Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/409

Rh PLATO. this, that the former had demonstrated the insuf- ficiency of the usual moral definitions in reference to the ideas of virtue as connected with tempe- rance {(Tw(ppo(rwri), bravery, and holiness, to which the latter had called attention generally. The profound dialogue Parmenides, on the other hand, we cannot with Schleiermacher regard either as a mere dialectic exercise, or as one of the earlier works of Plato (comp. Ed. Zeller's PlatoniscJie Sludien, p. 1 84, &c.), but rather see ourselves com- pelled to assign it a place in the second series of the dialogues of Plato. The foundation of this series is formed by the dialogues Theaetetus, So- phistes, and Politicus, which have clearly a mutual connection. Before the Theaetetus Schleiermacher places the Gorgias, and the connection of the two is indubitable, in so far as they both exhibit the constant and essential in opposition to the change- able and contingent, the former in the domain of cognizance, the latter in that of moral action ; and as the Theaetetus is to be placed before the So- phistes, Cratylus and other dialogues, so is the Gorgias to be placed at the head of the Politicus, Philebus and the Politeia. Less certain is the position assigned by Schleieiinacher to the Menon, Eiithydemus and Cratylus, between the Theaetetus and Sophistes. The Menon seems rather expressly designed to form a connecting link between the inves- tigations of the Gorgias and those of the Theaetetus, and on the one hand to bring into view the dis- tinction discussed in the latter between correct notion and true apprehension, in its application to the idea of virtue ; on the other hand, by means of this distinction to bring nearer to its final decision the question respecting the essence of the good, as of virtue and the possibility of teaching it. It might be more difficult to assign to the Euthydemus its definite place. Although with the ridicule of the empty polemical artifices of sophists which is contained in it, there are connected intimations respecting wisdom as the art of those who are in a condition at the same time to produce and to use what they produce, the dialogue nevertheless should probably be regarded as an occasional piece. The Cratylus opposes to the scoffing art of the sophist, dealing in grammatical niceties, the image of dia- lectic art which recognises and fashions language as a necessary production of the human mind. It should, however, find its appropriate place not before the Sophistes (where Schleiermacher places it), but after it, as the application of dialectic to language could hardly become a matter of inquiry until the nature of dialectic had been discussed, as is done in the Sophistes. The Eleatic stranger, when questioned by Socrates respecting the nature and difference of the sophist, the statesman and the philosopher (Soph. p. 217), answers only the first two of these questions, in the dialogues that bear those names, and if Plato had intended a third and similar investigation respecting the nature of the philosopher, he has not undertaken the immediate fulfilment of his design. Schleiermacher therefore assumes that in the Banquet and Phaedon taken together the model of the philosopher is exhibited in the person of Socrates, in the former as he lived, glorified by the panegyric of Alci- biades, and marked by the function, so especially peculiar to him, of love generating in the beautiful (p. 206) ; in the latter as he appears in death, longing to become pure spirit. (Schleiermacher's J'kiton, ii. 2. p. 358, &c.) The contents of the PLATO. ;}.97 two dialogues, however, and their organization as regarded from the pomt of view of this assump- tion, is not altogether intelligible. (Comp. Her- mann, p. 525. 27.) But as little should we, with Ed. Zeller (l. c. p. 194, &c.), look for the missing member of the trilogy, of which we have part in the Sophistes and Politicus, in the exclusively dialectical Parmenides. (Comp. Hermann, p. 671, note 533.) But Plato might the sooner have given up the sepa- rate exhibition of the philosopher, partly inasmuch as the description of him is already mixed up with the representation of the sophist and the politician, partly as the picture is rendered complete by means of the Symposium and the Phaedon, as well as by the books on the state. Meantime the place which Schleiermacher assigns to those two dialogues between the Sophistes and Philebus may be regarded as amply justified, as even Hermann admits in opposition to Ast and Socher (pp. 398, 469, 526). Only we must reserve room at this same place for the Parmenides. In this most difficult of the Platonic dialogues, which has been treated of at length by Ed. Zeller (Z. c), Stallbaum (Platonis Par7nemdes, cum IV. lihris Prolegome- noram. Lips. 1839), Biandis {GebcMchte der GriecJi. Pom. Philoaophie, u. 1, p. 234, &c., comp. p. 169, note), and others, we find on the one hand the outlines of the doctrine of ideas with the difficulties which oppose themselves to it briefly discussed, on the other hand a considerably more extended attempt made to point out in connection with the conceptions considered in themselves, and in parti- cular with the most universal of them, the One and Existence, the contradictions in which the isolated, abstract contemplation of those conceptions involves us ; manifestly in order to pave the way for the solution of those difficulties. In this the Parme- nides is closely connected with the Sophistes, and might be placed immediately after the Cratylus, before the Symposium and Phaedon. But that the Philebus is to be regarded as the immediate transition from the second, dialectical, series of dialogues to the third, Schleiermacher has incon- trovertibly shown ; and the smaller dialogues, which as regards their contents and form are related to those of the second series, in so for as they are not banished as spurious into the appendix, should be ranked with them as occasional treatises. In the third series the order for the books on the state (Politeia), the Tiraaeus and the Critias, has been expressly marked by Plato himself, and with the books on the state those on the laws connect them- selves as a supplement. Ast, though throughout polemically opposed to Schleiermacher, sees himself compelled in the main to recognise the threefold division made by the latter, as he distinguishes Socratic dialogues, in which the poetic and dramatic prevail (Protagoras, Phaedrus, Gorgias and Phaedon), dialectic dia- logues (Theaetetus, Sophistes, Politicus and Cra- tylus), and purely scientific, or Socratico- Platonic dialogues (Philebus, Symposium, Politeia, Timaeus and Critias. ( Platons Lelmi und Schrijlen, Leipzig, 1816.) But through this new conception and de- signation of the first series, and by adding, in the separation of the second and third series, an external ground of division to the internal one, he has been brought to unsteady and arbitrary assumptions which leave out of consideration the internal refe- rences. Socher's attempt to establish in place of such arrangements depending upon internal cou-