Hossein Jorjani
First publication: 2026 – 07 – 05
Readers approaching Plato for the first time are often struck by the kinds of questions that dominate his dialogues. Contrary to modern expectations, Socrates rarely investigates material objects or natural phenomena. Instead, his discussions almost invariably concern concepts: justice, courage, temperance, piety, friendship, beauty, knowledge, virtue, the good, and the nature of political leadership. Even when concrete examples are introduced, they generally serve as points of departure rather than as the principal objects of inquiry.
This preference is not accidental. Socrates repeatedly redirects the discussion away from particular instances toward the universal concept that those instances are thought to exemplify. When an interlocutor offers examples of courageous actions, Socrates asks not for additional examples but for the common characteristic that makes all of them instances of courage. Likewise, discussions of beautiful objects become inquiries into beauty itself, and examples of just actions become inquiries into justice itself.
The epistemological function of examples in Plato’s dialogues therefore differs markedly from their function in modern empirical science. In the dialogues, examples primarily illuminate concepts. They help clarify meanings, test definitions, and expose conceptual inconsistencies. Their role is philosophical rather than evidential.
Modern empirical science typically proceeds in the opposite direction. It begins with observations, measurements, experiments, or populations of concrete objects and gradually constructs increasingly general concepts and explanatory models. Observations are not merely illustrations; they constitute the empirical foundation upon which scientific knowledge is built.
Neither approach excludes the other, but they assign fundamentally different roles to concrete experience. In Platonic inquiry, examples serve conceptual clarification. In empirical inquiry, observations serve empirical investigation. Plato moves from examples toward concepts; modern science moves from observations toward concepts and explanatory models.
This distinction helps explain an important feature of Plato’s dialogues. Craftsmen, physicians, mathematicians, sailors, athletes, politicians, and countless everyday situations appear throughout the conversations. Yet these examples are seldom investigated for their own sake. Rather, they function as analogies through which broader questions concerning knowledge, virtue, justice, or reality may be examined. Their philosophical value lies less in the particular facts they describe than in the conceptual relationships they help disclose.
Seen in this light, the Platonic dialogues are concerned less with explaining the material world than with examining the conceptual framework through which human beings understand themselves and their world. The dialogue becomes a laboratory not for investigating nature, but for investigating thought itself.
Hossein Jorjani 