system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why did Plato write dialogues?

Why did Plato write dialogues? And why did he choose Socrates as the main character in those dialogues?
gpt
Plato thinks philosophy happens in conversation. We can't be there to talk with him, so he gave us examples of good conversation.

However, Plato also opposed *writing.*

Plato strongly believed that philosophers should not write down doctrines. He states this in the *Seventh Letter* and *Phaedrus* most explicitly. Basically, Plato believed that written doctrines could fall into the wrong hands and be abused by sophists. They could also be used to attack the writer in their absence. One cannot anticipate questions, objections, etc., and a person could intentionally distort your written document to attack you or others.

A written doctrine, more importantly, cannot speak in its own defense. Plato speaks about this quite often. One cannot question, say, Parmenides to see what he really meant (and in fact, Plato talks about people abusing Parmenides' text for this reason; cf. *Sophist*). Likewise, when someone gives their doctrines in a poem or prose (reciting them as a speech), the audience listens, but doesn't ask questions.

Furthermore, Plato believes that a philosopher should approach each person differently, knowing like a doctor the right "medicine" for a person. Just like drugs in the hands of a non-doctor are dangerous, written texts or speeches taken out of context are dangerous for the soul (cf. *Phaedrus*).

The dialogue genre accounts for these problems by "inserting a interlocutor," someone who can ask questions for us (since we cannot be present for the actual conversation). The conversation can be tailored for this person's ears, thus allowing us to watch the process of education at work for the interlocutor. 

This also subordinates the writing to the original speakers, where we placed at a distance from the "doctrinal, dogmatic" content, and instead have to infer the philosophical content from what Socrates talked about with so-and-so at such and such a place. 

To put it briefly, the dialogue genre gives a context for the specific things said. Written doctrines have no context, lending themselves to abuse.



The whole thing, basically, is a clever way to prevent "Plato" from ever becoming "Platonism." 

Unfortunately, Aristotle tells us what Plato's unwritten doctrines were, letting the cat out of the bag.