Plato and Platonism

hiefly through the influence of Plato, inheriting, expanding

ll never attain, here were the sophistai,+ the experts-wise men, who proposed to make other people as wise as themselves, wise in that sort of wisdom [100] regarding which we can really test others, and let them test us, not with the merely approximate results of the Socratic method, but with the exactness we may apply to processes understood to be mechanical, or to the proficiency of quite young students (such as in fact the Sophists were dealing with) by those examinations which are so sufficient in their proper place. It had been as delightful as learning a new game, that instruction, in which you could measure your daily progress by brilliant feats of skill. Not o

nal influence, there had been little to distinguish between Socrates and his professional rivals. Socrates in truth was a Sophist; but more than a Sophist. Both alike handled freely matters that to the fathers had seemed beyond question; encouraged what seemed impious questioning in the sons; had set "the hearts of the sons against the fathers"; and some instances there were in which the teaching of Socrates had been more conspicuously ruinous than theirs. "If you ask people at Athens," says Socrates in the Meno, "how virtue is to be attained, they will laugh in your face and say they don't so much as know what virtue is." And who was responsible for that? Certainly that Dialogue, proposing to discover the essential nature of virtue, by no means re-establishes one's old prepossessions abou

f that mobility, that daring mobility, of character has seemed to many the special contribution of the Greek people to advancing humanity. It was not however of the Greek people in general that Pericles was speaking at the beginning of the Peloponnesian [103] war, but of Athens in particular; of Athens, that perfect flower of Ionian genius, in direct contrast to, and now in bitter r

nfluences: its restless versatility drives it towards the assertion of the principles of individualism, of separatism-the separation of state from state, the maintenance of local religions, the development of the individual in that which is most peculiar and individual in him. Shut off land-wards from the primitive sources of those many elements it was to compose anew, shut off from all the rest of the world, to [104] which it presented but one narrow entrance pierced through that rock of Tempe, so narrow that "in the opinion of the ancients it

An enemy everywhere, though through acquired principle indeed rather than by instinct, to variegation, to what is cunning, or "myriad-minded" (as we say of Shakespeare, as Plato thinks of Homer) he sets himself in mythol

al and precious thing in the world, enforces everywhere the impress of its reasonable sanity; its candid reflexions upon things as they really are; its sense of logical proportion. It is that centripetal tendency,

, as made known to us especially in Lacedaemon, is the best illustration of it, in its love of order, of that severe composition everywhere, of which the Dorian style of architecture

age, they were really developing further and reinforcing the ruinous fluidity of the Greek, and especially of the Athenian people, by turning it very adroitly into a conscious method, a practical philosophy, an art of life itself, in which all those specific arts would be but subsidiary-an all-supplementing ars artium, a master-art, or, in depreciatory Platonic mood one might say, an artifice, or, cynically, a

en, pray? He asked.-When seated together in their thousands at the great assemblies, or in the law-courts, or the theatres, or the camp, or any other common gathering of the public, with much noise the majority praise this and blame [107] that in what is said and done, both alike in excess, shouting and clapping; and the very rocks too and the place in which they are, echoing around, send back redoubled that clamour of pr

n image) of some wild beast, which he knows how to command by a well-considered obedience to all its varying humours. If the Sophists are partly the cause they are still more the effect of the social environment. They had discovered, had ascertained with much acuteness, the actual momentum of the society which ma

y, as things themselves: will bring you, like some perfectly accomplished implement, to this carri?re ouverte, this open quarry, for the furtherance of your personal interests in the world." And if old- fashioned principle or prejudice be found in the way, who better than they could instruct one, not how to minimise, or violate it-that was not needed, nor perhaps desirable, regarding what was so useful for the control of

ers proceed to say, "teachers of persuasion (peithous didaskaloi)+ who impart skill in popular and forensic oratory; and so by fair means or by unfair we shall gain our ends." It is with the d?mos,+ with the vulgar, insubordinate, tag-

ut the nursing of his sickly body, excluding him from politics, keeps him back. Our own peculiarity is not worth speaking of-the sign from heaven! for I suppose it has occurred to scarce anyone before. And so, those who have been of this number, and have tasted how sweet and blessed the possession is; and again, having a full view of the folly of the many, and that no one, I might say, effects any sound result in what concerns the state, or is an ally in whose company one might proceed safe and sound to the help of the just, but that, like a man falling among wild beasts, neither willing to share their evil deeds, nor sufficient by himself to resist the whole fierce band, flung away before he shall have done any service [110] to the city or to his own friends, he would become useless both to hims

h, the eternally fixed outlines of things themselves. What the difference (difference in regard to continuity and clearness) really is between the conditions of mind, in which respectively the sophistic process, and the genuinely philosophical or dialectic process, as [111] conceived by Plato, leave us, is well illustrated by the peculiar treatment of Justice, its proper definition or idea, in The Republic. Justice (or Righteousness, as we say, more largely) under the light of a comprehensive experience of it, carefully, diligently, adjusted to the nature of man on the one hand, of society on the other, becomes in the fourth book of

hard to disbelieve," (sophos gar kai theios an?r)+ on the one hand; than that of the Sophists on the other, as represented by Thrasymachus. "Show us not only that justice is a better thing than Injustice; but, by doing wha

r or occupy, a certain space, as the exact area of Justice. And what happens with each proposed definition in turn is, that it becomes, under conceivable circumstances, a defini

