SOURCE: "On Socrates, with Reference to Gregory Vlastos," in The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. XXXIII, No. 2, December, 1979, pp. 371-89.

Below, Haden refers to an essay by Gregory Vlastos in which Vlastos maintains that Plato's Socrates is highly reflective of the historical Socrates. Haden argues that as Plato's Socrates has "exercised the decisive influence down through the centuries," it is valuable, whether or not one agrees with Vlastos, to examine Vlastos's conclusions and test them for their "adequacy." Haden goes on to fault Vlastos for measuring Socrates "by a New Testament model."

I

In his essay "The Paradox of Socrates,"¹ Gregory Vlastos paints a vivid and moving portrait of Socrates, or, as he puts it: "the Platonic Socrates, or, to be more precise, the Socrates of Plato's early dialogues."² That the man who emerges from these early dialogues is something very like the actual Socrates is Vlastos's opinion. He...