PLATO'S 'PLATO COMPLETE WORKS'

Introduction

- Plato, a native Athenian, was born in 427 B.C.

- Plato died at the age of eighty-one in 347 B.C.
- Socrates died in 399 B.C.
- Aristotle became a student in about 367 B.C. (at the age of eighteen) at a
school of higher education that Plato opened in the sacred grove of Academus.
- This book is based on Thrasyllus' edition of Plato's work, which was
compiled prepared nearly four hundred years after Plato's death.
- The conversation in "Euthyphro" is marked as taking place shortly before
Socrates' trial; his speech at his trial is then given in the "Apology," while
"Crito" presents a visit to Socrates in prison, three days before his execution,
which is the culminating event of the "Phaedo."
- "Laws" was left unpublished at the time of Plato's death.
- Xenophon was another student of Socrates who also wrote Socratic dialogues.
- All of Aristotle's dialogues have perished.
- Heraclitus claims to have discovered the unity of opposites, the key to all
reality, and he excoriates other thinkers for having missed it by wasting their
time learning up all sorts of arcane details.
- Arcesilaus (third century B.C.) was one of Plato's successors as head of
the Academy.

Euthyphro

- Agora was the central marketplace of Athens.

- Euthyphro disposed charges of murder against his father, which would be
considered by some to be "impious."
- Socrates himself is on his way to answer to charges of "impiety" that were
brought against him by three younger fellow citizens.
- Socrates attempts to acquire knowledge from Euthyphro regarding piety,
however Euthyphro cannot answer Socrates' questions to Socrates' or his own
satisfaction.
- Euthyphro leaves before answering all of Socrates' questions due to having
business elsewhere.
- Socrates seeks the answer to the question: "What is piety?"
- This book implicitly acknowledges the distinction between accidental
quality and essential quality. It also implicitly recognises that all that can be
said of a species can be said of the genus. These things however are not developed
explicitly.

Apology

- The original Greek title uses the word "apologia," which means defense
speech; Socrates does not apologise for anything in this book, this is instead his
legal defense.
- The trial was held in 399 B.C.
- The excellence of a judge lies in judging justly; the excellence of a
speaker lies in speaking truthfully.
- It is not difficult to avoid death, but it is difficult to avoid
wickedness.

Crito

- The Athenian state galley sailed off on an annual religious mission to the
island of Delos a day before Socrates' trial; no executions were permitted in its
absence, hence Socrates did not die until a month after his trial, on the return of
the galley.
 - Crito comes to tell Socrates of the galley's anticipated arrival, and to
convince him [Socrates] to allow Crito and his friends to bribe the jailers and
help him escape. Socrates refuses as to do so would be greatly unjust.

Meno

- Meno's is one of the leading aristocratic families of Thessaly,

traditionally friendly to Athens and Athenian interests.
- Meno wants to know Socrates' position on the then much-debated question
whether virtue can be taught, or whether it comes rather from practice, or else is
acquired by one's birth and nature, or in some other way.
- Socrates points to the failue of famous Athenian leaders to pass their own
virtue on to their sons, which offends Meno.
- Socrates has heard from certain wise priests and priestesses that the soul
is immortal and that at our birth we already possess all theoretical knowledge
(including moral knowledge), and that by questioning and contemplating things we
can "recollect" our forgotten knowledge.
- Socrates gives the essence of shape as the limit of a solid.
- Socrates gives the essence of colour as the effluvium from shapes which
fits the sight and is percieved.
- The divine poets say that the human soul is immortal; at times it comes to
an end, which they call dying; at times it is reborn, but it is never destroyed,
and one must therefore live one's life as piously as possible: "Persephone will
return to the sun above the ninth year the souls of those from whom she will enact
punishment for old miseries, and from these come noble kings, mighty in strength
and greatest in wisdom, and for the rest of time men will call them sacred heroes."
- The dialogue ends with Socrates deciding that virtue appears to be present
in those of us who may possess it as a gift from the gods.

Symposium

- A "symposium" is a formal drinking party.

- "Love" (Greek erôs) covers sexual attraction and gratification between men
and women and between men and teenage boys.
- According to Hesiod, the first to be born was Chaos, then came Earth and
Love.
- There are two goddesses of the name Aphrodite: one is an older deity, the
motherless daughter of Uranus, the god of heaven, she is known as Urania, or
Heavenly Aphrodite; the other is a younger goddess, she is the daughter of Zeus and
Dione, her name is Pandemos, or the Common Aphrodite. Love and Aphrodite are
inseparable, hence there is a Common as well as a Heavenly Love.
- The vulgar, common lover loves the body rather than the soul, he is the man
whose love is bound to be inconstant, since what he loves is itself mutable and
unstable. How different is this from the man who loves the right sort of character,
and who remains its lover for life, attached as he is to something that is
permanent.
- The principle of governing the proper attitude toward the lover of young
men and the principle governing the love of wisdom and of virtue in general - must
be combined if a young man is to accept a lover in an honorable way. When an older
lover and a young man come together and each obeys the principle appropriate to him
- when the lover realises that he is justified in doing anything for a loved one
who grants him favors, and when the young man understands that he is justified in
performing any service for a lover who can make him wise and virtuous - and when
the lover is able to help the young man become wiser and better, and the young man
is eager to be taught and improved by his lover - then, and only then, when these
two principles coincide absolutely, is it ever honorable for a young man to accept
a lover.
- Heraclitus says, "being at variance with itself is in agreement with
itself."
 - Medicine is the science of the effects of Love on repletion and depletion
of the body; music is the science of the effects of Love on rhythm and harmony.
- Composition creates new verses and melodies.
- Musical education teaches the correct performance of existing compositions.
- The movement of the stars and the seasons of the year are the objects
studied by the science called astronomy.
- The rites of sacrifice and the whole area with which the art of divination
is concerned is the interaction between men and gods.
- Divination, therefore, is the practice that produces loving affections
between gods and men; it is simply the science of the effects of Love on justice
and piety.
- Long ago Human Nature was not what it is now, but very different. Back then
there were three types of human: male, female, and something inbetween, called
"androgynous." "Androgynous" was a form composed of male and female elements. The
male kind were an offspring of the sun, the female of the earth, and the one that
combined genders was of the moon, because the moon shares in both.
- "Wisdom" translates sophia, technē means "professional skill."
- Diotima argues that Love is a spirit, which is inbetween a god and a
mortal.
- Love is not himself loved, but he is rather a lover.
- The object of love is wanting to possess the good forever.
- Love desires immortality.
- The mind's sight becomes sharp only when the body's eyes go past their
prime.