ntroductory book of The Republic. The first book forms in truth an eristic, a destructive or negative, Dialogue (such as we have other examples of) in which the whole business might have concluded, prematurely, with an exposure of the inadequacy, alike of common-sense as represented by Simonides, and of a sophisticated philosophy as represented by Thrasymachus, to define

stinguish absolutely, ideally, as towards the intellect, what is, from what is not. To Plato, for whom, constitutionally, and ex hypothesi, what can be clearly thought is the precise measure of what really is, i

ind of casuistry, by the allegation of certain possible cases of conduct, the whole of that supposed area of the Just is occupied by definitions of Injustice, from this centre or that. Justice therefore- -its area, the space of experience which it covers, dissolves away, literally, as the eye is fixed upon it, like Heraclitean water: it is and is not. And if this, and the like of this, is to the last all that can be kn

rates [115] and the Sophists really was, amid much that they had in common, as being both

e Protagoras, and again still more effectively in the Phaedrus; the closing pages of which discover the essential point of that famous quarrel between the Sophists and Socrates or Plato, in regard to a matter which is [116] of permanent interest in itself, and as being not directly connected with practical morals is unaffected by the peculiar prejudices of that age. Art, the art of oratory, in particular, and of literary composition,-in this case, how one should write or speak really inflammatory discourses about love, write love- letters, so to speak, that shall really get at the heart they're meant for-that was a matter on which the Sophists had thought much professionally. And the debate introduced in the Phaedrus regarding the secret of success in proposals of love or friendship turns properly on this: whether it is necessary, or even advantageous, for one who would be a good orator, or writer, a poet, a good artist generally, to know, and consciously to keep himself in contact with, the truth of his subject as he knows or feels i

well acquainted with the truth of the things they are to speak about?"-"Nay!" answers Phaedrus, in that age of sophistry, "It is in this way I have heard about it:- that it is not necessary for one who would be a master of rhetoric to learn what re

inite patience which is the note of a sincere, a really impassioned lover of anything, says, in his convinced Lacedaemonian way, that a genuine art of speech (tou legein etumos techn?)+ unless one be in contact with truth, there neither is nor can be. We are reminded of that difference between genuine memory, and mere haphazard recollection, noted by Plato in the story he tells so well of the invention of writing in ancient Egypt.- It might be doubted, he thinks, whether genuine memory was encouraged by that invention. The note on the margin by the inattentive reader to "remind hi

ng freedom or precision, figure, emphasis, proportion of parts and the like, exordium and conclusion:-against all such the Platonic Socrates still protests, "You know what must be known before harmony can be attained, but not yet the laws of harmony itself,"-ta pro trag?dias,+ Sophocles would object in like case, ta pro trag?dias, all' ou tragika.+ Given the dynamic Sophoclean intention or conviction, and the irresistible law of right utterance, (anank? logogr

his own essential business in his own home, the young man would become, of course, proportionately less interested, less meanly interested, in what was superficial, in the mere outsides, of other people and their occupations. With the true artist indeed, with almost every expert, all knowledge, of almost every kind, tells, is attracted into, and duly charged with, the force of what [121] may be his leading apprehension. And as the special function of all speech as a fine art is the control of minds (psychag?gia)+ it is in general with knowledge of the soul of man-with a veritable p

n, anyone, beginning from things here below, through a right practice of love, ascending, begins to discern that other beauty, he will almost have reached the end. For this in truth is the right method of proceeding towards the doctrine of love, or of being conducted therein by another,-beginning from these beautiful objects here below ever to be going up higher, with that other beauty in view; using them as steps of a ladder; mounting from the love of one fair person to the love of two; and from the love of two to the love of all; and from the love of beautiful persons to the love of beautiful employments-kala epit?deumata+ (that means being a soldier, or a priest, or a scholar) and from the love of beautiful employments to the love of beautiful kinds of knowledge; till he passes from degrees of knowledge to that knowledge which is the knowledge of nothing else save the absolute Beauty itself, and knows it at length as in itself it really is. At this moment of life, dear Socrates! said the Mantinean Sibyl, if at any moment, man truly lives, beholding the absolute beauty-the which, so you have once seen it, will appear beyond the comparison of gold, or raiment, or those beautiful young persons, seeing whom now, like many another, you are so over

st for Plato, things that were "an end in themselves"; and the Platonic Socrates was right:- Plato has written so w

O

ell and Scott definition: "at Athens,

." Pater refers to the Funeral Oration given by Pericles to commemorate the Athenians wh

ato, Rep

kaloi. Pater's translation: "teachers

os. Liddell and Scott defi

ato, Rep

y every part . . . of its own proper business therein." The translation elaborat

translation: "The doing, by every part . . . of its

n?r. E-text editor's translation: "for he was

sa. Pater's translation: "but, by do

aut?n. Pater's translation: "in an

didonai. Pater's translation: "to restore wh

Liddell and Scott definition: "Th

s techn?. Pater's translation: "a genui

etai. E-text editor's translation: "In the art of speaking, therefore, the person who does not know the truth, who has so

Pater's translation: "[a] bastard ar

in?se?s. E-text editor's translation: "Concerning brevity, and spee

E-text editor's translation: "the thing

ika. E-text editor's translation: "the things before

translation: "[the manner] required [in] prose-writing or sp

's translation: "in accordance with received opi

lation: "the control of minds." The verb ag? mean

?. Pater's translation: "[not] by mere empiric routine, but

text editor's translation: "fine things ar

mata. Pater's translation: "beautifu

t editor's translation: "of one kind, s

t editor's translation: "with what i

ion: "imaginative reason." The word nous or noos

iotima's speech about love-runs