Tagline: Plato’s Practice of Philosophical Inquiry

ISBN: 0-8101-1530-1

My rating: 79/100

See Book Notes for other books I have read. If you like my notes, go buy it!

Key Points and Themes

• Adversarial (Eristic) vs Non-adversarial (Dialectic) dialogue. Socrates’ method is beneficent at its core. He is seeking the truth so that everyone benefits, and this is in stark contrast to many of the people with whom he talks – they want to disprove the theory of their opponent so they can “win” the argument, without care for the truth. In the conclusion of nearly all the Socratic dialogues, all agree Socrates is correct and ask him to come to their homes later to instruct them on his methods.
• Propositional vs Non-propositional knowledge. Propositional knowledge in this book includes things like names, definitions, spoken words, and images. Non-propositional knowledge cannot be learned by speaking or writing alone, and includes things like “how to swing a hammer,” “how to ride a bike,” and “how to love a spouse well.”
• The person who knows how to use names and definitions properly is none other than the dialectician.
• The process of inquiry is itself an essential part of being virtuous.
• Dialectic does not result in firm, unmovable conclusions. The wisdom found through dialectical inquiry is always subject to further improvement and interpretation.
• To [truly] know a thing is not to know how it de facto exists, but what it according to its nature should be.
• True wisdom cannot be expressed in writing. Why is this true? Because the subject of this wisdom simply cannot be expressed in words.

Introduction: The Need for a Reexamination of Plato’s Dialectic

to this day the most thorough and influential treatment of Plato’s “earlier dialectic” is to be found in Richard Robinson’s book of that name. … its basic approach to the examination of dialectic is fundamentally flawed. Robinson’s book is a book on logic. 

two new and antagonistic movements have emerged in Platonic scholarship and are gaining increasing acceptance. I will call one the “nondoctrinal” interpretation of Plato and the other the “esotericist” interpretation (“unwritten doctrines”).

The modern era of Platonic scholarship can be said to have begun with the publication in 1804 of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s general introduction to his new German translation of Plato’s dialogues.

In the present study I align myself primarily with the “nondoctrinal” camp … rejecting the presupposition that Plato understood philosophy to be systematic, and in maintaining that Plato was much closer to Socrates than he was to the dogmatic metaphysics that succeeded him.

To have propositional knowledge of something is to know that certain predicates are true of it. For example, I can “know a triangle” by knowing that it has three sides, that it has angles totaling 180 degrees, and so on. … However, knowledge is nonpropositional when it cannot be identified with knowing what can truly be asserted of its object. … One clear example is knowledge of a certain skill: knowing how to do something. … I will suggest another possible candidate for nonpropositional knowledge: self-knowledge. What is peculiar about self-knowledge is that it does not seem to be equivalent to knowing that certain facts are true about yourself.

elenchus – a technique of argument associated with Socrates wherein the arguer asks the interlocutor to agree with a series of premises and conclusions, ending with the arguer’s intended point.

Nothing stand in the way of expressing a system in writing: Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel were able to do so without the slightest difficulty or reservation. If Plato himself had a philosophical system, why was he so hesitant to write it down?

the choice of dialogues as well as the order in which they are presented is determined by the general framework within which I have chosen to examine dialectic. The three basic principles of this framework are as follows. (1) There are three major means employed by dialectic in its search for truth: verbal analysis, arguments, and images. (2) This study portrays dialectic as existing between everyday discourse and sophistic discourse ( my reasons for approaching dialectic in this way will be explained in the introduction to the second chapter). (3) This study seeks to understand the relation between dialectic in the “early” dialogues and the hypothetical method in the “middle” dialogues.

Part 1: Dialectic in Between Ordinary and Sophistic Discourse

2 Dialectic at Work in the Laches and the Charmides

there is in each dialoge a “more sophisticated” character who thinks that ordinary experience tells us nothing and that a knowledge of virtue is to be had by possessing a definition or proposition. Socrates, however, steers a course between the overly naive and the overly sophisticated understandings of virtue and thus in his ignorance displays a knowledge that is nonpropositional and yet can be acquired only through philosophical inquiry conducted by means of propositions.

