The author: Michael Stokes' previous writings include One
and Many in Presocratic Philosophy, Plato's Socratic Conversations:
Drama and Dialectic in Three Dialogues, and Plato's Apology.
Plato's Crito examines a single moral decision, whether Socrates
ought to escape from his death-cell. Stokes' book discusses Socrates'
arguments against Crito's offer of escape. It construes Socrates'
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 Socrates' whole strategy. It demonstrates both the shakiness
of Socrates' persuasion of the un-philosophical Crito to engage
in dialectic, and the coherence of his substantive confutation.
Plato's reasoning emerges from Stokes' study with more credit than
many have given it.
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