Plato Art Quotes

I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning

That's what education should be," I said, "the art of orientation. Educators should devise the simplest and most effective methods of turning minds around. It shouldn't be the art of implanting sight in the organ, but should proceed on the understanding that the organ already has the capacity, but is improperly aligned and isn't facing the right way.

Calligraphy is a geometry of the soul which manifests itself physically.

The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton." ...and what that means is that that law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads! It 's a ghost!" Mind has no matter or energy but they can't escape its predominance over everything they do. Logic exists in the mind. numbers exist only in the mind. I don't get upset when scientists say that ghosts exist in the mind. it's that only that gets me. science is only in your mind too, it's just that that doesn't make it bad. or ghosts either." Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Law of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts." ...we see what we see because these ghosts show it to us, ghosts of Moses and Christ and the Buddha, and Plato, and Descartes, and Rousseau and Jefferson and Lincoln, on and on and on. Isaac Newton is a very good ghost. One of the best. Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past.

There is also a third kind of madness, which is possession by the Muses, enters into a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens lyric....But he, who, not being inspired and having no touch of madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks he will get into the temple by the help of art--he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man is nowhere at all when he enters into rivalry with the madman.

The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. Paintings of Moreau are paintings of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet bring our mind into contact with the eternal wisdom; Plato's world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys.

And whenever any one informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man –whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyze the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation.

The Love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as the "Love that dare not speak its name," and on account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.

Plato said: 'He who approaches the temple of the Muses without inspiration in the belief that craftmanship alone suffices, will remain a bungler and his presumptuous poetry will be obscured by the songs of the maniacs.'

In which, if any, of these constitutions do we find the art of ruling being practiced in the actual government of men? What art is more difficult to learn? But what art is more important to us?

The twins spend their second day in Paris at the Louvre. ''... Really great geniuses, eh Fritz? One could barely call them human beings.'' '' As a matter of fact, I don't think they were... just superior beings from some other planet... perhaps from the same one that gave us Mozart and Plato, for it's impossible that a mere human being create such monumental works.'' ''Wonderful...

I'm grateful to my readers. Readers who buy and support authors, especially career authors, are the patrons who fund art, genius, innovation, and creativity. Out of all the books published, there will emerge the next Plato, Socrates, Einstein, Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin, Edison, Churchill, Tolstoy, and Tolkien. My readers help with my creative process because they help create the positive and supportive environment that allows me to keep writing the books and series my readers love. Thank You!" - Kailin Gow, Strong.

Philosophy, for Plato, is a kind of vision, the 'vision of truth' ... Everyone who has done any kind of creative work has experienced, in a greater or less degree, the state of mind in which, after long labour, truth or beauty appears, or seems to appear, in a sudden glory – it may only be about some small matter, or it may be about the universe ... I think most of the best creative work, in art, in science, in literature, and in philosophy, has been the result of such a moment.

I wonder if Socrates would have appreciated the flagrant irony: It’s only because his pupils Plato and Xenophon put his disdain for the written word into written words that we have any knowledge of it today

Madness, provided it comes as the gift of heaven, is the channel by which we receive the greatest blessings . . . the men of old who gave things their names saw no disgrace or reproach in madness; otherwise they would not have connected it with it the name of the noblest of arts, the art of discerning the future, and called it the manic art . . . So, according to the evidence provided by our ancestors, madness is a nobler thing than sober sense . . . madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.

[there are] two kinds of things the nature of which it would be quite wonderful to grasp by means of a systematic art... the first consists in seeing together things that are scattered about everywhere and collecting them into one kind, so that by defining each thing we can make clear the subject of any instruction we wish to give... [the second], in turn, is to be able to cut up each kind according to its species along its natural joints, and to try not to splinter any part, as a bad butcher might do... phaedrus, i myself am a lover of these divisions and collections, so that i may be able to think and to speak.

Then Prometheus, in his perplexity as to what preservation he could devise, stole from Hephaestus and Athena wisdom in the arts together with fire -- since by no means without fire could it be acquired or helpfully used by any -- and he handed it there and then as a gift to man.

Misanthropy develops when without art one puts complete trust in somebody thinking the man absolutely true and sound and reliable and then a little later discovers him to be bad and unreliable ... and when it happens to someone often ... he ends up ... hating everyone

If a painter, then, paints a picture of an ideally beautiful man, complete to the last detail, is he any the worse painter because he cannot show that such a man could really exist?

There are six canons of conservative thought: 1) Belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. A narrow rationality, what Coleridge called the Understanding, cannot of itself satisfy human needs. "Every Tory is a realist," says Keith Feiling: "he knows that there are great forces in heaven and earth that man's philosophy cannot plumb or fathom." True politics is the art of apprehending and applying the Justice which ought to prevail in a community of souls. 2) Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems; conservatives resist what Robert Graves calls "Logicalism" in society. This prejudice has been called "the conservatism of enjoyment"--a sense that life is worth living, according to Walter Bagehot "the proper source of an animated Conservatism." 3) Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes, as against the notion of a "classless society." With reason, conservatives have been called "the party of order." If natural distinctions are effaced among men, oligarchs fill the vacuum. Ultimate equality in the judgment of God, and equality before courts of law, are recognized by conservatives; but equality of condition, they think, means equality in servitude and boredom. 4) Persuasion that freedom and property are closely linked: separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all. Economic levelling, they maintain, is not economic progress. 5) Faith in prescription and distrust of "sophisters, calculators, and economists" who would reconstruct society upon abstract designs. Custom, convention, and old prescription are checks both upon man's anarchic impulse and upon the innovator's lust for power. 6) Recognition that change may not be salutary reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress. Society must alter, for prudent change is the means of social preservation; but a statesman must take Providence into his calculations, and a statesman's chief virtue, according to Plato and Burke, is prudence.

Plato's objection to the older art--that it is the imitation of a phantom and hence belongs to a sphere even lower than the empirical world--could certainly not be directed against the new art; and so we find Plato endeavoring to transcend reality and to represent the idea which underlies this pseudo-reality.

One had to know Plato personally to appreciate the love he suppressed puritanically for the music, poetry, and drama he censured in his philosophy and censored in his model communities. They moved him too deeply.

