| Yes, everything we have from Socrates was written by Plato. We do, however, know that Socrates was a real person. Common (informed) opinion is that the early dialogues in particular were fairly accurate reports of Socrates teachings -- the later we are less clear about. The common parlance is to refer to the Socratic dialogues (which I did; except when I said that Socrates put it better) and to Socrates stories to seperate them from the works of Plato as himself -- which is very useful to highlight the rather significant differences between the two streams of thought. The analogy of Socrates to Karamazov is misleading, Karamazov was a purely fictional character; Socrates was not.
(And if you really want to be technical about it, then I would have to point out it's an allegory, not an analogy) |