Abstract

Papadopoulos explains why Plato, unlike his Socrates, wrote philosophic texts and founded a school. His paper brings together the Phaedrus and Laws in an attempt to show how Socrates’s critique of writing is met by the Athenian Stranger’s prescriptions for the preservation and study of texts in Magnesia. Papadopoulos reflects on the possible ways in which Plato’s writing can be construed as a kind of philosophic care or philanthropy.