Plato has given to all posterity the model of a new art form, the model of the novel--which may be described as an infinitely enhanced Aesopian fable, in which poetry holds the same rank in relation to dialectical philosophy as this same philosophy held for many centuries in relation to theology: namely the rank of ancilla.

I remember saying once to André Gide, as we sat together in some Paris café, that while meta-physics had but little real interest for me, and morality absolutely none, there was nothing that either Plato or Christ had said that could not be transferred immediately into the sphere of Art and there find its complete fulfilment.

Oratory is the art of enchanting the soul, and therefore he who would be an orator has to learn the differences of human souls--they are so many and of such a nature, and from them come the differences between man and man.

The ancient Greeks worshipped the human capacity for insight. Scott Berkun, in examining the topic of innovation, pointed out that the Greek religious pantheon included nine goddesses who represented the creative spirit. Leading philosophers such as Socrates and Plato visited temples dedicated to these goddesses, these muses, who were a source of inspiration. We honor this tradition when we visit a museum, a “place of the muses,” and when we enjoy music, the “art of the muses

Then, I said, no science or art considers or enjoins the interest of the stronger or superior, but only the interest of the subject and weaker?

Then the imitative poet who aims at being popular is not by nature made, nor is his art intended, to please or to affect the rational principle in the soul; but he will prefer the passionate and fitful temper, which is easily imitated? Clearly. And

As Plato said, every soul is deprived of truth against its will. The same holds true for justice, self-control, goodwill to others, and every similar virtue. It’s essential to constantly keep this in your mind, for it will make you more gentle to all.

The disease of the soul is both more common and more deadly than the disease of the body. Just as medicine is the art devoted to healing the body, so philosophy is the art devoted to healing the soul, curing it of improper emotions, false beliefs, and faulty judgments, which are the causes of so much hardship and handicap. To heal the body one turns to the practitioner of the art of healing the body, but to heal the soul there is no doctor to turn to, and each of us is left to become that doctor unto himself. Yet, this need not stop us from exhorting others to imitate us in the godly art, in the forlorn hope that they might transform themselves into better citizens for Athens and better companions for us.

The hostility to art shown by all revolutionary reformers must, however, be pointed out. Plato is moderately reasonable. He only calls in question the deceptive function of language and exiles only poets from his republic. Apart from that, he considers beauty more important than the world.

to suffer is better than to do evil;' and the art of rhetoric is described as only useful for the purpose of self-accusation.

The happiest man is he who has no trace of malice in his soul. PLATO

Hence it is from the representation of things spoken by means of posture and gesture that the whole of the art of dance has been elaborated.

Plato also wrote—and I lettered this in firm italic letters and posted it on my dorm-room door—All learning which is acquired under compulsion has no hold upon the mind.

..we have become wealthy, and wealth is the prelude to art. In every country where centuries of physical effort have accumulated the means for luxury and leisure, culture has followed as naturally as vegetation grows in a rich and watered soil. To have become wealthy was the first necessity; a people too must live before it can philosophize. No doubt we have grown faster than nations usually have grown; and the disorder of our souls is due to the rapidity of our development. We are like youths disturbed and unbalanced, for a time, by the sudden growth and experiences of puberty. But soon our maturity will come; our minds will catch up with our bodies, our culture with our possessions. Perhaps there are greater souls than Shakespeare's, and greater minds than Plato's, waiting to be born. When we have learned to reverence liberty as well as wealth, we too shall have our Renaissance.

There seem to be two causes of the deterioration of the arts. What are they? Wealth, I said, and poverty. How do they act? The process is as follows: When a potter becomes rich, will he, think you, any longer take the same pains with his art? Certainly not. He will grow more and more indolent and careless? Very true. And the result will be that he becomes a worse potter? Yes; he greatly deteriorates.

I wonder if Socrates would have appreciated the flagrant irony: It’s only because his pupils Plato and Xenophon put his disdain for the written word into written words that we have any knowledge of it today.

The Greeks were so committed to ideas as supernatural forces that they created an entire group of goddesses (not one but nine) to represent creative power; the opening lines of both The Iliad and The Odyssey begin with calls to them. These nine goddesses, or muses, were the recipients of prayers from writers, engineers, and musicians. Even the great minds of the time, like Socrates and Plato, built shrines and visited temples dedicated to their particular muse (or muses, for those who hedged their bets). Right now, under our very secular noses, we honor these beliefs in our language, as the etymology of words like museum ("place of the muses") and music ("art of the muses") come from the Greek heritage of ideas as superhuman forces.

Then, if women are to have the same duties as men, they must have the same nurture and education? Yes. The education which was assigned to the men was music and gymnastic. Yes. Then women must be taught music and gymnastic and also the art of war, which they must practise like the men? That is the inference, I suppose. I

for the man of war must learn the art of number or he will not know how to array his troops, and the philosopher also, because he has to rise out of the sea of change and lay hold of true being, and therefore he must be an arithmetician.

Many are the noble words in which poets speak concerning the actions of men; but like yourself when speaking about Homer, they do not speak of them by any rules of art: they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them, and that only; and when inspired, one of them will make dithyrambs, another hymns of praise, another choral strains, another epic or iambic verses- and he who is good at one is not good any other kind of verse: for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine.

And therefore, I said, Glaucon, musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful; and also because he who has received this true education of the inner being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature, and with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives into his soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justly blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason why; and when reason comes he will recognize and salute the friend with whom his education has made him long familiar… …Thus much of music, which makes a fair ending; for what should be the end of music if not the love of beauty?

Then, I said, Thrasymachus, there is no one in any rule who, in so far as he is a ruler, considers or enjoins what is for his own interest, but always what is for the interest of his subject or suitable to his art; to that he looks, and that alone he considers in everything which he says and does.

I think it was Coleridge who said everyone is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. People who can’t stand Aristotle’s endless specificity of detail are natural lovers of Plato’s soaring generalities. People who can’t stand the eternal lofty idealism of Plato welcome the down-to-earth facts of Aristotle.

