ABSTRACT
Another means of leaving dialogue behind is dialogue within the dialogue. Here I am not thinking of the literary technique of the framework-dialogue, as it can be seen used in the Phaedo and the Euthydemus among other dialogues, but of the way in which the conversation which has been held till now is temporarily interrupted by the conversationleader and by the introduction of an imaginary person, whether as an imagined possibility or as a report of a conversation which has allegedly been held in the past. Indeed, formally it might look merely as if another conversation-partner is being included, as happens repeatedly in the Platonic dialogues. But because the new ‘person’ is clearly differentiated from the persons present at the conversation in that he does not have any individuality of his own but is simply representative of a certain position or a certain mentality, he can easily be recognised as a construction of the conversation-leader, who thus preserves the dialogue-form by means of the device while in reality suspending the conversation actually held up to this point in order to be able to give it the direction he desires.