The Laches on Courage

skill of knowledge – mathema 

Laches tells of the fighter Stesilaus … This Stesilaus, during his service as a marine, was armed with an unusual weapon (half spear, half scythe) of his own invention (significantly referred to as a sophisma [which means “to make wise”in Greek]). Once in the midst of fighting, this weapon got caught in the rigging of the enemy ship. Stesilaus, refusing to let it go, struggled to pull it free. As a result, he was pulled along with it as the other ship began to pass his own, thereby provoking laughter of his own fellow crewmen as well as the enemy. He finally had to let go of his precious scythe-spear, and the sight of him standing there while his weapon waved in the air provided the spectators with another occasion for mirth. The moral of Laches’ story is the foolishness of depending too much on an acquired skill or art. Stesilaus refuses to let go of his weapon because he has placed all his confidence in it; he has invented it in order to give himself the edge over his opponents, and now he simply cannot do without it. By relying too much on his sophisma, he proves himself a coward when threatened with its loss. Stesilaus is clearly someone who attempts to win battles through intelligence; he therefore invents an unusual weapon which he feels will respond to the peculiar needs of sea fighting. In thus attempting to anticipate the contingencies of battle, however, he proves incapable of dealing with the unforeseen (his weapon getting stuck). Being a good soldier clearly involves for Laches openness to the contingencies of the moment, and such openness is incompatible with excessive reliance on a special skill or art. 

Laches considers Socrates’ question “What is courage?” easy to answer. … complacent in his unreflective intuition, believes that courage can be easily defined. Courage, Laches replies, is to remain at one’s post and not run away.

Nicias provides a definition advocated by Socrates himself elsewhere in the dialogues. … Nicias seems to be arguing for a distinctly Socratic position. Nevertheless, rather than acknowledging and embracing such a faithful pupil, Socrates proceeds to refute him. This results in the strange spectacle of Socrates examining and refuting views which in the dialogue itself are said to originate with him. PP but the way in which he [Nicias] deals with what he has heard is clearly “unsocratic.” He believes that in having learned a definition of courage, he has acquired knowledge of courage.

Laches understanding of courage is purely intuitive and does not rise above ordinary experience. He therefore displays nothing but the endurance of the foot soldier. Nicias, on the other hand, places himself above ordinary experience only by possessing an abstract and superficial wisdom (consisting of definitions borrowed from others). His courage is therefore one based entirely on skill and cleverness. These deficiencies explain the one things Laches and Nicias have in common: both of them are motivated in the present discussion by contentiousness (philonikia).

Socrates’ in volvement in the discussion clearly differs from the philonikia of the two generals. He is willing to listen to arguments in a way that Laches is not, and he is willing to let go of presumed knowledge in a way that Nicias is not.

At the end of the dialogue Socrates claims to be as ignorant as his interlocutors. … Throughout the course of the discussion, however, Socrates’ ignorance somehow shows itself to be more “knowing” than the ignorance of his interlocutors. This is what explains the very strange closing scene of the dialogue.

Socrates ignorance is clearly seen to differ from the ignorance of his interlocutors. … But what exactly is the nature of the courage which Socrates exhibits in the inquiry? The answer is to be found in Socrates’ avoidance of the two extremes (and thus the two one-sided accounts of courage) represented by Laches and Nicias. … Socrates does not place all his trust in any presumed expertise but is ready to abandon what he has achieved if the truth reveals itself to be elsewhere. 

The Charmides on Temperance

Σωφροσύνη – sophrosune – temperance

Socrates’ ability to make his interlocutors feel shame, however, coincides with his ability to make them know themselves. Shame is the beginning of self-knowledge.

Charmides has been seen to rely on his own experience in answering Socrates’ questions, Critas will be seen to rely on what he has learned from the sophists.

Charmides in failing at this point to look within himself is failing to be temperate. Though his blush in reply to Socrates’ earlier questions exhibited temprence, we now see that this temperance does not go very deep.

Seeing that Charmides is allowing what is in fact his own definitions to be refuted, Critas can no longer control himself but joins the argument, angry and quarrelsome.

We suspect that Critas has also omitted self-knowledge in another important sense: he has clearly not introspected or employed self-reflection in discovering his new definition. Instead he has used verbal distinction learned from the sophists simply to avoid refutation.

[Critas] therefore clearly believes that the truth is to be found in a definition, rather than in himself.

While Critas is merely asserting that temperance is a knowledge of knowledge, Plato has Socrates display this knowledge of knowledge. The juxtaposition is revealing: Critas, who confidently asserts that he knows what temperance is, shows little signs of having it, whereas Socrates, who does not presume to know what it is, clearly does have it.

