Frequently Asked Questions about Plato

The pages in this FAQ section are not intended to answer scholarly questions about Plato (though they might still be of interest to scholars), but questions of newcomers to Plato. These are the kinds of questions non specialists visiting my site often mail to me.
These pages are not intended either to provide ready-made answers to assignments for "cheating" students surfing the net to spare them the time and effort to think by themselves and more interested in the grade they might obtain than in what Plato may help them find out about themselves, man and life. Such students might as well forget about Plato, whose only purpose in writing dialogues rather than treatises was to avoid forcing his own answers on his readers and rather guide them in learning to think by themselves in order to better know what it means to be a (wo)man. I suggest them to simply read the initial speech of Callicles in the Gorgias (482c-486d), or the discussion between Thrasymachus and Socrates in the first book of the Republic (336a-354c), where they will find in Callicles and Thrasymachus role models much better suited to them. Besides, I must warn them that my "theories" and "opinions" on Plato are far from being "mainstream", and that, in simply copying what they might find here, they expose themselves to the risk of having bad grades anyway !..
Indeed, the "answers" found here, as throughout this site, at least those that express opinions about the dialogues as opposed to factual data about references to quotations and the like, are not meant to be the truth about Plato, but simply a "dialogue with the dialogues" in which the visitor is supposed to take part as well. And whoever is willing to engage in a dialogue with Plato is welcome here.

1. Plato and the so-called "theory of Forms"
2. The allegory of the cave
3. Plato about youth and the excess of freedom
4. The Butcher's Wife and the "split men"
5. Plato's real name
6. Plato and Atlantis
7. Quoting Plato: what are those weird numbers and letters?
8. Did Plato write: "Only the dead have seen the end of war"?
9. "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter"

Plato and his dialogues : Home - Biography - Works and links to them - History of interpretation - New hypotheses - Map of dialogues : table version or non tabular version. Tools : Index of persons and locations - Detailed and synoptic chronologies - Maps of Ancient Greek World. Site information : About the author.

First published May 2, 1999 - Last updated January 4, 2004
© 1999-2004 Bernard SUZANNE (click on name to send your comments via e-mail)
Quotations from theses pages are authorized provided they mention the author's name and source of quotation (including date of last update). Copies of these pages must not alter the text and must leave this copyright mention visible in full.