Abstract

The development of Plato's dialectical method is traced through a number of dialogues. Beginning with the Meno, the evolution of a "pre-critical" dialectic ending with the Phaedo is considered. This first dialectic is described as an ascending or inductive movement from sensible things, through which the Forms are apprehended intuitively and independently. The problem of the mutual participation of the Forms, and of sensible things in them, occasions a growing crisis which comes to a head in the first part of the Parmenides, where, according to Montes, the inadequacy of such a dialectic is established. The second part of that dialogue is then interpreted as an exercise in a new "critical dialectic," which is to be applied later in the Sophist to a rational deduction of the Forms in which the problems of participation are overcome. As might be expected of a work originally in thesis form, the book is heavy with footnotes, references, and Greek quotations, making for cumbersome reading.--A. T.