An old man crawls on the roof, risking the only thing he still has, his life, to feed himself. Below him live men much younger, listening to the radio, watching TV or sleeping. They’ve sold their wives and children. They can’t stand the heat with their shirts on,’ says Plato. ‘That’s the contrast. That’s what turns life into art.

Fusing the doctrines of Plotinus and Proclus with the creeds and beliefs of Christianity, Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite combined the Neo-Platonic conviction of the fundamental oneness and luminous aliveness of the world with the Christian dogmas of the triune God, original sin and redemption. The universe is created, animated and unified by the perpetual self-realization of what Plotinus had called "the One," what the Bible had called "the Lord," and what he calls "the superessential Light.

The ancient philosophers always had their doubts about democracy. Plato feared the "false and braggart words" of the demagogue, and suspected democracy might be nothing more than a staging point on the road to tyranny. Early American advocates of republican government also recognized the challenge that a corrupt leader could pose to democracy, and thought hard about creating the institutions that would resist one. The Constitutional Convention of 1787 created the electoral college as a means of ensuring that a man with what Alexander Hamilton called "talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity" could never become president of the United States.

And if, I said, the male and female sex appear to differ in their fitness for any art or pursuit, we should say that such pursuit or art ought to be assigned to one or the other of them; but if the difference consists only in women bearing and men begetting children, this does not amount to a proof that a woman differs from a man in respect of the sort of education she should receive; and we shall therefore continue to maintain that our guardians and their wives ought to have the same pursuits. Very true, he said. Next,

Plato spoke of the necessity for divine madness in the poet. It is a frightening thing to open oneself to this strange and dark side of the divine; it means letting go of our sane self-control, that control which gives us the illusion of safety. But safety is only an illusion, and letting it go is part of listening to the silence, and to the Spirit.

As Deng Xiaoping once said, “I don’t care if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.” The Stoics had their own reminder: “Don’t go expecting Plato’s Republic.

Don’t go expecting Plato’s Republic.

tanto con la riqueza como con la indigencia resultan peores los productos de las artes y peores también los que las practican.

No science or art considers or enjoins the interest of the stronger or superior, but only the interest of the subject and weaker

-¿Que sobre todo objeto hay tres artes distintas: la de utilizarlo, la de fabricarlo y la de imitarlo?

Plato, in his famous fight against the ancient Sophists, discovered that their “universal art of enchanting the mind by arguments” (Phaedrus 261) had nothing to do with truth but aimed at opinions which by their very nature are changing, and which are valid only “at the time of the agreement and as long as the agreement lasts” (Theaetetus 172). He also discovered the very insecure position of truth in the world, for from “opinions comes persuasion and not from truth” (Phaedrus 260). The most striking difference between ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality.

A disdain for the practical swept the ancient world. Plato urged astronomers to think about the heavens, but not to waste their time observing them. Aristotle believed that: “The lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master.… The slave shares in his master’s life; the artisan is less closely connected with him, and only attains excellence in proportion as he becomes a slave. The meaner sort of mechanic has a special and separate slavery.” Plutarch wrote: “It does not of necessity follow that, if the work delight you with its grace, the one who wrought it is worthy of esteem.” Xenophon’s opinion was: “What are called the mechanical arts carry a social stigma and are rightly dishonoured in our cities.” As a result of such attitudes, the brilliant and promising Ionian experimental method was largely abandoned for two thousand years. Without experiment, there is no way to choose among contending hypotheses, no way for science to advance. The anti-empirical taint of the Pythagoreans survives to this day. But why? Where did this distaste for experiment come from? An explanation for the decline of ancient science has been put forward by the historian of science, Benjamin Farrington: The mercantile tradition, which led to Ionian science, also led to a slave economy. The owning of slaves was the road to wealth and power. Polycrates’ fortifications were built by slaves. Athens in the time of Pericles, Plato and Aristotle had a vast slave population. All the brave Athenian talk about democracy applied only to a privileged few. What slaves characteristically perform is manual labor. But scientific experimentation is manual labor, from which the slaveholders are preferentially distanced; while it is only the slaveholders—politely called “gentle-men” in some societies—who have the leisure to do science. Accordingly, almost no one did science. The Ionians were perfectly able to make machines of some elegance. But the availability of slaves undermined the economic motive for the development of technology. Thus the mercantile tradition contributed to the great Ionian awakening around 600 B.C., and, through slavery, may have been the cause of its decline some two centuries later. There are great ironies here.

And if you have art, then, as I was saying, in falsifying your promise that you would exhibit Homer, you are not dealing fairly with me. But if, as I believe, you have no art, but speak all these beautiful words about Homer unconsciously under his inspiring influence, then I acquit you of dishonesty, and shall only say that you are inspired. Which do you prefer to be thought, dishonest or inspired? ION:

-Son, pues, estos dos principios los que, en mi opi­nión, podríamos considerar como causas de que la divi­nidad haya otorgado a los hombres otras dos artes, la música y la gimnástica, no para el alma y el cuerpo, ex­cepto de una manera secundaria, sino para la fogosidad y filosofía respectivamente, con el fin de que estos princi­pios lleguen, mediante tensiones o relajaciones, al punto necesario de mutua armonía.

Around 2300 years ago, Plato taught that merely existing meant that something had the power to affect something else and was therefore conscious. This wise sage was far ahead of his time, in that he had intimate knowledge of this phenomenon without modern-day scientific instruments. Today, we can measure it at the quantum physics level invisible to the naked eye, acknowledging that even atoms and subatomic particles have awareness and consciousness.

The danger of the poets, for Plaot, is that they can imitate so well that it is difficult to see what is true and what is merely invented. Since reality cannot be invented, but only discovered through the exercise of reason-according to Plato-all poets must be put into the service of reason. The poets are to surround the citizens of the Republic with such art as will "lead them unawares from childhood to love of, resemblance to, and harmony with, the beauty of reason." The use of the word "unawares" shows Plato's intention to keep the metaphysical veil intact. Those who are being led to reason cannot be aware of it. They must be led to it without choosing it. Plato asks his poets not to create, but to deceive. True poets lead no one unawares. It is nothing other than awareness that poets-that is, creators of all sorts-seek. They do not display their art so as to make it appear real; they display the real in a way that reveals it to be art.

for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine. Had he learned by rules of art, he would have known how to speak not of one theme only, but of all; and therefore God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us.

