Publication Details

Abstract

The present article focuses on the dramatic context of Plato’s dialogue Phaedo tracing in it, in one hand, a confrontation of philosophical and poetical approaches and, intertextual references to the Apology on the other hand. Consequently, Plato’s intention as the author seems to be double: take a “revenge” for the trial and execution of Socrates, as well as to put the high philosophy “on trial”. This testing of the bounda- ries of the philosophy itself can be only launched from the standpoint of a competing side, which is poetry. That is why in Plato’s work the poetry, working with mythos, remains a permanent incentive to descend from the heights of idealism to a lower, second-best type of philosophy which takes into account the real conditions.