Platonic Dialogues which are the most famous example of Ancient Greek dialogues while certainly having a pedagogical function for the audience were polished and refined texts by writers who had the lessons they intended to impart before they began writing this. It is not a quick and easy method for the truth—it a a byproduct of having arrived at one’s own truth. A literary genre. As such they a martial art (a liberal art, maybe, but not martial) - they are more like watching training film or a manual for martial art rather than being a form of oratory combat in and of themselves. (In the end of the Topics Aristotle does propose a system for training philosophical ability—but this is not a “dialogue”—it isn’t intended to be written down, and he claims his school invented it: suggesting it is a totally different beast to the Platonic Dialogues or even his own Exoteric works which while lost were known to be dialogues.).
Not only that, I’m sure that in Gorgias at least there was no intent to “reach a conclusion” with his interlocutors, it is adversarial. Calllicles even calls out Socrates for laying “traps” for Gorgias—trying to get him to admit that he will teach anyone who pays, even a man who isn’t trained in virtue, rhetoric. This is not because Gorgias is a poor naive soul who doesn’t realize the harm of what he’s doing, Socrates knows it, Gorgias knows it, even Callicles knows it. But of course the last two won’t admit it because… well why would they?
I’m convinced Plato was very much intended to skewer and satirize the Sophists. Plato is actually very funny.
Why you’re trying to distinguish Ancient Greek dialogues from trolling then, and then to say they are martial art is very confusing to me.
Platonic Dialogues which are the most famous example of Ancient Greek dialogues while certainly having a pedagogical function for the audience were polished and refined texts by writers who had the lessons they intended to impart before they began writing this. It is not a quick and easy method for the truth—it a a byproduct of having arrived at one’s own truth. A literary genre. As such they a martial art (a liberal art, maybe, but not martial) - they are more like watching training film or a manual for martial art rather than being a form of oratory combat in and of themselves. (In the end of the Topics Aristotle does propose a system for training philosophical ability—but this is not a “dialogue”—it isn’t intended to be written down, and he claims his school invented it: suggesting it is a totally different beast to the Platonic Dialogues or even his own Exoteric works which while lost were known to be dialogues.).
Not only that, I’m sure that in Gorgias at least there was no intent to “reach a conclusion” with his interlocutors, it is adversarial. Calllicles even calls out Socrates for laying “traps” for Gorgias—trying to get him to admit that he will teach anyone who pays, even a man who isn’t trained in virtue, rhetoric. This is not because Gorgias is a poor naive soul who doesn’t realize the harm of what he’s doing, Socrates knows it, Gorgias knows it, even Callicles knows it. But of course the last two won’t admit it because… well why would they?
I’m convinced Plato was very much intended to skewer and satirize the Sophists. Plato is actually very funny.
Why you’re trying to distinguish Ancient Greek dialogues from trolling then, and then to say they are martial art is very confusing to me.