And the same will be true of the orator and the oratory in relation to all other arts. The orator need have no knowledge of the truth about thongs; it is enough for him to have discovered a knack of persuading the ignorant that he seems to know more than the experts.

Yet surely the art of the shepherd is concerned only with the good of his subjects; he has only to provide the best for them, since the perfection of the art is already ensured whenever all the requirements of it are satisfied. And that was what I was saying just now about the ruler. I conceived that the art of the ruler, considered as ruler, whether in a state or in private life, could only regard the good of his flock or subjects; whereas you seem to think that the rulers in states, that is to say, the true rulers, like being in authority.

Though thou pour the ocean into thy pitcher, It can hold no more than one day's store. The pitcher of the desire of the covetous never fills, The oyster-shell fills not with pearls till it is content; Only he whose garment is rent by the violence of love Is wholly pure from covetousness and sin. Hail to thee, then, O LOVE, sweet madness! Thou who healest all our infirmities! Who art the physician of our pride and self-conceit! Who art our Plato and our Galen! Love exalts our earthly bodies to heaven, And makes the very hills to dance with joy!

Imagine then a fleet or a ship in which there is a captain who is taller and stronger than any of the crew, but he is a little deaf and has a similar infirmity in sight, and his knowledge of navigation is not much better. The sailors are quarrelling with one another about the steering --every one is of opinion that he has a right to steer, though he has never learned the art of navigation and cannot tell who taught him or when he learned, and will further assert that it cannot be taught, and they are ready to cut in pieces any one who says the contrary. They throng about the captain, begging and praying him to commit the helm to them; and if at any time they do not prevail, but others are preferred to them, they kill the others or throw them overboard, and having first chained up the noble captain's senses with drink or some narcotic drug, they mutiny and take possession of the ship and make free with the stores; thus, eating and drinking, they proceed on their voyage in such a manner as might be expected of them. Him who is their partisan and cleverly aids them in their plot for getting the ship out of the captain's hands into their own whether by force or persuasion, they compliment with the name of sailor, pilot, able seaman, and abuse the other sort of man, whom they call a good-for-nothing; but that the true pilot must pay attention to the year and seasons and sky and stars and winds, and whatever else belongs to his art, if he intends to be really qualified for the command of a ship, and that he must and will be the steerer, whether other people like or not-the possibility of this union of authority with the steerer's art has never seriously entered into their thoughts or been made part of their calling. Now in vessels which are in a state of mutiny and by sailors who are mutineers, how will the true pilot be regarded? Will he not be called by them a prater, a star-gazer, a good-for-nothing?

Y así, Trasímaco --- dije yo-, nadie que tiene gobierno, en cuanto es gobernante, examina ni ordena lo conveniente para sí mismo, sino lo conveniente para el gobernado y sujeto a su arte, y dice cuanto dice y hace todo cuanto hace mirando a éste y a su conveniencia y ventaja.

Then now, Thrasymachus, there is no longer any doubt that neither arts nor governments provide for their own interests; but, as we were before saying, they rule and provide for the interests of their subjects who are the weaker and not the stronger–to their good they attend and not to the good of the superior. And this is the reason, my dear Thrasymachus, why, as I was just now saying, no one is willing to govern; because no one likes to take in hand the reformation of evils which are not his concern without remuneration. For, in the execution of his work, and in giving his orders to another, the true artist does not regard his own interest, but always that of his subjects; and therefore in order that rulers may be willing to rule, they must be paid in one of three modes of payment, money, or honour, or a penalty for refusing.

And can you mention any pursuit of mankind in which the male sex has not all these gifts and qualities in a higher degree than the female? Need I waste time in speaking of the art of weaving, and the management of pancakes and preserves, in which womankind does really appear to be great, and in which for her to be beaten by a man is of all things the most absurd? You are quite right, he replied, in maintaining the general inferiority of the female sex: although many women are in many things superior to many men, yet on the whole what you say is true. And

The ascent of the soul through love, which Plato describes in the Phaedrus, is symbolized in the figure of Aphrodite Urania, and this was the Venus painted by Botticelli, who was incidentally an ardent Platonist, and member of the Platonist circle around Pico della Mirandola. Botticelli’s Venus is not erotic: she is a vision of heavenly beauty, a visitation from other and higher spheres, and a call to transcendence. Indeed, she is self-evidently both the ancestor and the descendant of the Virgins of Fra Filippo Lippi: the ancestor in her pre-Christian meaning, the descendant in absorbing all that had been achieved through the artistic representation of the Virgin Mary as the symbol of untainted flesh. The post-Renaissance rehabilitation of sexual desire laid the foundations for a genuinely erotic art, an art that would display the human being as both subject and object of desire, but also as a free individual whose desire is a favour consciously bestowed. But this rehabilitation of sex leads us to raise what has become one of the most important questions confronting art and the criticism of art in our time: that of the difference, if there is one, between erotic art and pornography. Art can be erotic and also beautiful, like a Titian Venus. But it cannot be beautiful and also pornographic—so we believe, at least. And it is important to see why. In distinguishing the erotic and the pornographic we are really distinguishing two kinds of interest: interest in the embodied person and interest in the body—and, in the sense that I intend, these interests are incompatible. (See the discussion in Chapter 2.) Normal desire is an inter-personal emotion. Its aim is a free and mutual surrender, which is also a uniting of two individuals, of you and me—through our bodies, certainly, but not merely as our bodies. Normal desire is a person to person response, one that seeks the selfhood that it gives. Objects can be substituted for each other, subjects not. Subjects, as Kant persuasively argued, are free individuals; their non-substitutability belongs to what they essentially are. Pornography, like slavery, is a denial of the human subject, a way of negating the moral demand that free beings must treat each other as ends in themselves.

