‘Irony,’ says Quintilian, is that figure of speech or trope ‘in which something contrary to what is said is to be understood’ . His formula has stood the test of time. It passes intact into Dr Johnson's dictionary . It survives virtually intact in ours:Irony is the use of words to express something other than, and especially the opposite of, [their] literal meaning.

In recent years considerable attention has been focused on the question whether Plato ever uses arguments he knows to be sophistical, especially whether he puts such arguments into the mouth of Socrates. Though differing views have been held, at the present time the majority of scholars seem to believe that Plato does not. Though I disagree with this position, I will not attack it directly in this paper. Instead I will discuss what I take to be an important preliminary matter, (...) establishing criteria that can be employed in order to assess the claim that one of Plato's characters does or does not argue sophistically. Since the case of Socrates is by far the most important, I will limit discussion here to the question whether Socrates ever uses sophistry. (shrink)

This fresh outlook on Socrates' political philosophy in Plato's early dialogues argues that it is both more subtle and less authoritarian than has been supposed. Focusing on the Crito, Richard Kraut shows that Plato explains Socrates' refusal to escape from jail and his acceptance of the death penalty as arising not from a philosophy that requires blind obedience to every legal command but from a highly balanced compromise between the state and the citizen. In addition, Professor Kraut contends that our (...) contemporary notions of civil disobedience and generalization arguments are not present in this dialogue. (shrink)

THE CLAIM that even Plato could not say everything at once nor could have thought or worked out everything at once is, of course, a platitude. It is generally acknowledged that there is development in Plato's thought. But what the development is, is still a much fought-over question. For in spite of all scholarly efforts this intriguing question cannot be regarded as settled in a satisfactory way. This is due not only to the fact that we all look at Plato (...) through different eyes. There are just too many unknowns: We do not know when the dialogues were written nor in what order. We do not know what Plato himself regarded as the result of each of the dialogues nor how they are supposed to hang together. We do not know to what extent Plato himself is in agreement with what he lets Socrates say--or any of his partners. Nor do we always know what, precisely, the text itself says. And we do not know when Plato put the dialogues into the form in which they have come down to us. (shrink)