Gorgias

- Gorgias was a famous teacher of oratory and the author of oratorical

display pieces.
- "Virtue" is loosely defined as the qualities that make a good person
overall and a good citizen.
- Astronomy is concerned with the motions of the stars, the sun and the moon,
and their relative velocities.
- Gorgias claims the product of oratory is persuasion, the kind that takes
place in law courts and in those other large gatherings, and it's concerned with
those matters that are just and unjust.
- There is such a thing as true and false conviction; there is no such thing
as false knowledge.
- Pastry baking is the flattery that wears the mask of medicine; cosmetics is
the one that wears that of gymnastics in the same way.
- What cosmetics is to gymnastics, sophistry is to legislation, and what
pastry baking is to medicine, oratory is to justice.
- Anaxagoras' book began with the words "All things were together,"
describing the primordial state of the universe.
- It is possible for a man who does in his city what he sees fit not to have
great power, nor to be doing what he wants.
- Doing what is unjust is worse than suffering it.
- The pleasant is not the same as the good. The pleasant must be done for the
sake of the good.
- A happy man is one who persues and practices self control.

Phaedrus

- The Delphic inscription orders "to know thyself."

- The unreasoning desire that overpowers a person's considered impulse to do
right and is driven to take pleasures in beauty, its force reinforced by its
kindred desires for beauty in human bodies - this desire, all-conquering in its
forceful drive, takes its name from the word for force (rhōmē) and is called erōs.
- God-sent madness is superior to being in control.
 - Every soul is immortal. That is because whatever is always in motion is
immortal, while what moves, and is moved by something else stops living when it
stops moving. So it is only what moves itself that never desists from motion, since
it does not leave off being itself. In fact, this self-mover is also the source of
motion in everything else that moves; and a source has no beginning. That is
because anything that has a beginning comes from some source, but there is no
source for this, since a source that got its start from something else would no
longer be the source. And since it cannot have a beginning, then necessarily it
cannot be destroyed. That is because if a source were destroyed it could never get
started again from anything else and nothing else could get started from it - that
is, if everything gets started from a source. This then is why a self-mover is the
source of motion. And that is incapable of being destroyed or starting up;
otherwise all heaven and everything that has been started up would collapse, come
to a stop, and never have cause to start moving again. But since we have found that
a self-mover is immortal, we should have no qualms about declaring that this is the
very essence and principle of a soul, for every bodily object that is moved from
outside has no soul, while a body whose motion comes from within, from itself, does
have a soul, that being the nature of a soul; and if this is so - that whatever
moves itself is essentially a soul - then it follows necessarily that soul should
have neither birth nor death.
- The four parts of madness are attributed to four gods: the inspiration of
the prophet to Apollo, of the mystic to Dionysus, of the poet to the Muses, and the
fourth part of madness to Aphrodite and to Love, we said that the madness of love
is the best.
- Tisias of Syracuse, with Corax, is credited with the founding of the
Sicilian school of rhetoric, represented by Gorgias and Polus.
- Socrates calls a "dialectician" someone capable of discerning a single
thing that is also by nature capable of encompassing many; a creator of divisions
and collections.
- These divisions and collections serve firstly to collect together scattered
things under one definition to show that the scattered things are all of one kind,
secondly divisions are employed to cut up the definitions into different species
which are distinguished from one another, for example, love is one thing but can be
cut up into at least two parts, lustful or profane love and love that is divine.
This method is employed in later dialogues called Sophist and Statesman.
- In rhetoric we must supply the soul with the reasons and customary rules
for conduct that will impart to it the convictions and virtues we want.

Cratylus

- A name is a tool for dividing being.

- Zeus is the son of Cronos, who is the son of Uranus. It would seem that the
etymology of "Zeus" expresses his nature as "life giver"; and Cronos' name
signifies purity and clarity of intellect or understanding; Uranus signifies
looking above.
- Daemons are gods or children of the gods or messengers from the gods.
- Heroes are demigods, who sprang from the love of a god for a mortal woman
or of a mortal man for a goddess.
- Humans were given the name "human" for their ability to reason.
- The etymology of soul, according to Socrates, crudely means "nature-
sustainer."
- The body is the tomb or prison of the soul, as the etymology of the word
"body" suggests.
- In Greek Attic "being" is called "ousia."
- The name "Hermes" has something to do with speech: he is an interpreter, a
messenger, a thief and a deceiver. He is the god who contrived speech.
- Anagoras had a recent theory that the moon derives its light from the sun.
- Socrates believes the names wisdom, comprehension, judgement, and knowledge
are all related to things that are in motion. Wisdom is the understanding of motion
and flow. The name "judgement" expresses the fact that to judge is to examine or
study whatever is begotten. "Understanding" is longing for the new. "Knowledge"
indicates that a worthwhile soul follows the movement of things, neither falling
behind nor running ahead. "Wisdom" signifies the grasp of motion.
- The "just" is the governer and penetrator of everything else.
- "Male" and "man" indicate an upward flow.
- It is better to learn about a thing through the thing itself rather than
through the thing's name.
- It isn't reasonable to say that there is such a thing as knowledge, if all
things are passing on and none remain.

Ion

- Ion is a rhapsode (classical Greek professional performer of epic poetry)

of Homer.
- Socrates believes that rhapsodes are not masters of the subjects contained
in the poetry they recite, but rather that they are divinely inspired when they
speak about their poets. This idea is developed further in the Republic.

Euthydemus

- Socrates had a brother called Patrocles and a father called Sophroniscus;

Socrates' brother was born of a different father, a man named Chaeredemus.
- Euthydemus and Dionysodorus exploit ambiguity in terms to make two
apparently contradictory statements appear true at the same time; this is
equivocating terms.

Menexenus

- This book is a funeral oration; the speech Socrates recites apparently has
Aspasia (Pericles' mistress) for its ownership.
- The earth is described as the human being's mother, and it is said that
human beings sprang from the earth. Earth does not mimic woman conceiving and in
generating, but woman earth.

