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The Dialogues of Plato, Volume 3
The Dialogues of Plato, Volume 3
DIALOGUES
VOLUME
OF
PLATO
PLATO
ION HIPPIAS MINOR
LACHESPROTAGORAS
Translated
with Comment
R.E.ALLEN
Yale University
New Haven and
Press
London
by
From the dawn of philosophy, the question concerning the summum bonum, or,
what is the same thing, concerning thefoundation of morality, has been accounted
the main problem of speculative thought, has occupied the most gifted intellects, and
divided them into sects and schools, carrying on a vigorous warfare against one
another. And after more than two thousand years the same discussions continue,
philosophers are still ranged under the same contending banners, and neither
thinkers nor mankind at large seem nearer to being unanimous on the subject, than
when the youth Socrates listened to the Old Protagoras, and asserted (if Plato's
dialogue be grounded on a real conversation) the theory of utilitarianism against
the popular morality of the so-called sophist.
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism,
chapter I
CONTENTS
PREFACE
Xl
THE ION
Comment
I ntroduc tion
Art Implies Knowledge of Who Speaks Well and Badly
about the Same Subjects: Ion Does Not Possessan Art
Poetry and Divine Possession: Rhapsodes as Messengers
of Messengers
Arts Defined by Their Objects: Ion Does Not Possessan Art
Translation
3
3
4
5
6
THE LACHES
47
Comment
Introduction
Nicias and Laches Disagree about Fighting in Armor
Fighting in Armor and Care of the Soul
What Is Courage?
Vll
49
49
51
51
53
VIll
CONTENTS
55
56
56
57
58
58
61
THEPROTAGORAS
Comment
Dramatic Introduction
Narrative Introduction
Sophistry and the Soul
A Foregathering of Sophists
Can Virtue Be Taught?
The Speech of Protagoras
The Unity of Virtue
The Unity of Justice and Holiness
The Unity of Temperance and Wisdom
The Unity of Justice and Temperance
Interlude: Questions and Speeches
The Poem of Simonides
Protagoras Questions Socrates
The Speech of Socrates
Interlude
The Unity of Virtue Revisited
The Unity of Wisdom and Courage
"Conceptual Analysis"
That Virtue Is Knowledge
The Hedonic Equation
Living Well
Ancient Hedonism
Utilitarianism
The Authority of Knowledge
Reply to the Many
The Hedonistic Calculus
The Nautical Almanac
The Art of Measurement
The Art Analogy
87
89
89
89
91
93
95
97
103
106
III
112
113
115
15
117
1 18
118
119
122
124
126
128
130
133
136
138
141
142
144
146
CONTENTS
IX
149
153
158
159
159
161
163
166
169
225
PREFACE
Herewith four dialogues, the Ion, Hippias Minor, Laches, and Protagoras.
The first three are comrnonly regarded as early, though they are not for
that reason immature: Plato was in his thirties when he wrote them, and a
philosophical and artistic genius. The Protagoras is closely connected with
the Meno. It is a boundary dialogue: it goes beyond the earlier dialogues of
search both in content and complexity of dramatic form, and leads on to
such great middle dialogues as the Phaedo and Symposium, Republic, and
Phaedrus.
The relation of the four dialogues here presented in paratactic; yet
there are inward connections which all stretch, finally, to the Protagoras.
The Ion treats actors and the poets they depend on as connected by a kind
of inspired magnetism, and we are reminded that poetry is said to be a
form of divine madness in the Phaedrus. But then, poets and dramatists,
and by derivation actors, are said to be rhetoricians in the Corgias; if this is
so, Ion and Protagoras, despite apparent difference in their outward and
visible callings, are inwardly engaged in like enterprise. The argument of
the Hippias Major is in important part matched by a similar pattern in the
Ion, and issues in an aporetic conclusion which, thought through, shows
that virtue is not and cannot be an art-a conclusion by which the hedonism analyzed in the Protagoras must be judged. The Laches, a dialogue too
much neglected, shows by its account of BO'UAtl,
counsel, the inner connection between Socrates' search for definitions, which may seem merely and
dryly logical, and his concern for the moral improvement of his respondents; it also places in sharpest contrast two concepts of courage: the raw
animal spirits raised in battle, which may yet be accompanied by dishonesty, and that courage which, because it is allied to wisdom, is allied to
justice. This is to anticipate the question of the unity of the virtues in the
Protagoras.
Xl
XlI
PREFACE
PREFACE
XIll
XIV
PREFACE
train. The Protagoras offers a contrast between two cultures: the sophistical culture of paideia which was the dominant element in the intellectual
climate of Athens, and directly or indirectly swayed by speech the history
of a great people; and the Socratic concern for virtue, offered by a man
whom the Athenians would eventually kill.
In both the Crito and the Protagoras, Socrates assumes that life has a
goal: the meaning of life is to live, and not only to live but to live well, ru