Plato’s notion of hypothesis in dialogues Meno, Phaedo and The Republic

The author analyses Plato?s use of the hypothesis notion in connection with his hypotheses method, as it was articulated in Meno and Phaedo, and later criticized in The Republic. It is shown that, at first, Plato?s use of this notion was identical to its use in ancient Greek mathematics, and that the same stands in regards with his method of inquiry - this, too, was at first modeled after ancient Greek mathematical methods of analysis and diorismos. Later, as he developed the metaphysical theory of forms, Plato distanced himself from ideal of building philosophy on the model of ancient Greek deductive science and established it as auto reflexive, critical thinking instead, with dialectics as method in its own right.