A careful reading of this dialogue should provide the following question: how does Socrates’ knowledge of knowledge differ from Critas knowledge of knowledge, on the one hand, and Charmides’ blush, on the other? Socrates differs from Charmides in his dissatisfaction with the contingent, limited awareness that ordinary experience can provide and in his search for a knowledge that goes beyond such experience. But how, then, does Socrates differ from Critas and his empty, sophistic knowledge of knowledge? The difference is clearly not to be found in the products or conclusions of Socrates’ method, since it has none. The difference is rather that Socrates in practicing the knowledge of knowledge shows us what it means to be good. We see no good in Critias’ contentious employment of definitions, but the good is revealed in the way in which Socrates examines and refutes definitions.

We may receive instructions on how to use a hammer, but we do not really know how to use it until we actually try it out. No knowledge of propositions can take the place of that knowledge gained by actually using a thing. More important, it is precisely in a thing’s use that its good is revealed. No description of a thing will provide us with knowledge of its good; only in the thing’s actual use will this good be known. 

3 The Cratylus on the Use of Words

The discussion gets under way when Socrates is asked to participate in a debate between Hermogenes and Cratylus about whether names are conventional or natural. Hermogenes is maintaining that they are conventional, and he accuses Cratylus of not clearly explaining is own view that they are natural. Socrates as usual claims ignorance but is willing to inquire.

We thus see how Socrates leads the question of the conventionality of names into a much deeper issue. He suspects that Hermogenes is tempted to take his relativism beyond names to the things themselves.

We have already seen that the ability to make names is attributed to some mysterious “legislator.” Yet, as in the case of the shuttle, it seems that he who can best judge whether or not a name serves its proper function, that is, has the right form, will be not he who makes names, but he who uses names. But if the legislator makes names, what are we to call the person who uses names? According to Socrates, the user of names will be that person who knows how to ask and answer questions. The person with this knowledge is none other than the dialectician.

The dialectician reveals the nature of a name, its form, by showing it at work.

This is precisely the point: an etymology of the word “justice” provides one with no knowledge of the nature of justice and consequently tells one nothing about the “natural fitness” of this word.

We are not restricted to a choice between discovering the truth in names (etymology) and discovering the truth directly without names. The alternative exists of discovering the truth through names by using them in such a way as to make manifest those stable natures presupposed by their very use. … This is why the dialectician … is one who knows how to use words.

My note: this got me thinking seriously about the product development process I developed for use at my company, which consists of a series of procedures that help guide you through the entire product development process from start to finish (production). Even before I started reading this book I was well aware of the need to customize the design process for every single product that we designed – no cookie cutter process would suffice – and the concept of dialectic is extremely related to this process. Often we make a prototype and discover something surprising or fail in some unexpected way, causing us to go back to the drawing board. There is also a deep relationship between Socrates’ distinction of names, definitions, and images versus the actual truths behind them – and the relationship between an engineering drawing or model and the real life object. The two are fundamentally different, and no matter how detailed the drawing or model is it will never be a perfect representation of the real world. This, however, does not absolve the designer of their responsibility to be constantly updating their models. And, to avoid making the mistake of assuming that their models behave the same as the real world objects. 

Dialectic and everyday discourse differ in that the latter uses up words for certain extrinsic ends, whereas the former focuses on these words themselves; etymology and dialectic differ in that the former is concerned with the sensible constituents of words (the material, conventional word), whereas the latter is concerned with the words “form” (the natural word), that is, the word’s function in which is made manifest the nature of things.

In the course of the dialogue, Socrates has refuted the positions of both Hermogenes and Cratylus. He could do so because these apparently opposed positions are really not opposed at all. Hermogenes position, by asserting that the meaning of a name is conventional, easily degenerates into the view that all truth is conventional and relative. Cratylus’s position, by abstracting language from the tings themselves and confining truth within language, ends up denying the possibility of falsehood (which is just the other side of the Protagorean view that whatever appears to one is true).

4 Dialectic and Eristic in the Euthydemus

I

II

III

eristic – Given to or characterized by disputatious, often specious argument. 

The similarity between eristic and dialectic is therefore that neither method has as its goal necessitating the universal acceptance of a given thesis and that thus both methods are immune to the change of fallacy. The dissimilarity, on the other hand, is this: while eristic aims to force a conclusion on the respondent with the purpose of defeating him, dialectic aims to convert the respondent to the pursuit of wisdom and virtue, a conversion that is not forced but is freely undergone (through agreement)

IV

V

What distinguishes Socrates’ dialectic from eristic is to be sought not in results nor in the formal validity of its reasoning, but in what it manifests through the very method of its argumentation.

