Tonight I read "Why Plato Wrote Dialogues" a chapter from Kenneth M. Sayre's text
Plato's Literary Garden. While I was reading, I was wondering why there is debate as to whether these are dialogues Plato imagined or whether he was actually with Socrates. Sayre poses a good point when he states "The fact that Brutus was an actual contemporary of Julius Caesar does not make Shakespeare's story of a conversation between them a depiction of an actual conversation". Likewise, the fact that Plato writes of conversations between Socrates and himself or Socrates and others does not make it a real conversation. My thought is wouldn't we be calling it a documentary if it was a real recording of Socrates? To me Plato was an artist. He used Socrates as his medium, to imagine what conversations would be like and to pose and try and answer philosophical questions that are bothering his intellectual mind. People do not assume Shakespeare's work is non-fiction, so why Plato?
I believe that it is a matter of both dramatization and the lack of meta cognition. Meta cognition is when we think about thinking. It is an interesting phenomenon that humans do; one that cognitive psychologists study. I think that if you think about Plato thinking about Socrates, it is easy to see it as a story. It is easy to picture him writing about what could have been or imagined conversations. I also believe that many people just assume he was there because he was one of Socrates friends. Why wouldn't Plato record everything word for word? Isn't Socrates supposed to be one of the most famous philosophers of human time? This is where the dramatization occurs. We want it to be a real conversation because the problems posed are so fruitful and perplexing. If it is just a story, then I can imagine that some would feel as though Plato is more of a storyteller than a philosopher. I feel like it is very easy for many of them to just want the dialogues to be documentations. Even though they are not, the dialogues of Plato are just as critical to the philosophical thought processes as any other text. I have been one of those people that has always assumed his dialogues were recorded and not created. It is interesting to look at now with a fresh mind and see Plato's work as artistic philosophical writings in the wake of his friends demise.
