Hi, thanks for tuning in to ancient Greece declassified.

Episode 16.

Dialogued and Dialectic.

This episode will explore the art of the philosophical dialogue, both as a literary form and as a practice between people in real-time conversation.

Most of the discussion will revolve in some way or other around the work of the philosopher

Plato, since he is widely

considered the best writer of philosophical dialogues from ancient Greece, if not of all time,

and our guest today, M.M. McCabe, is an expert on Plato. You'll probably need to know

some basic things about Plato in order to easily follow today's conversation.

If you're new to this podcast and you don't know much about Plato, then I would recommend

first checking out our episode 8 called Plato Strikes Back, where we give an introduction

and overview of Plato's life and times and his contributions to philosophy.

In that episode, we spoke to Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, who is probably the only well-known philosopher today who has

written her own philosophical dialogues. Most philosophers today publish books that offer a series

of arguments supporting some big claim.

There are no characters involved. It's just the author saying what he or she thinks.

Instead, Goldstein has a few books that take the form of a novel in which different characters

have lively debates about pressing issues and impactful ideas.

This way of writing philosophy, of dramatizing philosophy, goes way back to the beginnings

of philosophical investigation in the 5th century BC, and it has been practiced by philosophers

throughout history. A contemporary of Plato named Xenophon

also wrote dialogues featuring Socrates as the main character. The Roman statesman and

...