<I>Lo scritto contro l'orale nel contesto del dialogo platonico: tre esempi dal</I> Fedone

Abstract

Plato's literary work consists of written dialogues imitating face-to-face dialogical performances. This practice apparently runs against Plato's own principle that a written text is structurally unable to produce as much meaning as an oral exchange, and risks therefore to be unfit for developing a discourse aimed at truth. Three short specific passages are selected out of the Phaedo (the dialogue portraying arguably the most dramatical and philosophically relevant of Socrates' dialogical performances), in order to describe how Plato has faced the challenge he has set to himself, managing to transform his own mimetical description into an inducement to active philosophy for the benefit of the reader. Incidentally, the notion of "authorship" is also being discussed in relation to the literary genre of the Platonic dialogue.