Next, we shall ask our opponent how, in reference to any of the pursuits or arts of civic life, the nature of a woman differs from that of a man? That will be quite fair. And perhaps he, like yourself, will reply that to give a sufficient answer on the instant is not easy; but after a little reflection there is no difficulty. Yes, perhaps. Suppose then that we invite him to accompany us in the argument, and then we may hope to show him that there is nothing peculiar in the constitution of women which would affect them in the administration of the State. By all means. Let

Like it!” I exclaimed. “It is lovely — wonderful! It is worthy to rank with the finest Italian masterpieces.” “Oh, no!” remonstrated Zara; “no, indeed! When the great Italian sculptors lived and worked — ah! one may say with the Scriptures, ‘There were giants in those days.’ Giants — veritable ones; and we modernists are the pigmies. We can only see Art now through the eyes of others who came before us. We cannot create anything new. We look at painting through Raphael; sculpture through Angelo; poetry through Shakespeare; philosophy through Plato. It is all done for us; we are copyists. The world is getting old — how glorious to have lived when it was young! But nowadays the very children are blase.

And therefore, I said, Glaucon, musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful: and also because he who has received this true education of the inner being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature, and with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives into his soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justify blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he will recognize and salute the friend with whom his education has made him long familiar.

Then without determining as yet whether war does good or harm, thus much we may affirm, that now we have discovered war to be derived from causes which are also the causes of almost all the evils in States, private as well as public. Undoubtedly. And our State must once more enlarge; and this time the enlargement will be nothing short of a whole army, which will have to go out and fight with the invaders for all that we have, as well as for the things and persons whom we were describing above. Why? he said; are they not capable of defending themselves? No, I said; not if we were right in the principle which was acknowledged by all of us when we were framing the State: the principle, as you will remember, was that one man cannot practise many arts with success. Very

Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. Then supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. The painting of Gustave Moreau is the painting of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet bring our mind into contact with the eternal wisdom, Plato's world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys.

BOOKS AND SUCCESS. Ignorance is the curse of God, Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. —Shakespeare. Prefer knowledge to wealth; for the one is transitory, the other perpetual. —Socrates. If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. —Franklin. My early and invincible love of reading, I would not exchange for the treasures of India. —Gibbon. If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all. —Fénelon. Who of us can tell What he had been, had Cadmus never taught The art that fixes into form the thought,— Had Plato never spoken from his cell, Or his high harp blind Homer never strung? —Bulwer.

Most art these days is either trivial or false. There has always been bad art, but only when a culture's general world view and aesthetic theory have gone awry is bad art what most artists strive for, mistaking bad for good. In Plato's Athens or Shakespeare's London, who would have clapped for the merdistes? For the most part our artists do not struggle-as artists have traditionally struggled-toward a vision of how things out to be or what has gone wrong; they do not provide us with the flicker of lightning that shows us where we are. Either they pointlessly waste our time, saying and doing nothing, or they celebrate ugliness and futility, scoffing at good. Every new novelist, composer,and painter-or so we're told-is more 'distrubing' than the last. The good of humanity is left in the hands of politicians.

O that we were wise, Ion, and that you could truly call us so; but you rhapsodes and actors, and the poets whose verses you sing, are wise; whereas I am a common man, who only speaks the truth. For consider what a very commonplace and trivial things this which I have said - a thing which any man might say: that when a man has acquired a knowledge of a whole art, the enquiry into good and bad is one and the same.

-Sí, ¡por Zeus!, una diferencia absoluta -dijo. -¿Establecemos, pues, ésta como segunda enseñanza para los jóvenes? -Establezcámosla -dijo.   X. -¿Y qué? ¿Establecemos como tercera la astronomía? ¿O no estás de acuerdo? -Sí por cierto -dijo-. Pues el hallarse en condiciones de reconocer bien los tiempos del mes o del año no sólo es útil para la labranza y el pilotaje, sino también no me­nos para el arte estratégico.

Then now, Thrasymachus, there is no longer any doubt that neither arts nor governments provide for their own interests; but, as we were before saying, they rule and provide for the interests of their subjects who are the weaker and not the stronger—to their good they attend and not to the good of the superior. And this is the reason, my dear Thrasymachus, why, as I was just now saying, no one is willing to govern; because no one likes to take in hand the reformation of evils which are not his concern without remuneration. For, in the execution of his work, and in giving his orders to another, the true artist does not regard his own interest, but always that of his subjects; and therefore in order that rulers may be willing to rule, they must be paid in one of three modes of payment, money, or honour, or a penalty for refusing. What

There can be no nobler training than that, he replied. And therefore, I said, Glaucon, musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful; and also because he who has received this true education of the inner being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature, and with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives into his soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justly blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason why; and when reason comes he will recognise and salute the friend with whom his education has made him long familiar. Yes,

Helen’s era was quite different from what most people think of when they hear the words ancient Greece. The Parthenon, the graceful statues, the works of Sophocles, Euripides, Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato, all came nearly a thousand years after Helen’s time, during the classical era. In the Bronze Age, no one yet knew how to make brittle iron flexible enough to use for tools and weapons. Art, especially sculpture of the human form, was stiffer and more stylized. Few people could read or write. Instead of signing important papers, you would use a stone seal to leave an impression on clay tablets. The design on the seal would be as unique as a signature. There was a kind of writing in Bronze Age Greece, but it was mostly used to keep track of financial matters, such as royal tax records. Messages, poems, songs, and stories were not written down but were memorized and passed along by word of mouth.

Plato in his Protagoras well saith, a good philosopher as much excels other men, as a great king doth the commons of his country; and again, [2062] quoniam illis nihil deest, et minimè egere solent, et disciplinas quas profitentur, soli à contemptu vindicare possunt, they needed not to beg so basely, as they compel [2063] scholars in our times to complain of poverty, or crouch to a rich chuff for a meal's meat, but could vindicate themselves, and those arts which they professed. Now they would and cannot: for it is held by some of them, as an axiom, that to keep them poor, will make them study; they must be dieted, as horses to a race, not pampered, [2064] Alendos volunt, non saginandos, ne melioris mentis flammula extinguatur; a fat bird will not sing, a fat dog cannot hunt, and so by this depression of theirs [2065] some want means, others will, all want [2066] encouragement, as being forsaken almost; and generally contemned.

