Abstract

THE PLATONIC DIALOGUES are not treatises in disguise. They are protreptic and proleptic instruments, positioning the reader dispositionally and providing hints for the work of completing the direction of thought by attending to "the things themselves," the phenomena to which human beings, properly attuned, have native access. Plato, I would contend, is a protophenomenologist whose dialogues yield significant coherent results when approached from that point of view.