PLATO 



229 



I 



Xenophon, Plato does not go beyond what the 

 actual Socrates might have said. Such are the 

 dialogues which deal with some particular virtue ; 

 thus, in the Charmides Socrates questions the 

 beautiful and modest youth Charmides as to what 

 the virtue of modesty or ' temperance ' is. In the 

 Laches he questions the soldier Laches about 

 courage. The most important of this group is the 

 Protagoras, in which Socrates argues against this 

 famous sophist that all virtue is one, and that it is 

 identical with knowledge. Some of these slighter 

 dialogues may have been composed before the 

 death of Socrates ; Diogenes Laertius tells us that 

 Socrates on hearing Plato read the Lysis ( which 

 deals with friendship) said : 'O Hercules ! what a 

 lot of lies the young fellow has told aliout me.' 

 Ancient tradition made the Phcedrus the earliest 

 dialogue ; but this almost certainly belongs to a 

 later period, though earlier than the Republic. 

 The Apology, or ' Defence of Socrates on his Trial,' 

 has probably more historical accuracy than any 

 other composition of Plato's ( Plato tells us he was 

 present at the trial), and may have been written 

 soon after the death of Socrates. The Euthyphro 

 (concerning piety) and the Crito (Socrates in 

 prison) may belong to the same period. The 

 Phfedo, however ( the last conversation of Socrates, 

 on the immortality of the soul ), is probably of 

 later date, as it implies the theory of ideas, and 

 may be assigned to a time after Plato's visit to 

 Sicily i.e. after he had come more strongly under 

 Pythagorean inlluences. Some modern scholars, 

 laying great stress on the ' Megaric ' influence, 

 assign the great metaphysical dialogues (Par- 

 menides, Thecetetus, Sophist, Statesman) to the time 

 between 399 and 386, when Plato began his teach- 

 ing at the Academy. Others, with more prob- 

 ability, consider these dialogues and the Philebus 

 to belong to a later period tiian the Republic, and 

 this opinion is gaining ground. The Phcedrus, 

 Symposium ( ' Banquet ' ), Goryias, Republic, Phcedo, 

 in which ( along with the Tliecetetus) Plato's literary 

 skill is at its very highest, may perhaps lie all 

 assigned to the period of his life after forty, but 

 before his old age. In these dialogues the personal 

 characteristics ascribed to Socrates are probably 

 represented with historical and, at least, with 

 dramatic truth ; but theories are introduced which 

 betray strong Pythagorean influences. We must 

 of course remember that while Plato idealises 

 Socrates, and makes him more of a metaphysician 

 than in all probability he was, Xenophon, who has 

 a very nnphilosophical mind, most certainly under- 

 states him, and makes him more of a common- 

 place moralist than he must have been in order to 

 stimulate Greek thought as he did. In the 

 <v Plato would have felt it inappropriate to 

 make Socrates the exponent of theories about the 

 physical universe, and after a short introductory 

 conversation the dialogue form is deserted, and 

 Tim.'eus, a Pythagorean, expounds the cosmogony 

 of his school. In the Sophist and Statesman ' an 

 Eleatic stranger' is the chief speaker; in the 

 Parmenides the youthful Socrates is criticised by 

 the great Eleatic philosopher. In the Laws 

 Socrates does not appear at all, the leading speaker 

 being 'an Athenian stranger' (Plato himself?). 

 May we not regard this as an indication that in his 

 later years Plato felt himself farther away from 

 his master ? These later dialogues, in fact, seem 

 like a transition from the Plato of the Phcedrus 

 and of the Republic to Aristotle. 



It is customary to treat of Plato's philosophy 

 iimlertlie three heads of dialectic (or logic), physics, 

 and ethics. But, it must l>e rememliered, these 

 divisions did not exist for Plato himself, nor, in 

 fact, had he, strictly speaking, a 'system' of philo- 

 sophy. Plato's philosophy may most correctly l>e 



regarded as a development of the teaching of 

 Socrates, but containing elements derived from 

 the earlier philosophies from which Socrates had 

 purposely turned away. Aristotle's philosophy is, 

 however, a development of Plato's ; and we, know- 

 ing what becomes of Plato's suggestions in the 

 hands of his pupil, are able and apt to see a greater 

 amount of system than Plato himself would have 

 recognised. 



The dialogue was to Plato much more than a 

 mere literary form into which he chose to fit his 

 thoughts. The 'conversations of Socrates' gave 

 to Plato his conception of the method of philo- 

 sophy. ' Dialectic ' conies from a word which 

 means 'to converse,' 'to discuss;' and it is signi- 

 ficant that Athenian philosophy originated not in 

 the meditations of the solitary recluse, but in the 

 discussions of a city of talkers. It is said that 

 Zeno the Eleatic used the dialogue for philosophical 

 writing before Plato, but this is very doubtful. 

 In many of the later dialogues the chief speaker 

 has so much of the talking to himself that the 

 dialogue becomes a rather empty form, and is 

 evidently yielding place to the lecture as the vehicle 



of philosophical exposition. 

 According t 



to a well-known sentence of Aristotle, 

 the germs of logical doctrine which may be ascribed 

 to Socrates are ' the inductive method ' and the 

 endeavour to get 'general definitions.' When 

 people spoke about persons or acts as just or 

 beautiful, Socrates would insist on asking ' What 

 is justice?' 'What is beauty?' and would test 

 every definition brought forward by applying it 

 to particular instances, content to remove error 

 even where complete truth could not be obtained. 

 This is the procedure of Plato in the earlier dia- 

 logues. In the Tftetetetus, however, the Pjatonic 

 Socrates asks the profounder question, ' What is 

 knowledge?" i.e. true or scientific knowledge. It 

 is not 'sensation' (or 'perception'), as Protagoras 

 and his followers suggest : sensation alone gives us 

 no objective certainty, valid for every one. Nor is 

 it 'opinion.' Opinion may be true, but has no 

 certainty. A man only ' knows ' when he has got 

 at the reasons or causes of things, when he sees 

 facts not in an isolated way, but connected by the 

 'chain of causation' (Meno): he must be dealing 

 with what is permanent and universal. What 

 then is this? Plato's answer comes to be found 

 in the theory of 'Ideas.' (The word means pro- 

 perly 'forms' or 'shapes,' and so 'kinds.' The 

 analogy of sculpture may help one to understand 

 how the Greeks came to regard 'the form,' in 

 contrast to the ' material,' as the essential element.) 

 This theory, following Aristotle's guidance, we 

 may consider a development of the Socratic ' uni- 

 versal conception,' and also of the Pythagorean 

 doctrine of 'numbers.' By this theory Plato 

 seeks to reconcile the opposing views of the 

 Heracliteans and of the Eleatics (q.v. ). Accord- 

 ing to Plato, both the one, the permanent, and the 

 manifold, the changing, have their place in the 

 universe, the former in the world of ideas, the 

 intelligible world, with which 'science' deals, the 

 latter in the world of sense, with which mere 

 ' opinion ' is content. In the Republic Plato 

 elaborates this theory of knowledge, and gives 

 a symbolical representation of it in the famous 

 image or 'myth' of 'the Cave.' The majority of 

 mankind arc pictured by him as prisoners in a 

 subterranean cavern, chained with their backs to 

 a fire, looking at the shadows thrown by it on the 

 rocky wall and mistaking them for realities. The 

 turning round of some of these prisoners to the 

 light, and the toilsome ascent up the steep slope 

 to the month of the cave, and the gradual training 

 of their eyes bewildered in the sumipht to see the 

 real things in the upper world, and finally to look 



