The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gorgias, by Plato

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Title: Gorgias

Author: Plato

Translator: Benjamin Jowett

Posting Date: October 5, 2008 [EBook #1672]
Release Date: March, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Sue Asscher

GORGIAS

by Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

INTRODUCTION.

In several of the dialogues of Plato, doubts have arisen among his
interpreters as to which of the various subjects discussed in them
is the main thesis. The speakers have the freedom of conversation; no
severe rules of art restrict them, and sometimes we are inclined to
think, with one of the dramatis personae in the Theaetetus, that the
digressions have the greater interest. Yet in the most irregular of the
dialogues there is also a certain natural growth or unity; the beginning
is not forgotten at the end, and numerous allusions and references are
interspersed, which form the loose connecting links of the whole. We
must not neglect this unity, but neither must we attempt to confine
the Platonic dialogue on the Procrustean bed of a single idea. (Compare
Introduction to the Phaedrus.)

Two tendencies seem to have beset the interpreters of Plato in this
matter. First, they have endeavoured to hang the dialogues upon one
another by the slightest threads; and have thus been led to opposite and
contradictory assertions respecting their order and sequence. The mantle
of Schleiermacher has descended upon his successors, who have applied
his method with the most various results. The value and use of the
method has been hardly, if at all, examined either by him or them.
Secondly, they have extended almost indefinitely the scope of each
separate dialogue; in this way they think that they have escaped all
difficulties, not seeing that what they have gained in generality they
have lost in truth and distinctness. Metaphysical conceptions easily
pass into one another; and the simpler notions of antiquity, which
we can only realize by an effort, imperceptibly blend with the more
familiar theories of modern philosophers. An eye for proportion is
needed (his own art of measurin