Plato dispersed his account of how Socrates
became
Socrates across three dialogues. Thus, Plato rendered his becoming discoverable only to readers truly invested. In
How Socrates Became Socrates
, Laurence Lampert recognizes the path of Plato’s strides and guides us through the true account of Socrates’ becoming. He divulges how and why Plato ordered his
Phaedo
,
Parmenides
, and
Symposium
chronologically to give readers access to Socrates’ development on philosophy’s fundamental questions of being and knowing.
In addition to a careful and precise analysis of Plato’s
Phaedo,
Parmenides,
and
Symposium,
Lampert shows that properly entwined, Plato’s three dialogues fuse to portray a young thinker entering philosophy’s true radical power. Lampert reveals why this radicality needed to be guarded and places this discussion within the greater scheme of the politics of philosophy.