SOCRATES IN PLATO'S DIALOGUES

Consideration of Socrates' behavior in putatively doctrinal dialogues confirms so far my hypothesis that within the dialogues of Plato Socrates stays the same examining figure of the Apology. I do not say that my hypothesis is conclusively established. I think it at least as likely as the alternative hypothesis that Socrates speaks doctrine of a developing Plato.

The hypothesis that the Socrates of Plato's dialogues is deeply the same explains, for the dialogues I have considered, what Socrates is doing – he is engaging in the activity in which, as he says in the Apology, he spent his life. In the Apology he calls it his philosophizing; he says it comprises asking whether people care for the condition of their souls, and examining or testing them to find out if they do if they say that they do. He discerns their care or lack of it by observing their reaction to being shown not to know what they think they know. He reproaches if they seem untroubled. And all of that, he says, is persuading people to care about the way they live.

In the Theaetetus digression, the Republic, and the Phaedo we saw only a certain stage of the process of examination – the stage of the interlocutor's revealing himself by his reaction to Socrates' apparent teaching. Disclosing to his interlocutors what they are inclined to believe is the first step of the process of examination that he is always encouraging.