Republic

Introduction
- The world revealed by our senses is cognitively (the action of
acquiring knowledge and understanding) and metaphysically deficient.
Book I
- Celphalus does not mind old age because he believes he has lived a
just life; he also doesn't care too much for money.
- If a good person is poor old age is hard to bear, but if a bad person
is rich old age is hard to bear too.
- "Sweet hope is in his heart, Nurse and companion to this age. Hope,
captain of the ever-twisting Minds of mortal men."
- Socrates successfully argues that a just person is good and
knowledgable whilst an unjust person is bad and unknowledgable.
- The virture of eyes is sight; the virtue of ears is hearing.
Book II
- Glaucon argues that justice is intermediate between the best and the
worst; the best is to do injustice with impunity and the worst is to suffer
injustice without being able to take revenge. He argues justice is not good in
itself, and is only tolerated for the good that comes from it, namely the not
suffering injustice.
- The origin of war seems to spring from the want of seizing other
cities land to provide more luxuries for the host city.
- The love of learning is the same thing as philosophy and the love of
wisdom.
- Socrates argues that a great deal of the stories told about the gods
should not be told by the young, and if they are to be passed on, only to a few
select individuals after said individuals have sacrificed something scarce.
- The more good a thing is, the less changable or alterable it is.
- Socrates would want to control the stories the youth hear to prevent
them from being corrupted.
Book III
- "He struck his chest and spoke to his heart: 'Endure my heart, you've
suffered more shameful things than this.'"
- A song consists of three elements: words, harmonic mode, and rhythm.
- Sexual pleasure must not enter into the love a lover has for the boy
he loves. If a lover can persuade the boy, he may kiss him, be with him, and touch
him, as a father would a son, but he must never seem to go further than this.
- Doctors should only heal those who are naturally healthy with a
temporary illness, and not heal those who are unhealthy by nature.
- Those whose souls are too much corrupted by evil should be put too
death.
- The best guardians for a city are those who are not easily fooled,
who work both body and mind.
- Socrates wants the young to be told a story where each man is born
from the earth, and would therefore have a desire to defend the earth as if it were
his mother; past this, he would think of other citizens as his earthborn brothers.
Each man has within himself either gold, silver, bronze, or iron. The city will be
ruined if it is ever ruled by a bronze or iron guardian.
- Socrates thinks men should not own private property beyond what is
necessary. No one should have a house or storeroom which isn't open for all. All
will live together in common messes like soldiers.
Book IV
- Wealth makes for luxury, idleness, and revolution; poverty makes for
slavishness, bad work, and revolution.
- Socrates believes that once his theorised city gets a good start, the
citizen's offspring will become better than their parents, and their children
better than them, in a cycle that keeps going.
- The guardians must guard carefully against any innovation in music
and poetry or in physical training that is counter to the established order.
- Socrates enumerates the four virtues as to be: wise, courageous,
moderate, and just.
- The guardians will be the smallest class or part of their city. They
will have the kind of knowledge (perhaps we can say species of knowledge) called
wisdom.
- Self-control is when the better part of a person rules or controls
the worse part. There is a stronger self and a weaker self.
- Justice is said to be doing one's own work and not meddling with what
isn't one's own.
- No thing can be, do, or undergo opposites, at the same time, in the
same respect, in relation to the same thing.
- In the cases of all things that are related to something, those that
are of a particular sort are related to a particular sort of thing, while those
that are merely themselves are related to a thing that is merely itself. A
particular sort of thirst is for a particular sort of drink. But thirst itself
isn't for much or little, good or bas, or, in a word, for drink of a particular
sort. Rather, thirst itself is in its nature only for drink itself.
- Socrates argues there are three parts of the soul, like there were
three parts of the city (the money-makers, the auxiliary, and the deliberative),
the three parts are the spirited, the rational, and the appetitive.
- There is only one form of virtue; there are an unlimited number of
forms of vice, but only four worth mentioning; there are five types of political
constitution; there are five types of soul.
 Book V
- Socrates argues that the women of his theorised city should also be
given poetry and physical training as like the men.
- Socrates argues that women share by nature in every way of life just
as men do, but in all of them women are weaker than men.
- Socrates argues that women and children should be commonly possessed
by all the men.
- Socrates argues that the best men must have sex with the best women
as frequently as possible, and the opposite is true for the worst men and women. He
further argues that the children of the former must be reared but not the latters,
and that all this must take place with only the guardians (the rulers) noticing so
that the general population does not dissent.
- Socrates believes that a woman's prime lasts about twenty years and a
man's about thirty; for the women their prime lasts from the age of twenty to the
age of forty, and a man's from the time that he passes his peak as a runner until
he reaches the age of fifty-five. Once a man or woman is past the age of having
children, they may have sex with whomever they wish, with the exception of
relatives.
- The man who distinguishes himself in battle will be allowed to kiss
whichever men or women he chooses, and they won't be allowed to refuse.
- Socrates believes the philosophers should rule, and that until
philosophy and political power coincide, cities will have no rest from evil.
- Veridical means coninciding with the truth.
- There are at least three "is": existential is, predicative is, and
veridical is.
- The man who believes in the beautiful itself, and can see both it and
the things that participate in it and doesn't believe that the participants are it
or that itself are the participants is awake.
- Knowledge is an infallible power; opinion is a fallible power.
- Opinion belongs intermediate between knowledge and ignorance.
Knowledge is set over what is (being), ignorance is set over what is not (falsity).
The opinable is set over what is intermediate between what is not (falsity) and
what purely is (being).
Book VI
- Anyone who needs to be ruled knocks at the door of he who can rule
him; it isn't for the ruler, if he is of any use, to beg the other to accept his
rule.
- A sophist calls wisdom whatever pleases the crowds.
- The form of each thing is called "the being" of each thing.
- The many beautiful things, and the rest are visible but not
intelligible, while the forms are intelligible but not visible.
- The sun is not sight, but the cause of sight and is seen by it. What
the good itself is in the intelligible realm, in relation to understanding and
intelligible things, the sun is in the visible realm, in relation to sight and
visible things.
- We understand the soul in this way: When it focuses on something
illuminated by truth and what is, it understands, knows, and apparently possesses
understanding, but when it focuses on what is mixed with obscurity, on what comes
to be and passes away, it opines and is dimmed, changes its opinions this way and
that, and seems bereft of understanding. So that what gives truth to the things
known and the power to know to the knower is the form of the good. And though it is
the cause of knowledge and truth, it is also an object of knowledge. Both knowledge
and truth are beautiful things, but the good is other and more beautiful than they.
In the visible realm, light and sight are rightly considered sunlike, but it is
wrong to think that they are the sun, so here it is right to think of knowledge and
truth as goodlike but wrong to think that either of them is the good - for the good
is yet more prized.
- Not only do the objects of knowledge owe their being known to the
good, but their being is also due to it, although the good is not being, but
superior to it in rank and power.
- Socrates seems to say that the sun is the principle of the visible as
the good is to the intelligible.
- As the opinable is to the knowable, so the likeness is to the thing
it is like.
- Thought is intermediate between opinion and understanding.
- There are four conditions of the soul: Understanding, thought,
belief, and imaging.
Book VII
- The "being" belongs to the intelligble realm and the "becoming" to
the visible.
- Geometry is the subject that deals with plane surfaces.
- Socrates argues that calculation and arithmetic is the first subject
required to be studied by guardians, next would be geometry. These subjects turn
the soul away from the world of becoming and towards the world of being. The third
subject would be the subject dealing with the dimension of depth (the third
dimension, the subject may be called "solid geometry"), the fourth subject would be
astronomy (the subject dealing with the motion of things having depth).
- That which is (being) is invisible.
- The Pythagoreans say that the sciences of astronomy and harmonics are
closely akin.
- Knowledge and thought are classed as intellect; belief and imaging
are classed as opinion. Opinion is concerned with becoming, intellect with being.
And as being is to becoming, intellect is to opinion, and as intellect is to
opinion, knowledge is to belief and thought is to imaging.
- The subject superior to the ones above is dialectics, the previous
subjects being the preliminaries to dialectics, and with it the list of subjects
that a ruler must learn has come to an end.
Book VIII
- Education will be common to all, and he who is most successful will
be chosen as ruler.
- The four constitutions of the diseased city are Cretan or Laconian
(the victory-loving and honor-loving), oligarchy, democracy, and genuine tyranny.
The just constitution is aristocracy, so there are a total of five constitutions of
city.
- The honor-loving constitution could be called timocracy or timarchy.
- Oligarchy is the constitution based on a property assessment, in
which the rich rule, and the poor man has no share in ruling.
- A city experiences civil war when it splits into two after an initial
unity (one), the same holds true for the individual.
- Those in a democracy call insolence good breeding, anarchy freedom,
extravagance magnificence, and shamelessness courage.
- From democracy comes tyranny.
- The tyrannical leader is the opposite of a doctor, he draws off the
best and leaves the worst.
Book IX
- The appetitive part of the soul is money-loving and profit-loving,
for through the means of money it's appetitive desires are satiated.
- The spirited part of the soul is victory-loving and honor-loving.
- The learning part of the soul is called learning-loving and
philosophical.
- The life of the majority of people is like trying to fill a vessel
full of holes, they chase the pleasures of becoming as opposed to those of being.
Book X
- The god makes the being of a thing, the craftsman makes an individual
instance of a thing, the imitator makes an imitation of an instance of a thing. An
imitator, or imitation, is thus third removed from the truth.
- Imitation has no place in a just city, unless it can successfully
defend itself.
 - Socrates argues the soul is immortal, for if a soul isn't destroyed
by a single evil, whether it's own or something else's, then clearly it must always
be. And if it always is, it is immortal. Thre is the same number of soul(s) always.
- Socrates tells the story of Er who witnessed souls choosing new
lives, both human and animal.