And can there be anything better for the interests of the State than that the men and women of a State should be as good as possible? There can be nothing better. And this is what the arts of music and gymnastic, when present in such manner as we have described, will accomplish? Certainly. Then we have made an enactment not only possible but in the highest degree beneficial to the State? True. Then let the wives of our guardians strip, for their virtue will be their robe, and let them share in the toils of war and the defence of their country; only in the distribution of labours the lighter are to be assigned to the women, who are the weaker natures, but in other respects their duties are to be the same. And as for the man who laughs at naked women exercising their bodies from the best of motives, in his laughter he is plucking 'A fruit of unripe wisdom,' and he himself is ignorant of what he is laughing at, or what he is about;—for that is, and ever will be, the best of sayings, That the useful is the noble and the hurtful is the base. Very

What Fārābī indicates in regard to the procedure of the true philosophers, is confirmed by a number of remarks about the philosophic distinction between the exoteric and the esoteric teaching which occur in the writings of his successors. Fārābī’s Plato informs us about the most obvious and the crudest reason why this antiquated and forgotten distinction was needed. Philosophy and the philosophers were “in grave danger.” Society did not recognize philosophy or the right of philosophizing. There was no harmony between philosophy and society. The philosophers were very far from being exponents of society or of parties. They defended the interests of philosophy and of nothing else. In doing this, they believed indeed that they were defending the highest interests of mankind. The esoteric teaching was needed for protecting philosophy. It was the armor in which philosophy had to appear. It was needed for political reasons. It was the form in which philosophy became visible to the political community. It was the political aspect of philosophy. It was “political” philosophy.

SOCRATES: In my opinion then, Gorgias, the whole of which rhetoric is a part is not an art at all, but the habit of a bold and ready wit, which knows how to manage mankind: this habit I sum up under the word ‘flattery’; and it appears to me to have many other parts, one of which is cookery, which may seem to be an art, but, as I maintain, is only an experience or routine and not an art:—another part is rhetoric, and the art of attiring and sophistry are two others: thus there are four branches, and four different things answering to them.

It has been claimed that Plato was an egalitarian; it has been claimed that he was a totalitarian. It has been claimed that he was the utopian, proposing a universal blueprint for the ideal state; it has been claimed that he was an anti-utopian, demonstrating that all political idealism is folly. It has been claimed that he was a populist, concerned with the best interests of all citizens; it has been claimed he was an elitist with disturbing eugenic tendencies. It has been claimed he was a romantic; it has been claimed that he was a prick. It has been claimed that he was a theorizer, with sweeping metaphysical doctrines; it has been claimed that he was the anti-theorizing skeptic, always intent on unsettling convictions. It has been claimed that he was full of humor and play; it has been claimed that he was as solemn as a sermon limining the torments of the damned. It has been claimed he loved his fellow man; it has been claimed he loves his fellow man. It has been claimed he was a philosopher who used his artistic gifts in the service of philosophy; it has been claimed he was an artist who used philosophy in the service of his art.

POLUS: And if able to gratify others, must not rhetoric be a fine thing? SOCRATES: What are you saying, Polus? Why do you ask me whether rhetoric is a fine thing or not, when I have not as yet told you what rhetoric is? POLUS: Did I not hear you say that rhetoric was a sort of experience? SOCRATES: Will you, who are so desirous to gratify others, afford a slight gratification to me? POLUS: I will. SOCRATES: Will you ask me, what sort of an art is cookery? POLUS: What sort of an art is cookery? SOCRATES: Not an art at all, Polus. POLUS: What then? SOCRATES: I should say an experience.

Epigrams These four Epigrams were published—numbers 2 and 4 without title—by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 1st edition. To Stella From the Greek of Plato Thou wert the morning star among the living, Ere thy fair light had fled;— Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving New splendour to the dead. Kissing Helena From the Greek of Plato Kissing Helena, together With my kiss, my soul beside it Came to my lips, and there I kept it,— For the poor thing had wandered thither, To follow where the kiss should guide it, Oh, cruel I, to intercept it! Spirit of Plato From the Greek Eagle! why soarest thou above that tomb? To what sublime and star-ypaven home Floatest thou?— I am the image of swift Plato's spirit, Ascending heaven; Athens doth inherit His corpse below. NOTE: _5 doth Boscombe manuscript; does edition 1839. Circumstance From the Greek A man who was about to hang himself, Finding a purse, then threw away his rope; The owner, coming to reclaim his pelf, The halter found; and used it. So is Hope Changed for Despair—one laid upon the shelf, We take the other. Under Heaven's high cope Fortune is God—all you endure and do Depends on circumstance as much as you

I perceived how foolish I had been in consenting to take my turn with you in praising love, and saying that I too was a master of the art, when I really had no conception how anything ought to be praised. For in my simplicity I imagined that the topics of praise should be true, and that this being presupposed, out of the true the speaker was to choose the best and set them forth in the best manner. And I felt quite proud, thinking that I knew the nature of true praise, and should speak well. Whereas I now see that the intention was to attribute to Love every species of greatness and glory, whether really belonging to him or not, without regard to truth or falsehood—that was no matter; for the original proposal seems to have been not that each of you should really praise Love, but only that you should appear to praise him. And so you attribute to Love every imaginable form of praise which can be gathered anywhere; and you say that 'he is all this,' and 'the cause of all that,' making him appear the fairest and best of all to those who know him not, for you cannot impose upon those who know him. And a noble and solemn hymn of praise have you rehearsed. But as I misunderstood the nature of the praise when I said that I would take my turn, I must beg to be absolved from the promise which I made in ignorance, and which (as Euripides would say (Eurip. Hyppolytus)) was a promise of the lips and not of the mind. Farewell then to such a strain: for I do not praise in that way; no, indeed, I cannot. But if you like to hear the truth about love, I am ready to speak in my own manner, though I will not make myself ridiculous by entering into any rivalry with you. Say then, Phaedrus, whether you would like to have the truth about love, spoken in any words and in any order which may happen to come into my mind at the time. Will that be agreeable to you? Aristodemus