5 Philosophical Imitation

A Socratic inquiry never proceeds a priori. … It is grounded in the concrete world of experience even if its vision is directed elsewhere.

The most thorough account of imitation as well as the most thorough critique of its poetic use, are to be found in passages of the Republic, especially book 10.

My note: Knowledge is the cure for poetic imitation.

someone who can produce both the original and its imitation will not put forward the imitation as the best thing he has to offer. He will seriously concern himself with bringing forth great and noble deeds rather than with producing imitations of those deeds.

If Homer had known how to govern a city and make his fellow citizens virtuous, he surely would not have wasted his time on simply imitating these things. 

Yet if concrete action and technical production are the paradigms, there is another activity as vulnerable to criticism as poetry: philosophy.

My note: I imagine a person sitting doing nothing but reading philosophy all day, and another second person who has never read a word of philosophy but does philosophy in their everyday life. Who is the philosopher?

What city, Homer could retort, has Socrates governed?

Simile: computational fluid dynamics is to fluid flow what philosophy is to action. Therefore, the best philosophy is one wich seeks to mimic reality as closely as possible.

Some people (apparently the majority) prefer the semblance of justice over the reality, and yet these same people would never knowingly choose what merely appears good over what is really good. … If the goal of the Republic as a whole is to free being from its enslavement to seeming, the purpose of Socrates’ critique of the poets becomes clear.

The philosopher is capable of “measuring” what is truly good and thus can avoid being deceived by what merely appears good.

Does the insight that being is better than seeming require that we abandon appearance altogether or does it instead make possible a form of imitation to rival that of the poets?

The flute-maker does not himself know whether his flutes are well make, that is, whether they approximate the true form of a flute. The flute-player is the one who can tell the maker that a flute is either well or badly made.

The excellence or correctness of a thing, whether natural or artificial, is defined by its use: “It is not the case that the excellence, beauty, and correctness of each artifact or living thing or activity concerns nothing other than the use for which it was made or came to be?”

The mere “producer” of virtuous action is the person who has only what Socrates elsewhere in the Republic calls “civic virtue”: this person does what is good without reflecting on the reason for, or point of, doing good. The practitioner of the user’s art, however, is here someone who recognizes the importance of going beyond simply conditioned or habitual virtue and examining what virtue is for.

[Plato’s dialogues] are a work of art we can see through.

The philosopher’s art is a user’s art.

In the Ion Socrates claims that the poet, as the mouthpiece of a god, speaks not with understanding, but under inspiration. “The poet is a delicate, flighty and holy thing and is unable to create before he becomes inspired and out of his senses, so that understanding no longer remains in him.

In summation, a distinctly philosophical or dialectical form of imitation require the recognition of the following points: (1) an image, though merely duplicating an appearance, can be used in such a way as to point beyond appearance; (2) the intelligible original is revealed in the use of the image, rather than in the image itself; (3) the deficiency of the image must be recognized in order for the original to appear through it; (4) the “perception” of the original through the image is the result of neither deductive reasoning nor “conjecture,” but rather of some form of inspiration; (5) this inspiration, unlike that of the poets, does not blind the philosopher to the immeasurable gulf between the image and original.

Part II The Method of Hypothesis

6 Failed Virtue and Failed Knowledge in the Meno

The dialogue begins abruptly with Meno’s question: “Can you tell me Socrates, if virtue is teachable?”

lack of context is revealing, since it suggests that Meno’s question is not inspired by any practical dilemma but is “academic,” that is, “sophistic.”

We must suspect that its purpose is either to let Meno show off the wisdom he thinks he has or to enable him to ensnare the renowned Socrates in an eristic trap (or both).

to know what is true about virtue (i.e., its properties) is not the same as to know virtue itself. Knowledge of virtue as a whole is not reducible to knowledge of its different aspects or of the different ways in which it is qualified.

Whether virtue is acquired through practice or theoretically (by being taught) is in fact a principal question addressed by the dialogue.

Yet Socrates can also have a more positive, complementary goal: to get Meno genuinely to inquire for the first time in his life, not because inquiry is the means to an adequate definition of virtue, but because inquiry is itself an essential part of being virtuous.

