Plato never says what he thinks.
His dialogues have characters, settings, dramatic tension. Socrates argues, gets contradicted, sometimes wins, sometimes retreats. Other speakers propose theories, defend positions, get refuted.
And Plato? Where is Plato in all this?
He is hidden. Deliberately.
The dialogue form means the reader must do the work: follow the argument, evaluate objections, decide who is right. There is no author telling you "the answer is X." There is only a conversation you must interpret.
Showing vs. telling
Most philosophers tell. They write: "I argue that justice is X," then provide premises and derivations. The reader's job is to check the logic.
Plato shows. He dramatizes a conversation in which the question "What is justice?" gets tested from multiple angles. The reader must reconstruct what Plato might think by observing how the arguments unfold, which objections are taken seriously, which conclusions survive scrutiny.
This is harder. But it is also more honest. Philosophical questions rarely admit of simple, declarative answers. By showing rather than telling, Plato acknowledges the complexity of the inquiry.
Why some dialogues don't conclude
Many Platonic dialogues end in aporia—a state of puzzlement where no definitive answer has been reached. Euthyphro asks "What is piety?" and ends without a satisfactory definition. Laches examines courage and concludes only that further inquiry is needed.
This frustrates some readers. Why didn't Plato just tell us what he thinks?
Because the point is not to deliver a doctrine. The point is to show that certain questions—questions we thought we understood—are actually harder than they appear. Euthyphro thinks he knows what piety is. By the end of the dialogue, he realizes he doesn't. That realization is the philosophical achievement.
Aporia is not failure. It is the clearing of false certainty, making space for genuine understanding.
Reading without looking for "the moral"
There is a temptation to treat Platonic dialogues like fables: read them, extract "the moral," move on. This misses the point.
The value of a dialogue is not in its conclusion (if it has one) but in the process. The moves Socrates makes, the objections he raises, the distinctions he draws—these are what you should attend to. You are learning a method, not a doctrine.
Consider the Republic. It is tempting to read it as "Plato's theory of the ideal state," memorize the three-part soul and the philosopher-kings, and call it done. But the Republic is not a blueprint. It is an extended investigation into the nature of justice, using the ideal city as a model. The question is not "Would this city work?" but "What does this model reveal about justice itself?"
If you read for conclusions, you will find contradictions and loose ends. If you read for method, you will find one of the most sophisticated philosophical minds ever at work.