Abstract

This chapter considers the dialogues’ handling of narratives, and the extent to which Plato’s works contain plots of a classical type. After surveying the different types of stories found in Plato’s dialogues, with particular reference to Laches, Republic and Sophist, it is argued that in fact, inverting the tendencies of classical plot, Plato’s stories tend towards proliferation, fragmentation and irresolution; and that they do so in a more demanding way as one progresses through the corpus. In doing so, it is suggested, the dialogues channel the energy which would be directed into linear progression and resolution into review and re-analysis, thereby drawing the reader into a pattern of on-going, repetitive reflection of the sort which is presented as part of true philosophical progress.