Five Dialogues

Metadata

• Author:: [[ Plato ]]
• Full Title:: Five Dialogues
• Category:: #books

Highlights

• We are often told that in this theory Socrates ignored the will, but that is in part a misconception. The aim is not to choose the right but to become the sort of person who cannot choose the wrong and who no longer has {x} any choice in the matter. This is what he sometimes expresses as becoming like a god, for the gods, as he puts it in Euthyphro (10d), love the pious (and so, the right) because it is right; they cannot do otherwise and no longer have any choice at all, and they cannot be the cause of evil. (Location 27)
• he is prosecuting his own father for the murder of a laborer who is himself a murderer. (Location 50)
• deme, (Location 71)
• aquiline (Location 72)
• ignoble (Location 74)
• Consider this: Is the pious being loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is being loved by the gods? (Location 237)

  New highlights added November 12, 2022 at 10:34 AM

• Socrates is guilty of wrongdoing in that he busies himself studying things in the sky and below the earth; he makes the worse into the stronger argument, and [c] he teaches these same things to others. (Location 452)
• “I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.” (Location 490)
• So I took up those poems with which they seemed to have taken most trouble and asked them what they meant, in order that I might at the same time learn something from them. I am ashamed to tell you the truth, gentlemen, but I must. Almost all the bystanders might have explained the poems better than their authors could. I soon realized that poets do not compose their poems with knowledge, but [c] by some inborn talent and by inspiration, like seers and prophets who also say many fine things without any understanding of what they say. (Location 500)
• “This man among you, mortals, is wisest who, like Socrates, understands that his wisdom is worthless.” (Location 516)

  New highlights added November 12, 2022 at 5:25 PM

• To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils. (Location 627)

Reading and Writing MOC## New highlights added November 18, 2022 at 11:27 AM

• Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.” (Location 647)
• A man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time. (Location 676)