Parmenides

- Zeno (originator of Zeno's paradoxes) is a disciple of Parmenides, and has

attacked the intelligibility of any "plurality" of real things. His book in which
he develops this argument is lost.
- Zeno's hypothesis is "if things are many, they must then be both like and
unlike, but that is impossible, because unlike things can't be like or like things
unlike."
- Parmenides says in his poem that the "all is one."
- Socrates believes there is a form of "likeness" which is itself by itself
(meaning both "apart, on its own," and also meaning it is itself responsible for
its own being, independent of other things), and another form, opposite to the form
of "likeness," which is the form of the "unlike." Further, the "many" shares in
both of these two forms / entities.
- If someone where to say that something is both one and many, this is not
suprising, if however he says that the many is one or vice versa, this would be
astonishing.
- It is difficult and dubious to posit that there is one form for each time a
distinction among things is made; it is difficult to argue that forms are
"themselves of themselves," or in other words self-sufficient, find their
justification within themselves.
- A slave is not a slave of master itself (form) and a master is not master
of slave itself (form), being a human being, he is a master or slave of a human
being who is a master or slave. Mastery itself is what it is of slavery itself; and
in the same way, slavery itself is slavery of mastery itself. Things in us
(assuming qualities) do not have their power in relation to forms, nor do they
(forms) have theirs in relation to us; but Parmenides repeats, forms are what they
are of themselves and in relation to themselves, and things that belong to us are,
in the same way, what they are in relation to themselves. Knowledge itself then
(its form) must not be of our world, and is therefore not accessible through human
nature, if we say god is that which partakes in knowledge itself, being that this
knowledge is a form and hence belongs to the world of forms, perhaps what one would
call the divine, it would follow that god would not have knowledge of our world,
for forms have power only in relation to themselves and cannot access our world.
This is one objection to the theory of forms as Socrates formulates it in this
dialogue.
- Parmenides argues that the one has neither beginning nor end, and is
therefore unlimited, he further argues that it has no shape, for a shape has a
middle, a middle is a part, and the one is without parts, for a thing which has
parts has many, and the one is not the many. The one is nowhere as it is neither in
itself nor in another.
- The two motions Parmenides recognises are spatial movement and alteration.
The one is neither at rest nor in motion.
- The one will not be the same as another, for then it would be something
other than itself, something other than one, and it will not be different from
itself, for if it were different from one, it would not be one. The one is
different from nothing. It is not like another or itself either.
- The one cannot be younger than, older than, or the same age as itself or
another. The one has no share of time, nor is it in any time.
- The one in no way partakes of being. Therefore the one neither is one nor
is. Parmenides rejects this conclusion.
- The one cannot be and not partake of being, so if one is, one partakes of
being. Whatever is one both has a whole and a part. If one is it partakes both of
oneness and being. Both parts of the one, the oneness and being, each partake of
the other, so that the oneness part has within it being and the being part has
within it oneness, these parts can be indefinitely divided into two again and
again, and therefore it can be said that the one is unlimited in multitude.
- Parmenides now concludes that the one must sometimes partake of being and
sometimes not partake of being.
- The instant between motion and rest is not in time.
- If one is not, nothing is.

Theaetetus

- Plato was around sixty when he wrote this dialogue.

