Two Kinds of Lawlessness
Plato's Crito
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6350037 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ann Congleton (Wellesley College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1974 |
| Volume | 2 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 432-446 |
| Publication date | 1974-11-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Political Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0090-5917 • E-ISSN: 1552-7476 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/009059177400200406 |
| OpenAlex | W1451933580 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
LATO WROTE DIALOGUES. Why he wrote dialogues and not treatises cannot be explained by simply citing the view that he probably began as a poet and playwright. For while Plato's dialogue form certainly required the gifts of a dramatist in order to be so much more than the antiphonal arguments of such writers as Berkeley and Hume, the Dialogues are not pieces for actors. Rather, they are a new prose form, a form for readers, a form devised by Plato to meet the needs presented by Socrates. Socrates convinced Plato that if reason is to play a part in human decisions it must be made active in individual human beings and that the way to make it active in some particular individual is to draw that person into joint inquiry, to lead the person to become an active associate in discussion. It is partly because Socrates insisted on dialogue that he was put to death, and Plato invented his literary form to show that what made the practice of dialogue the proper expression of Socrates' beliefs about human nature and the development of virtue was also what made it, at least in fifth-century Athens, a dangerous pursuit. It seemed to Socrates and Plato a danger worth risking, because they not only believed that, as a person thinks, so that person will live, and that the union of thinking and living can be seen in the way people conduct themselves in discussion, but they also believed that if any teaching of virtue could occur, it could occur through dialogue. Socrates therefore spoke with particular respondents rather than making speeches to the world at large, and Plato tumed his
Criminology · Law and economics · Lawlessness · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Law
| Citations per year | 0.15 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1987 - 2013 (27) |
| Highly cited | No |