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The Types of Plate Tectonics Essay

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Introduction

Types of plate tectonics, works cited.

Plate tectonics refers to movements on Earth’s surface, that is, the lithosphere. This is a theory in science explaining such movements. The lithosphere is made up of large broken rock masses also referred as tectonic plates (Oreskes 424). These tectonic plates are suspended on molten layer of Earth’s crust that comes immediately below the lithosphere; this layer is called asthenosphere.

Given that the asthenosphere is molten, these plates move on it with ease. The movement occurs at boundaries namely; transform boundaries, divergent and convergent boundaries (Oreskes 16). These three different boundaries give rise to the different forms of plate tectonics known today.

According to United States Geological Survey (USGS), there are three different types of plate movements; that is, divergent, convergent, and lateral plate slipping resulting from the three different plate boundaries that exist. Divergent plate movements occur when two oceanic plate move away from each other to form new oceanic crust at a zone of divergence. The zone of divergence results as the Earth’s crust separates (Earth Science). The separation results from hot magma arising from the magma in the continental mantle. This magma has large pressure that causes the crust to crack and separate.

Convergent plate movements are the opposite of divergent and it occurs when two oceanic plates collide leading to loss of crust at a convergent point. Convergent movements involve collision between two plates and these two plates may be either continental or oceanic (USGS).

Convergent plate movements come after divergent plate movements because after the plates break up in the latter, they meet at another point and collide hence the subduction. On the other hand, lateral slipping occurs when two plates move in opposite direction slipping over each other at a transform boundary. The two plates eventually jerk apart due to pressure that mounts up in the mantle and this causes earthquakes (USGS).

The movement of these plates is facilitated by the fact that they float on the Earth’s molten magma on the region called asthenosphere, which lies, below lithosphere. As aforementioned, lithosphere is the outermost Earth’s crust that human beings can reach. Actually, lithosphere makes the tectonic plates (Rychert and Shearer 496). The molten magma heats up as the core of the Earth heats up which causes convectional currents within the molten magma. As the earth core cools, the molten magma cools and sinks and in the process, it pulls the plates attached to it hence the plate movement.

Earthquakes results from these plate tectonic movements along fault lines. Fault lines are cracks on lithosphere. As tectonic plates move, there is building up of pressure along the fault lines, and when this pressure exceeds the strength of lithosphere, earthquakes result to relieve the pressure mounting in the lithosphere. According to Rychert and Shearer, the lateral plate slipping form of movement is the one that causes many earthquakes around the world (498).

Plate tectonics describes the movement of fragments formed from broken lithosphere.

These fragments are suspended on the asthenosphere, which is molten hence offering good medium of movement. There are three different types of plate tectonics, that is, convergent, divergent, and lateral slipping. These movements cause earthquakes as the lithosphere releases mount up pressure in the Earth’s mantle. Earthquakes result mainly from lateral slipping moving and this occurs along fault lines, which are weak points on the lithosphere.

Earth Science. “Plate Tectonics.” Moorland School. N.d. Web.

Oreskes, Naomi. “Plate Tectonics: An Insider’s History of the Modern Theory of the Earth.” California: Westview Press, 2003.

Rychert, Catherine, & Shearer, Peter. “A Global View of the Lithosphere-Asthenosphere Boundary.” Science Journals. 324(5):5926. 2009.

United States Geological Survey. “ Understanding Plate Motions .” 1999. Web.

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ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Plate tectonics.

The theory of plate tectonics revolutionized the earth sciences by explaining how the movement of geologic plates causes mountain building, volcanoes, and earthquakes.

Earth Science, Geology, Oceanography, Geography, Physical Geography

San Andreas Fault

Tectonic plate boundaries, like the San Andreas Fault pictured here, can be the sites of mountain-building events, volcanoes, or valley or rift creation.

Photograph by Georg Gerster

Plate tectonics is a scientific theory that explains how major landforms are created as a result of Earth’s subterranean movements. The theory, which solidified in the 1960s, transformed the earth sciences by explaining many phenomena, including mountain building events, volcanoes , and earthquakes . In plate tectonics , Earth’s outermost layer, or lithosphere —made up of the crust and upper mantle—is broken into large rocky plates. These plates lie on top of a partially molten layer of rock called the asthenosphere . Due to the convection of the asthenosphere and lithosphere , the plates move relative to each other at different rates, from two to 15 centimeters (one to six inches) per year. This interaction of tectonic plates is responsible for many different geological formations such as the Himalaya mountain range in Asia, the East African Rift, and the San Andreas Fault in California, United States. The idea that continents moved over time had been proposed before the 20th century. However, a German scientist named Alfred Wegener changed the scientific debate. Wegener published two articles about a concept called continental drift in 1912. He suggested that 200 million years ago, a supercontinent he called Pangaea began to break into pieces, its parts moving away from one another. The continents we see today are fragments of that supercontinent . To support his theory, Wegener pointed to matching rock formations and similar fossils in Brazil and West Africa. In addition, South America and Africa looked like they could fit together like puzzle pieces.

Despite being dismissed at first, the theory gained steam in the 1950s and 1960s as new data began to support the idea of continental drift . Maps of the ocean floor showed a massive undersea mountain range that almost circled the entire Earth. An American geologist named Harry Hess proposed that these ridges were the result of molten rock rising from the asthenosphere . As it came to the surface, the rock cooled, making new crust and spreading the seafloor away from the ridge in a conveyer-belt motion. Millions of years later, the crust would disappear into ocean trenches at places called subduction zones and cycle back into Earth. Magnetic data from the ocean floor and the relatively young age of oceanic crust supported Hess’s hypothesis of seafloor spreading . There was one nagging question with the plate tectonics theory: Most volcanoes are found above subduction zones, but some form far away from these plate boundaries. How could this be explained? This question was finally answered in 1963 by a Canadian geologist , John Tuzo Wilson. He proposed that volcanic island chains, like the Hawaiian Islands, are created by fixed “hot spots” in the mantle. At those places, magma forces its way upward through the moving plate of the sea floor. As the plate moves over the hot spot, one volcanic island after another is formed. Wilson’s explanation gave further support to plate tectonics . Today, the theory is almost universally accepted.

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Plate Tectonics Essay

Plate tectonics.

Plate tectonics is a principal process that largely forms the face of the Earth. It divides over ninety percent of the Earth surface into fifteen primary pieces of lithosphere known as tectonic plates. Plate tectonics is a recognized modern geological theory addressing the motion of the lithosphere. According to this theory, tectonic plates are giant pieces of lithosphere, which altogether provide the planet with a mosaic structure. Slow motions of tectonic plates subsequently result in the movement of both the ocean floor and continents. Plates encounter with each other, extruding the solid earth to form ridges and mountain ranges or denting it to create deep basins in the ocean. Their activity is mainly interrupted by short catastrophic events like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Primary geological activity is concentrated along the plate boundaries. The fact that the plates are moving has been scientifically proved with the help of satellites, which can accurately measure changes in distance between two points on different plates and determine the speed of their movement. Nevertheless, the mechanism of the movement of tectonic plates is currently under study. The existing theory explains movement of plates by pressure originated in the mantle. Unfortunately, the theory of plate tectonics does not provide an accurate explanation of how the movement of plates is related to processes taking place in the depths of the planet. Joint efforts of geologists, geophysicists, physicists, chemists, mathematicians, and geographers working in the National Park Service have resulted into an efficient technical and scientific description of the structure and movement of lithospheric plates.

Location of Tectonic Plates

Being a significant geologic construct, plate tectonics provides accurate data referring to location of lithosphere plates. The analyzed phenomenon is theoretically based on the fact that the exterior layer of Earth, also known as the lithosphere, is divided into solid pieces called tectonic plates. The forenamed fifteen tectonic plates are named in accordance with their location: the African plate, the North American plate, the Arabian plate, the Cocos plate, and the Nazca plate, along with the Caribbean plate, the Eurasian plate, the South American plate, the Philippine sea plate, the Juan de Fuca plate, the Australian plate, the Antarctic plate, the Indian plate, and the Pacific plate (Saunders, 2011). The mentioned plates occupy around ninety percent of the Earth’s rigid surface.

Figure. 1. Tectonic plates of the Earth (Lillie, 2005).

Tectonic plates like the Eurasian plate and the North American plate mainly consist of continents, while tectonic plates such as the Antarctic plate and the Pacific plate are primarily located under the world ocean. The first group of plates shapes the continental crust of Earth, while the second group participates in the formation of the ocean crust of the planet. The planet’s continents are continuously moving due to motions of the listed tectonic plates. Each of the aforementioned plate moves with an individual speed up to ten centimeters per year and in a specific direction in relation to other plates. Consequently, the plates may crush, pull apart, and sideswipe each other. Location of the place of contact of two tectonic plates is knows as a plate boundary (Oskin, 2013). Names of boundaries depend on moving patterns of the plates as opposed to each other. Correspondingly, it is vital to note that initial location of the plate changes annually, creating new geological boundaries around the planet.

Physiographic Characteristics of Tectonic Plates

It is important to mention the fact that only eight out of the general amount of tectonic plate are defined as the most stable areas of the Earth’s surface. The following plates are considered to be stable due to the performed moderate velocity: the Antarctic plate, the Australian plate, the African plate, the Eurasian plate, the Indian plate, the Pacific plate, the South American plate, and the North American plate (Saunders, 2011).

Australia and its surrounding part of the ocean, reaching Hindustan, represent the Australian plate. The currently observed movement of the given lithospheric plate is directed from the east at a speed of approximately 67 millimeters per year (Frisch, Meschede, & Blakey, 2010, p.11);

The Antarctic plate occupies the lower part of the planet with Antarctica and adjacent portions of the oceanic crust. This plate is relatively stable as it is surrounded by mid-ocean ridges and other lithospheric plates are moving away from it (Frisch, Meschede, & Blakey, 2010, p.5);

The African continent along with the section of oceanic crust, which occupies a part of the bottom of the Indian and Atlantic oceans, constitutes the African plate. The northern part of the plate has experienced a vast breakage, separating Arabian Peninsula from the African continent. Neighboring tectonic plates tend to move away from the African plate while the plate itself produces motions leading to its sinking into the Earth’s mantle with the velocity of approximately twenty-seven millimeters per year. In other words, the plate is experiencing the phenomenon known as geologic subduction (Frisch, Meschede, & Blakey, 2010, p.15);.

The Eurasian plate is shaped by the main part of the Eurasian continent except Hindustan, the Arabian Peninsula, and the northeastern “corner” of the continent. It is the largest lithospheric plate in the world in terms of the content of continental crust (Frisch, Meschede, & Blakey, 2010, p.11);

The Indian plate allocates Hindustan. It is peculiar for collision with the Eurasian plate, which gave birth to the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas. The tectonic plate continues its movement in the northeastern direction at the velocity of fifty millimeters per year, while the Eurasian plate tends to avoid further collisions at the approximate speed of twenty millimeters per year. Additionally, the plate possesses three subduction areas, which precondition its sinking into the mantle. The sinking occurs at the rates of fifty-five, sixty-seven, and eighty-seven millimeters per year correspondingly (Frisch, Meschede, & Blakey, 2010, p.7);

The Pacific plate is formed by the site of the oceanic crust, shaping the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. In the area of California, the plate moves northward at a rate of fifty-five millimeters per year. The size of the Pacific plate is steadily declining due to several subduction areas. Under the Eurasian plate, it is sinking into the mantle at a rate of seventy-five millimeters per year. Under the Indian plate, it sinks at a rate of eighty-two millimeters per year. Under the North American plate, it approaches the mantle at a rate of thirty-five millimeters per year, and at a rate of twelve millimeters per year under the medium-sized Philippine lithospheric plate (Frisch, Meschede, & Blakey, 2010, p.16); The North American plate is shaped by the North American continent, the north-western part of the Atlantic Ocean, about half of the Arctic Ocean, and the northeast “corner” of Eurasia (Frisch, Meschede, & Blakey, 2010, p.13);

The South-American plate constitutes South America and a part of the ocean crust of the Atlantic Ocean. The plate has two subduction zones of nineteen and five millimeters per year (Frisch, Meschede, & Blakey, 2010, p. 2).

