Literature and philosophy

Abstract

Literature is an artistic practice that tries to capture contingency, diversity, and movement in reality. In fact, literary art is made up of approximating essays. It´s an essayist art. Philosophy, all along history, has almost always shown a contrary tendency, as it reduces the richness of diversity to conceptual units, it tries to discover whatever is essential, and form systemic ideas. In this article, however, we would like to analyse a philosophic text that contradicts such tendency, namely, Menon, a dialogue written by Plato.We intend to show that the dialectic procedures developed by Plato come up with an essay on the central theme - virtue - which motivates the dialogic aspect in Menon. The Platonic concepts that will help to make all this clearer are doxa (opinion), alethésdoxa (true opinion), and eudoxia (harmonious opinion). If philosophizing becomes essay-like, then philosophizing is in tune with the art of literature.