GENERAL INTRODUCTION

xv

powers of imaginative sympathy and eloquence are summoned to unveil the sacred vision of absolute beauty Plato explores the idea that "Beauty itself" is a divine, unchanging reality that we can only see with the mind, not the eyes.. The Phaedo A famous dialogue set in the prison cell where Socrates spent his final hours before execution. turns the logical theory upon the soul, which is seen to enjoy, when freed from the body, familiar cognition of the eternal types of being These are the "Forms"—the perfect, unchanging templates of things like Justice, Beauty, and Equality that Plato believed existed in a higher realm.. Here Orphic dogma A set of mystical religious beliefs in ancient Greece that emphasized the soul's divine origin and its journey through reincarnation. lends its aid to the Socratic search for knowledge, while we behold an inspiring picture of the philosopher in his hour of death.

With increasing confidence in himself as the successor of Socrates, Plato next undertook, in the Republic, to show the master meeting his own unsatisfied queries on education and politics. We read now of a "form" of good The "Form of the Good" is the highest point in Plato’s philosophy; he describes it as the sun of the intellectual world, giving light and life to all other truths. to which all thought and action aspire, and which, contemplated in itself, will explain not merely why justice is better than injustice, but the meaning and aim of everything. In order that man may be fully understood, we are to view him "writ large" A famous metaphor where Plato suggests that the structure of an entire city reflects the structure of a single human soul, but on a larger, more readable scale. in the organisation of an ideal state. The scheme of description opens out into many subsidiary topics, including three great proposals already known to Greece—the abolition of private property, the community of women and children, and the civic equality of the sexes These radical proposals were intended for the "Guardians" or ruling class of the city to prevent corruption and ensure total loyalty to the state.. But the central subject is the preparation of the philosopher, through a series of ancillary sciences These "supporting sciences" include arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music theory, which were meant to train the mind for higher abstract thought., for dialectic The highest form of philosophical reasoning; the ability to use pure logic to reach the ultimate truth of things without relying on physical senses.; so that, once possessed of the supreme truth, he may have light for directing his fellow-men. As in the Phaedo, the spell of mythical revelation Plato often ends his complex rational arguments with a "myth" or symbolic story to help the reader visualize spiritual or cosmic truths. is brought to enhance the discourse of reason. The