- Theaetetus' three successive definitions of knowledge are "knowledge is
perception," which is linked to Protagoras' "man is the measure" doctrine of
relativistic truth, and also linked to the theory that "all is motion and change,"
he then argues knowledge is correct judgement and finally that knowledge is correct
judgement with an account, all three definitions are done away with by the end of
the dialogue.
- Socrates references the Parmenides dialogue in this dialogue.
- This is the founding document of epistemology, the branch of philosophy
concerned with the question, "what is knowledge?"
- Socrates seems to suspect that Protagoras' "man is the measure" doctrine
was put out for the general public, whilst he revealed the Truth (apparently the
title of Protagoras' book) to his select pupils; here seems to be an allusion to
exoteric / estoteric doctrines.
- Protagoras and Heraclitus and Empedocles and Epicharmas (comedy poet) and
Homer (tragedy poet) believed it was wrong to say that anything is, that all things
were coming to be, constantly in motion.
- What passes for being and becoming are said to be the result of motion,
whilst not-being and passing-away are the result of rest.
- The idea that "it is impossible that a thing should ever be what it was not
before without having become and without any process of becoming" seems sound,
however if you were to take a fully grown man and a boy, you would say that the
fully grown man is bigger than the boy, but as the boy grows the fully grown man
becomes smaller than the boy, so that despite the fully grown man remaining equal
in height, we say that he has changed from bigger to smaller.
- All is motion, there are two types of motion which are indefinite in their
multitude, one motion is active whilst the other is passive. From the intercourse
and friction of these two motions is begotten twins, also indefinite in multitude,
one of which is the perceived, the other the perception of it.
- There is no passive until it meets the active, no active except in
conjunction with the passive. When an eye meets a thing commensurate with the eye,
the eye is filled with sight, it does not become sight but instead a seeing eye,
the commensurate object becomes, for example, filled with whiteness, it is not
itself whiteness but white, if there is no eye the thing is not filled with
whiteness, if there is no thing the eye is not filled with sight. Hence there is
nothing which in itself is just one thing; all things become relatively to
something. No one of the things that appear to him really is, but are only coming
to be.
- The percipient is the passive and the perceptible is the active (with
perceptible meaning white but not whiteness, or hard but not hardness).
- The theory being expounded only allows the words "being" and "becoming" to
be used in conjunction with "for somebody," "of something," or "relatively to
something." You must never speak of anything as in itself either being or becoming.
Each perception is tied to a percipient, whose perception is therefore wholly his
own, then if the perception is true for the percipient, it holds that of things
that are, that they are, for me; and of things that are not, that they are not. In
no way could the a man not be the knower of things of which he is the perceiver.
- The problem with the theory "man is the measure of all things" is that
Protagoras who expounded it became a teacher of other men, he, presumably wise,
taught those who were presumably ignorant, but the conclusion of his doctrine is
that each man alone can judge his own world, and that his perceptions, regardless
of what they are, his judgements, regardless of what they are, are true, how then
could Protagoras possibly confer knowledge onto these men, if knowledge is nothing
but one's perception? "Man is the measure of all things," but man is not the only
being who can perceive, therefore is would also follow that a pig, baboon, and a
tadpole are also the "measure of all things."
- If perception and knowledge are identified, then when a man closes his eyes
or is blind he cannot be said to know, which would be absurd, and hence the
defining of knowledge as perception is refuted.
- If man is the measure of all things, then it stands that any judgement a
man may have is true for him, if he then contradicts the "man is the measure"
doctrine, the doctrine itself must accept what the man judges to be true, and hence
the doctrine refutes itself.
- "Man is the measure" is also criticised for future predictions, for what
man says will be may not be, and therefore not all that a man thinks to be true is.
- Parmenides is an opponent to the Protagoras "man is the measure" doctrine.
He says "Unmoved is the Universe"; all things are One, and this One stands still,
itself within itself, having no place in which to move.
- Socrates (and hence Plato) is afraid to criticise Parmenides for he is
afraid he may not understand what Parmenides says.
- Theaetetus says we see and hear through our eyes and ears with the soul.
- Perception has no share in the grasping of the truth since it has none in
the grasping of being, which is grasped by reasoning about perceptions, therefore
perception has no share of knowledge and hence perception and knowledge are not
one.
- Judgement is the activity in the soul when it is busy by itself about the
things which are.
- After deciding knowledge is not perception, Theaetetus suggests that
knowledge is true judgement.
- False judgement, if such a thing exists, is different from judging a thing
which is not.
- False judgment cannot be defined as heterodoxy, or "other-judging," which
is to say a thing is actually its opposite, i.e. the beautiful is the ugly, the
just is the unjust, and so on.
- It is impossible to think 1) that a thing you know, because you possess the
record of it in your soul, but which you are not perceiving, is another thing which
you know - you have its imprint too - but are not perceiving, 2) that a thing you
know is something you do not know and do not have a seal of, 3) that a thing you
don't know is another thing that you don't know, 4) that a thing you don't know is
a thing you know.
- It is impossible to think 1) that a thing you are perceiving is another
thing that you are perceiving, 2) that a thing you are perceiving is a thing which
you are not perceiving, 3) that a thing you are not perceiving is another thing you
are not perceiving, 4) that a thing you are not perceiving is a thing you are
perceiving.
- It is impossible to think 1) that a thing you both know and are perceiving,
when you are holding the imprint in line with your perception of it, is another
thing which you know and are perceiving, and whose imprint you keep in line with
the perception (this is even more impossible than the former cases, if that can
be), 2) that a thing which you both know and are perceiving, and that record of
which you are keeping in its true line, is another thing which you know, 3) that a
thing you both know and are perceiving and which you have the record correctly in
line as before, is another thing you are perceiving, 4) that a thing you neither
know nor are perceiving is another thing you neither know nor perceive, 5) that a
thing you neither know nor perceive is another thing you don't know, 6) that a
thing you neither know nor perceive is another thing you are not perceiving.
- In the above enumerations it is a sheer impossiblity for any false
judgement.
- False judgement arises in the following cases of things you know: when you
think 1) that they are other things you know and are perceiving, 2) that they are
things you don't know and are perceiving, 3) that things you both know and are
perceiving are other things you both know and are perceiving.
- To sum up: it seems that in the case of things we do not know and have
never perceived, there is no possibility of error or of false judgement, if what we
are saying is at all sound; it is in cases where we both know things and are
perceiving them that judgement is erratic and varies between truth and falsity.
When it brings together the proper stamps and records directly and in straight
lines, it is true; when it does so obliquely and crosswise, it is false.
- False judgement must be something other than a misapplication of thought to
perception, for else we would never be in error when remaining in other thoughts,
but we sometimes mistake eleven and twelve for example, when in other thoughts we
add five and seven.
- Socrates uses an analogy of wax in the soul to explain memory and then
shifts to a different analogy of birds in an enclosure, the enclosure being the
soul and birds being fragments of knowledge.
- Greek "logos" translates to "account," "statement," "argument," "speech,"
and "discourse."
- Knowledge cannot be the same as true judgement as then even the best
juryman couldn't form a correct judgement without knowledge, i.e. without being an
eye witnesses and knowing himself what had happened.
- Knowledge is then said to be true judgement with an account (an experience
of the thing being judged).
- Knowledge is proven to not be perception, true judgement, or an account
added to true judgement.
- Socrates leaves the dialogue to go to the King's Porch to answer an
indictment brought against him by Meletus. This is the beginning of Euthyphro.

Sophist

- This takes place the day after Theaetetus.

