ABSTRACT
The most obvious of these characteristics of Plato’s works have generally been interpreted too readily in the spirit of our age’s current thought-patterns. Because scholars have thought that in this way they already have the correct answers, they have again and again failed to ask the really essential questions of the evidence of the dialogues themselves. In what follows, let me enumerate some of the usual misunderstandings, which we must avoid, together with the most important questions that emerge when we consider the list of characteristics.
