Why did Plato put his philosophical arguments into dialogues, rather than presenting them in a plain and readily understandable fashion? A group of distinguished scholars here offer answers to this question by studying the relation between form and argument in his late dialogues. These penetrating studies show that the literary structure of the dialogues is of vital importance in the ongoing interpretation of Plato.

Christopher Gill is Professor of Ancient Thought at the University of Exeter. He is the editor of The Person and the Human Mind: Issues in Ancient and Modern Philosophy (OUP, 1990) and the author of Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy: The Self in Dialogue (OUP, 1996).
Mary Margaret McCabe is Professor of Philosophy at King's College London. She is the author of Plato on Punishment (Berkeley, 1981), and Plato's Individuals (Princeton, 1994).