Virtue is found in the inquiry itself. We become more virtuous in the very process of seeking to know what virtue is. Virtue is not some theory or result attained at the end of inquiry but is rather exhibited in the very process of inquiry.

What emerges from Socrates’ discussion with Anytus is that there are no teachers of virtue.

Neither of the two candidates for teacher of virtue, neither the sophist nor the man of practical experience, proves to be able to teach it.

… the distinction between what a thing is and how it is qualified. Socrates’ view, as interpreted above, is that we cannot know the properties of a thing until we know what the thing itself is. This seems to assume that the nature of a thing (what it is) is the “cause” of its properties. … A thing has certain properties because of what it is and not vice versa; this is why we cannot know how the thing is qualified before we know what it is.

My table:

Inspiration from within	Inspiration from without
The slave realizing the side of the square is an irrational number. Non-propositional.	Exhibited by both Meno and Anytus. Knowledge is borrowed from others and not firsthand. It is propositional.
Leads to dreamlike true beliefs, insight without “answers,” understanding without “certainty”.	Leads to dogma; clear cut answers and opinions.

7 A Second Sailing in the Phaedo

misology – Hatred of reason, argument, or enlightenment. 

“there is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse [logos]” (89d2-3). This means, presumably, that misology is an even greater evil than the death that awaits Socrates: more important than the personal survival of Socrates is the survival of the argument.

In the absence of an ability to learn the truth from others or discover it for ourselves … we should sail through life on the least refutable account we can find (85c7-d4).

8 Idealization and the Destruction of Hypotheses in the Republic

if we were to know everything except the good our knowledge would in no way benefit us.

Just as the sun is the source of the light that brings together that which sees and that which is seen, so is the good the source of the truth that “yokes” together the mind that knows and the forms that are known.

Wolfgang wieland … the good is not an object of theoretical, propositional knowledge but is rather what governs our use of whatever knowledge of objects we do have.

If the good is the “norm of norms” or “ideal of ideals,” then it seems only natural that our knowledge of the good should have the practical function of determining how we deal with and use everything else.

the good is the principle behind all idealization. We can know what virtue is without reducing it to its imperfect and contingent instances only because our understanding of the good allows us to idealize virtue.

To know a thing is not to know how it de facto exists, but what it according to its nature should be.

This knowledge requires an ascent beyond hypotheses. But what is the nature of this ascent? Elsewhere Socrates identifies the method of the ascent with dialectic (511b4).

To return to the hypotheses of the mathematicians, there is a difference between being certain of the truth of these hypotheses and understanding them. Indeed, certainty and understanding are apparently independent of one another: not only can one understand something about whose truth one is not certain, but one can also be certain about the truth of something one does not really understand. For example, I can be certain that “2+2=4” without really understanding what this statement means, since I may not know, among other things, whether it is synthetic or analytic. I can also be certain that “virtue is good” (i.e., I can see no way of doubting this without the greatest absurdity) without necessarily understanding what virtue itself is or how it is related to the good.

When Socrates criticizes the mathematicians for failing to give an account of the numbers and figures they postulate, what he is criticizing is not their failure to prove these things, but their inability to explain them in the give and take of dialectical discussion.

When Socrates says that the mathematician fails to rise above his hypotheses, what he means is that he lacks that insight into the nature of the good which would enable him to understand his objects no longer as hypotheses, but as what they in essence are.

there are two directions an inquiry can take. It can let be the hypotheses as parts of a self-contained system, concerning itself only with achieving consistency within this system: this is the “coherentist” hypothetical method. Or the inquiry can make these hypotheses open to that which transcends them by, as Socrates puts it elsewhere, destroying them: this is dialectic.

the descent from the first principle is simply a return to the hypothetical method.

in the downward path we do return to the hypothetical method, but now with a better understanding of the hypotheses, which means, with better recognition of their limitations.

dialectic enables us to abandon reliance on sensible images for understanding.

in the best of circumstances, the good is seen just barely (517c1)

9 Conclusion: Dialectic in the Seventh Letter

My notes:

The five things:

1. Names (onoma, ὄνομα)
2. Propositions/Definitions (logos, λόγος) 
3. Images (eidolon, εἴδωλον)
4. The Knowledge Itself (episteme, ἐπιστήμη) – the link between the means and the entity known
5. The Entity Known – Knowledge of what a thing truly is.

1-3 are the means by which knowledge is attained/refined.

