The Phædon is affirmative and expository

The Phædon is characterised by Proklus as a dialogue wherein Sokrates unfolds fully his own mental history, and communicates to his admirers the complete range of philosophical cognition. This criticism is partly well founded. The dialogue generally is among the most affirmative and expository in the Platonic list. Sokrates undertakes to prove the immortality of the soul, delivers the various reasons which establish the doctrine to his satisfaetion, and confutes some dissentient opinions entertained by others. In regard to the exposition, however, we must consider ourselves as listening to Plato under the name of Sokrates: and we find it so conducted as to specify both certain stages through which the mind of Plato had passed, and the logical process which (at that time) appeared to him to carry conviction.

Situation and circumstances assumed in the Phædon. Pathetic interest which they inspire

The interest felt by most readers in the Phædon, however, depends, not so much on the argumentative exposition, (which Wyttenbach justly pronounces to be obscure and difficult as well as unsatisfactory) as on the personality of the expounding speaker, and the irresistible pathos of the situation. Sokrates had been condemned to death by the Dikastery on the day after the sacred ship, memorable in connection with the legendary voyage of Theseus to Krete, had been dispatched on her annual mission of religious sacrifice at the island of Delos. The Athenian magistrates considered themselves as precluded from putting any one to death by public authority, during the absence of the ship on this mission.

Dramatic and comic exuberance of the Euthydêmus. Judgments of various critics

Dramatic vivacity, and comic force, holding up various persons to ridicule or contempt, are attributes which Plato manifests often and abundantly. But the dialogue in which these qualities reach their maximum, is, the Euthydêmus. Some portions of it approach to the Nubes of Aristophanes: so that Schleiermacher, Stallbaum, and other admiring critics have some difficulty in explaining, to their own satisfaction, how Plato, the sublime moralist and lawgiver, can here have admitted so much trifling and buffoonery. Ast even rejects the dialogue as spurious; declaring it to be unworthy of Plato and insisting on various peculiarities, defects, and even absurdities, which offend his critical taste. His conclusion in this case has found no favour: yet I think it is based on reasons quite as forcible as those upon which other dialogues have been condemned: upon reasons, which, even if admitted, might prove that the dialogue was an inferior performance, but would not prove that Plato was not the author.

Scenery and personages

Sokrates recounts (to Kriton) a conversation in which he has just been engaged with two Sophists, Euthydêmus and Dionysodorus, in the undressing-room belonging to the gymnasium of the Lykeium. There were present, besides, Kleinias, a youth of remarkable beauty and intelligence, cousin of the great Alkibiades—Ktesippus, an adult man, yet still young, friend of Sokrates and devotedly attached to Kleinias—and a crowd of unnamed persons, partly friends of Kleinias, partly admirers and supporters of the two Sophists.

The present work is intended as a sequel and supplement to my History of Greece. It describes a portion of Hellenic philosophy: it dwells upon eminent individuals, enquiring, theorising, reasoning, confuting, &c., as contrasted with those collective political and social manifestations which form the matter of history, and which the modern writer gathers from Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon.

Both Sokrates and Plato, indeed, are interesting characters in history as well as in philosophy. Under the former aspect, they were described by me in my former work as copiously as its general purpose would allow. But it is impossible to do justice to either of them—above all, to Plato, with his extreme variety and abundance—except in a book of which philosophy is the principal subject, and history only the accessory.

The names of Plato and Aristotle tower above all others in Grecian philosophy. Many compositions from both have been preserved, though only a small proportion of the total number left by Aristotle. Such preservation must be accounted highly fortunate, when we read in Diogenes Laertius and others, the long list of works on various topics of philosophy, now irrecoverably lost, and known by little except their titles. Respecting a few of them, indeed, we obtain some partial indications from fragmentary extracts and comments of later critics. But none of these once celebrated philosophers, except Plato and Aristotle, can be fairly appreciated upon evidence furnished by themselves.

Scanty information about Plato's life

Of Plato's biography we can furnish nothing better than a faint outline. We are not fortunate enough to possess the work on Plato's life, composed by his companion and disciple Xenokrates, like the life of Plotinus by Porphyry, or that of Proklus by Marinus. Though Plato lived eighty years, enjoying extensive celebrity—and though Diogenes Laertius employed peculiar care in collecting information about him—yet the number of facts recounted is very small, and of those facts a considerable proportion is poorly attested.

His birth, parentage, and early education

Plato was born at Ægina (in which island his father enjoyed an estate as klerucn or out-settled citizen) in the month Thargelion (May) of the year B.C. 427. His family, belonging to the Dême Kollytus, was both ancient and noble, in the sense attached to that word at Athens. He was son of Ariston (or, according to some admirers, of the God Apollo) and Periktionê: his maternal ancestors had been intimate friends or relatives of the lawgiver Solon, while his father belonged to a Gens tracing its descent from Kodrus, and even from the God Poseidon. He was also nearly related to Charmides and to Kritias—this last the well-known and violent leader among the oligarchy called the Thirty Tyrants. Plato was first called Aristoklês, after his grandfather; but received when he grew up the name of Plato—on account of the breadth (we are told) either of his forehead or of his shoulders.

Character of dialogues immediately preceding—much transcendental assertion. Opposite character of the Parmenides

In the dialogues immediately preceding—Phædon, Phædrus, Symposion—we have seen Sokrates manifesting his usual dialectic, which never fails him: but we have also seen him indulging in a very unusual vein of positive affirmation and declaration. He has un-folded many novelties about the states of pre-exist ence and post-existence: he has familiarised us with Ideas, Forms, Essences, eternal and unchangeable, as the causes of all the facts and particularities of nature: he has recognised the inspired variety of madness, as being more worthy of trust than sober, uninspired, intelligence: he has recounted, with the faith of a communicant fresh from the mysteries, revelations made to him by the prophetess Diotima,—respecting the successive stages of exaltation whereby gifted intelligences, under the stimulus of Eros Philosophus, ascend into communion with the great sea of Beauty. All this is set forth with as much charm as Plato's eloquence can bestow. But after all, it is not the true character of Sokrates:—I mean, the Sokrates of the Apology, whose mission it is to make war against the chronic malady of the human mind—false persuasion of knowledge, without the reality. It is, on the contrary, Sokrates himself infected with the same chronic malady which he combats in others, and requiring medicine against it as much as others. Such is the exact character in which Sokrates appears in the Parmenides: which dialogue I shall now proceed to review.

Persons who debate in the Gorgias. Celebrity of the historical Gorgias

Aristotle, in one of his lost dialogues, made honourable mention of a Corinthian cultivator, who, on reading the Platonic Gorgias, was smitten with such vehement admiration, that he abandoned his fields and his vines, came to Athens forthwith, and committed himself to the tuition of Plato. How much of reality there may be in this anecdote, we cannot say: but the Gorgias itself is well calculated to justify such warm admiration. It opens with a discussion on the nature and purpose of Rhetoric, but is gradually enlarged so as to include a comparison of the various schemes of life, and an outline of positive ethical theory. It is carried on by Sokrates with three distinct interlocutors—Gorgias, Polus, and Kalliklês; but I must again remind the reader that all the four are only spokesmen prompted by Plato himself. It may indeed be considered almost as three distinct dialogues, connected by a loose thread. The historical Gorgias, a native of Leontini in Sicily, was the most celebrated of the Grecian rhetors; an elderly man during Plato's youth. He paid visits to different cities in all parts of Greece, and gave lessons in rhetoric to numerous pupils, chiefly young men of ambitious aspirations.