Euthydemus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno (English)

by Plato

Publisher:

Perseus Digital Library

, 1967

Overview

Contents

Top Highlights

“But you cannot carry away doctrines in a separate vessel: you are compelled, when you have handed over the price, to take the doctrine in your very soul by learning it, and so to depart either an injured or a benefited man. These, then, are questions which we have to consider with the aid of our elders, since we ourselves are still rather young to unravel so great a matter.” (source)

“For how can a man be happy if he is a slave to anybody at all?” (source)

“Seeing then that the soul is immortal and has been born many times, and has beheld all things both in this world and in the nether realms, she has acquired knowledge of all and everything; so that it is no wonder that she should be able to recollect all that she knew before about virtue and other things. For as [81d] all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things, there is no reason why we should not, by remembering but one single thing—an act which men call learning—discover everything else, if we have courage and faint not in the search; since, it would seem, research and learning are wholly recollection.” (source)

“‘To all,’ replied Zeus; ‘let all have their share: for cities cannot be formed if only a few have a share of these as of other arts.” (source)

“Very well; but now, the rhetoric addressed to the Athenian people, [502e] or to the other assemblies of freemen in the various cities—what can we make of that? Do the orators strike you as speaking always with a view to what is best, with the single aim of making the citizens as good as possible by their speeches, or are they, like the poets, set on gratifying the citizens, and do they, sacrificing the common weal to their own personal interest, behave to these assemblies as to children, trying merely to gratify them, nor care a jot whether they will be better or worse in consequence?” (source)

Product Details

• Title: Euthydemus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno (English)
• Author: Plato
• Publisher: Perseus Digital Library
• Print Publication Date: 1967
• Logos Release Date: 2011
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subject: Classics › English--History
• Resource ID: LLS:PLATTET6ENG
• Resource Type: text.monograph.ancient-manuscript.translation
• Metadata Last Updated: 2021-03-03T20:41:19Z

About Plato

Plato (427–347 BC) was born in Athens to an aristocratic family. A student of Socrates until the latter’s death, he also studied the works of Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Pythagoreans. Following the death of Socrates, Plato spent a number of years traveling around the Mediterranean. He eventually returned to Athens and founded a school of philosophy called the Academy (named for the field in which it was located), where he later taught Aristotle.

Plato wrote works on ethics, politics, morality, epistemology, and metaphysics. He is best known for his theory of forms, the theory that the qualities that define a thing’s existence (redness, beauty) exist in an abstract realm of forms, separate from matter. Plato believed that what was true, and therefore real, must be unchanging. Because the material world is in a constant state of change it is not true reality but a mere illusion. Plato taught that love is the longing for the Beautiful in its purest, most abstract, form. Consequently, love is what motivates all the highest human achievements.