignore the dialogue genre altogether. For such interpreters, Weingartner’s argument goes, "... questions and objections that are interjected by the other participants in the conversation... are seen as mere literary devices which provide Plato’s prolocutor with plausible opportunities for stating and clarifying his own views." On the other hand, he criticizes those who would make of Plato nothing but a literary figure, and of Socrates a "god of refutation." Fittingly, though, Professor Weingartner also clarifies the more subtle mistake of reading the dialogues "... as tranches de vie philosophique, in which the character of Socrates plays the leading role...". Having stated what he takes to be improper interpretive devices, he selects the Cratylus, Protagoras, and Parmenides and "... attempts to show, in some detail, that each of them can, and therefore should, be understood as a unified whole."