strauss can give you an appreciation for his interlocutors

>>25040214
I'm studying him in school

>>25040214
The interlocutors are stock characters generally hence having sarcastic names like “euthy Phroneo.” Not all of them are but many of them clearly were just made up as stock characters to convey a point.

>>25040348
That's not true. The most evidently made up character is Diotima, on account of having specific responses to the people present from a speech 25 years in the past. The interlocutors do stand in for "types" of people, but they're not simply made up, and they're chosen because their historical personagesstood for this or that.

>>25040314
Perfect description. I've gotten tired of explaining to retards the very careful way Socrates approached conversations to dispel the very ironically retarded notions contained in his interlocutors, that retards like OP parrot "SOCRATES JUST SAYS SOMETHING SMART AND OBVIOUS AND THEN EVERYBODY AGREES".

Im tired of stupid people.

>>25040356
It's likely that if Plato intended that, a consequence is just as much that he expected and counted on some readers misunderstanding him in that way, so one pretty much has to learn to stand by bemused and shrug.

The one who talks with Socrates:
>he's beautiful isn't he
Socrates:
>mmm yes

>>25040354
Sophists and rhetoricians like Callicles or Gorgias or Protagoras were definitely real but the ones like Euthyphro who weren’t attested to sophists with an actual teaching/ school or thought are just stock characters. Euthphyro is supposed to be a generic brain dead religious zealot.

>>25040374
Lack of testimony may be a standard for deciding when a figure is simply fictional, but it isn't the only standard. Diotima can be considered purely fictional both because she's completely unattested, but also because her speeches, as shared by Socrates, took place, as he emphasizes, 10 years before the plague broke out at the start of the Peloponnesian War, and yet one of her speeches practically addresses each other speaker in the Symposium one-by-one (because Socrates is addressing everyone present indirectly), and in a context where Plato disavows direct knowledge of the occasion (Apollodorus relating Phoenix relating Aristodemus). Whereas Euthyphro is both attested to in Plato's Cratylus, and is discussed as someone with concrete family relations and a role in the assembly, which would be harder to make up. If you had considered the other interlocutors as a whole, it'd be evident how completely uncommon it would be. Only Timaeus and Callicles are speakers unattested in surviving writings, inscriptions, and other dialogues. Meno similarly has his name played on, insofar as he "remains" in place throughout the conversation, and he was perfectly historical.

>>25040314
>>25040356
>if you think I'm stupid, it is actually YOU who is stupid
>I'm not stupid though, because I know that I know nothing.
>even though I only say that to prove that you're stupid and I'm not
who the hell listens to this hack

>>25040418
People smarter than you, for one

>>25040214
despite all his rage he is still just a cat on this page