outlines of method which are thrown out at white heat in the Phaedrus are a preparation for the more sober treatment of the ideas in the dialectical dialogues. In these, however, the conception of classification is somewhat altered through contact with Eleaticism. (3) The Phaedrus aims, not merely at realizing universals, but at grasping them in and through particulars. This is an ideal of knowledge which was “lost as soon as seen,” but one which in some of his latest dialogues, such as the Politicus and Philebus, Plato again endeavoured to work out. (4) The Phaedrus contains the elements of that true psychology into which the ontological theory of the ideas is gradually transmuted in Plato's more advanced writings, when the difficulties of his ideal doctrine in its cruder forms have been clearly felt and understood. (5) Plato here appears as a professor of education preferring oral intercourse to authorship. In this paradox he at once exalts the work of Socrates and avows his own vocation as a teacher. The passage throws an interesting light upon the form of dialogue in which his works are cast. But it is not to be supposed that he remained long unconscious of the influence he was destined to wield by writing. In executing a great task like the Republic, he practically diverged from the untenable view asserted here; and in the Laws he recommends his longest and least dramatic work as a suitable basis for the education of the future. (6) It must always appear strange, even to those most familiar with the conditions of Hellenic life, that in portraying the idealizing power of passionate love Plato should have taken his departure from unnatural feeling.
On this subject he has sung his own “palinode” in the Laws, which he intended as his final legacy to mankind.[1] Not that he ceased to exalt genius and originality above mere talent, or to demand for philosophy the service of the heart as well as the head nor yet that friendship was less valued by him in later years. All this remained unchanged. And in the Republic the passion of love is still distantly referred to as the symbol of ideal aspiration. But a time came when he had learned to frown on the aberration of feeling which in the Symposium and Phaedrus he appears to regard as the legitimate stimulus of intellectual enthusiasm. And already in the Theaetetus not love but wonder is described as the only beginning of philosophy.
While calling attention to this change of sentiment, it is right to add that Platonic love in the “erotic” dialogues of Plato is very different from what has often been so named, and that nothing even in the noble passage of the Laws above referred to casts the slightest shadow of blame on the Socrates of the Symposium. Such changes are, amongst other things, a ground for caution in comparing the two steeds of the Phaedrus with the spirit (θυμός) and desire (ἐπιθυμία) of the Republic and Timaeus. The Phaedrus, in common with these dialogues, asserts the existence of higher and lower impulses in human nature, but there is no sufficient ground for supposing that when Plato wrote the Phaedrus he would have defined them precisely as they are defined in the Republic.
The Cratylus is full of curious interest as marking the highest point reached by the “science of language” in antiquity; but, as this dialogueCratylus. “hardly derives any light from Plato's other writings,”[2] so neither does it reflect much light on them. It deals slightly with the contrast between Heracliteanism and Eleaticism, the importance of dialectic, the difficulty about the existence of falsehood, and ends with a brief allusion to the doctrine of ideas—but these topics are all more fully discussed elsewhere.
Three persons maintain different views respecting the nature and origin of language.
Hermogenes affirms that language is conventional, Cratylus (the Heraclitean) that it is natural. Socrates, mediating between these sophistical extremes, declares that language, like other institutions, is rational, and therefore (1) is based on nature, but (2) modified by convention.
In his dialectical treatment of the subject, Socrates displays a tissue of wild etymologies in reliance on the “inspiration” of Euthyphro. Presently a distinction appears between primary and secondary words. Many primary words convey the notion of movement and change. It follows that the legislator or word-maker held Heraclitean views. Socrates thus far presses on Hermogenes the view of Cratylus. Then turning to Cratylus he asks if there are no false names. “False language,” Cratylus argues, “is impossible.” Socrates shows that a true image may be inadequate, so that we have a right to criticize the work of the word-maker. And the facts indicate an element of meaningless convention. Nor was the original word-maker consistently Heraclitean. For some important words point not to motion but to rest.
But the question returns—Are we sure that the theory of nature which the word-maker held was true? This difficulty cannot be touched by verbal arguments. In seeking to resolve it we must consider, not words, but things. If there is a true beauty and a true good, which are immutable, and if these are accessible to knowledge, that world of truth can have nothing to do with flux and change.
V. Gorgias, Republic.—In the Symposium and Phaedrus Plato largely redeems the promise implied in the Phaedo, where Socrates tells his friends to look among themselves for a charmer who may soothe away the fear of death. But he was pledged also to a sterner duty by the warning of Socrates to the Athenians, in the Apology, that after he was gone there would arise others for their reproof more harsh than he had been. To this graver task, which he had but partially fulfilled with the light satire upon Lysias or the gentle message to Isocrates, the philosopher now directs his powers, by holding up the mirror of what ought to be against what is, the principles of truth and right against the practice of men. For the good has more than one aspect. The beautiful or noble when realized in action becomes the just. And to the question, What is just? are closely allied those other questions of Socrates—What is a state? What is it to be a statesman?
In the Gorgias Plato asserts the absolute supremacy of justice through the dramatic portraiture of Socrates in his opposition to the world; in the Republic he strives at greater length to define the nature of justice through the imaginary creation of an ideal community.
In the Gorgias the Platonic Socrates appears in direct antagonism with the Athenian world. The shadow of his fate is impending. Chaerephon (who is still alive)Gorgias. understands him, but to the other interlocutors, Gorgias, Polus, Callicles, he appears perversely paradoxical. Yet he effectively dominates them all. And to the reader of the dialogue this image of “Socrates contra mundum” is hardly less impressive than that other image of Socrates confronting death.
1. Gorgias asserts that rhetoric is an art concerned with justice; and that persuasion is the secret of power.
a. Socrates, after suggesting some ironical doubts, declares his opinion that rhetoric is no art, but a knack of pleasing, or in other words “the counterfeit of a subsection of statesmanship." This oracular definition rouses the interest of Gorgias, and Socrates proceeds with the following “generalization and division”:—
| Management of | |
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| Soul. | |
Body. | |
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| Real. | |
Pretended. | |
Real. | |
Pretended. | |
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| πολιτική. | |||||||||||||||
| | | α | β' | α | β | α' | β' | |||||||||
| Sophistic. | Rhetoric. | Gymnastic. | Medicine. | Cosmetic. | Confectionery. | ||||||||||
| α | β | ||||||||||||||
| Legislation. | Jurisprudence. | ||||||||||||||
| | Flattery. |
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Flattery influences men through pleasure without knowledge. And the rhetor is a kind of confectioner, who can with difficulty be distinguished from the sophist.
b. Rhetoric, then, is not an art. And persuasion is not the secret of power. Here Socrates maintains against Polus the three paradoxes:—
The tyrant does what he chooses but not what he wishes;
It is less evil to suffer wrong than to do wrong;
It is better for the wrongdoer to be punished than to escape punishment.
The only use of rhetoric, therefore, is for self-accusation, and (if it is ever permissible to do harm) to prevent the punishment of one's enemy.
2. Callicles here loses patience and breaks in. He propounds his theory, which is based on the opposition of nature and custom.