Tectonic plates posses several physiographic characteristics, which primarily deal with location of continents and oceans, shaping mountain chains and ocean trenches and leading to the rising activity of earthquakes or volcanoes. The continental crust is ordinarily older and thicker than the oceanic crust of tectonic plates. The first one ranges from thirty-five up to seventy kilometers, while the latter is usually from seven to ten kilometers (Saunders, 2011). Thickness of the crust directly affects its mobility and its physical integrity as the majority of physical formations occur on the planet’s tectonic plates. In terms of psyhiography, there are three main groups of tectonic plates’ boundaries: convergent, divergent, and transform boundaries. The tectonic plates that approach each other create the so-called convergent boundaries (Frisch, Meschede, & Blakey, 2010). Geological theory identifies the plates, which are moving away from each other, as plates creating divergent boundaries and the ones that are sliding by each other have transform boundaries. In addition, modern plate tectonics defines plate rift zones, i.e. territories where boundaries are not clearly defined and that may transform relatively quickly.

Figure 2. Types of plate boundaries (Israel, 2012)

Divergent boundaries are places, which generate a new crust from energy obtained from the plates pulling away from each other. Divergent boundaries are the major precondition of the existence of certain volcanoes, valleys, and trenches all over the globe, for instance, numerous volcanoes in Iceland and deep rift valleys located in eastern Africa (Frisch, Meschede, & Blakey, 2010, p.195). Convergent boundaries, in turn, are defined as places where the crust is destroyed due to the collision of two tectonic plates diving one under another. It is owing to convergent boundaries that the geological society has the opportunity to study ocean trenches and such chains of mountains as the Andes in South America and the Himalayas in India. In addition, convergent boundaries are to take full responsibility for the existence of volcanoes on the planet. According to the theory of plate tectonics, transform boundaries neither bring forth nor break the crust as they slide by each other using a horizontal pattern. These boundaries create the planet’s seismic active locations such as the California region known as the Ring of Fire (Oskin, 2013).

Figure 3. Planet’s earthquake activity map (Lillie, 2005).

Stratigraphy of Tectonic Plates

The National Park geology holds a significant place in terms of the stratigraphy of tectonic plates. Stratigraphic columns for different tectonic locations vary due to the origin of their formation. This is the reason why it is more appropriate to analyze the stratigraphy of tectonic plates using concrete national parks and monuments. The paper analyzes the example of the Bryce Canyon National Park located in Utah and presents the stratigraphic column of its tectonic history (Stratigraphy of Bryce Canyon national park and vicinity, n.d.). The stratigraphic column provides data referring to tectonic history of the North-American plate. As seen on Figure 5, the ground base of the canyon in the majority of its parts is represented by Wahweap formations of the mid to late Cretaceous (100-75 MYA). The latter belongs to the period when the territory of North America was covered by an inland sea dividing the continent into two halves (Anderson, Chidsey, & Sprinkel, 2010). The shore of the forenamed inland sea formed shale and sandstone deposits along its shore. Reptiles, mollusks, and other ammonite fossil assemblages formed the John Henry and Drip Tank constituents of the stratigraphic column (Stratigraphy of Bryce Canyon national park and vicinity, n.d.). Fossil accumulations of the upper part of wahweap formations included mammals, crabs, dinosaurs, and freshwater fish.

Figure 4. The prominent pink cliffs present at the Bryce Canyon (Israel, 2012).

Correspondingly, the latter suggests that rocks of the canyon were formed in the shoreline area of the inland sea. Kalparowits Formation, located above the Wahweap Formation, in Figure 5 is seen to be consisting of alluvial floodplain deposits and shoreline fossil assemblages such as sharks and rays. Bryce Canyon is widely known for its pink, orange, and buff colored rocks. The mentioned colors have their origin in the Claron Formation of the Tertiary period (Anderson, Chidsey, & Sprinkel, 2010). These rocks were deposited after the recession of the inland sea in the alluvial plains, deltas, and river channels.

Figure 5. The stratigraphic column of Bryce Canyon (2014).

Figure 5 exposes formation of pink hollow formation and pink limestone member at the sea level of the inland sea as it contains rocks formed in deltas. The white limestone member, along with the sandstone member was formed in broad lakes after the recession of the inland sea.

The conglomerates of sandstones and mudstones were formed after numerous floods affected the climate change in the Eocene. The next level above the Claron Formation is the Mount Dutton Formation and the Osiris Tuff as results of relatively violent volcanic activity during the period from 40 MYA until 23 MYA. Top layers of the Bryce Canyon are to be analyzed as the result of quiet volcanic eruption forming boat mesa conglomerate, younger basal, and quaternary deposits after 20 MYA (Anderson, Chidsey, & Sprinkel, 2010). Thus, the stratigraphy can be addressed as a vital component of the changing nature of the tectonic activity and the natural observation of tectonic processes producing them.

Petrology of Bryce Canyon

The primary petrology patterns of the Bryce Canyon are associated with the Hoodoos, the pinnacle rocks rich in calcium carbonate. As calcium was historically washed away by water erosion from the rocks, it left horizontal traces (grooves and protrusions), which greatly contributed to the beauty of the national park. The chemical decay is the key to the variety of colors presented within the Bryce Canyon. The mentioned decay resulted from the oxidization of iron presented in the compound of the canyon rocks. Oxidization of iron produced primarily red colored mineral called hematite (Fe2O) constituting the Pink Cliffs. Along with hematite, the area is reach in limonite (FeO(OH), a yellow tint produced by the iron’s reaction with water. In addition, manganese constituents (MnO) evolved into the lavender shades of wall staining (Chronic & Chronic, 2004). Dolomite rocks along with pure limestone form the white color seen on the canyon walls.

According to Figure 6, the petrology of Bryce Canyon national park reveals five primary groups of mineral cliffs: pink, gray, white, vermilion, and chocolate cliffs, which are principal accumulations of the platform sediments (Foos, 2011). The chocolate cliffs are tapeats sandstones created during early Cambrian Period by the ocean waters. The grey cliffs come from the Muav limestone, which was deposited during the late Cambrian Period due to the Sauk Sea transgression.

Figure 6. Cross-section of Bryce Canyon (Foos, 2011).

The petrology of the Bryce Canyon has its roots in the late Cretaceous period and the first half of the Cenozoic era. The Claron Formation formed the hoodoos and the monolith parts were presented by the white cliffs. The hoodoos, in turn, are built from sedimentary rocks and cretaceous rocks, making the Bryce Canyon National Part one of the most interesting places on the planet in terms of mineral formations.

Structure of Bryce Canyon

Bryce Canyon consists from picturesque fourteen amphitheaters, which are located along the edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. The sedimentary conglomerate of this national park was formed by erosion of water and exposure to strong winds. Consequently, it evolved in the formation of rock fins and hoodoos. As mentioned before, the Bryce Canyon contains numerous joints and fractures. The joints of the Bryce Canyon are vertical and are ordinarily set in parallel groups. Large-scale crustal movements along with the erosion pressure and removal of overlying sediments have historically generated these parallel groups known as hoodoos (Anderson, Chidsey, & Sprinkel, 2010). Besides the rock structures, which are widely present in Bryce Canyon, there are several specific structures assisting in the identification of the tectonic history of the region. These specific structures are known as faults and are located around the national park due to crust deformation. The canyon’s structure attains both normal and reverse faults, which makes its landscape very attractive in terms of geology. The hoodoos themselves resulted from the uplifting of rocks, which significantly expanded, forming an exfoliation dome (Anderson, Chidsey, & Sprinkel, 2010). As the rock is uplifted and expands, perpendicular fracture planes are created. These fractures are generated by the exfoliation that is eroded to consequently shape peninsular rocks and walls. The latter is eroded to form the canyon’s arches and, with time, it is reduced to hoodoos.

Geologic History of Bryce Canyon

The surface of the Bryce Canyon National Park consists mainly of rocks belonging to the Tertiary, Cretaceous, and Jurassic periods. The Bryce Canyon has been scientifically proved to exist over sixty million years during the Eocene epoch of the Tertiary Period. Sixty million years ago, the territory of the Bryce Canyon was covered with waters of inland seas and lakes. The long-term exposure to water erosion led to two thousand feet deposit of large amount of silt, lime, and sand. As s result of severe storms and changes in weather, it has evolved into a unique geological area (Foos, 2011). The region was shaped by numerous mudslides, volcano eruptions, and water erosions, which moved sediment and stimulated deposition of different minerals in the canyon’s layers. The major result of the changes that occurred in the area was related to the accumulation of sand, gravel, and sedimentary within the basin of the inland sea. With time, the forenamed accumulations hardened and transformed into the compounds of the Claron rock formations of the canyon hoodoo sculptures. The first premises of the canyon formation were preconditioned by extensive interior seaway located in the Western interior basin of North America. The Bryce Canyon geological history comprises two major historical periods: the Mesozoic and the Cenozoic periods. Clearly, the Mesozoic rocks are tapped by Cenozoic rocks because of intense regional erosion.

• The Mesozoic Period. The Mesozoic rocks, specifically Jurassic age rocks at Bryce Canyon, begin the record of the surface geologic history in the area with limestone, dolomites, sandstones, and shale. As the Jurassic period lasted for more than hundred million years, it provided invasion of shallow seawater to the northeast-southwest border of Utah. The latter margin was pertained to relate to the Andean-type formations, which similarly provoked volcanic activity in the seduction areas. The described process is traced nowadays in the mountain system of the Andes (Foos, 2011).
• The Cenozoic Period. It is addressed as a more modern period of the canyon development that happened roughly forty million years ago. The forenamed segment was distinguished by the arrangement of the upper levels of hoodoos consisting of the Claron Formation or the Bryce Limestone. The Claron Formation appeared in the result of local basins filled with sediments, creating hoodoos, amphitheatres, and other outstanding geological shapes observed at Bryce Canyon today.

Plate tectonics is a complex theoretical notion in geology due to its ability to clarify and elucidate the geological history of the surface of Earth. Bryce Canyon in Utah is an outstanding example of the insight brought by plate tectonics. According to the theory of plate tectonics, minerals and multiple vertical structures found in the canyon uncover the geological history in terms of what happened in the geologic past of the area. It has been proved that cliffs presented at Bryce Canyon were initially formed at the sea level. This answers the question of the origin of the presently observed mountain plateau formed by sedimentary accumulations. Severe volcanic eruptions experienced in the canyon’s region consequently led to the formation of various faults and specifically volcanic rocks. Evidently, throughout the history, Bryce Canyon has survived much weather- and climate-related stress. Modern convergent plate boundaries present many of the same volcanic rocks and faults. Elevation of the site indicates that tectonic forces uplifted the entire era. The uplift observed at Bryce Canyon is obviously the result of a regional tectonic activity. After it occurred, the area began to erode, creating a valley filled with water from rivers, frost, gravity slides, and winds. The theory of plate tectonics is to be perceived as the driving force of comprehending processes occurring on the planet millions of years ago and processes that are to be expected in the coming centuries.

