Despite the fact that the word 'Platonic' is repeatedly attached to a whole series of concepts from Platonic love to the theory of forms, it is, in fact, very difficult to attribute secure authorship to the ideas expressed in his dialogues. This is not because we cannot be sure that Plato wrote these words himself. By and large, with a few notable exceptions, one can be almost certain that the works we have are by Plato and have been transmitted in the same form as they existed in antiquity. It is rather that Plato deliberately removes his signature from his writings in a series of distancing strategies. First there is the genre of the dialogue: Plato transforms Heraclitus' dialectics from a philosophical position to a method of philosophizing. Through its very nature, the dialogue form invites a plurality of perspectives rather than a single dogmatic position. Second, Plato completely removes himself as a protagonist from the scene of philosophy. His name does appear in a couple of dialogues but he is only invoked to ultimately explain his absence. In the Phaedo.