1997 0-7734-8628-3 The essays in this volume were specially planned and solicited because of their various contributions to a dialogical reading of the Platonic dialogues. Emphasis on the dialogical is a way of advocating an approach that appreciates the dialogues in their witty humorousness, their irony, their literary richness and historical allusiveness. The work also deals ultimately with the question of the compatibility, or incompatibility of the dogmatic or doctrinal approach to the dialogues.