Editing Socratic problem (section)

== Plato ==

Socrates—who is often credited with turning [[Western philosophy]] in a more ethical and political direction and who was put to death by the [[democracy]] of [[Athens]] in May 399 BC—was Plato's mentor. Plato, like some of his contemporaries, wrote [[dialogue]]s about his teacher. Much of what is known about Socrates comes from Plato's writings; however, it is widely believed that very few, if any, of Plato's dialogues can be verbatim accounts of conversations between them or unmediated representations of Socrates' thought. Many of the dialogues seem to use Socrates as a device for Plato's thought, and inconsistencies occasionally crop up between Plato and the other accounts of Socrates; for instance, Plato has Socrates denying that he would ever accept money for teaching, while [[Xenophon]]'s ''[[Symposium (Xenophon)|Symposium]]'' clearly has Socrates stating that students pay him to teach wisdom and that this is what he does for a living.

[[Stylometric]] analysis of Plato's work has led some scholars to classify dialogues as falling approximately into three groups, Early, Middle and Late.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=946xAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA8 |author=M Cormack |title=Plato's Stepping Stones: Degrees of Moral Virtue |page=8 |publisher=A&C Black |access-date=17 April 2015 |isbn=9781847144416 |date=15 October 2006}}</ref> On the assumption that there is an evolution of philosophical thought in Plato's dialogues from his early years to his middle and later years,<ref>Krämer (1990) ascribes this view to [[Eduard Zeller]] (Hans Joachim Krämer, [https://books.google.com/books?id=T2k6edyBklwC ''Plato and the Foundations of Metaphysics''], SUNY Press, 1990, pp. 93–4).</ref> the most common modern view is that Plato's dialogues contain a development of thought from closer to that of Socrates' to a doctrine more distinctly Plato's own.<ref>Penner, T. "Socrates and the early dialogues" in Kraut, R. (ed.) ''The Cambridge Companion to Plato'' (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 121. See also [[Terence Irwin|Irwin, T. H.]], "The Platonic Corpus" in Fine, G. (ed.), ''The Oxford Handbook of Plato'' (Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 77–85.</ref> However, the question of exactly what aspects of Plato's dialogues are representative of Socrates and what are not, is debated. Although the view that Plato's dialogues are ''developmental'' in their doctrines (with regard to the historical Socrates or not) is standard, the view is not without objectors who propose a ''unitarian'' view or other alternative interpretations of the chronology of the corpus.<ref>Rowe, C. "Interpreting Plato" in Benson, H. H. (ed.), ''A Companion to Plato'' (Blackwell Publishing, 2006), pp. 13–24.</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Smith|first1=Nicholas|last2=Brickhouse|first2=Thomas|title=The Trial and Execution of Socrates : Sources and Controversies|date=2002|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=New York|isbn=9780195119800|page=[https://archive.org/details/trialexecutionof0000unse/page/24 24]|url=https://archive.org/details/trialexecutionof0000unse/page/24}}</ref> One notable example is [[Charles H. Kahn|Charles Kahn]] who argued that Plato had created his works not in a gradual way, but as a unified philosophical vision, whereby he uses Socratic dialogues, a non-historical genre, to flesh out his views.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Kahn|first1=Charles H.|title=Plato and the Socratic Dialogue : The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form|date=2000|publisher=Cambridge Univ. Press|isbn=978-0521648301}}</ref>  The time that Plato began to write his works and the date of composition of his last work are unknown and, adding to the complexity, even ancient sources do not know the order of the works or dialogues.<ref name="Handbook Plato">{{cite book|last1=Fine|first1=Gail|title=The Oxford handbook of Plato|date=2011|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|isbn=978-0199769193|pages=76–77}}</ref>