- According to Plato the supreme philosopher is one who can define a thing,
and therein demonstrate his own devotion to the truth, and the correct method of
analysis for achieving it.
- This dialogue has Theaetetus, Theodorus, and Socrates' younger namesake
present (as they were in Theaetetus), as well as a philosopher visiting from Elea,
a Greek town in Southern Italy famous for being the home of Parmenides and Zeno.
- The Eleatic philosopher takes up the position that the sophist, statesman,
and philosopher are three distinct entities possessing three distinct intellectual
capacities, as opposed to the idea that all three are just the same kind of person.
In Sophist the Eleatic philosopher sets out to define sophist whilst in Statesman
he sets out to define a statesman.
- The Eleatic philosopher used the method of "collection and division"
described in Phaedrus 265d.
- Sophistry is defined as a loosely associated set of distinct capacities -
it hunts rich, prominent young men so as to receive a wage for speaking
persuasively to them without virtue, it sells items of alleged knowledge on this
same subject, it is expert at winning private debates about right and wrong, it
cleanses people's souls by refuting their false or poorly supported ideas. In the
final accounting, the sophist is one who is aware he does not know anything,
produces in words inadequate "copies" of the truth on important subjects, ones he
makes appear to others to be the truth, even though they are false.
- The Eleatic philosopher understands speaking falsely as saying "what is
not," while his teacher Parmenides (famously) argues that this is impossible; he
commits "parricide" by going against his teacher and showing how Parmenides was
wrong. There is a discussion on the meaning of "what is" and "what is not," here
Plato is working out a new theory of the nature of the Form of being, and its
relations to other "greatest" or most comprehensive Forms: such a theory is needed
to make saying "what is not" intelligible. There is a metaphysical excursion into
the topic of being and not being.
- Ugliness is disproportion.
- The sophist is considered a kind of cheat and imitator.
- The Eleatic philosopher has trouble speaking of "that which is not," or
"those which are not," because in speaking about "that which is not" you apply to
it "one," and speaking of "those which are not" who apply to it "plurality,"
however to attach "oneness" or "plurality" to a thing presupposes the thing has
being, as qualities such as "one" or "plurality" can only be attached to that which
is (that which has being), but speaking of "that which is not" is speaking of a
thing (if it is appropriate to even use the word "thing") that is supposed to not
be.
- In order for the Eleatic philosopher to break through the above confusion,
he goes against Parmenides by trying to argue that that which is not somehow is and
that that which is somehow is not.
- People who say there are just some two things (dualists) may be asked if
both of these two things are, if they say yes, they are saying that both of these
two things partake of being, the question would then have to be raised as to
whether this "being" is distinct from these two things, if it is then they are
saying there are some three things and not that there are two, if being is not
distinct from these two things then there would just be one.
- Parmenides says "All around like the bulk of a well-formed sphere, Equal-
balanced all ways from the middle, since neither anything more Must it be, this way
or that way, nor anything less" about the "one."
- Plato argues that in saying "one is" you are saying that one has being, but
if being is distinct from the one then there are two things, not one, so you would
have to say that the one and being are the same. Furthermore "the one" has a name,
namely "one," but if a name is other than the thing it is the name of, then we have
again two things: the thing and it's name, so a name can only be the name of
nothing, so that there is just the one thing, the name, or else the name will have
to be the name of itself, i.e. the name of a name and nothing else.
- There is a group of people who argue that only what offers tangible contact
is, since they define being as the same as the body, so that nothing but the body
is; there is another group of people who argue that true being is certain nonbodily
forms that can be thought about, they take bodies and what they call the truth and
call them a process of coming-to-be instead of being.
- The Eleatic philosopher proposes that "that which is" should be definied as
that which has any capacity at all, either by nature to do something to something
else or to have even the smallest thing done to it by even the most trivial thing,
even if it only happens once.
- One group of people argue that by our bodies and through perception we have
dealings with coming-to-be, but we deal with real being by our souls and through
reasoning. Being always stays the same and in the same state, but coming-to-be
varies from one time to another.
- The Eleatic philosopher revises his understanding of "that which is" to
include both the unchanging (being) and that which changes (coming-to-be). However
he then rejects this idea as he says both rest (unchanging) and change partake of
"that which is," as they both are, and therefore "that which is" must be a third
distinct thing from both the unchanging and change, and so "that which is" is
neither at rest nor is changing.
- The Eleatic philosopher decides that some things must blend with each other
and other things don't.
- The Eleatic philosopher concludes taht "that which is not" is not being,
and is one form among the many that are. This goes against Parmenides.
- The Eleatic philosopher decides that false speech and false belief both
appear to be.
- The sophist is an insincere and unknowing imitator.
Statesman

- The alternate name for this dialogue is the Latin "Politicus."

- Wherever there is a class there is a part, but a part is not necessarily a
class. A class is a "real" grouping or division that actually exists in things.
Class may be considered as "idea," or "sort," or "tribe."
- "To turn itself by itself forever is, I dare say, impossbile for anything
except the one who guides all things which, unlike him, are in movement..."
- The myth the Vistor expounds upon refers to two alternating eras, one of
west-to-east rotation (under God's control) and the other east-to-west (our
familiar rotation).
- The myth suggests that the human being imitates the cosmos and does so for
all time.
- According to the Visitor those things that are without body are greatest
and most valuable.
- The apparently needless length of discussion this dialogue contains is
justified by its making the interlocutors better dialecticians.
- At the time this dialogue was written it was not permitted in Egypt for a
king to hold office without also excerising that of priest.
- The five constitutions of a city that were enumerated in the Republic are
also enumerated here, it seems perhaps that this was the first instance in Plato's
work of their enumeration, as the Visitor seems to deduce their being five as
opposed to simply stating that they are. The Visitor tells us that the only
constitution that can be truly called by that name is one whose rulers have expert
knowledge on what is just, all others who merely claim to have such knowledge are
reduced to imitators; those "law-abiding" cities have imitiated the constitution
for the better. The just rulers are compared to doctors, in the same way as the
tyrannical ruler was compared to the opposite of a doctor in the Republic.
- The art of the legislator belongs to that of the king.
- Laws could never accurately embrace what is best and most just for all at
the same time. Nothing in human affairs ever remains stable, which prevents any
sort of expertise whatsoever from making any simple decision in any sphere that
will cover all cases for all time. It is better for the kingly man to prevail
rather than any set of laws.
- The legislator sets laws according to the principle of "for the majority of
people, for the majority of cases." Every law is imperfect.
- The Visitor says that he who possesses the art of statesmanship should be
able to disregard laws when things contrary to the laws appear to be better for the
individual case.
- No large collection of people is capable of acquiring any sort of expertise
whatever.
- The Visitor continues his enumeration of constitutions to make seven
instead of five. Out of the three principal constitutions: monarchy, rule by few,
and rule by many, each can be split into two. Out of monarchy comes kingly and
tyrannical rule; out of rule by few comes aristocracy and oligarchy; out of
democracy comes democracy ruling by laws and democracy ruling contrary to laws. The
seventh is a constitution which relates to the others as a god relates to man.
- The sort of expert knowledge capable of persuading mass and crowd, through
the telling of stories, is rhetoric.
- The one who controls the art of persuasion and speaking (rhetoric) is the
statesman.
- The expert knowledge of generals is subordinate to statesmanship.
- The power of judges is subordinate to the king (statesman).
- What is kingship must not itself perform practical tasks, but control those
with the capacity to perform them.
- The one who controls all individual expertises, weaving together everything
in the correct way, would be most appropriately called statesmanship.
- The parts of virtue appear to be at odds with one another, for example,
corageousness and orderliness / moderation, with the former being vigorous and
swift and sharp, and the latter being deliberate, and slow and contemplative.
- The kingly weaving-together is the intertwining of the moderate and
corageous types.
- The man who possesses the art of kingship is the statesman.

Phaedo

- An alternate name for this dialogue is "On the Soul."

- This dialogue concerns Socrates' last hours and his death in the jail at
Athens.
- Phaedo reports the contents of this dialogue to a group of Pythagoreans,
who were noted for their belief in the immortality of the soul and its
reincarnation in human or animal form and for the consequenmt concern to keep one's
soul pure by avoiding contamination with the body, so as to win the best possible
next life.
- Plato indicates that this dialogue is not Socrates' actual last
conversation or even one that fits his views. Plato was not present with Socrates
on Socrates' last day.
- There is a reference to Meno's theory (in Meno) of recollection of objects
known before birth, but here the claim is made that this recollection is of Forms.
- One of the mysteries states that we men are in a kind of prison (assuming
the body) and we must not free oneself or run away (kill ourselves).
- Socrates considers death to be the separation of the soul from the body.
- The poets are continually saying we do not see or hear anything accurately,
and that the body deceives the soul.
- All wars are due to the desire to acquire wealth, according to Socrates.
- Those who arrive in the underworld uninitiated and unsanctified will wallow
in the mire, whereas he who arrives there purified and initiated will dwell with
the gods. There are many who carry the thyrsus (external symbols of Dionysian
worship) but the Bacchants (followers of Dionysus) are few.
- Socrates establishes that things come to be from their opposites, and that
there are two process attached to each pair of opposites, when former comes to be
the latter and the latter comes to be the former, for example, largeness comes from
smallness and vice versa, with the two processes attached to this pair of opposites
being increase and decrease. Socrates applies this idea to life and death, saying
that the living come to be from the dead, and the dead come to be from the living.
- Anaxogoras claimed that the universe was directed by Mind (Nous).
- Experiences of pleasures and pains makes the soul most corporeal by
deceiving it into thinking bodily things are most real / the only real things. The
body is like a tomb to the soul (a recurring analogy).
- Misology is the hatred of reason.
- "Imagine not being able to distinguish the real cause from that without
which the cause would not be able to act as a cause."
- A thing cannot itself become its opposite. When opposites approach one
another, one flees or is destroyed by the other.
- Because the soul always brings life with it, so that whatever the soul
occupies it provides with life, and because a thing will never admit the opposite
of that which it brings along, it follows that the soul is deathless, as it does
not admit death, death being the opposite of life. Although Socrates (Plato) does
not use the following terms, it seems what is being said is that the soul shares in
the Form of Life by its "essence," or in other words, it's [the soul's] having life
is not an "accidental" property.
- Socrates believed the earth was round.

