Dialogue Is the Best Kind of Education

Socrates argues in the phidrus that oral discussion is a far better way to get closer to the truth than the written word. Dialogue has knowledge affirming value because t allows all parties to question everything from all possible angles. It might then seem odd that plato took the trouble to write down dialogues that future readers were bound to misunderstand, revile or use in self serving ways,. as indeed they have. But the difference between discussing knowledge, virtue, politics or the soul through written dialogue or in non dialogic form, is that dialogues, at least plato's, do not claim to set out settled truths about any of these subjects. They merely expose fallacies in various