Sivut kuvina
PDF
ePub

combining with the object of dialectically investigating the notion of piety, that of defending his master in his own peculiar manner, connected as the charge against him was with this very subject. Nay, it might be, that the more pressing the circumstances, the more easily this apologetic purpose would so far swallow up the original ethico-dialectic one, that Plato neglected to introduce explanatory hints into the sceptical discussion in his usual manner, without, however, our being able to say that he is untrue to, or that he has completely renounced himself. Thus with this undeniable complication of purposes, the alleged and unquestionable deficiencies of the little work may be explained from the urgency of the endeavour to exhibit, as far as might be possible, the common ideas in their nakedness, and the haste, it would seem, of the composition-so far at least that as we have no traces of any follower of Socrates who composed and wrote in so Platonic a style as that exhibited in this work, and the piece can hardly be fixed in the later times of the regular imitators, I still would never venture to pronounce sentence of condemnation decisively upon it.

If, therefore, we continue to regard this dialogue as Platonic, it may be added, that while it has indeed much of the character of an occasional piece from the preponderance of the subordinate purpose, it cannot without unfairness be excluded from the list of those which connect themselves with the Protagoras, in which it is probable, indeed, that it would have filled its place more worthily without the references to Socrates, though still, if allowed a certain degree of indulgence, it may certainly maintain it.

The introduction of Euthyphro as the interlocutor is quite in the style of the Laches, in which dialogue

also Socrates has to do with persons eminently skilled in the subject under discussion. Now this man was, as is manifest from some of his own expressions, a very well-known and somewhat ridiculous personage a prophet, as it would seem, and one who professed himself especially knowing in matters relating to the gods, and who boldly defended the orthodox ideas taken from the old theological poets. One Euthyphro, indisputably the same as this, appears also in the Cratylus of Plato. The idea, then, of bringing this person into contact with Socrates, while the process against the latter was actually going on, and to exhibit him in contrast with the philosopher, by means of the piece of immorality which his zeal for piety had occasioned him to commit, was one by no means unworthy of Plato. The action brought by Euthyphro against his father, bears pretty much the stamp of a real occurrence, though it might be transferred from other times or persons. The manner, moreover, in which it is discussed, may be almost compared with the story of the sickle-spear in the Laches; only that the suit in the Euthyphro has a far closer connection with the subject, and that neither its greater prolixity, nor the frequent recurrence to it, when the unquestionable apologetic reference is taken into consideration, can be viewed in the light of a fault.

VII. PARMENIDES.

WHо knows not how in former times the Parmenides was by many contemplated at an awful distance as a gloomy sanctuary concealing treasures of the most exalted wisdom, and those accessible only to a few? But

after this fancy, however natural it might be, had been though not till lately, set aside, that falsely grounded opinion of exalted wisdom was changed into objections of such a nature, that supposing the correctness of them, the whole only becomes inconceivable in another point of view. Or is it not to be thought inconceivable that a man of Plato's genius and philosophical acuteness should either not have remarked the multiplicity of meanings in the words which involved him in the contradictions which he has accordingly written out for the world, with so much patience and without tracing their solution, or that he should have run his jokes with his still unpractised readers more mischievously than all the Sophists whom he so multifariously attacks, and that he should even have pushed the thing so far as to be in danger of fatiguing the instructed with the performance, or of disgusting them with the intention. To review, preliminarily, these objections and the different explanations of them, and to endeavour to set them aside individually or collectively, might contribute more than anything to render difficult the introduction of the reader into this dialogue, on other accounts sufficiently terrifying to many in many points of view. Hence it may be more advisable to state briefly the view which seems to be the correct one, as it may possibly approve itself sufficiently to give a standard whereby to judge of other opinions.

It is in general supposed that the Parmenides belongs to the later writings of Plato; but as this hypothesis rests upon hardly any other ground except a reluctance to give him the credit of having composed so profound a work in his youth, the reader may as easily admit the opposite assumption, preliminarily and only

Р

as hypothesis, and consider the Parmenides as belonging to the Phædrus and Protagoras. For as the Phædrus had only in general inspired and admiringly praised the philosophical impulse and its organ dialectics, while the Protagoras, artfully connecting the external and the internal, had exhibited by examples this philosophical passion and the sophistical pruriency, as well as the methods resulting from each of the two: so the Parmenides also shews itself to be a similar efflux from the Phædrus, inasmuch as it completes in another point of view what the Protagoras had begun, as a supplement to it and counterpart of it. For, in the Protagoras, the philosophical passion is considered as communicative, while in this dialogue it is represented in reference to the independent process of investigation which must precede communication: how, I mean, it looks in its purity to truth alone, and rejecting every collateral point, and all alarm at any result whatever, starts only upon the necessary assumption, that scientific knowledge is possible, and searches for it in well arranged excursions. There is, therefore, no want of opposition taken between the true and the false, but it is shown partly in Zeno, who works onwards to a definite point, the refutation of others, not without a consciousness of the inadmissibility of his weapons to whose books, at that time generally known, the reader is almost tacitly referred; partly also in Socrates who does not yet go far enough, and from youthful apprehension, still confines himself within too narrow limits. That Plato did not by this intend to imply a censure upon his friend and master, we see, partly from the circumstance that in the earlier dialogues he attributes. to him a genuine zeal for dialectics; partly, because in those pieces as well as in this he represents him as only in an

earlier and imperfect stage of his philosophical career. Two things, however, may probably be looked for in this indication on the one side, I mean, a censure upon those Socraticians who only applied themselves to ethics, and who upon that very account considered themselves more genuine scholars of the philosopher; on the other side hints for those who, overlooking, perhaps, in the Protagoras and the dialogues belonging to it the dialectic purpose and the speculative indications, would confound Plato with the class just mentioned. As then in this opposition, one side is only just indicated, so also is the other verbally set forth only in some particular expressions in the Parmenides, but shown in the main by the quiet manner in which the investigation, from which so many terrific results come out, is brought to a conclusion, and by the strictness of the method pursued in it. Now as regards the examples of philosophical investigations here chosen, the doctrine of correct division of ideas was attempted in the same way in the Protagoras and it is there satisfactorily shewn why the philosophy of morals is chosen with that view, and every thing reduced to the question of the communicability of virtue. From the same grounds, then, and in the same spirit, in this dialogue in which investigation in the abstract is to be exhibited, the exercise is undertaken upon the doctrine of the mutual connection of ideas, as it is only by such connection, and not by separation, that knowledge can be really extended. And it is perfectly consistent with this, that in this dialogue the philosophy of nature predominates, and the highest question in it, that, namely, of the possibility of the knowledge of things, constitutes the centre-point, around which the whole moves in distant circles. Now it can hardly escape any one's

« EdellinenJatka »