Timaeus

- Timaeus appears to follow on from the Republic, due to Socrates' reference

to a previous day's exposition of the institutions of the ideal city.
- Timaeus (thought to be an invention of Plato's) introduces a creator god,
the "demiurge" (Greek for "craftsman"), who crafts and brings order to the physical
world by using the Forms as patterns - Timaeus does not conceive the Forms as
themselves shaping the world.
- Timaeus develops the theory of a "receptacle" underlying physical things,
onto which, as onto a featureless plastic stuff, the Formal patterns are imposed.
- Timaeus was a central text of Platonism in later antiquity and the Middle
Ages - it was almost the only work of Plato's available in Latin.
- This dialogue is generally considered as one of Plato's later dialogues,
with a minority arguing it belongs to the "middle period" and came into existence
not long after the Republic.
- Plato is responsible for all of Timaeus' theories.
- The Egyptian "Neith" is the same as the Greek "Athena."
- A priest of Egypt regarded the Greeks as being like children, and that
there isn't an old man among them.
- The cosmos (whole universe or world order) is a work of craft, modeled
after that which is changeless and is grasped by a rational account, that is, by
wisdom.
- What being is to becoming, truth is to convincingness.
- There is only one universe.
- The Creator gave the world a round shape as the round shape contains all
other shapes.
- The outer band is the circle responsible for the constant daily rotation of
the fixed stars - hence for the "movement of the Same." The inner band is the
circle responsible for contrary movements in the Zodiac of the seven "wandering"
stars (moon and sun, plus the five planets known by the ancients) - hence the
"movements of the Different."
- Was and will be are properly said about the becoming that passes in time,
only is can be correctly applied to being.
- Earth and Heaven gave birth to Ocean and Tethys, who in turn gave birth to
Phorcys, Cronus and Rhea and all the other gods in that generation. Cronus and Rhea
gave birth to Zeus and Hera, as well as all those siblings who are called by names
we know.
- There are three types of things: that which comes to be, that in which it
comes to be, and that after which the thing coming to be is modeled, and which is
the source of its coming to be. The receiving thing could be called the mother (the
receptical?), the source the father (what is), and the nature between them the
offspring (what comes to be).
- It is through instruction that we come to have understanding, and through
persuasion that we come to have true belief. Understanding always involves a true
account while true belief lacks any account. And while understanding remains
unmoved by persuasion, true belief gives in to persuasion. And to true belief, it
must be said, all men have a share, but of understanding, only the gods and a small
group of people do.
- There are three distinct things: being, space, and becoming, which existed
before the universe came to be.
- A quadrangle is a shape with four sides.
- The elemental bodies according to Plato are fire, air, water, and earth.
- Hard we call whatever our flesh gives way to; soft, whatever gives way to
our flesh.
- The liver's purpose is for divination.
- Both processes, the replenishment and the depletion (of the body), follow
the manner of the movement of anything within the universe at large: everything
moves toward that which is of its own kind.
- The disease of the sacred part of our constitution is called the "sacred"
disease (i.e., epilepsy).
- Mindlessness is the disease of the soul, it is of two kinds: madness and
ignorance.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZrZCE-
ufoM&t=1943s&ab_channel=PostNothingness (good video by Pierre Grimes on Plato's
Timaeus)
- This dialogue was a cosmology - a theory on how the universe came to be / a
theory on how the universe was generated. It is also a metaphysics, it considers
the conditions for man can know himself and the universe.
- Conditions are ontologically prior to cause, the conditions necessary for a
fire come before the cause of the fire. The conditions for a fire may be satisfied
without there actually being a fire, however a fire cannot come to be if the
conditions underlying the potential for a fire are not satisfied.
- The dialogue is also a theology as it introduces a god who is the creator
of the universe - a god who brings about the cosmology.
- The highest term is the Platonic language is "the one," also called "the
good."
- In Parmenides Plato says of the one that it is unlimited. It is unlimited
and also bound. It is "bound" in the sense that it can be said to be unlimited, in
other words, it is defined as being unlimited, its being defined implies it has a
boundary, as to be defined is to be bound.
- The first five things that can be said of the one is that is has being,
permanency, motion, same, and difference.
- If the one is the one it cannot be the many, if it is not the many it
cannot be a whole, for a whole is nothing but a sum of parts; the one cannot be a
part as a part presupposes a whole of which it is a part of, a part can be
considered as a relative, spoken of only relative to some other thing, another part
or a whole, the one cannot be a whole because a whole engenders parts and therefore
engenders multitude (i.e., the many), but the one is not the many. The one cannot
have a beginning, middle, or an end as these are all parts of a whole, and the one
is not a whole, therefore the one is unlimited.
- The kind of motion that the one is said to have is a "logical motion," the
ability to know itself. This is the meaning of the Greek word "ousia." This "ousia"
is often translated to "essence." The Greek word "ontos" (which is what "ontology"
derives from) is translated to "being." Ousia and ontos are often used
interchangably as there is no english word which directly translates ontos.
- "Ousia" or "being" or "essence" stands between the one and soul. "Ousia" is
an image of the one. "Ousia" is the paradigm or model of the soul.
- I believe Pierre Grimes suggests that the One finds its equivalent in
Hinduism as Ishvara.

Critias

- This dialogue carries on from Timaeus. Critias promises to detail the

Republic's ideal city in action at war, and supposes that the Athens of nine
thousand years before was governed by the institutions of Socrates' ideal city.
- Critias is either Plato's mother's cousin - the Critias of Charmides,
Protagoras, and Eryxias - or that cousin's grandfather.
- The dialogue remains incomplete.
- When the divine nature of the ten kings began to grow faint their human
nature grew ascendancy and they became disordered.

