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Gorgias, if you do not deny that his art has the advantage in usefulness to
mankind, he will not quarrel with you for saying that the study of which I am
speaking is superior in this particular of essential truth; as in the comparison
of white colours, a little whiteness, if that little be only pure, was said to be
superior in truth to a great mass which is impure. And now let us give our best
attention and consider well, not the comparative use or reputation of the
sciences, but the power or faculty, if there be such, which the soul has of
loving the truth, and of doing all things for the sake of it; let us search into the
pure element of mind and intelligence, and then we shall be able to say
whether the science of which I have been speaking is most likely to possess
the faculty, or whether there be some other which has higher claims.
PROTARCHUS: Well, I have been considering, and I can hardly think that
any other science or art has a firmer grasp of the truth than this.
SOCRATES: Do you say so because you observe that the arts in general
and those engaged in them make use of opinion, and are resolutely engaged in
the investigation of matters of opinion? Even he who supposes himself to be
occupied with nature is really occupied with the things of this world, how
created, how acting or acted upon. Is not this the sort of enquiry in which his
life is spent?
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: He is labouring, not after eternal being, but about things
which are becoming, or which will or have become.
PROTARCHUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And can we say that any of these things which neither are nor
have been nor will be unchangeable, when judged by the strict rule of truth
ever become certain?
PROTARCHUS: Impossible.
SOCRATES: How can anything fixed be concerned with that which has no
fixedness?
PROTARCHUS: How indeed?
SOCRATES: Then mind and science when employed about such changing
things do not attain the highest truth?
PROTARCHUS: I should imagine not.
SOCRATES: And now let us bid farewell, a long farewell, to you or me or
Philebus or Gorgias, and urge on behalf of the argument a single point.
PROTARCHUS: What point?
926
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Buch The Complete Plato"
The Complete Plato
- Titel
- The Complete Plato
- Autor
- Plato
- Datum
- ~347 B.C.
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- PD
- Abmessungen
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Seiten
- 1612
- Schlagwörter
- Philosophy, Antique, Philosophie, Antike, Dialogues, Metaphysik, Metaphysics, Ideologie, Ideology, Englisch
- Kategorien
- Geisteswissenschaften
- International