3 ms·

Great comment! I just have one clarification- > to my knowledge, no other philosophical writers in his place and time have been preserved, so we have no idea w

Great comment! I just have one clarification- > to my knowledge, no other philosophical writers in his place and time have been preserved, so we have no idea what his literary context was like We do have surviving works from Aristotle, who studied directly under Plato. He too published some of his writings as dialogues, although he also wrote treatises.

maxander 9y ago
You're right, for some reason I was thinking there was a generation gap there, but it's true that Aristotle did his own teaching also in Athens only a bit later. But I think my point survives, since what we have of Aristotle's works are thought to actually be notes compiled by his students- not intended as finished publications at all. Whether they were released to the public in his time seems to be unknown- there's a story about them being locked in a cellar for a generation before being rediscovered, but apparently that's apocryphal.