Laws

Introduction
- This work was left unpublished at Plato's death, it was transcribed
for publication by Plato's associate Philip of Opus.
- There is debate as to whether Laws replaces and critisises the
Republic, whose rule by philosopher-kings were untrammeled / unrestrained by law.
In writing Laws Plato was perhaps not engaging in pure constitutional and
legislative theory, as in Statesman, and Republic.
Book I
- The Cretian's legislator's position would be that what most men call
"peace" is really only a fiction, and that in cold fact all states are by nature
fighting an undeclared war against every other state.
- The Cretan suggests that every state is in an undeclared war with all
others, and the same goes for villages, households, individuals, and even man in
relation to himself.
- Plato seems to suggest the four parts of virtue are justice, self-
control, good judgement, and courage; the enumeration indicates which takes
precedence over the other.
- When male and female come together in order to have a child, the
pleasure they experience seems to arise entirely naturally. But homosexual
intercourse and lesbianism seem to be unnatural crimes of the first rank, and are
committed because men and women cannot control their desire for pleasure.
- When men investigate legislation, they investigate almost exclusively
pleasures and pains as they affect society and the character of the individual.
Book II
- Virtue is the general accord between reason and emotion. Education is
the aquisition of this virtue, the correct formation of our feelings of pleasure
and pain. Education is a matter of correctly disciplined feelings of pleasure and
pain.
- The art of Egypt has remained permanently the same for the last ten
thousand years prior to the writting of Laws, it is contrasted with the Greek
cities whose tastes change on every whim.
- Anyone who is going to be a sensible judge or art (in painting,
music, etc.) should be able to assess three points: 1) he must know what has been
represented; he must know how correctly it has been copied; he must know the moral
value of the representation.
- The common story (in Ancient Greece) is that wine was given to men as
a means of taking vengenance - by driving us men insane. In Plato's interpretation
it is the opposite: the gift was intended as medicine and to produce reverence in
the soul, and health and strength in the body.
- Book II concludes the discussion of music, Plato now wants to proceed
to discuss gymnastics.
Book III
- Men born at the early stage of a world cycle (thought to be the
interval between one cosmic upheaval (for example a flood) and the next) took as
their political system autocracy.
- The second stage of the world cycle sees a focus on agriculture and a
large unit forming of various familes, each family imposes their own laws on their
offspring, but eventually they will form an aristocracy or kingship and introduce
common legislation to the whole unit.
- The third stage are cities of the plains, for example Troy, of
various constitutions.
- Discord between pleasures and pains and rational judgement
constitutes the lowest depths of ignorance.
- The two mother-constitutions are monarchy and democracy, all other
constitutions are a mix of these two. It is absolutely vital for a political system
to combine them, if it is to enjoy freedom and friendship applied with good
judgement.
- The democratising of music led to man believing he was an authority
on everything.
- A lawgiver should frame his code with an eye on three things: the
freedom, unity and wisdom of the city for which he legislates.
Book IV
- Where supreme power in a man joins hands with wise judgement and
self-restraint, there you have the birth of the best political system, with laws to
match; you'll never have it otherwise.
- That which we call constitutions are not really that at all: they are
a number of ways of running a state, all of which involve some citizens living in
subjection to others like slaves, and the state is named after the ruling class in
each case. The constitutions Plato is refering to are dictatorship, aristocracy,
democracy, and oligarchy.
- In the time of Cronus spirits (beings superior to men) where put in
charge of mankind, just like how men put themselves in charge of sheep or cattle,
and do not instead put a sheep in charge of the other sheep or cattle in charge of
cattle.
- If the law is the master of the government and the government is its
slave, then the situation is full of promise and men enjoy all the blessings that
the gods shower on a state.
- The enforcement of laws will be partly persuasion and partly (for
those who defy persuasion) complusion and chastisement.
- The first law Plato believes should be passed in a state is marriage
law. The marriage law states that men between thirty and thirty-five must get
married; it is never a holy thing to voluntarily deny oneself this prize; a man who
disobeys the marriage law will be fined yearly and will not receive the honors
which the younger people of the state pay to their elders.
- A lawgiver who employs both persuasion and compulsion in his
legislation employs a "double" method, whilst the one who uses just compulsion uses
the "single" method. The double method is superior to single. The "persuasion"
portion of the written law should be considered as a preamble or preface, intended
to make the ruled more co-operative and eager to learn.
Book V
- Gods deserve the first rank of honor, second comes the soul, third
the body.
- Poverty is a sign of increased greed rather than decreased wealth.
- There would be no such thing as private property in the ideal state.
- The ideal number of households is 5040.
- The state should offer equality of opportunity.
- There will be four property-classes. The city must be divided into
twelve sections for the twelve gods.
Book VI
- The Athenian resumes his discussion of political offices after the
preliminaries of Book V.
- A states constitution should be a compromise between a monarchical
and democratic constitution.
- Indiscriminate equality for all amounts to inequality, and both fill
a state with quarrels between its citizens.
- A woman's natural potential for virtue is inferior to a man's.
- The Orphics held that a human soul could be reborn in the body of
another human being or animal, and the soul of an animal in another animal or a
human being. Hence they strictly prohibited killing and meat-eating.
- The age limit for marriage for a girl will be between sixteen to
twenty, and for a man from thirty to thirty-five.
Book VII
- People should develop equal ability in both their left and right
hands, so that no one is "left-handed" or "right-handed."
- Plato completes his discussion of gymnastics which he referenced all
the way back in Book II.
- Plato advocates for stability and resists the introduction of new
subjects, dances and songs, from being introduced into the state. He will imitate
the Egyptians in the implementation of this idea.
- No type of music is superior or inferior to another on the score of
pleasure, but simply on whether it is a good influence or bad.
- Every man and boy belong to the state first and their parents second.
Plato would make education compulsory. This law will apply just as much to girls as
to boys.
- Sleep little and be the first to get up.
- Book VII finishes with discussing laws surrounding hunting which
subsequently completes the laws regarding education.
Book VIII
 - The union of body and soul can never be superior to their separation.
- The greatest victory is the one gained over pleasure.
- Sexual desire can be controlled through distracting oneself with hard
work.
- The rest of Book VIII concerns trade and agriculture.
Book IX
- Plato assimilates the just and the good.
- Plato asserts that no man acts unjustly involuntarily.
- The general description of injustice is the mastery of the soul by
anger, fear, pleasure, pain, envy and desires.
- A charge worse than death is a deprivation of burial.
- Book IX concerns the punishments for murder, both unintentional and
intentional, and assualt, both unintentional and intentional.
Book X
- The chief mistake made by atheists is that they confuse the order in
which soul and nature came into being. Plato argues that the soul is one of the
first creations, born long before physical things, and is the chief cause of all
their alterations and transformations.
- Self-generating motion is the source of all motions, and the primary
force in both stationary and moving objects, it is the most ancient and potent of
all changes.
- Soul is defined as motion capable of moving itself, i.e. self-
generating motion.
- Plato seems to suggest that reason is an image of the soul.
- Plato first argues that gods exist, then that they care about
mankind, and finally that they cannot be bought off with prayer and sacrifice.
Book XI
- This book is concerned with the adulteration of merchandise and
articles.
- It is concerned also with the distribution of the deceased's
belongings.
Book XII
- This book is concerned with the consequences of cowards and deserters
(with regard to warfare).
- I have nothing to thank for my individuality than my soul, whereas my
body is just a likeness of myself that I carry around with me.