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Plate tectonics is the grand, unifying theory of Earth sciences, combining the concepts of continental drift and sea-floor spreading into one holistic theory that explains many of the major structural features of the Earth's surface. It explains why the oceanic lithosphere is never older than about 180 Ma and why only the continents have preserved the Earth's geological record for the past 4000 Ma. It provides the framework to explain the distribution of earthquakes and volcanoes and a mechanism for the slow drift of the continents across the Earth's surface. The theory has now reached such a level of scientific acceptance that the movement of plates, both relative to one another and to the hot-spot reference frame, are being used to infer movement of the hot-spot reference frame with respect to the Earth's rotational axis.

Plate tectonics is an expression of the convective regime in the underlying mantle, but the link between individual convection cells and plate boundaries is not direct because plate boundaries are not fixed and, like the plates, move relative to one another. Plate movements are driven by gravity, largely by cold, dense lithospheric slabs pulling younger lithosphere towards a destructive boundary. A less-powerful driving force is generated by the potential energy of spreading centres, elevated some 2-3 km above the general level of the abyssal plains.

As ideas concerning plate tectonics have evolved since the 1970s, it has become apparent that while the theory can be applied rigorously to the oceans, the same cannot be said of the continents. Because of the strength and rigidity of oceanic plates, deformation is focused into narrow linear zones along plate margins. By contrast, when continental lithosphere approaches a plate boundary, deformation can extend hundreds of kilometres into the continental interior because continental plates are less strong. Such deformation gives rise to the major mountain belts of the Earth, as exemplified by the Alpine Himalayan Chain.

Plate Tectonics

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4.15: Quiz Questions - Chapter 4 - Plate Tectonics

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1) Mid-oceanic ridges are sites with active volcanism, mild earthquakes, and: a. they only have thin sediment cover because ocean floor is being newly formed. b. the new crustal rocks consist of rocks of basaltic composition. c. they are locations of hot water vents (called black smokers) on the seafloor. d. all of the above.

2) The theory of plate tectonics helps explain the location of volcanoes and earthquakes. Which of these also describes the current theory of plate tectonics? a. it combines elements of continental drift and seafloor spreading. b. it suggests that the lithosphere is divided into pieces, called plates. c. denser ocean crust sinks below less-dense continental crust along subduction zones. d. all of the above.

3) A mid-ocean ridge is an example of what type of plate boundary? a. convergent zone b. divergent zone c. transform zone d. subduction zone

4) The youngest rocks on the ocean floor are typically located near what feature? a. a mid-ocean ridge b. a subduction zone c. on an island arc d. a deep-sea trench

5) A rift valley is evidence of which kind of plate boundary? a. convergent boundary b. transform boundary c. divergent boundary d. hotspot

6) What happens where an oceanic plate converges with a continental plate? a. The denser oceanic plate slides on top of the less dense continental plate. b. The denser oceanic plate slides under the less dense continental plate. c. The less dense oceanic plate slides past the denser continental plate. d. The less dense oceanic plate slides under the denser continental plate.

7) At what type of plate boundary are most high continental mountains formed? a. convergent boundary b. hotspots c. divergent boundary d. transform boundary e. mid-ocean ridges

8) What kind of plate movement created the Himalayan Mountains? a. convergence of oceanic crust with continental crust. b. divergence between two continental crustal plates. c. transform movement between oceanic and continental crustal plates. d. convergence of two plates composed of continental crust.

9) According to the theory of plate tectonics: a. the asthenosphere is divided into plates. b. the lithosphere is divided into plates. c. the asthenosphere moves over the lithosphere. d. the asthenosphere is strong and rigid. e. all of the above.

10) In plate tectonics theory, a plate can be made up of: a. continental lithosphere only. b. oceanic lithosphere only. c. both continental and oceanic lithosphere. d. both continental and oceanic asthenosphere.

11) What kind of plate boundary occurs where two plates grind past each other without destroying or producing new lithosphere? a. divergent boundary b. hotspots c. convergent boundary d. transform boundary

12) What type of boundary occurs where two plates move together, causing one plate to descend into the mantle beneath the other plate? a. transform fault boundary b. convergent boundary c. divergent boundary d. hotspots

13) Deep ocean trenches are associated with: a. mid-ocean ridge systems. b. transform fault boundaries. c. subduction zones. d. rift zones.

14) The Hawaiian Islands are associated with what type of volcanism? a. intra-plate volcanism at a hotspot b. subduction zone volcanism c. volcanism at a divergent plate boundary d. volcanism at a convergent plate boundary

15) Almost all deep-focus earthquake occur along or near what type of plate boundary? a. convergent boundary b. passive margin c. transform boundary d. divergent boundary

16) Which type of plate boundary is in the southern California region? a. passive margin b. divergent boundary c. convergent boundary d. transform boundary

17) Rift valleys, like the Great African Rift Valley, form as a result of: a. crustal compression. b. crustal extension. c. stress and strain. d. ductile deformation.

18) According to the Plate Boundary Map, what type of plate boundary occurs between the North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate? a. transform boundary b. divergent boundary c. convergent oceanic-continental plate boundary d. convergent oceanic-oceanic plate boundary

19) According to the Plate Boundary Map, what type of boundary occurs between the South American Plate and the Nazca Plate? a. transform boundary b. convergent continental-continental plate boundary c. a convergent oceanic-continental plate boundary d. convergent oceanic-oceanic plate boundary.

20) According to the Plate Boundary Map, which of the seven major lithospheric plates consists mostly of oceanic lithosphere? a. Pacific Plate b. Antarctic Plate c. Indo-Australian Plate d. South American Plate

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Plato (429?–347 B.C.E.) is, by any reckoning, one of the most dazzling writers in the Western literary tradition and one of the most penetrating, wide-ranging, and influential authors in the history of philosophy. An Athenian citizen of high status, he displays in his works his absorption in the political events and intellectual movements of his time, but the questions he raises are so profound and the strategies he uses for tackling them so richly suggestive and provocative that educated readers of nearly every period have in some way been influenced by him, and in practically every age there have been philosophers who count themselves Platonists in some important respects. He was not the first thinker or writer to whom the word “philosopher” should be applied. But he was so self-conscious about how philosophy should be conceived, and what its scope and ambitions properly are, and he so transformed the intellectual currents with which he grappled, that the subject of philosophy, as it is often conceived—a rigorous and systematic examination of ethical, political, metaphysical, and epistemological issues, armed with a distinctive method—can be called his invention. Few other authors in the history of Western philosophy approximate him in depth and range: perhaps only Aristotle (who studied with him), Aquinas, and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same rank.

1. Plato’s central doctrines

2. plato’s puzzles, 3. dialogue, setting, character, 4. socrates, 5. plato’s indirectness, 6. can we know plato’s mind, 7. socrates as the dominant speaker, 8. links between the dialogues, 9. does plato change his mind about forms, 10. does plato change his mind about politics, 11. the historical socrates: early, middle, and late dialogues, 12. why dialogues, primary literature, secondary literature, other internet resources, related entries.

Many people associate Plato with a few central doctrines that are advocated in his writings: The world that appears to our senses is in some way defective and filled with error, but there is a more real and perfect realm, populated by entities (called “forms” or “ideas”) that are eternal, changeless, and in some sense paradigmatic for the structure and character of the world presented to our senses. Among the most important of these abstract objects (as they are now called, because they are not located in space or time) are goodness, beauty, equality, bigness, likeness, unity, being, sameness, difference, change, and changelessness. (These terms—“goodness”, “beauty”, and so on—are often capitalized by those who write about Plato, in order to call attention to their exalted status; similarly for “Forms” and “Ideas.”) The most fundamental distinction in Plato’s philosophy is between the many observable objects that appear beautiful (good, just, unified, equal, big) and the one object that is what beauty (goodness, justice, unity) really is, from which those many beautiful (good, just, unified, equal, big) things receive their names and their corresponding characteristics. Nearly every major work of Plato is, in some way, devoted to or dependent on this distinction. Many of them explore the ethical and practical consequences of conceiving of reality in this bifurcated way. We are urged to transform our values by taking to heart the greater reality of the forms and the defectiveness of the corporeal world. We must recognize that the soul is a different sort of object from the body—so much so that it does not depend on the existence of the body for its functioning, and can in fact grasp the nature of the forms far more easily when it is not encumbered by its attachment to anything corporeal. In a few of Plato’s works, we are told that the soul always retains the ability to recollect what it once grasped of the forms, when it was disembodied prior to its possessor’s birth (see especially Meno ), and that the lives we lead are to some extent a punishment or reward for choices we made in a previous existence (see especially the final pages of Republic ). But in many of Plato’s writings, it is asserted or assumed that true philosophers—those who recognize how important it is to distinguish the one (the one thing that goodness is, or virtue is, or courage is) from the many (the many things that are called good or virtuous or courageous )—are in a position to become ethically superior to unenlightened human beings, because of the greater degree of insight they can acquire. To understand which things are good and why they are good (and if we are not interested in such questions, how can we become good?), we must investigate the form of good.

Although these propositions are often identified by Plato’s readers as forming a large part of the core of his philosophy, many of his greatest admirers and most careful students point out that few, if any, of his writings can accurately be described as mere advocacy of a cut-and-dried group of propositions. Often Plato’s works exhibit a certain degree of dissatisfaction and puzzlement with even those doctrines that are being recommended for our consideration. For example, the forms are sometimes described as hypotheses (see for example Phaedo ). The form of good in particular is described as something of a mystery whose real nature is elusive and as yet unknown to anyone at all ( Republic ). Puzzles are raised—and not overtly answered—about how any of the forms can be known and how we are to talk about them without falling into contradiction ( Parmenides ), or about what it is to know anything ( Theaetetus ) or to name anything ( Cratylus ). When one compares Plato with some of the other philosophers who are often ranked with him—Aristotle, Aquinas, and Kant, for example—he can be recognized to be far more exploratory, incompletely systematic, elusive, and playful than they. That, along with his gifts as a writer and as a creator of vivid character and dramatic setting, is one of the reasons why he is often thought to be the ideal author from whom one should receive one’s introduction to philosophy. His readers are not presented with an elaborate system of doctrines held to be so fully worked out that they are in no need of further exploration or development; instead, what we often receive from Plato is a few key ideas together with a series of suggestions and problems about how those ideas are to be interrogated and deployed. Readers of a Platonic dialogue are drawn into thinking for themselves about the issues raised, if they are to learn what the dialogue itself might be thought to say about them. Many of his works therefore give their readers a strong sense of philosophy as a living and unfinished subject (perhaps one that can never be completed) to which they themselves will have to contribute. All of Plato’s works are in some way meant to leave further work for their readers, but among the ones that most conspicuously fall into this category are: Euthyphro , Laches , Charmides , Euthydemus , Theaetetus , and Parmenides .

There is another feature of Plato’s writings that makes him distinctive among the great philosophers and colors our experience of him as an author. Nearly everything he wrote takes the form of a dialogue. (There is one striking exception: his Apology , which purports to be the speech that Socrates gave in his defense—the Greek word apologia means “defense”—when, in 399, he was legally charged and convicted of the crime of impiety. However, even there, Socrates is presented at one point addressing questions of a philosophical character to his accuser, Meletus, and responding to them. In addition, since antiquity, a collection of 13 letters has been included among his collected works, but their authenticity as compositions of Plato is not universally accepted among scholars, and many or most of them are almost certainly not his (see Burnyeat and Frede 2015). Most of them purport to be the outcome of his involvement in the politics of Syracuse, a heavily populated Greek city located in Sicily and ruled by tyrants.)

