Abstract

This chapter considers the Plato’s approach to the unity of literary works, and especially his own dialogues, with special reference to works such as Phaedrus and Politicus which have often struck readers as puzzlingly constructed, even problematically disunified. After reviewing current approaches to structure and unity in the dialogues, the chapter puts forward an alternative model, which takes its starting point from structural patterns which typify both ‘problem’ works such as Phaedrus, and more obviously unified works like Meno. These features, which are displayed in a more extreme fashion by works such as Phaedrus, are integral, the chapter suggests, to the way in which the dialogues engage the reader in an active and ‘live’ dialogue, and encourage her to participate in the search for unity which is bound up with the search for understanding.