Analysis of Socratic Dialogues by Plato

The Ion

In Plato’s dialogue Ion he seems to address a rather trifling question: Do poets know what they’re talking about?

What is Poetry? A conscious creation of the poet or divine inspiration? Starting with this question, Socrates in the Platonic dialogue of Ion develops the theory of divine inspiration

Essentially, Ion believes that poetry involves a special knowledge and Socrates does not. Instead, he believes the poet is possessed, and not simply inspired, by the Muse and transmits that power to the audience. A rhapsode is farther in the chain from the source- he compares this nicely to a magnet and iron fillings – but still performs his art in a non-rational way requiring no special knowledge. Many artists would describe the moment of creation as a sort of trance state, although very few would agree that artistry requires no technical knowledge. Technical knowledge is practical, and often relate to mechanical, information technology, mathematical, or scientific tasks. Some examples include knowledge of programming languages, mechanical equipment, or tools.

The dialogue of Ion obviously carries a particularly dramatic or dramatized style, which is gradually exacerbated not only by the Platonic Socrates attempt to logically reason his interlocutor’s thoughts, but mainly because of the endeavor of Ion to respond to this “challenge”

This point matters because, if poets have no special technical knowledge, they likely are not moral experts either. Indeed, many of his contemporaries took poets to be moral guides and there are still those who would like to believe that art makes us better people. In spite of the very obvious problem that a god might act through an artist to deliver moral truth, Socrates is making the case that seeing artists as moral experts is a dangerous delusion. They arouse our emotions and provide us with entertainment, but ultimately, they can hardly be our moral guides, since they don’t even know what they are doing.

This is a central idea in Plato: Virtue is Knowledge. We would be good if only we had the moral knowledge to do so.

The Meno

The dialogue opens with Meno asking Socrates how one acquires virtue. Socrates replies that this question cannot be settled without first reaching agreement on a prior one, namely, what the nature of virtue is. As usual, Socrates professes not to know what virtue is, and, furthermore, he says that he has never met anyone else who knows. Meno naïvely remarks that Gorgias knew, to which Socrates replies that he has “forgotten” what Gorgias said. Meno then agrees to act on Gorgias’s behalf and to inform Socrates of what Gorgias held virtue to be. This, of course, sets up a view that Socrates can examine and refute by his usual method of question and answer.

The Meno, for here for the first time the interlocutor named “Socrates” devotes considerable attention to an issue outside the realm of moral philosophy; although he begins with a typically Socratic question – What is virtue? Whether virtue s to be taught; or whether it is acquired. – Socrates finds no adequate answer, he soon faces an unprecedented question about the legitimacy of his method of inquiry, a question that challenges our ability to move from a state of ignorance and acquire knowledge. “Socrates” responds to this challenge by proposing a radical theory of knowledge according to which the human soul is born with the ability to recollect what it once learned in a previous existence; and he defends this theory by conducting an experiment in which it is shown that a slave can make significant progress toward an understanding of geometry, if he is asked

This Dialogue is an attempt to answer the question, can virtue be taught? No one would either ask or answer such a question in modern times. But in the age of Socrates it was only by an effort that the mind could rise to a general notion of virtue as distinct from the particular virtues of courage, liberality, and the like. And when a hazy conception of this ideal was attained, it was only by a further effort that the question of the how one best could teach virtue was of interest to be resolved.

The Phaedo

Phaedo is the fourth and final dialogue Plato wrote depicting trial and the last days leading up to the execution of Plato’s teacher, Socrates (469-399 B.C.E.). Socrates was sentenced to death by the state of Athens. It follows after his dialogues Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito.

It contains the first extended discussion of the Theory of Forms. More than most of Plato's other writings, the Phaedo is in constant dialogue with the Pre-Socratic theories of the world and the soul, in particular those of Pythagorus, Anaxagoras, and Heraclitus.

The dialogue commences with a conversation between two characters, Echecrates and Phaedo, occurring sometime after Socrates’ death in the Greek city of Phlius.

The Phaedo gives us three different arguments for the immortality of the soul:

The Opposites Argument explains that the soul has to be immortal and the opposite of our mortal bodies. It is also known as the Cyclical Argument because it explains the cycle of life, death, and birth. The cycle involves the dead being created from the living and through death, the living is then created from the dead through their birth. The soul withdraws completely intact from the physical body at our death. The soul then enters another body at birth. The soul, which always brings life, is eternal and unchanging. The second argument, is from the Theory of recollection that can be interpreted as following that humans have prior knowledge that was known to them before they even were taught it was there, thus this knowledge must have been gained from their previous life. This theory suggests that we have non-empirical or non-factual knowledge that comes to us by way of the immortality of the soul.

The Argument from Affinity, and the final argument, given as a response to Cebes' objection. This argument is understood as that all humans have a soul and thus the ability to see from different perspectives than what our body can, and therefore all human souls have an afterlife, even when the body seem to perish/die. Plato uses all of these arguments to argue for the immorality aspect in relation to the soul.

The Final Argument, also known as the Argument from Form of Life, argues that ideas (Form) are the cause of everything in the world and represent the most accurate version of reality. The soul can never die. The study of ideas is the only true way to gain knowledge.

What Socrates speaks of as Knowledge of existence is what I refer to as the Purpose of Life. And this Purpose is for Man to discover who, what, and why he/she exists? And once this is known, one no longer has any resistance to death. Indeed, one welcomes death as a release from the illusion of life. But this is all quite Esoteric and can only be known by those who have accumulated the Virtues of Life that every Soul is slowly accumulating in every lifetime ones Soul experiences.

I conclude that Plato’s arguments come down to one irrevocable fact. Human beings do not have a soul. Plato have dubbed ‘the soul’ may be a synopsis for neurotransmitters inside our brain. Once the brain no longer functions the very core of our existence likely dies with it. I presume that Plato, wanted to believe that humans have a soul. In a way, this makes us more human. The idea of a soul is a beautiful one. It somehow decreases the reality of all the negativity in our world. It means we have purpose. There is perhaps nothing more compelling to us than our lives have real meaning and we are not simply an evolutionary mistake.

Overall comparison

One can understand that the form and method of writing is similar to all above material. The Socratic dialogs tend to be short and the other dialogues tend to be longer. The Socratic dialogues tend to be aporetic and without positive results, as befits a principal investigator who confesses his own ignorance; the other dialogues often have positive results, the main character often laying out much positive doctrine. The Socratic dialogues are, extroverted, optimistic, and mischievous in tone while the other dialogues seem to be more scientifically or fact based in their statements, as they are introverted, pessimistic, and brooding. The Socratic dialogues are almost exclusively ethical in content, concerned with individual ethics and individual education both for oneself and for the young; other dialogues are interested in many other topics besides ethics.

Plato was a formidable philosopher and one of the most dazzling writers known in the Western literature culture. His brilliance of ideas, whether we agree with them or not, are still a huge contribution to moral and ethical questions, that we continue learn and write about them even today in the 21st century.