Plato

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Plato

 

connected with the trial and death of So-
crates, the Phcedo> which represents the last
scenes in the prison, and includes a discussion
of the immortality of the soul.
The late group includes, besides the Laws,
which is the latest of all, and the Timaus,
which contains Plato's cosmological theories
a group of five very abstract and difficult
dialogues in which fundamental, speculative,
ethical, and political questions are discussed.
These five are the Thecetetus, the Phikbus,
perhaps the most important of all the later
dialogues; and a group of three (the Par-
menides, Sophist, and Politicus).
The remaining dialogues that call for men-
tion come probably somewhere between the
early and the late group. In the Protagoras,
we find Plato pushing the hedonistic aspect

is usually regarded as being, from a purely
literary point of view, the most perfect of all
the dialogues. The theme of these two dia-
logues is love in its highest form, in which it
appears as an exalted and spiritual yearning
for a supersensible beauty that can be found
only in an ideal world. It is in this central
group of dialogues that the famous theory of
Ideas begins to take more and more definite
shape. But the theory comes to more decisive
expression in the Phosdo (already mentioned),
and again in the greatest of all the dialogues,
the Republic.
This great work has been thought by some
to reflect in its several parts different stages
of Plato's philosophical development; but
however this may be, all the parts of tht-
finished work belong now to a single struc

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of the Socratic ethics to its logical conclusion
by identifying the good with pleasure — a
position, however, which, if he ever really
accepted it, he soon abandoned. In the Gor-
gias the good life and the life of pleasure are
sharply opposed. These two dialogues also
portray the two famous Sophists whose
names they bear. Plato treats them with
respect even while he criticises them freely,
but in the amusing or at times farcical dia-
logue, the Euthydemus, where he is dealing
with Sophists of a very different type, mere
vorbal quibblers, he shows us the degrada-
tion which the Socratic method of discussion
underwent in the hands of men utterly de-
void of serious purpose, and eager only to
show off before their bewildered audience.
On the other hand, when he sets himself, in
the Ph&drus and Symposium, to show us in
allegorical fashion the true spirit of philoso-
phy, all his literary skill is brought to bear
on the task, and the Symposium in particular

ture, and in its large and complex plan al-
most all the chief topics of the Platonic phil-
osophy are represented. The discussion is by
turns ethical, political, theological, education-
al, psychological, metaphysical, and sesthe-
tical, as the many windings of the argument
require. We are brought to the highly im-
portant discussion of the nature and objects
of philosophical study, and the method of a
philosophical education, and are shown, in a
fully elaborated contrast, the stages in the
deterioration of the state and the individual
soul which have once lapsed from their true
justice or goodness. Plato is not averse to
the use of fiction for didactic purposes, and
the Republic concludes with one of those
stories or myths which are a frequent de-
vice in the dialogues. In it he pictures for us
the destiny of the soul in a morally governed
world in which justice is rewarded and in-
justice punished.
The absolute good, or idea of the gooa, be-