Franktalk wrote:Chap wrote:Nope. Socrates didn't write anything. His disciple Plato wrote a number of dialogues which purport to record Socrates' debates (often very lively) with a number of people, some of whom disagreed with him strongly.
His student took notes and wrote it for him. In much the same way Matthew wrote down the words of Christ. So are you saying that the book The Republic did not come from Socrates? Or are you just being "Chap" for the sake of being "Chap"? Since most books come from the printer and not the author are you saying that the ideas should not be assigned to the author? It is apparent to me that your silly comment lacks any deep thought and appears to be sand box level at best.
Look, people who have actually studied the topic know it is a good deal more complicated than that. There are at least three different 'Socrates', the one portrayed by the playwright Aristophanes, the one portrayed by Xenophon, and finally the one that Plato constructs. The dialogues written by Plato are certainly not the result of a simple process of transcription. Here to help you is something from the Oxford Classical Dictionary on the topic:
Socrates' execution prompted Plato and Xenophon to create portraits intended to refute the formal charge under which he was tried and to counter his popular image, which may have been inspired by Aristophanes' Clouds. Aristophanes had depicted Socrates engaged in natural philosophy and willing to teach his students how ‘to make the weaker argument stronger’—a commonplace charge against the sophists. Both Plato and Xenophon were intent on distinguishing Socrates as radically as possible from other members of the sophistic movement, with whom he may actually have had some affinities. But their strategies differ. In both authors, Socrates devotes himself, like the sophists, to dialectical argument and the drawing of distinctions. In both, he refuses, unlike the sophists, to receive payment. In Xenophon, however, he uses argument to support, in contrast to the sophists, a traditional and conventional understanding of the virtues. In Plato, on the other hand, it is a serious question whether he holds any views of his own, and his main difference from the sophists is that, unlike them, he never presents himself as a teacher of any subject.
Plato's and Xenophon's portraits, inconsistent as they are with Aristophanes', are also inconsistent with each other. This is the root of ‘the Socratic problem’, the question whether we can ever capture the personality and philosophy of the historical Socrates or whether we must limit ourselves to the interpretation of one or another of his literary representations. For various reasons, in the mid-19th cent. Plato replaced Xenophon as the most reliable witness for the historical Socrates, even though it is accepted that our knowledge of the latter can be at best a matter of speculation.
Oh, and I don't think anybody thinks that the views in Republic are Socrates' rather than Plato's.
Which of the 'Socratic' dialogues have you actually read, by the way?
