Platone, il dialogo socratico e lo spoudaiogheloion

This paper deals with the accounts of the most significant attestations of seriousness (spoude), ridiculous (geloion) and playfulness (padia) occurring in the Corpus Platonicum. These notions form an almost inextricable jumble. Understanding the links between them is essential to grasp some core features of Plato’s thought: the serio-comic structure of the genre he employs, the dialogue; the role of the dialogue in the search for knowledge; and the serio-comic and serious-playful ambivalences of his main character Socrates. The aim of this paper is to shed light on these connections.