Listening instead of Reading Plato

At a conference I attended this winter at Quinnipiac University, I was discussing favorite philosophers with a colleague at the bar. (Yeah, that’s what we do at academic conferences.) He favored Derrida, but had a soft spot for Kant; a strange combination. I was reading William James and Charles Sanders Peirce at the time. I mentioned that I was listening to the Socratic Dialogues on tape while running. I’d listened to all of them by then, at least the ones I could find recording of. He asked me what I had learned so far. Had to think about that for a while.

Here’s a brief list of what you get when you listen to the dialogues rather than read them, when you approach them orally rather than textually.  

1. Plato was a funny guy; some passages of the dialogues are roll-on-the-ground funny. Most are obviously satirical. (Notable exception: The Laws, which are also quite boring.)
2. Plato may have had a love/hate relationship with Socrates; such tension is common in mentor relationships; he sometimes depicts Socrates as senile.  
3. Plato was as sophistic as they come; Though he (Often I'm not sure if I'm hearing Plato or Socrates) insisted on the truth from others, he wasn’t above lying to them himself, as long as it was for their own good;
4. Plato/Socrates wasn’t a philosopher. His main goal was improving the virtue of Athens. His philosophy is actually a theory of education. Read the dialogues that way and the inconsistencies disappear.
5. Socrates, as depicted by Plato, was passionate about one thing, Athens; that’s why . . .
6. In Plato’s version of The Apology, Socrates wanted to die for Athens; He intentionally threw the trial. The only fate for a virtuous man in Athens was death.