Dialectic in Action: An Examination of Plato’s Crito

Plato’s Crito examines a single moral decision, whether Socrates ought to escape from his death-cell. Stokes’s book discusses Socrate’s arguments against Crito’s offer of escape. It construes Socrate’s questions as genuine questions, which clarify and undermine Crito’s positions. Stokes’s approach avoids the ‘documentary fallacy’; it shows how Plato catered for both the novice and the experienced reader of his published works. This books offers a fresh account of Socrate’s whole strategy. It demonstrates both the shakiness of Socrate’s persuasion of the un-philosophical Crito to engage in dialectic, and the coherence of his substantive confutation. Plato’s reasoning emerges from Stokes’s study with more credit than many have given it.