Faced with the difficult task of distinguishing Plato's real ideas from the contradictory voices he used to express, the researchers did not show absolute meaning from the many incompatibilities within and between the dialogues. In the book "Plato's Plato," Catherine Zacert explains for the first time how this prose drama combines to reveal a comprehensive Platonic understanding of philosophy. To expose this coherence, Zuckert examines the dialogues not in the order of their supposed composition but in the dramatic order in which Plato refers to their occurrence.

This unconventional arrangement places a story about the rise, evolution and limitations of Socratic philosophy. In the first drama dialogues, for example, non-Socratic philosophers offer the political and philosophical problems that Socrates tries to respond to.

A second dramatic collection shows how Socrates developed his distinctive philosophical style. Finally, the following dialogues feature interlocutors who reveal the limitations of his philosophy.

Despite these limitations, Zuckert concludes that Plato made Socrates the central figure of the dialogue because Socrates raises the fundamental human question: What is the best way to live?