1-4 are qualifications of what is; they are propositional

5 is what is. It is non-propositional

But does Plato anywhere explicitly state the views that my interpretation of these dialogues has attributed to him?

If Plato is the author of the Seventh Letter, then the answer to each of these questions is affirmative.

The authenticity of the Seventh Letter has been frequently questioned and is still debated.

If the letter was written by a forger, it is my view that this forger had a better understanding of Plato than many other scholars, both ancient and contemporary.

Translation of the Seventh Letter by Gonzalez is on page 248

each of them being refuted through well-meaning [nonadversarial] refutations

My notes: At first it was not obvious to me the difference between Socrates goals and the goals of many of this interlocutors. He is consistently trying to raise them up, almost in an upward spiral getting them to realize more about themselves or the world. On the other hand, many of this interlocutors view themselves as his “opponent”, and are seeking to disassemble and destroy him or others, to prove him wrong. I am now realizing one of the major reasons I dislike most politicians and politically minded people – their end goals are not really to make everyone better and to heal – their end goals are to destroy. Their goals are to prove the other side is wholly evil, to prove them stupid, to tear them down, and revel in watching them fall. The fact that the word “bi-partisan bill” exists proves that there is division, because heaven forbid we just call it a “bill”.

Interpretation of the “Philosophical Digression”

what “Plato” [Gonzalez puts him in quotes here because the authorship is not 100% certain] proceeds to say makes clear that the target of his criticism is any attempt to express the principles in writing.

Why would it fill people with only the presumption of wisdom, rather than the real thing? “Plato’s” answer to this question is clear: true wisdom cannot be expressed in writing. But why, then, is this true? Because the subject of this wisdom simply cannot be expressed in words.

When we say, for example, that we cannot express or describe our love for someone dear to us, we do not mean that we cannot talk about this love; we could do so ad nauseam. We mean instead that none of our words can do justice to the meaning of the experience itself. To understand this love, one must experience it for oneself.

important characteristics of this knowledge: (1) it is the result of living with the thing itself in conversation with others, as opposed to a solitary and purely theoretical grasp of propositions or doctrines, (2) it is nonpropositional, and (3) it is capable of sustaining itself.

Because knowledge is the “link” between names, definitions, and images, on the one hand, and the thing itself, on the other, it will sometimes be associated more with the former and sometimes more with the latter.

unless one somehow lays hold of four of the elements, one will never fully partake of knowledge of the fifth. This means that unless one makes use of names, definitions, images, and knowledge itself, one will never know what a thing truly is (its “form”).

That the definition of a circle needs to be supplemented by the image of a circle drawn in sand shows that the definition is itself incapable of expressing what the circle truly is.

Given the weakness inherent in the very nature of language, it would be sheer folly to attempt to express the truth of the first principles in words, especially written words.

Two equal sticks will also be unequal … what is most objectionable is their belief that they can eliminate the defect by making the image as “realistic” and “perfect” as possible. … Plato directs his harshest criticism against the most skilled image-makers.

Socrates’ intention is not to make his interlocutors look foolish, but to get at the truth.

protreptic (προτρεπτικός) – serving to instruct

The discussion of the Cratylus showed that while the nature of a thing is not revealed in its name (as Cratylus would have it), it is revealed in the particular use which the dialectician makes of the name. The discussion of the Euthydemus showed that while arguments cannot in themselves guarantee the truth, they can nevertheless be used in such a way (protreptic) as to lead to recognition of the truth. The discussion of Republic 10 and related texts showed that although images are in themselves completely opaque to the real natures of which they are images, they can nevertheless be used in such a way as to reveal these natures. In each case, the use that enables the three means to awaken in us an awareness of that which they cannot themselves express is dialectic as described here and elsewhere: the process of question and answer in which we expose the weakness of the words, propositions, and images we use and thereby just barely glimpse through their cracks the true being which they all attempt but fail to express.

Conclusion

From this examination of the Seventh Letter, as well as from the interpretation of specific dialogues in previous chapters, it can be concluded that dialectic as Plato understands it in these works is guided by the following three presuppositions:

1. Names, propositions, and images are incapable of expressing what a thing truly is (ti esti) and consequently are always open to refutation.
2. Names propositions, and images are nevertheless indispensable as means of attaining knowledge of what a thing truly is.
3. One can use these three means in such a way as to obtain an insight that transcends them, that is, an insight into the nature which they themselves presuppose but cannot express.