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Philosophy Ebooks Plato - Symposium
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Plato - Symposium |
INTRODUCTION.
Of all the works of Plato the Symposium is the most perfect in form, and may be truly thought to contain
more than any commentator has ever dreamed of; or, as Goethe said of one of his own writings, more than
the author himself knew. For in philosophy as in prophecy glimpses of the future may often be conveyed in
words which could hardly have been understood or interpreted at the time when they were uttered (compare
Symp.)−−which were wiser than the writer of them meant, and could not have been expressed by him if he
had been interrogated about them. Yet Plato was not a mystic, nor in any degree affected by the Eastern
influences which afterwards overspread the Alexandrian world. He was not an enthusiast or a sentimentalist,
but one who aspired only to see reasoned truth, and whose thoughts are clearly explained in his language.
There is no foreign element either of Egypt or of Asia to be found in his writings. And more than any other
Platonic work the Symposium is Greek both in style and subject, having a beauty 'as of a statue,' while the
companion Dialogue of the Phaedrus is marked by a sort of Gothic irregularity. More too than in any other of
his Dialogues, Plato is emancipated from former philosophies. The genius of Greek art seems to triumph over
the traditions of Pythagorean, Eleatic, or Megarian systems, and 'the old quarrel of poetry and philosophy' has
at least a superficial reconcilement. (Rep.) |
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| DETAILS |
| Format: | PDF
| Allows Print: | YES |
| FileSize: | 113Kb | | |
| Pages: | 43 | | |
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