We are of course familiar with the dialogue form through our acquaintance with the literary genre of drama. But Plato’s dialogues do not try to create a fictional world for the purposes of telling a story, as many literary dramas do; nor do they invoke an earlier mythical realm, like the creations of the great Greek tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Nor are they all presented in the form of a drama: in many of them, a single speaker narrates events in which he participated. They are philosophical discussions—“debates” would, in some cases, also be an appropriate word—among a small number of interlocutors, many of whom can be identified as real historical figures (see Nails 2002); and often they begin with a depiction of the setting of the discussion—a visit to a prison, a wealthy man’s house, a celebration over drinks, a religious festival, a visit to the gymnasium, a stroll outside the city’s wall, a long walk on a hot day. As a group, they form vivid portraits of a social world, and are not purely intellectual exchanges between characterless and socially unmarked speakers. (At any rate, that is true of a large number of Plato’s interlocutors. However, it must be added that in some of his works the speakers display little or no character. See, for example, Sophist and Statesman —dialogues in which a visitor from the town of Elea in Southern Italy leads the discussion; and Laws , a discussion between an unnamed Athenian and two named fictional characters, one from Crete and the other from Sparta.) In many of his dialogues (though not all), Plato is not only attempting to draw his readers into a discussion, but is also commenting on the social milieu that he is depicting, and criticizing the character and ways of life of his interlocutors (see Blondell 2002). Some of the dialogues that most evidently fall into this category are Protagoras , Gorgias , Hippias Major , Euthydemus , and Symposium .

There is one interlocutor who speaks in nearly all of Plato’s dialogues, being completely absent only in Laws , which ancient testimony tells us was one of his latest works: that figure is Socrates. Like nearly everyone else who appears in Plato’s works, he is not an invention of Plato: there really was a Socrates just as there really was a Crito, a Gorgias, a Thrasymachus, and a Laches. Plato was not the only author whose personal experience of Socrates led to the depiction of him as a character in one or more dramatic works. Socrates is one of the principal characters of Aristophanes’ comedy, Clouds ; and Xenophon, a historian and military leader, wrote, like Plato, both an Apology of Socrates (an account of Socrates’ trial) and other works in which Socrates appears as a principal speaker. Furthermore, we have some fragmentary remains of dialogues written by other contemporaries of Socrates besides Plato and Xenophon (Aeschines, Antisthenes, Eucleides, Phaedo), and these purport to describe conversations he conducted with others (see Boys-Stone and Rowe 2013). So, when Plato wrote dialogues that feature Socrates as a principal speaker, he was both contributing to a genre that was inspired by the life of Socrates and participating in a lively literary debate about the kind of person Socrates was and the value of the intellectual conversations in which he was involved. Aristophanes’ comic portrayal of Socrates is at the same time a bitter critique of him and other leading intellectual figures of the day (the 420s B.C.), but from Plato, Xenophon, and the other composers (in the 390’s and later) of “Socratic discourses” (as Aristotle calls this body of writings) we receive a far more favorable impression.

Evidently, the historical Socrates was the sort of person who provoked in those who knew him, or knew of him, a profound response, and he inspired many of those who came under his influence to write about him. But the portraits composed by Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato are the ones that have survived intact, and they are therefore the ones that must play the greatest role in shaping our conception of what Socrates was like. Of these, Clouds has the least value as an indication of what was distinctive of Socrates’ mode of philosophizing: after all, it is not intended as a philosophical work, and although it may contain a few lines that are characterizations of features unique to Socrates, for the most part it is an attack on a philosophical type—the long-haired, unwashed, amoral investigator into abstruse phenomena—rather than a depiction of Socrates himself. Xenophon’s depiction of Socrates, whatever its value as historical testimony (which may be considerable), is generally thought to lack the philosophical subtlety and depth of Plato’s. At any rate, no one (certainly not Xenophon himself) takes Xenophon to be a major philosopher in his own right; when we read his Socratic works, we are not encountering a great philosophical mind. But that is what we experience when we read Plato. We may read Plato’s Socratic dialogues because we are (as Plato evidently wanted us to be) interested in who Socrates was and what he stood for, but even if we have little or no desire to learn about the historical Socrates, we will want to read Plato because in doing so we are encountering an author of the greatest philosophical significance. No doubt he in some way borrowed in important ways from Socrates, though it is not easy to say where to draw the line between him and his teacher (more about this below in section 12). But it is widely agreed among scholars that Plato is not a mere transcriber of the words of Socrates (any more than Xenophon or the other authors of Socratic discourses). His use of a figure called “Socrates” in so many of his dialogues should not be taken to mean that Plato is merely preserving for a reading public the lessons he learned from his teacher.

Socrates, it should be kept in mind, does not appear in all of Plato’s works. He makes no appearance in Laws , and there are several dialogues ( Sophist , Statesman , Timaeus ) in which his role is small and peripheral, while some other figure dominates the conversation or even, as in the Timaeus and Critias , presents a long and elaborate, continuous discourse of their own. Plato’s dialogues are not a static literary form; not only do his topics vary, not only do his speakers vary, but the role played by questions and answers is never the same from one dialogue to another. ( Symposium , for example, is a series of speeches, and there are also lengthy speeches in Apology , Menexenus , Protagoras , Crito , Phaedrus , Timaeus , and Critias ; in fact, one might reasonably question whether these works are properly called dialogues). But even though Plato constantly adapted “the dialogue form” (a commonly used term, and convenient enough, so long as we do not think of it as an unvarying unity) to suit his purposes, it is striking that throughout his career as a writer he never engaged in a form of composition that was widely used in his time and was soon to become the standard mode of philosophical address: Plato never became a writer of philosophical treatises, even though the writing of treatises (for example, on rhetoric, medicine, and geometry) was a common practice among his predecessors and contemporaries. (The closest we come to an exception to this generalization is the seventh letter, which contains a brief section in which the author, Plato or someone pretending to be him, commits himself to several philosophical points—while insisting, at the same time, that no philosopher will write about the deepest matters, but will communicate his thoughts only in private discussion with selected individuals. As noted above, the authenticity of Plato’s letters is a matter of great controversy; and in any case, the author of the seventh letter declares his opposition to the writing of philosophical books. Whether Plato wrote it or not, it cannot be regarded as a philosophical treatise, and its author did not wish it to be so regarded.) In all of his writings—except in the letters, if any of them are genuine—Plato never speaks to his audience directly (see Frede 1992) and in his own voice. Strictly speaking, he does not himself affirm anything in his dialogues; rather, it is the interlocutors in his dialogues who are made by Plato to do all of the affirming, doubting, questioning, arguing, and so on. Whatever he wishes to communicate to us is conveyed indirectly.

This feature of Plato’s works raises important questions about how they are to be read, and has led to considerable controversy among those who study his writings. Since he does not himself affirm anything in any of his dialogues, can we ever be on secure ground in attributing a philosophical doctrine to him (as opposed to one of his characters)? Did he himself have philosophical convictions, and can we discover what they were? Are we justified in speaking of “the philosophy of Plato”? Or, if we attribute some view to Plato himself, are we being unfaithful to the spirit in which he intended the dialogues to be read? Is his whole point, in refraining from writing treatises, to discourage the readers of his works from asking what their author believes and to encourage them instead simply to consider the plausibility or implausibility of what his characters are saying? Is that why Plato wrote dialogues? If not for this reason, then what was his purpose in refraining from addressing his audience in a more direct way (see Griswold 1988, Klagge and Smith 1992, Press 2002)? There are other important questions about the particular shape his dialogues take: for example, why does Socrates play such a prominent role in so many of them, and why, in some of these works, does Socrates play a smaller role, or none at all?

Once these questions are raised and their difficulty acknowledged, it is tempting, in reading Plato’s works and reflecting upon them, to adopt a strategy of extreme caution. Rather than commit oneself to any hypothesis about what he is trying to communicate to his readers, one might adopt a stance of neutrality about his intentions, and confine oneself to talking only about what is said by his dramatis personae . One cannot be faulted, for example, if one notes that, in Plato’s Republic , Socrates argues that justice in the soul consists in each part of the soul doing its own. It is equally correct to point out that other principal speakers in that work, Glaucon and Adeimantus, accept the arguments that Socrates gives for that definition of justice. Perhaps there is no need for us to say more—to say, for example, that Plato himself agrees that this is how justice should be defined, or that Plato himself accepts the arguments that Socrates gives in support of this definition. And we might adopt this same “minimalist” approach to all of Plato’s works. After all, is it of any importance to discover what went on inside his head as he wrote—to find out whether he himself endorsed the ideas he put in the mouths of his characters, whether they constitute “the philosophy of Plato”? Should we not read his works for their intrinsic philosophical value, and not as tools to be used for entering into the mind of their author? We know what Plato’s characters say—and isn’t that all that we need, for the purpose of engaging with his works philosophically?

But the fact that we know what Plato’s characters say does not show that by refusing to entertain any hypotheses about what the author of these works is trying to communicate to his readers we can understand what those characters mean by what they say. We should not lose sight of this obvious fact: it is Plato, not any of his dramatis personae , who is reaching out to a readership and trying to influence their beliefs and actions by means of his literary actions. When we ask whether an argument put forward by a character in Plato’s works should be read as an effort to persuade us of its conclusion, or is better read as a revelation of how foolish that speaker is, we are asking about what Plato as author (not that character) is trying to lead us to believe, through the writing that he is presenting to our attention. We need to interpret the work itself to find out what it, or Plato the author, is saying. Similarly, when we ask how a word that has several different senses is best understood, we are asking what Plato means to communicate to us through the speaker who uses that word. We should not suppose that we can derive much philosophical value from Plato’s writings if we refuse to entertain any thoughts about what use he intends us to make of the things his speakers say. Penetrating the mind of Plato and comprehending what his interlocutors mean by what they say are not two separate tasks but one, and if we do not ask what his interlocutors mean by what they say, and what the dialogue itself indicates we should think about what they mean, we will not profit from reading his dialogues.

Furthermore, the dialogues have certain characteristics that are most easily explained by supposing that Plato is using them as vehicles for inducing his readers to become convinced (or more convinced than they already are) of certain propositions—for example, that there are forms, that the soul is not corporeal, that knowledge can be acquired only by means of a study of the forms, and so on. Why, after all, did Plato write so many works (for example: Phaedo , Symposium , Republic , Phaedrus , Theaetetus , Sophist , Statesman , Timaeus , Philebus , Laws ) in which one character dominates the conversation (often, but not always, Socrates) and convinces the other speakers (at times, after encountering initial resistance) that they should accept or reject certain conclusions, on the basis of the arguments presented? The only plausible way of answering that question is to say that these dialogues were intended by Plato to be devices by which he might induce the audience for which they are intended to reflect on and accept the arguments and conclusions offered by his principal interlocutor. (It is noteworthy that in Laws , the principal speaker—an unnamed visitor from Athens—proposes that laws should be accompanied by “preludes” in which their philosophical basis is given as full an explanation as possible. The educative value of written texts is thus explicitly acknowledged by Plato’s dominant speaker. If preludes can educate a whole citizenry that is prepared to learn from them, then surely Plato thinks that other sorts of written texts—for example, his own dialogues—can also serve an educative function.)

This does not mean that Plato thinks that his readers can become wise simply by reading and studying his works. On the contrary, it is highly likely that he wanted all of his writings to be supplementary aids to philosophical conversation: in one of his works, he has Socrates warn his readers against relying solely on books, or taking them to be authoritative. They are, Socrates says, best used as devices that stimulate the readers’ memory of discussions they have had ( Phaedrus 274e-276d). In those face-to-face conversations with a knowledgeable leader, positions are taken, arguments are given, and conclusions are drawn. Plato’s writings, he implies in this passage from Phaedrus , will work best when conversational seeds have already been sown for the arguments they contain.

