My book Plato's Phaedo: Forms, Death and the Philosophical Life has recently been published by Cambridge University Press (2023). The first paragraph of the introduction explains my basic approach:

The Phaedo is a literary gem that develops many of Plato’s most famous ideas and arguments, so it comes as no surprise that there are trenchant debates and deep disagreements about almost every part of the dialogue. This book argues that these debates and disagreements cannot be resolved so long as we consider the dialogue’s passages in relative isolation from one another, separated from their intellectual context. Many of the Phaedo’s ideas can only be fully understood once one recognizes how Plato is engaging with and responding to ideas in his literary, religious, scientific, and philosophical context. Moreover, the dialogue itself is tightly unified in such a way that one can fully understand its central ideas and arguments only in light of its overall structure. Even arguments that appear to stand on their own rely on claims made elsewhere in the dialogue. Carefully working through the details with an eye to the dialogue’s structure and aims, in light of its context, is the best way to understand it. And so, I have written this as a comprehensive treatment of the dialogue. This overall approach yields new interpretations of key ideas in the Phaedo, including the nature and existence of “Platonic” forms, the continued existence of the soul after death, the method of hypothesis, and the contemplative ethical ideal. Moreover, this approach shows how the interaction between the characters plays an integral role in the Phaedo’s development and how its literary structure complements Socrates’ views while making its own distinctive contribution to the dialogue’s drama and ideas.