Socrates' Failure

A detailed Summary of Socrates' Failure


Socrates is of course a historical figure. For our purposes, he is a figment of Plato's imagination. Similar to the ending of a movie saying " all characters are fictional and any similarity in name or personality is strictly coincidental." I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. From the beginning then, we must consider that all of Plato's works are fictional. We must also consider the fact that these arguments were totally constructed from one mind as opposed to the many that are represented in the text. It makes a difference when one person is arguing both sides of the argument.

In the Phaedrus Socrates outlines what a good speech consists of:

'Every good speech must be put together like a living creature, with a body of it's own; it must be neither without heads nor without legs; and it must have a middle and extremities that are fitting bot


"The act of asking; interrogation; inquiry; as, to examine

h to one another and to the whole work.' (Plato 246c)

First of all, a creature is made up of all the same kind of parts. This may sound strange, but consider an automobile. An auto made by Ford is entirely made of Ford parts. A Chevrolet is composed of strictly Chevy parts, and so on. This applies to an argument. How do we decide what is part of an argument and what is not? This is the next logical question. The answer is to this question is not simple. How many digressions are allowed before we decide that the argument has lost its form? That cannot be easily answered. We already know that every argument that Socrates makes is very complex, with many digressions, and several people usually involved. A creature has many different parts with various functions, yet they all serve the same purpose: keeping the creature

Some common words found in the essay are:
Plato's Meno, Ford Chevrolet, Phaedrus Socrates, I'm I'm, Failure Socrates, Meno Socrates, question answer, serve purpose, living creature, speech consists, answer question, definition question, plato's meno, decide argument,

Approximate Word count = 596
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)

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