If we take Plato to be trying to persuade us, in many of his works, to accept the conclusions arrived at by his principal interlocutors (or to persuade us of the refutations of their opponents), we can easily explain why he so often chooses Socrates as the dominant speaker in his dialogues. Presumably the contemporary audience for whom Plato was writing included many of Socrates’ admirers. They would be predisposed to think that a character called “Socrates” would have all of the intellectual brilliance and moral passion of the historical person after whom he is named (especially since Plato often makes special efforts to give his “Socrates” a life-like reality, and has him refer to his trial or to the characteristics by which he was best known); and the aura surrounding the character called “Socrates” would give the words he speaks in the dialogue considerable persuasive power. Furthermore, if Plato felt strongly indebted to Socrates for many of his philosophical techniques and ideas, that would give him further reason for assigning a dominant role to him in many of his works. (More about this in section 12.)

Of course, there are other more speculative possible ways of explaining why Plato so often makes Socrates his principal speaker. For example, we could say that Plato was trying to undermine the reputation of the historical Socrates by writing a series of works in which a figure called “Socrates” manages to persuade a group of naïve and sycophantic interlocutors to accept absurd conclusions on the basis of sophistries. But anyone who has read some of Plato’s works will quickly recognize the utter implausibility of that alternative way of reading them. Plato could have written into his works clear signals to the reader that the arguments of Socrates do not work, and that his interlocutors are foolish to accept them. But there are many signs in such works as Meno , Phaedo , Republic , and Phaedrus that point in the opposite direction. (And the great admiration Plato feels for Socrates is also evident from his Apology .) The reader is given every encouragement to believe that the reason why Socrates is successful in persuading his interlocutors (on those occasions when he does succeed) is that his arguments are powerful ones. The reader, in other words, is being encouraged by the author to accept those arguments, if not as definitive then at least as highly arresting and deserving of careful and full positive consideration. When we interpret the dialogues in this way, we cannot escape the fact that we are entering into the mind of Plato, and attributing to him, their author, a positive evaluation of the arguments that his speakers present to each other.

There is a further reason for entertaining hypotheses about what Plato intended and believed, and not merely confining ourselves to observations about what sorts of people his characters are and what they say to each other. When we undertake a serious study of Plato, and go beyond reading just one of his works, we are inevitably confronted with the question of how we are to link the work we are currently reading with the many others that Plato composed. Admittedly, many of his dialogues make a fresh start in their setting and their interlocutors: typically, Socrates encounters a group of people many of whom do not appear in any other work of Plato, and so, as an author, he needs to give his readers some indication of their character and social circumstances. But often Plato’s characters make statements that would be difficult for readers to understand unless they had already read one or more of his other works. For example, in Phaedo (73a-b), Socrates says that one argument for the immortality of the soul derives from the fact that when people are asked certain kinds of questions, and are aided with diagrams, they answer in a way that shows that they are not learning afresh from the diagrams or from information provided in the questions, but are drawing their knowledge of the answers from within themselves. That remark would be of little worth for an audience that had not already read Meno . Several pages later, Socrates tells his interlocutors that his argument about our prior knowledge of equality itself (the form of equality) applies no less to other forms—to the beautiful, good, just, pious and to all the other things that are involved in their asking and answering of questions (75d). This reference to asking and answering questions would not be well understood by a reader who had not yet encountered a series of dialogues in which Socrates asks his interlocutors questions of the form, “What is X?” ( Euthyphro : what is piety? Laches : what is courage? Charmides : What is moderation? Hippias Major : what is beauty? see Dancy 2004). Evidently, Plato is assuming that readers of Phaedo have already read several of his other works, and will bring to bear on the current argument all of the lessons that they have learned from them. In some of his writings, Plato’s characters refer ahead to the continuation of their conversations on another day, or refer back to conversations they had recently: thus Plato signals to us that we should read Theaetetus , Sophist , and Statesman sequentially; and similarly, since the opening of Timaeus refers us back to Republic , Plato is indicating to his readers that they must seek some connection between these two works.

These features of the dialogues show Plato’s awareness that he cannot entirely start from scratch in every work that he writes. He will introduce new ideas and raise fresh difficulties, but he will also expect his readers to have already familiarized themselves with the conversations held by the interlocutors of other dialogues—even when there is some alteration among those interlocutors. (Meno does not re-appear in Phaedo ; Timaeus was not among the interlocutors of Republic .) Why does Plato have his dominant characters (Socrates, the Eleatic visitor) reaffirm some of the same points from one dialogue to another, and build on ideas that were made in earlier works? If the dialogues were merely meant as provocations to thought—mere exercises for the mind—there would be no need for Plato to identify his leading characters with a consistent and ever-developing doctrine. For example, Socrates continues to maintain, over a large number of dialogues, that there are such things as forms—and there is no better explanation for this continuity than to suppose that Plato is recommending that doctrine to his readers. Furthermore, when Socrates is replaced as the principal investigator by the visitor from Elea (in Sophist and Statesman ), the existence of forms continues to be taken for granted, and the visitor criticizes any conception of reality that excludes such incorporeal objects as souls and forms. The Eleatic visitor, in other words, upholds a metaphysics that is, in many respects, like the one that Socrates is made to defend. Again, the best explanation for this continuity is that Plato is using both characters—Socrates and the Eleatic visitor—as devices for the presentation and defense of a doctrine that he embraces and wants his readers to embrace as well.

This way of reading Plato’s dialogues does not presuppose that he never changes his mind about anything—that whatever any of his main interlocutors uphold in one dialogue will continue to be presupposed or affirmed elsewhere without alteration. It is, in fact, a difficult and delicate matter to determine, on the basis of our reading of the dialogues, whether Plato means to modify or reject in one dialogue what he has his main interlocutor affirm in some other. One of the most intriguing and controversial questions about his treatment of the forms, for example, is whether he concedes that his conception of those abstract entities is vulnerable to criticism; and, if so, whether he revises some of the assumptions he had been making about them, or develops a more elaborate picture of them that allows him to respond to that criticism (see Meinwald 2016). In Parmenides , the principal interlocutor (not Socrates—he is here portrayed as a promising, young philosopher in need of further training—but rather the pre-Socratic from Elea who gives the dialogue its name: Parmenides) subjects the forms to withering criticism, and then consents to conduct an inquiry into the nature of oneness that has no overt connection to his critique of the forms. Does the discussion of oneness (a baffling series of contradictions—or at any rate, propositions that seem, on the surface, to be contradictions) in some way help address the problems raised about forms? That is one way of reading the dialogue. And if we do read it in this way, does that show that Plato has changed his mind about some of the ideas about forms he inserted into earlier dialogues? Can we find dialogues in which we encounter a “new theory of forms”—that is, a way of thinking of forms that carefully steers clear of the assumptions about forms that led to Parmenides’ critique? It is not easy to say. But we cannot even raise this as an issue worth pondering unless we presuppose that behind the dialogues there stands a single mind that is using these writings as a way of hitting upon the truth, and of bringing that truth to the attention of others. If we find Timaeus (the principal interlocutor of the dialogue named after him) and the Eleatic visitor of the Sophist and Statesman talking about forms in a way that is entirely consistent with the way Socrates talks about forms in Phaedo and Republic , then there is only one reasonable explanation for that consistency: Plato believes that their way of talking about forms is correct, or is at least strongly supported by powerful considerations. If, on the other hand, we find that Timaeus or the Eleatic visitor talks about forms in a way that does not harmonize with the way Socrates conceives of those abstract objects, in the dialogues that assign him a central role as director of the conversation, then the most plausible explanation for these discrepancies is that Plato has changed his mind about the nature of these entities. It would be implausible to suppose that Plato himself had no convictions about forms, and merely wants to give his readers mental exercise by composing dialogues in which different leading characters talk about these objects in discordant ways.

The same point—that we must view the dialogues as the product of a single mind, a single philosopher, though perhaps one who changes his mind—can be made in connection with the politics of Plato’s works (see Bobonich 2002).

It is noteworthy, to begin with, that Plato is, among other things, a political philosopher. For he gives expression, in several of his writings (particular Phaedo ), to a yearning to escape from the tawdriness of ordinary human relations. (Similarly, he evinces a sense of the ugliness of the sensible world, whose beauty pales in comparison with that of the forms.) Because of this, it would have been all too easy for Plato to turn his back entirely on practical reality, and to confine his speculations to theoretical questions. Some of his works— Parmenides is a stellar example—do confine themselves to exploring questions that seem to have no bearing whatsoever on practical life. But it is remarkable how few of his works fall into this category. Even the highly abstract questions raised in Sophist about the nature of being and not-being are, after all, embedded in a search for the definition of sophistry; and thus they call to mind the question whether Socrates should be classified as a sophist—whether, in other words, sophists are to be despised and avoided. In any case, despite the great sympathy Plato expresses for the desire to shed one’s body and live in an incorporeal world, he devotes an enormous amount of energy to the task of understanding the world we live in, appreciating its limited beauty, and improving it.

His tribute to the mixed beauty of the sensible world, in Timaeus , consists in his depiction of it as the outcome of divine efforts to mold reality in the image of the forms, using simple geometrical patterns and harmonious arithmetic relations as building blocks. The desire to transform human relations is given expression in a far larger number of works. Socrates presents himself, in Plato’s Apology , as a man who does not have his head in the clouds (that is part of Aristophanes’ charge against him in Clouds ). He does not want to escape from the everyday world but to make it better (see Allen 2010). He presents himself, in Gorgias , as the only Athenian who has tried his hand at the true art of politics.

Similarly, the Socrates of Republic devotes a considerable part of his discussion to the critique of ordinary social institutions—the family, private property, and rule by the many. The motivation that lies behind the writing of this dialogue is the desire to transform (or, at any rate, to improve) political life, not to escape from it (although it is acknowledged that the desire to escape is an honorable one: the best sort of rulers greatly prefer the contemplation of divine reality to the governance of the city). And if we have any further doubts that Plato does take an interest in the practical realm, we need only turn to Laws . A work of such great detail and length about voting procedures, punishments, education, legislation, and the oversight of public officials can only have been produced by someone who wants to contribute something to the improvement of the lives we lead in this sensible and imperfect realm. Further evidence of Plato’s interest in practical matters can be drawn from his letters, if they are genuine. In most of them, he presents himself as having a deep interest in educating (with the help of his friend, Dion) the ruler of Syracuse, Dionysius II, and thus reforming that city’s politics.

