Plato and the Variety of Literary Production

In the polarity between the hedgehog and the fox, as underlined by Isaac Berlin, Plato’s literary production recalls the fox more than the hedgehog. Typical of the fox is the play that Plato develops in the sign of the dissimulation both with the code of irony and with the style that changes in the relationship to the characters. Certainly, the complex connection between mimesis and diegesis does not evoke the hedgehog and, in any case, we can say that Plato’s literary production persuades as it does not dismiss the poikilia. In the direction of the fox goes the intertwinement between genres, epics, historiography, epideictics, comedy and tragedy, hymn and encomium, for the celebration of the bios illuminated by the ideal reality.