Malcolm Schofield, How Plato Writes: Perspectives and Problems

Why did Plato write dialogues, marvelous fusions of philosophy and fiction, instead of treatises in which he straightforwardly stated and then defended his own views? Why (with the exception of his letters) did he not speak in his own voice? This question has repeatedly been asked by some of Plato’s most dedicated readers, a few of whom would go so far as to claim that without addressing it, it is impossible fully to understand his thought. Such readers will thus be enticed by the title of Malcolm Schofield’s book, How Plato Writes. They will welcome his statement that “arguments and philosophical theories advanced in Plato’s pages often cannot be studied satisfactorily without consideration of the trajectory of the entire dialogue in which they appear or of its other literary dimensions” (p. 2). They will nod in agreement when he declares that this topic has not “been sufficiently pondered” (p. vii). Upon reading further, however, they will be sorely disappointed, for they will discover that this book sheds little light on “why [Plato] wrote what he did in the way he did” (p. 2). …