Just as any attempt to understand Plato’s views about forms must confront the question whether his thoughts about them developed or altered over time, so too our reading of him as a political philosopher must be shaped by a willingness to consider the possibility that he changed his mind. For example, on any plausible reading of Republic , Plato evinces a deep antipathy to rule by the many. Socrates tells his interlocutors that the only politics that should engage them are those of the anti-democratic regime he depicts as the paradigm of a good constitution. And yet in Laws , the Athenian visitor proposes a detailed legislative framework for a city in which non-philosophers (people who have never heard of the forms, and have not been trained to understand them) are given considerable powers as rulers. Plato would not have invested so much time in the creation of this comprehensive and lengthy work, had he not believed that the creation of a political community ruled by those who are philosophically unenlightened is a project that deserves the support of his readers. Has Plato changed his mind, then? Has he re-evaluated the highly negative opinion he once held of those who are innocent of philosophy? Did he at first think that the reform of existing Greek cities, with all of their imperfections, is a waste of time—but then decide that it is an endeavor of great value? (And if so, what led him to change his mind?) Answers to these questions can be justified only by careful attention to what he has his interlocutors say. But it would be utterly implausible to suppose that these developmental questions need not be raised, on the grounds that Republic and Laws each has its own cast of characters, and that the two works therefore cannot come into contradiction with each other. According to this hypothesis (one that must be rejected), because it is Socrates (not Plato) who is critical of democracy in Republic , and because it is the Athenian visitor (not Plato) who recognizes the merits of rule by the many in Laws , there is no possibility that the two dialogues are in tension with each other. Against this hypothesis, we should say: Since both Republic and Laws are works in which Plato is trying to move his readers towards certain conclusions, by having them reflect on certain arguments—these dialogues are not barred from having this feature by their use of interlocutors—it would be an evasion of our responsibility as readers and students of Plato not to ask whether what one of them advocates is compatible with what the other advocates. If we answer that question negatively, we have some explaining to do: what led to this change? Alternatively, if we conclude that the two works are compatible, we must say why the appearance of conflict is illusory.

Many contemporary scholars find it plausible that when Plato embarked on his career as a philosophical writer, he composed, in addition to his Apology of Socrates, a number of short ethical dialogues that contain little or nothing in the way of positive philosophical doctrine, but are mainly devoted to portraying the way in which Socrates punctured the pretensions of his interlocutors and forced them to realize that they are unable to offer satisfactory definitions of the ethical terms they used, or satisfactory arguments for their moral beliefs. According to this way of placing the dialogues into a rough chronological order—associated especially with Gregory Vlastos’s name (see especially his Socrates Ironist and Moral Philosopher , chapters 2 and 3)—Plato, at this point of his career, was content to use his writings primarily for the purpose of preserving the memory of Socrates and making plain the superiority of his hero, in intellectual skill and moral seriousness, to all of his contemporaries—particularly those among them who claimed to be experts on religious, political, or moral matters. Into this category of early dialogues (they are also sometimes called “Socratic” dialogues, possibly without any intended chronological connotation) are placed: Charmides , Crito , Euthydemus , Euthyphro , Gorgias , Hippias Major , Hippias Minor , Ion , Laches , Lysis , and Protagoras , (Some scholars hold that we can tell which of these come later during Plato’s early period. For example, it is sometimes said that Protagoras and Gorgias are later, because of their greater length and philosophical complexity. Other dialogues—for example, Charmides and Lysis —are thought not to be among Plato’s earliest within this early group, because in them Socrates appears to be playing a more active role in shaping the progress of the dialogue: that is, he has more ideas of his own.) In comparison with many of Plato’s other dialogues, these “Socratic” works contain little in the way of metaphysical, epistemological, or methodological speculation, and they therefore fit well with the way Socrates characterizes himself in Plato’s Apology : as a man who leaves investigations of high falutin’ matters (which are “in the sky and below the earth”) to wiser heads, and confines all of his investigations to the question how one should live one’s life. Aristotle describes Socrates as someone whose interests were restricted to only one branch of philosophy—the realm of the ethical; and he also says that he was in the habit of asking definitional questions to which he himself lacked answers ( Metaphysics 987b1, Sophistical Refutations 183b7). That testimony gives added weight to the widely accepted hypothesis that there is a group of dialogues—the ones mentioned above as his early works, whether or not they were all written early in Plato’s writing career—in which Plato used the dialogue form as a way of portraying the philosophical activities of the historical Socrates (although, of course, he might also have used them in other ways as well—for example to suggest and begin to explore philosophical difficulties raised by them, see Santas 1979, Brickhouse and Smith 1994).

But at a certain point—so says this hypothesis about the chronology of the dialogues—Plato began to use his works to advance ideas that were his own creations rather than those of Socrates, although he continued to use the name “Socrates” for the interlocutor who presented and argued for these new ideas. The speaker called “Socrates” now begins to move beyond and depart from the historical Socrates: he has views about the methodology that should be used by philosophers (a methodology borrowed from mathematics), and he argues for the immortality of the soul and the existence and importance of the forms of beauty, justice, goodness, and the like. (By contrast, in Apology Socrates says that no one knows what becomes of us after we die.) Phaedo is often said to be the dialogue in which Plato first comes into his own as a philosopher who is moving far beyond the ideas of his teacher (though it is also commonly said that we see a new methodological sophistication and a greater interest in mathematical knowledge in Meno ). Having completed all of the dialogues that, according to this hypothesis, we characterize as early, Plato widened the range of topics to be explored in his writings (no longer confining himself to ethics), and placed the theory of forms (and related ideas about language, knowledge, and love) at the center of his thinking. In these works of his “middle” period—for example, in Phaedo , Cratylus , Symposium , Republic , and Phaedrus —there is both a change of emphasis and of doctrine. The focus is no longer on ridding ourselves of false ideas and self-deceit; rather, we are asked to accept (however tentatively) a radical new conception of ourselves (now divided into three parts), our world—or rather, our two worlds—and our need to negotiate between them. Definitions of the most important virtue terms are finally proposed in Republic (the search for them in some of the early dialogues having been unsuccessful): Book I of this dialogue is a portrait of how the historical Socrates might have handled the search for a definition of justice, and the rest of the dialogue shows how the new ideas and tools discovered by Plato can complete the project that his teacher was unable to finish. Plato continues to use a figure called “Socrates” as his principal interlocutor, and in this way he creates a sense of continuity between the methods, insights, and ideals of the historical Socrates and the new Socrates who has now become a vehicle for the articulation of his own new philosophical outlook. In doing so, he acknowledges his intellectual debt to his teacher and appropriates for his own purposes the extraordinary prestige of the man who was the wisest of his time.

This hypothesis about the chronology of Plato’s writings has a third component: it does not place his works into either of only two categories—the early or “Socratic” dialogues, and all the rest—but works instead with a threefold division of early, middle, and late. That is because, following ancient testimony, it has become a widely accepted assumption that Laws is one of Plato’s last works, and further that this dialogue shares a great many stylistic affinities with a small group of others: Sophist , Statesman , Timaeus , Critias , and Philebus . These five dialogues together with Laws are generally agreed to be his late works, because they have much more in common with each other, when one counts certain stylistic features apparent only to readers of Plato’s Greek, than with any of Plato’s other works. (Computer counts have aided these stylometric studies, but the isolation of a group of six dialogues by means of their stylistic commonalities was recognized in the nineteenth century. See Brandwood 1990, Young 1994.)

It is not at all clear whether there are one or more philosophical affinities among this group of six dialogues—that is, whether the philosophy they contain is sharply different from that of all of the other dialogues. Plato does nothing to encourage the reader to view these works as a distinctive and separate component of his thinking. On the contrary, he links Sophist with Theaetetus (the conversations they present have a largely overlapping cast of characters, and take place on successive days) no less than Sophist and Statesman . Sophist contains, in its opening pages, a reference to the conversation of Parmenides —and perhaps Plato is thus signaling to his readers that they should bring to bear on Sophist the lessons that are to be drawn from Parmenides . Similarly, Timaeus opens with a reminder of some of the principal ethical and political doctrines of Republic . It could be argued, of course, that when one looks beyond these stage-setting devices, one finds significant philosophical changes in the six late dialogues, setting this group off from all that preceded them. But there is no consensus that they should be read in this way. Resolving this issue requires intensive study of the content of Plato’s works. So, although it is widely accepted that the six dialogues mentioned above belong to Plato’s latest period, there is, as yet, no agreement among students of Plato that these six form a distinctive stage in his philosophical development.

In fact, it remains a matter of dispute whether the division of Plato’s works into three periods—early, middle, late—does correctly indicate the order of composition, and whether it is a useful tool for the understanding of his thought (See Cooper 1997, vii–xxvii). Of course, it would be wildly implausible to suppose that Plato’s writing career began with such complex works as Laws , Parmenides , Phaedrus , or Republic . In light of widely accepted assumptions about how most philosophical minds develop, it is likely that when Plato started writing philosophical works some of the shorter and simpler dialogues were the ones he composed: Laches , or Crito , or Ion (for example). (Similarly, Apology does not advance a complex philosophical agenda or presuppose an earlier body of work; so that too is likely to have been composed near the beginning of Plato’s writing career.) Even so, there is no good reason to eliminate the hypothesis that throughout much of his life Plato devoted himself to writing two sorts of dialogues at the same time, moving back and forth between them as he aged: on the one hand, introductory works whose primary purpose is to show readers the difficulty of apparently simple philosophical problems, and thereby to rid them of their pretensions and false beliefs; and on the other hand, works filled with more substantive philosophical theories supported by elaborate argumentation. Moreover, one could point to features of many of the “Socratic” dialogues that would justify putting them in the latter category, even though the argumentation does not concern metaphysics or methodology or invoke mathematics— Gorgias , Protagoras , Lysis , Euthydemus , Hippias Major among them.

Plato makes it clear that both of these processes, one preceding the other, must be part of one’s philosophical education. One of his deepest methodological convictions (affirmed in Meno , Theaetetus , and Sophist ) is that in order to make intellectual progress we must recognize that knowledge cannot be acquired by passively receiving it from others: rather, we must work our way through problems and assess the merits of competing theories with an independent mind. Accordingly, some of his dialogues are primarily devices for breaking down the reader’s complacency, and that is why it is essential that they come to no positive conclusions; others are contributions to theory-construction, and are therefore best absorbed by those who have already passed through the first stage of philosophical development. We should not assume that Plato could have written the preparatory dialogues only at the earliest stage of his career. Although he may well have begun his writing career by taking up that sort of project, he may have continued writing these “negative” works at later stages, at the same time that he was composing his theory-constructing dialogues. For example although both Euthydemus and Charmides are widely assumed to be early dialogues, they might have been written around the same time as Symposium and Republic , which are generally assumed to be compositions of his middle period—or even later.

No doubt, some of the works widely considered to be early really are such. But it is an open question which and how many of them are. At any rate, it is clear that Plato continued to write in a “Socratic” and “negative” vein even after he was well beyond the earliest stages of his career: Theaetetus features a Socrates who is even more insistent upon his ignorance than are the dramatic representations of Socrates in briefer and philosophically less complex works that are reasonably assumed to be early; and like many of those early works, Theaetetus seeks but does not find the answer to the “what is it?” question that it relentlessly pursues—“What is knowledge?” Similarly, Parmenides , though certainly not an early dialogue, is a work whose principal aim is to puzzle the reader by the presentation of arguments for apparently contradictory conclusions; since it does not tell us how it is possible to accept all of those conclusions, its principal effect on the reader is similar to that of dialogues (many of them no doubt early) that reach only negative conclusions. Plato uses this educational device—provoking the reader through the presentation of opposed arguments, and leaving the contradiction unresolved—in Protagoras (often considered an early dialogue) as well. So it is clear that even after he was well beyond the earliest stages of his thinking, he continued to assign himself the project of writing works whose principal aim is the presentation of unresolved difficulties. (And, just as we should recognize that puzzling the reader continues to be his aim even in later works, so too we should not overlook the fact that there is some substantive theory-construction in the ethical works that are simple enough to have been early compositions: Ion , for example, affirms a theory of poetic inspiration; and Crito sets out the conditions under which a citizen acquires an obligation to obey civic commands. Neither ends in failure.)

