Didactic Platonism: a System of Thought and its Metaphysical Patterns / Anti-Dogmatic Patterns

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The aim of the overall project is to examine the schematic trend in Platonism, a trend that might seem very strange because it concerns a philosophy connected to a corpus of dialogues that resisted several attempts at systematization. The aim of this part of the project – which was not foreseen in the original project and for which I am asking for a one-year extension – is to study some isagogical questions that may bear witness to the Socratic way of arguing. What I wish to show is that even those who believed it was impossible to infer any doctrine from the dialogues – namely, the Neo-Academics – derived from them a method to justify the use of reading schemes that were bound to support a doctrinal system. The didactic hints scattered throughout Plato’s dialogues gave certain discussions (and later doctrines) a methodological foundation. This method not only helped clarify certain discussions or doctrines, but also assigned them a truth content.