Glaucon, (1) the son of Ariston, had conceived such an ardour to gain the headship of the state that nothing could hinder him but he must deliver a course of public speeches, (2) though he had not yet reached the age of twenty. His friends and relatives tried in vain to stop him making himself ridiculous and being dragged down from the bema. (3) Socrates, who took a kindly interest in the youth for the sake of Charmides (4) the son of Glaucon, and of Plato, alone succeeded in restraining him. (1) Glaucon, Plato's brother. Grote, "Plato," i. 508. (2) "Harangue the People." (3) See Plat. "Protag." 319 C: "And if some person offers to give them advice who is not supposed by them to have any skill in the art (sc. of politics), even though he be good-looking, and rich, and noble, they will not listen to him, but laugh at him, and hoot him, until he is either clamoured down and retires of himself; or if he persists, he is dragged away or put out by the constables at the command of the prytanes" (Jowett). Cf. Aristoph. "Knights," 665, {kath eilkon auton oi prutaneis kai toxotai}. (4) For Charmides (maternal uncle of Plato and Glaucon, cousin of Critias) see ch. vii. below; Plato the philosopher, Glaucon's brother, see Cobet, "Pros. Xen." p. 28.

¡Pero qué!, la respondí, ¿es que el Amor es mortal? — De ninguna, manera. — Pero, en fin, Diotima, dime qué es. — Es, como dije antes, una cosa intermedia entre lo mortal y lo inmortal. — ¿Pero qué es por último? — Un gran demonio, Sócrates; porque todo demonio ocupa un lugar intermedio entre los dioses y los hombres. — ¿Cuál es, la dije, la función propia de un demonio? — La de ser intérprete y medianero entre los dioses y los hombres; llevar al cielo las súplicas y los sacrificios de estos últimos, y comunicar a los hombres las órdenes de los dioses y la remuneración de los sacrificios que les han ofrecido. Los demonios llenan el intervalo que separa el cielo de la tierra; son el lazo que une al gran todo. De ellos procede toda la esencia adivinatoria y el arte de los sacerdotes con relación a los sacrificios, a los misterios, a los encantamientos, a las profecías y a la magia. La naturaleza divina como no entra nunca en comunicación directa con el hombre, se vale de los demonios para relacionarse y conversar con los hombres, ya durante la vigilia, ya durante el sueño. El que es sabio en todas estas cosas es demoníaco18; y el que es hábil en todo lo demás, en las artes y oficios, es un simple operario. Los demonios son muchos y de muchas clases, y el Amor es uno de ellos. —

July 19th FORGIVE THEM BECAUSE THEY DON’T KNOW “As Plato said, every soul is deprived of truth against its will. The same holds true for justice, self-control, goodwill to others, and every similar virtue. It’s essential to constantly keep this in your mind, for it will make you more gentle to all.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 7.63 As he wound his way up Via Dolorosa to the top of Calvary Hill, Jesus (or Christus as he would have been known to Seneca and other Roman contemporaries) had suffered immensely. He’d been beaten, flogged, stabbed, forced to bear his own cross, and was set to be crucified on it next to two common criminals. There he watched the soldiers roll dice to see who would get to keep his clothes, listened as the people sneered and taunted him. Whatever your religious inclinations, the words that Jesus spoke next—considering they came as he was subjected to unimaginable human suffering—send chills down your spine. Jesus looked upward and said simply, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” That is the same truth that Plato spoke centuries earlier and that Marcus spoke almost two centuries after Jesus; other Christians must have spoken this truth as they were cruelly executed by the Romans under Marcus’s reign: Forgive them; they are deprived of truth. They wouldn’t do this if they weren’t. Use this knowledge to be gentle and gracious.

SOCRATES: Whether the rhetorician is or not inferior on this account is a question which we will hereafter examine if the enquiry is likely to be of any service to us; but I would rather begin by asking, whether he is or is not as ignorant of the just and unjust, base and honourable, good and evil, as he is of medicine and the other arts; I mean to say, does he really know anything of what is good and evil, base or honourable, just or unjust in them; or has he only a way with the ignorant of persuading them that he not knowing is to be esteemed to know more about these things than some one else who knows? Or must the pupil know these things and come to you knowing them before he can acquire the art of rhetoric?

You remember that lovely passage in which Plato describes how a young Greek should be educated, and with what insistence he dwells upon the importance of surroundings, telling us how the lad is to be brought up in the midst of fair sights and sounds, so that the beauty of material things may prepare his soul for the reception of the beauty that is spiritual. Insensibly, and without knowing the reason why, he is to develop that real love of beauty which, as Plato is never weary of reminding us, is the true aim of education. By slow degrees there is to be engendered in him such a temperament as will lead him naturally and simply to choose the good in preference to the bad, and, rejecting what is vulgar and discordant, to follow by fine instinctive taste all that possesses grace and charm and loveliness. Ultimately, of course, this taste is to become critical and self-conscious, but at first it is to exist purely as a cultivated instinct, and ‘he who has received this true culture of the inner man will with clear and certain vision per­ceive the omissions and faults in art or nature, and with a taste that cannot err, while he praises, and finds his pleasure in what is good, and receives it into his soul, and so becomes good and noble, will rightly blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason why:’ and so, when, later on, the critical and self-conscious spirit develops in him, he ‘will recognise and salute it as a friend with whom his education has made him long familiar.

The three greatest metaphysicians who ever existed - Plato, Aristotle and St.Thomas Aquinas - had no system in the idealistic sense of the word. Their ambition was not to achieve philosophy once and for all, but to maintain it and to serve it in ours. For us, as for them, the great thing is not to achieve a system of the world as if being could be deduced from thought, but to relate reality, as we know it, to the permanent principles in whose light all the changing problems of science, of ethics and of art have to be solved. A metaphysics of existence cannot be a system wherewith to get rid of philosophy, it is an always open inquiry, whose conclusions are both always the same and always new, because it is conducted under the guidance of immutable principles, which will never exhaust experience, or be themselves exhausted by it. For even though, as is impossible, all that which exists were known to us, existence itself would still remain a mystery. Why, asked Leibniz, is there something rather than nothing ?