If we are justified in taking Socrates’ speech in Plato’s Apology to constitute reliable evidence about what the historical Socrates was like, then whatever we find in Plato’s other works that is of a piece with that speech can also be safely attributed to Socrates. So understood, Socrates was a moralist but (unlike Plato) not a metaphysician or epistemologist or cosmologist. That fits with Aristotle’s testimony, and Plato’s way of choosing the dominant speaker of his dialogues gives further support to this way of distinguishing between him and Socrates. The number of dialogues that are dominated by a Socrates who is spinning out elaborate philosophical doctrines is remarkably small: Phaedo , Republic , Phaedrus , and Philebus . All of them are dominated by ethical issues: whether to fear death, whether to be just, whom to love, the place of pleasure. Evidently, Plato thinks that it is appropriate to make Socrates the major speaker in a dialogue that is filled with positive content only when the topics explored in that work primarily have to do with the ethical life of the individual. (The political aspects of Republic are explicitly said to serve the larger question whether any individual, no matter what his circumstances, should be just.) When the doctrines he wishes to present systematically become primarily metaphysical, he turns to a visitor from Elea ( Sophist , Statesman ); when they become cosmological, he turns to Timaeus; when they become constitutional, he turns, in Laws , to a visitor from Athens (and he then eliminates Socrates entirely). In effect, Plato is showing us: although he owes a great deal to the ethical insights of Socrates, as well as to his method of puncturing the intellectual pretensions of his interlocutors by leading them into contradiction, he thinks he should not put into the mouth of his teacher too elaborate an exploration of ontological, or cosmological, or political themes, because Socrates refrained from entering these domains. This may be part of the explanation why he has Socrates put into the mouth of the personified Laws of Athens the theory advanced in Crito , which reaches the conclusion that it would be unjust for him to escape from prison. Perhaps Plato is indicating, at the point where these speakers enter the dialogue, that none of what is said here is in any way derived from or inspired by the conversation of Socrates.

Just as we should reject the idea that Plato must have made a decision, at a fairly early point in his career, no longer to write one kind of dialogue (negative, destructive, preparatory) and to write only works of elaborate theory-construction; so we should also question whether he went through an early stage during which he refrained from introducing into his works any of his own ideas (if he had any), but was content to play the role of a faithful portraitist, representing to his readers the life and thought of Socrates. It is unrealistic to suppose that someone as original and creative as Plato, who probably began to write dialogues somewhere in his thirties (he was around 28 when Socrates was killed), would have started his compositions with no ideas of his own, or, having such ideas, would have decided to suppress them, for some period of time, allowing himself to think for himself only later. (What would have led to such a decision?) We should instead treat the moves made in the dialogues, even those that are likely to be early, as Platonic inventions—derived, no doubt, by Plato’s reflections on and transformations of the key themes of Socrates that he attributes to Socrates in Apology . That speech indicates, for example, that the kind of religiosity exhibited by Socrates was unorthodox and likely to give offense or lead to misunderstanding. It would be implausible to suppose that Plato simply concocted the idea that Socrates followed a divine sign, especially because Xenophon too attributes this to his Socrates. But what of the various philosophical moves rehearsed in Euthyphro —the dialogue in which Socrates searches, unsuccessfully, for an understanding of what piety is? We have no good reason to think that in writing this work Plato adopted the role of a mere recording device, or something close to it (changing a word here and there, but for the most part simply recalling what he heard Socrates say, as he made his way to court). It is more likely that Plato, having been inspired by the unorthodoxy of Socrates’ conception of piety, developed, on his own, a series of questions and answers designed to show his readers how difficult it is to reach an understanding of the central concept that Socrates’ fellow citizens relied upon when they condemned him to death. The idea that it is important to search for definitions may have been Socratic in origin. (After all, Aristotle attributes this much to Socrates.) But the twists and turns of the arguments in Euthyphro and other dialogues that search for definitions are more likely to be the products of Plato’s mind than the content of any conversations that really took place.

It is equally unrealistic to suppose that when Plato embarked on his career as a writer, he made a conscious decision to put all of the compositions that he would henceforth compose for a general reading public (with the exception of Apology ) in the form of a dialogue. If the question, “why did Plato write dialogues?”, which many of his readers are tempted to ask, pre-supposes that there must have been some such once-and-for-all decision, then it is poorly posed. It makes better sense to break that question apart into many little ones: better to ask, “Why did Plato write this particular work (for example: Protagoras , or Republic , or Symposium , or Laws ) in the form of a dialogue—and that one ( Timaeus , say) mostly in the form of a long and rhetorically elaborate single speech?” than to ask why he decided to adopt the dialogue form.

The best way to form a reasonable conjecture about why Plato wrote any given work in the form of a dialogue is to ask: what would be lost, were one to attempt to re-write this work in a way that eliminated the give-and-take of interchange, stripped the characters of their personality and social markers, and transformed the result into something that comes straight from the mouth of its author? This is often a question that will be easy to answer, but the answer might vary greatly from one dialogue to another. In pursuing this strategy, we must not rule out the possibility that some of Plato’s reasons for writing this or that work in the form of a dialogue will also be his reason for doing so in other cases—perhaps some of his reasons, so far as we can guess at them, will be present in all other cases. For example, the use of character and conversation allows an author to enliven his work, to awaken the interest of his readership, and therefore to reach a wider audience. The enormous appeal of Plato’s writings is in part a result of their dramatic composition. Even treatise-like compositions— Timaeus and Laws , for example—improve in readability because of their conversational frame. Furthermore, the dialogue form allows Plato’s evident interest in pedagogical questions (how is it possible to learn? what is the best way to learn? from what sort of person can we learn? what sort of person is in a position to learn?) to be pursued not only in the content of his compositions but also in their form. Even in Laws such questions are not far from Plato’s mind, as he demonstrates, through the dialogue form, how it is possible for the citizens of Athens, Sparta, and Crete to learn from each other by adapting and improving upon each other’s social and political institutions.

In some of his works, it is evident that one of Plato’s goals is to create a sense of puzzlement among his readers, and that the dialogue form is being used for this purpose. The Parmenides is perhaps the clearest example of such a work, because here Plato relentlessly rubs his readers’ faces in a baffling series of unresolved puzzles and apparent contradictions. But several of his other works also have this character, though to a smaller degree: for example, Protagoras (can virtue be taught?), Hippias Minor (is voluntary wrongdoing better than involuntary wrongdoing?), and portions of Meno (are some people virtuous because of divine inspiration?). Just as someone who encounters Socrates in conversation should sometimes be puzzled about whether he means what he says (or whether he is instead speaking ironically), so Plato sometimes uses the dialogue form to create in his readers a similar sense of discomfort about what he means and what we ought to infer from the arguments that have been presented to us. But Socrates does not always speak ironically, and similarly Plato’s dialogues do not always aim at creating a sense of bafflement about what we are to think about the subject under discussion. There is no mechanical rule for discovering how best to read a dialogue, no interpretive strategy that applies equally well to all of his works. We will best understand Plato’s works and profit most from our reading of them if we recognize their great diversity of styles and adapt our way of reading accordingly. Rather than impose on our reading of Plato a uniform expectation of what he must be doing (because he has done such a thing elsewhere), we should bring to each dialogue a receptivity to what is unique to it. That would be the most fitting reaction to the artistry in his philosophy.

The bibliography below is meant as a highly selective and limited guide for readers who want to learn more about the issues covered above. Further discussion of these and other issues regarding Plato’s philosophy, and far more bibliographical information, is available in the other entries on Plato.

• Cooper, John M. (ed.), 1997, Plato: Complete Works , Indianapolis: Hackett. (Contains translations of all the works handed down from antiquity with attribution to Plato, some of which are universally agreed to be spurious, with explanatory footnotes and both a general Introduction to the study of the dialogues and individual Introductory Notes to each work translated.)
• Burnyeat, Myles and Michael Frede, 2015, The Pseudo-Platonic Seventh Letter , Dominic Scott (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Ahbel-Rappe, Sara, and Rachana Kamtekar (eds.), 2006, A Companion to Socrates , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Allen, Danielle, S., 2010, Why Plato Wrote , Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Annas, Julia, 2003, Plato: A Very Short Introduction , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Benson, Hugh (ed.), 2006, A Companion to Plato , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Blondell, Ruby, 2002, The Play of Character in Plato’s Dialogues , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Bobonich, Christopher, 2002, Plato’s Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and Politics , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Boys-Stone George, and Christopher Rowe (eds.), 2013, The Circle of Socrates: Readings in the First-Generation Socratics , Indianapolis: Hackett.
• Brandwood, Leonard, 1990, The Chronology of Plato’s Dialogues , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Brickhouse, Thomas C. & Nicholas D. Smith, 1994, Plato’s Socrates , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Dancy, Russell, 2004, Plato’s Introduction of Forms , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Ebrey, David and Richard Kraut (eds.), 2022, The Cambridge Companion to Plato , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Fine, Gail (ed.), 1999, Plato 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• ––– (ed.), 1999, Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• ––– (ed.), 2008, The Oxford Handbook of Plato , Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Essays by many scholars on a wide range of topics, including several studies of individual dialogues.)
• ––– (ed.), 2019, The Oxford Handbook of Plato , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Frede, Michael, 1992, “Plato’s Arguments and the Dialogue Form,” in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy , Supplementary Volume 1992, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 201–220.
• Griswold, Charles L. (ed.), 1988, Platonic Writings, Platonic Readings , London: Routledge.
• Guthrie, W.K.C., 1971, Socrates , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 1975, A History of Greek Philosophy , Volume 4, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 1978, A History of Greek Philosophy , Volume 5, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Irwin, Terence, 1995, Plato’s Ethics , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Kahn, Charles H., 1996, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2003, “On Platonic Chronology,” in Julia Annas and Christopher Rowe (eds.), New Perspectives on Plato: Modern and Ancient , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, chapter 4.
• Klagge, James C. and Nicholas D. Smith (eds.), 1992, Methods of Interpreting Plato and His Dialogue , Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 1992, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Kraut, Richard (ed.), 1992, The Cambridge Companion to Plato , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2008, How to Read Plato , London: Granta.
• Ledger, Gerald R., 1989, Re-Counting Plato: A Computer Analysis of Plato’s Style , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• McCabe, Mary Margaret, 1994, Plato’s Individuals , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• –––, 2000, Plato and His Predecessors: The Dramatisation of Reason , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Meinwald, Constance, 2016, Plato , London: Routledge.
• Morrison, Donald R., 2012, The Cambridge Companion to Socrates , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Nails, Debra, 1995, Agora, Academy, and the Conduct of Philosophy , Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
• –––, 2002, The People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and Other Socratics , Indianapolis: Hackett. (An encyclopedia of information about the characters in all of the dialogues.)
• Nightingale, Andrea, 1993, Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construction of Philosophy , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Peterson, Sandra, 2011, Socrates and Philosophy in the Dialogues of Plato , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Press, Gerald A. (ed.), 2000, Who Speaks for Plato? Studies in Platonic Anonymity , Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
• Prior, William J., 2019, Socrates , Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Rowe, C.J., 2007, Plato and the Art of Philosophical Writing , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Rowe, Christopher, & Malcolm Schofield (eds.), 2000, Greek and Roman Political Thought , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Contains 7 introductory essays by 7 hands on Socratic and Platonic political thought.)
• Rudebusch, George, 2009, Socrates , Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Russell, Daniel C., 2005, Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Rutherford, R.B., 1995, The Art of Plato: Ten Essays in Platonic Interpretation , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Santas, Gerasimos, 1979, Socrates: Philosophy in Plato’s Early Dialogues , London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Sayre, Kenneth, 1995, Plato’s Literary Garden , Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
• Schofield, Malcolm, 2006, Plato: Political Philosophy , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Silverman, Allan, 2002, The Dialectic of Essence: A Study of Plato’s Metaphysics , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Smith, Nicholas D. and Thomas C. Brickhouse, 1994, Plato’s Socrates , Oxford: Oxford University Press
• –––and John Bussanich (eds.), 2015, The Bloomsbury Companion to Socrates , London: Bloomsbury.
• Taylor, C.C.W., 1998, Socrates , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Thesleff, Holger, 1982, Studies in Platonic Chronology , Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 70, Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica.
• Vander Waerdt, Paul. A. (ed.), 1994, The Socratic Movement , Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• Vasiliou, Iakovos, 2008, Aiming at Virtue in Plato , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Vlastos, Gregory, 1991, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 1995, Studies in Greek Philosophy (Volume 2: Socrates, Plato, and Their Tradition), Daniel W. Graham (ed.), Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• White, Nicholas P., 1976, Plato on Knowledge and Reality , Indianapolis: Hackett.
• Young, Charles M., 1994, “Plato and Computer Dating,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy , 12: 227–250.
• Zuckert, Catherine H., 2009, Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Links to Original texts of Plato’s Dialogues (maintained by Bernard Suzanne)
• In Dialogue: the Life and Works of Plato , a short podcast by Peter Adamson (Philosophy, Kings College London).

