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INTRODUCTIONthe audience with crucial information or to comment on the action of
the play. Most conclusions reached in the dialogues are established in
merely presumptive and provisional terms, so they are open to further
discussion, as the philosophical characters, especially Socrates, engage
in discussion after discussion to test their opinions, beliefs, and hypoth-
eses, amassing evidence for the best views on various subjects. (This
has been termed “Socrates’ evidentialism.”)^14 Despite what Socrates ap-
pears to know compared to others, he never claims knowledge of any-
thing except his ignorance.^15 Likewise, Plato writes his dialogues so that
diffi culties among the various positions are left unresolved, philosophy
does not always get the last word, and more than a few dialogues end
inconclusively. So it is not only that Plato wrote richly textured, hetero-
geneous, open-ended, quasi-historical fi ctions, but also that those key
conclusions which seem to be reached in them are presented as only
tentative and subject to reexamination.
At some point, a fi rst-time reader attempting to unpack and un-
derstand her fi rst Platonic dialogue would be justifi ed in wondering
whether there wasn’t a simpler, less ambiguous, more direct way in
which Plato might have written if he just wanted his readers to under-
stand his “teachings” or his own “beliefs.” If this author’s aim had truly
been to communicate a set of “doctrines” to his audience—especially if
those doctrines were central beliefs that he held deeply or strongly, and
he wished to disseminate them—another form of writing would seem
to have been simpler, more straightforward, and much more prima fa-
cie successful than the open-ended dialogue form. Even if a fi rst-time
reader was diligent and faithful and worked through a dialogue care-
fully and critically, she might still feel at the end of the day that all of
the fi ne grains of sand she had mined and collected were in danger of
slowly slipping through her hands. Confi dence in one’s understanding,
like Socrates’ “shadowy wisdom,” is here as ephemeral as a dream.
At this point the fi rst-time reader will either give up or perse-
vere, either returning to the “gateway” dialogue, tackling another one,
or throwing up her hands. Going on to a second dialogue raises new
problems, since it inevitably entails attempting to reconcile what is said
in one dialogue with what is said in another. How should one resolve
apparent discrepancies, or even seeming contradictions, between (or
among) what is said in one dialogue and what is said in others, even by
the same character? For example, Socrates argues in the Gorgias that
pleasure is not the Good; in the Protagoras, he defends the view that
pleasure is the Good; and in the Philebus, he argues that pleasure is
part of the Good. Can these three positions be reconciled? Is Socrates
tailoring his statements to different interlocutors? (After all, don’t hu-