Plato's Literary Garden

This work argues that Plato did not intend his written dialogues to serve as repositories of philosophical doctrine, but instead composed them as teaching instruments. The study is organised according to the progression of a horticultural metaphor adopted from the "Phaedrus".

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Plato's dialogues are universally acknowledged as standing among the masterworks of the Western philosophic tradition. What most readers do not know, however, is that Plato also authored a public letter in which he unequivocally denies ever having written a work of philosophy. If Plato did not view his written dialogues as works of philosophy, how did he conceive them, and how should readers view them? In Plato's Literary Garden, Kenneth M. Sayre brings over thirty years of Platonic scholarship to bear on these questions, arguing that Plato did not intend the dialogues to serve as repositories of philosophic doctrine, but instead composed them as teaching instruments.