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Essay about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

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Plato’s Allegory of the Cave presents an extended metaphor drawing upon philosophical issues such as epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, enlightenment, education, religion, and politics. As we journey through Plato’s story we come to understand the representations behind it. The basic premise here is showing us the relation between education and truth. True knowledge is hidden and humans are easily misinterpreting information presented when under certain conditions that don’t allow them to expand their perspective or question the nature of reality and truth.

He argues that the prisoners (and other humans alike) are miseducated or ignorant, and in order to attain true objective knowledge we must gain it through philosophical reasoning.

The process of progressing out of the cave is about enlightenment toward true understanding. The process in his story is depicted as one of struggle and discomfort. It requires assistance and sometimes force to progress. Plato is implying that there will always be struggle when confronting truth and that it is not easy to become educated. The prisoner leaving the cave is questioning his beliefs, where the prisoners still chained are accepting their beliefs and living in ignorance, even when faced with opposition of the freed prisoner trying to help them. Here Plato implies that not everyone has the capacity to think philosophically, that there are some people that are not willing to face their beliefs and are comfortable living in ignorance.

When people live in ignorance and stay in a limited perspective, they become more prone to being manipulated and used. Many believe Plato is discussing the underlying struggle between society and government. The cave represents the limited ‘world’ controlled by government and the shadows on the wall symbolize an illusion of truth given to us by our government. This way, the government has more power and more money in the process. Plato’s ideal society contains proper functions and intentions from a philosophical ruler. This means that philosophers who have acquired ethical virtuous knowledge are the best to lead society so that it will function at its best, and that these philosophers have the best intentions because they are based from knowledge and not opinion. He argues that the greatest rulers for society are ones that are based from education, experience, and objective truth.

Some may argue that Plato’s ideals about government are unrealistic because we live in a world of duality (good and evil) and that we may never have a perfect functioning society, that triumphs over evil (ignorance). There will always be corruption and even if we may attain a society and government similar to one that Plato describes, would it last? This is a logical point to bring up, there is constant shifting in the world between good and evil, but Plato’s main intention with this thought experiment is to show the struggle between good and evil and that we should always strive toward being good even if it is a struggle. Even if we cannot form a perfect society based solely on virtue and ethics, we should always try to improve ourselves, society and other people around us. Allegory of the Cave provides hope of transcending from ignorance and reaching for the truth.

For Plato, education is a transformative process, it is a struggle and it changes your existence as a whole. This is the transition from darkness (the cave/ignorance) to light (outside of the cave/truth). He believed that everyone is capable of learning only if they have the will to learn, the desire. If the prisoner did not question the shadows on the wall (his reality/beliefs) he would have never ascended unto knowledge. With the help of a teacher he was able to understand reality and progress his character toward truth.

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Making food choices for meals and snacks can be difficult at times. What should I eat? How much should I eat? From how many different food groups should I eat? How can I help my child make good decisions about food selections? These are very important questions to ask and answer as you work to model and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

The USDA (2011) developed MyPlate to assist with making healthier food choices. The MyPlate program provides a visual plate that includes the five different food groups: fruits, vegetables, grains, protein foods, and dairy products. MyPlate uses the visual plate model to help us as we make food selections for ourselves and as we teach our children about making healthy food choices. The model and information found at choosemyplate.gov remind us to control food portions; avoid foods high in fat, sugar, and salt; and eat more fruits and vegetables ( half the plate should be fruits a nd vegetables ).

If your child is a picky eater and you are struggling with how to meet the MyPlate recommendations, consider the following suggestions:

• BE IN CONTROL.  Provide food choices and allow your child to make decisions. For example, provide the child with a choice between two vegetables such as broccoli or carrots, or, for snack, a choice between sliced apples or orange wedges.
• BE A HELPER.  Food preparation can be fun and educational for children. Help your child learn skills such as placing pre-bagged salad into individual salad bowls; washing vegetables and snapping or shelling peas and beans; and using child-friendly equipment, such as a potato masher to make mashed potatoes.
• BE ADVENTUROUS.  Allow your child to assist with picking foods that are on your grocery list. While at the store, allow your child to pick a new food for the whole family to try at mealtime. Remember to provide the choice, but let the child make the decision, as he or she will be more likely to try the new food.
• BE POSITIVE.  As your child is exposed to different foods and new food preparation methods, make sure that mealtime is positive. Small steps are important and appropriate for young children. A small taste of a new food is a great achievement! It can take up to 12 times for some children to accept new foods.

www.choosemyplate.gov

https://wicworks.fns.usda.gov/resources/picky-eaters

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Research reported in this publication was supported by the Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health under Award Number R25OD011162. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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In the ‘Demandingly Joyful Company’ of Socrates and Plato

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To the Editor:

Re “ Higher Education Needs More Socrates and Plato ,” by Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Harun Küçük (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, May 19):

I applaud Professors Emanuel and Küçük and their call for “more Socrates and Plato” in higher education. I add only that their proposals have long been followed at St. John’s College, which I had hoped would merit a mention, since our practices are uncannily similar to what the professors suggest.

To borrow the words of the professors, we offer a “broad-based” education that spans disciplines and is rooted in Great Books. We do so as preparation for “democratic citizenship,” which we embody in “small seminar discussions” led by teachers who function as guides, not experts.

We even give our students, before their first class, a document that outlines the virtues of brevity, “listening at length” and “being willing to go where the argument leads.” That document, “Notes on Dialogue,” was written by Stringfellow Barr, whose close reading of Plato led him to create the unique program of instruction St. John’s College has offered the American republic for nearly 100 years.

We welcome more Socrates and Plato, but our students have been learning in their demandingly joyful company for quite some time.

Brendan Boyle Annapolis, Md. The writer is associate dean for graduate programs at St. John’s College.

What Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Harun Küçük should have highlighted in their otherwise thoughtful argument for renewing higher education’s commitment to “the liberal arts ideals that have made them great” is a more directed focus on what it means to educate students to be intellectuals.

What Socrates, Plato and all the other philosophers and writers whom the authors mention represent are examples of what is historically called “the intellectual.”

Different in form, yet consistent in their desire to know, to learn, to understand, to engage with the hard problems of their day, to discuss, to challenge, to inquire, to provoke, to awaken, to read, to analyze, to reflect: These are the qualities of the intellectual, and we should be educating our college students to embody and practice these dispositions and habits of mind and body from Day 1.

Civic education, as the authors discuss it, should start in early childhood. But anti-intellectualism has so rooted itself in the fibers of higher education that to argue for a liberal arts education is controversial. To argue for educating students to be intellectuals is radical.

Eric J. Weiner East Hampton, N.Y. The writer is a professor of education at Montclair State University.

As a lifelong educator, I think the great books and the great debates over the great questions should be done in high school or even earlier. Why wait until college to engage young people in citizenship? This way when students graduate the foundation is there already, no matter what path they decide on — college or no.

Wasn’t that the idea of public schooling to begin with? Don’t we want to teach to the imagination of students and not just equip them with functional skills?

Julianne Sumner Lenox, Mass.

Re “ Election Updates: Tim Scott Says That Black Americans Would Be Better Off Under Trump ” (nytimes.com, May 26):

I want Senator Tim Scott to explain how Black Americans would be better off under another Trump administration. Mr. Trump has said that he wants to cut back on federal programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security that a large number of Black Americans rely on. He wants to replace Obamacare — again a program that many Black Americans rely on — with what is not exactly clear. He wants to end diversity and inclusion programs.

The White House Office of Environmental Justice will surely be closed. I can’t even begin to list examples of Mr. Trump’s history of racism, starting with refusing to rent to Black tenants , wanting the death penalty for the Central Park Five , etc., etc.

What is good for Black Americans about this? Does Senator Scott think they are as gullible as he is?

Daniel Fink Beverly Hills, Calif.

“ Threats and Fear Are Transforming U.S. Politics ” (front page, May 20) does an important job of highlighting the “steady undercurrent of violence and political risk that has become the new normal” for our public officials.

I just returned from Northern Ireland, a place that experienced decades of civil war; this spring marks 26 years of peace. I was there with a cross-partisan group of U.S. faith leaders and former politicians to learn how Northern Ireland overcame seemingly intractable, violent, identity-based division.

Three main lessons came through. First, when you hold a mirror to American society, we are much further along the path to normalized violent conflict than we know. Second, prolonged violent conflict leads to immense suffering and destruction. Third, a return to peace is never quick.

And the hopeful lesson is that people who used to hate, bomb and maim one another could find common ground. They found this in exhaustion from the killing and pain, a desire for better lives for their children and a sense of common humanity. By painstaking and determined conversation, they found a way to agree. We, in the U.S., need to do the same.

Tom Crick Atlanta The writer is a project adviser with the Carter Center’s Conflict Resolution Program.

Re “ Homeowners Who Planned to Demolish Marilyn Monroe House Sue Los Angeles ” (news article, nytimes.com, May 8):

Marilyn Monroe’s housekeeper once said that her Brentwood home, with its thick beams and walls, made the actress feel safe. It became her refuge, a place where she could go when the world became too much. It was also the place where Marilyn kept her beloved collection of books and other items she treasured.

The house wasn’t fancy by Hollywood standards, but it was solely hers, and she loved it. If her “spirit” resides anywhere today, it’s there. Marilyn herself has become a global symbol of not only glamour and sex, but also personal perseverance and courage in the face of great odds. All good reasons to save her beloved Brentwood home from the wrecking ball.

Joe Elliott Arden, N.C.

Re “ Documents Show Missteps in Overhaul of College Aid ” (news article, May 21):

I’m grateful for The Times’s investigation into the yearslong struggle to update the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

I serve as the vice president of programs at Chicago Scholars , a nonprofit that serves students from low-income households or who will be first-generation students and want to attend a four-year college. The FAFSA mishap upended the college decision season for everyone in our organization, and finding workarounds has unfairly fallen to our students and counselors.

Roadblocks like this forced students to choose between a provisional financial aid package and a gap year. Unfortunately, we find that Chicago Scholars students who take a gap year are far less likely to earn a degree. For many of our students, a college degree is the most attainable path to economic mobility, and it is a path they have worked hard to access.

Our students deserve more than they’ve been given in this situation. This latest misstep is only further evidence that they continue to be left behind.

Tamara Hoff Pope Chicago