| Summary: | "I have also derived much assistance from the great work of Mr. Grote, which contains excellent analyses of the Dialogues, and is rich in original thoughts and observations. I agree with him in rejecting as futile the attempt of Schleiermacher and others to arrange the Dialogues of Plato into a harmonious whole. Any such arrangement appears to me not only to be unsupported by evidence, but to involve an anachronism in the history of philosophy. There is a common spirit in the writings of Plato, but not a unity of design in the whole, nor perhaps a perfect unity in any single Dialogue. The hypothesis of a general plan which is worked out in the successive Dialogues is an after-thought of the critics, who have attributed a system to writings belonging to an age when system had not as yet taken possession of philosophy. The aim of the Introductions in these volumes has been to represent Plato as the father of idealism, who is not to be measured by the standard of utilitarianism or any other modern philosophical system"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved).
|
|---|