Three levels of the Socrates's Irony in the Platonic dialogues

There is no doubt that understanding Plato’s dialogues in a philosophical way is depended to understanding that what the position of Socrates is? And first of all, because we know that Socrates is the Master of Irony we should consider and try to understand how his Irony works? But the question then arises about the nature of Socratic irony. This has been considered by many scholars who discussed about Socrates. This article aims at the first to give a review on the history of Irony from ancient Greek texts until the Modern’s, and then according to that review explain the necessity of returning to understanding the nature of Socratic irony. After that with recognizing levels of Socrates’ irony in the Platonic dialogues, we’re going to achieve the purpose of the article. The levels of Socrates’ irony that discussed in our classification are: 1. Rhetorical 2. Existential 3. Ontological.