Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman (English)

by Plato

Publisher:

Perseus Digital Library

, 1921

Overview

Contents

Top Highlights

“For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy,” (source)

“Protagoras said with his doctrine [386a] that man is the measure of all things—that things are to me such as they seem to me, and to you such as they seem to you—or do you think things have some fixed reality of their own?” (source)

“Or does anyone, do you think, understand the name of anything when he does not know what the thing is?” (source)

“Perception, then, is always of that which exists and, since it is knowledge, cannot be false” (source)

“As the talk which the soul has with itself about any subjects which it considers.” (source)

Product Details

• Title: Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman (English)
• Author: Plato
• Publisher: Perseus Digital Library
• Print Publication Date: 1921
• Logos Release Date: 2011
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subject: Classics › English--History
• Resource ID: LLS:PLATTET2ENG
• Resource Type: text.monograph.ancient-manuscript.translation
• Metadata Last Updated: 2021-03-03T20:41:04Z

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.