The three greatest metaphysicians who ever existed - Plato, Aristotle and St.Thomas Aquinas - had no system in the idealistic sense of the word. Their ambition was not to achieve philosophy once and for all, but to maintain it and to serve it in their own times, as we have to maintain it and to serve it in ours. For us, as for them, the great thing is not to achieve a system of the world as if being could be deduced from thought, but to relate reality, as we know it, to the permanent principles in whose light all the changing problems of science, of ethics and of art have to be solved. A metaphysics of existence cannot be a system wherewith to get rid of philosophy, it is an always open inquiry, whose conclusions are both always the same and always new, because it is conducted under the guidance of immutable principles, which will never exhaust experience, or be themselves exhausted by it. For even though, as is impossible, all that which exists were known to us, existence itself would still remain a mystery. Why, asked Leibniz, is there something rather than nothing ?

August 8th START WITH WHERE THE WORLD IS “Do now what nature demands of you. Get right to it if that’s in your power. Don’t look around to see if people will know about it. Don’t await the perfection of Plato’s Republic, but be satisfied with even the smallest step forward and regard the outcome as a small thing.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 9.29.(4) Have you ever heard the expression “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough”? The idea is not to settle or compromise your standards, but rather not to become trapped by idealism. The community organizer Saul Alinsky opens his book Rules for Radicals with a pragmatic but inspiring articulation of that idea: “As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be—it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be.” There is plenty that you could do right now, today, that would make the world a better place. There are plenty of small steps that, were you to take them, would help move things forward. Don’t excuse yourself from doing them because the conditions aren’t right or because a better opportunity might come along soon. Do what you can, now. And when you’ve done it, keep it in perspective, don’t overblow the results. Shun both ego and excuse, before and after.

The other strikingly modern feature of the type of poet which Euripides now introduced into the history of literature is his apparently voluntary refusal to take any part whatever in public life. Euripides was not a soldier as Aeschylus was, nor a priestly dignitary as Sophocles was, but, on the other hand, he is the very first poet who is reported to have possessed a library, and he appears to be also the first poet to lead the life of a scholar in complete retirement from the world. If the bust of him, with its tousled hair, its tired eyes and the embittered lines round the mouth, is a true portrait, and if we are right in seeing in it a discrepancy between body and spirit, and the expression of a restless and dissatisfied life, then we may say that Euripides was the first unhappy poet, the first whose poetry brought him suffering. The notion of genius in the modern sense is not merely completely strange to the ancient world; its poets and artists have nothing of the genius about them. The rational and craftsmanlike elements in art are far more important for them than the irrational and intuitive. Plato’s doctrine of enthusiasm emphasized, indeed, that poets owed their work to divine inspiration and not to mere technical ability, but this idea by no means leads to the exaltation of the poet; it only increases the gulf between him and his work, and makes of him a mere instrument of the divine purpose. It is, however, of the essence of the modern notion of genius that there is no gulf between the artist and his work, or, if such a gulf is admitted, that the genius is far greater than any of his works and can never be adequately expressed in them. So genius connotes for us a tragic loneliness and inability to make itself fully understood. But the ancient world knows nothing of this or of the other tragic feature of the modern artist—his lack of recognition by his own contemporaries and his despairing appeals to a remote posterity. There is not a trace of all this—at least before Euripides. Euripides’ lack of success was mainly due to the fact that there was nothing in classical times that could be called an educated middle class. The old aristocracy took no pleasure in his plays, owing to their different outlook on life, and the new bourgeois public could not enjoy them either, owing to its lack of education. With his philosophical radicalism, Euripides is a unique pheno menon, even among the poets of his age, for these are in general as conservative in their outlook as were those of the classical age —in spite of a naturalism of style which was derived from the urban and commercial society they lived in, and which had reached a point at which it was really incompatible with political conservatism. As politicians and partisans these poets hold to their conservative doctrines, but as artists they are swept along in the progressive stream of their times. This inner contradiction in their work is a completely new phenomenon in the social history of art.

-Pero, por el contrario, pienso que, cuando un arte­sano u otro que su índole destine a negocios privados, engreído por su riqueza o por el número de los que le siguen o por su fuerza o por otra cualquier cosa seme­jante, pretenda entrar en la clase de los guerreros, o uno de los guerreros en la de los consejeros o guardia­nes, sin tener mérito para ello, y así cambien entre sí sus instrumentos y honores, o cuando uno solo trate de hacer a un tiempo los oficios de todos, entonces creo, como digo, que tú también opinarás que seme­jante trueque y entrometimiento ha de ser ruinoso para la ciudad. -En un todo. -Por tanto, el entrometimiento y trueque mutuo de estas tres clases es el mayor daño de la ciudad y más que ningún otro podría ser con plena razón calificado de cri­men. -Plenamente. -¿Y al mayor crimen contra la propia ciudad no ha­brás de calificarlo de injusticia? -¿Qué duda cabe?   XI. -Eso es, pues, injusticia. Y a la inversa, diremos: la actuación en lo que les es propio de los linajes de los trafi­cantes, auxiliares y guardianes, cuando cada uno haga lo suyo en la ciudad, ¿no será justicia, al contrario de aque­llo otro, y no hará justa a la ciudad misma? -Así me parece y no de otra manera -dijo él. -No lo digamos todavía con voz muy recia -obser­vé-; antes bien, si, trasladando la idea formada a cada uno de los hombres, reconocemos que allí es también justicia, concedámoslo sin más, porque ¿qué otra cosa cabe oponer? Pero, si no es así, volvamos a otro lado nuestra atención. Y ahora terminemos nuestro examen en el pensamiento de que, si tomando algo de mayor extensión entre los seres que poseen la justicia, nos es­forzáramos por intuirla allí, sería luego más fácil obser­varla en un hombre solo. Y de cierto nos pareció que ese algo más extenso es la ciudad y así la fundamos con la mayor excelencia posible, bien persuadidos de que en la ciudad buena era donde precisamente podría hallar­se la justicia. Traslademos, pues, al individuo lo que allí se nos mostró y, si hay conformidad, será ello bien; y, si en el individuo aparece como algo distinto, volveremos a la ciudad a hacer la prueba, y así, mirando al uno jun­to a la otra y poniéndolos en contacto y roce, quizá con­seguiremos que brille la justicia como fuego de enjutos y, al hacerse visible, podremos afirmarla en nosotros mismos.