Discorsi e pedine: teoria e prassi del dialogo negli spuria del Corpus Platonicum

Abstract

Scholars engaging in the analysis of pseudo-platonic dialogues have often noticed a distinctive ‘eristical’ turn of Socrates’ interrogations and argumentation in most of these texts. This peculiarity, traditionally seen as a sign of the authors’ lack of dialectical subtility, can instead be interpreted as a deliberate strategy, connected to a re-interpretation of the ways and means of Socratic dialogue. Hints to this new evaluation of the literary genre can be found in the dialogues themselves, most notably in the passages comparing dialogue to petteia, an image inherited from Plato.