Plato writes narrated (as distinct from dramatic) dialogues in his ‘middle’ period. Some are narrated throughout, others are introduced and sometimes interrupted by a dramatic frame dialogue, highlighting the fictiveness of the conversation being represented. In one group, Socrates himself narrates conversations he had with boys or teenagers or young men: Charmides, Lysis, Euthydemus. Here Plato pursues themes appropriate to the genre of ‘erotic’ dialogue, where narration can exhibit the comedy of interactions between his characters. Sometimes another speaker recounts a conversation in which Socrates participated: Phaedo, Symposium, Parmenides (Theaetetus is an abortive further example; Protagoras, narrated by Socrates himself, has many affinities with Symposium). These three dialogues employ distancing mechanisms coupled with ostentatious but self-defeating claims of veracity and reliability, indicating remoteness from what Socrates himself in fact taught. Finally, I take up the suggestion that Plato sticks with the mode of narrated dialogue in Republic because he has by now developed theoretical scruples about the ethical propriety of direct dramatic representation.

This volume offers perspectives on examples of key ingredients in Plato’s writing: particularly of argument, allegory, images, and myth, of intertextuality, and of paradox, but also his characterization of speakers he portrays in dialogue, now through narration, now direct dramatic presentation, and his assumed readerships. All the essays included were prompted by perception of something problematic: either in a passage within a dialogue itself, or in the way scholarship had tackled or failed to tackle a topic. First come three approaching the corpus as a whole, three different vantage points. The next group of three focus on arguments and disputants within the overall argumentative structure of three very different dialogues: Gorgias, Cratylus, and Parmenides. A third group contains two studies of celebrated imaginative fictions – the Noble Lie and the Cave – that perform key but unstraightforward roles in the philosophical strategy of the Republic. The final six chapters discuss the Laws. They explore further literary and philosophical dimensions of Plato’s writing in the last and longest of his dialogues, nowadays yielding up more philosophical rewards than was once the case.

In this opening chapter, I attempt to situate Plato’s philosophizing and literary production in its historical context. The evidence external to the dialogues that such an enterprise can rely on is either scrappy or suspect, or both. So what I offer here is a series of snapshots. They follow a chronological sequence, from Plato’s relationship with Socrates and the Athens that executed him; through his momentous first visit to Italy and Sicily and its impact on his thinking about politics and philosophy; to the founding of the Academy, Plato’s rivalry with Isocrates, and the birth of the theory of Forms; and ending with the worlds of the late dialogues.

11. Social theories develop and transform in and through dialogues that simultaneously take place in multiple interactions and dialogues between the creator of a theory and numerous other factors. They provide us with rich evidence of struggles and tensions between:

• creative individuals and powerful institutions dominated by political, ideological, and religious forces

• general patterns of thought in specific time periods due to cultural and historical influences (zeitgeist)

• creative individuals and audiences (peers, the public)

• creative individuals and their doubts, hopes, and imagined others.

Throughout these dialogues, we have observed responses to the question ‘who is the individual and what is society’, which dominated Moscovici’s thinking throughout his life. They also answered another query that he kept raising: ‘what is “social” about social psychology’ (Moscovici, 1972/2000, p. 54)? To that end, the theory of social representations and communication is approaching its goal. It has showed who the Self is and who Others are, and who is individual and what is society. By following this path, and by exploring in a holistic manner the dynamic and complex phenomena in daily practices, such as health, education, politics, and ecology, it has the potential of becoming an anthropology of modern culture.

This chapter discusses Pope Gregory the Great’s ideas about visions and the afterlife, and how they were received in the early middle ages. To provide a fuller picture of Gregory’s ideas about afterlife visions, the chapter discusses his thought more generally about visions and dreams, especially the two main themes of this thought: the nature of dreams and visions, as ways through which invisible realities might be perceived; and the nature of afterlife visions, especially whether they represented the afterlife allegorically or as it was. The reception of Gregory’s ideas was influenced by the existing tradition of narrating afterlife visions and the way his works were excerpted and abbreviated to suit new needs. This process made Gregory known both as a proponent of the reality of visions and the author of a teaching critical of dreams, and his Dialogues an influential source of imagery for afterlife visions.