Plato Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus

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The Phaedrus addresses the subject of rhetoric, using it to lead us allegorically into the realm of “ideas,” and from there to point toward a new rhetoric, one worthy of the well-trained dialectician a philosopher skilled in the art of logical debate and analysis. We also gain a glimpse of the philosopher’s duty to investigate the mutual relations of the “forms,” to which his study of particular things has led him.

A closer interest in logical method, appearing alongside his delight in imaginative construction, is a distinctive mark of this middle stage in Plato’s teaching. As he passes to the next two dialogues, the Theaetetus and Parmenides, he sets aside aesthetic rapture and considers the ideas as categories of thought that require coordination. The discussion of knowledge in the former makes it evident that the Academy was now the meeting-place for vigorous minds. Some of these minds were eager to urge, or to hear refuted, the doctrines they had learned from other schools of thought, while the arguments are conducted with a critical caution that is very different from the brilliant and often hasty zeal of Socrates. The Parmenides corrects an actual or possible misconception of the theory of ideas in the domain of logic, showing perhaps how Aristotle—now a youthful disciple of Plato—found fault with the theory as he understood it. The forms are viewed in light of the necessities of thought: knowledge is to be attained by a careful practice that will raise our minds to the vision of all particulars in their rightly distinguished and connected classes.