Mr Plato

Yes, Plato wrote also that some made it out of the cave and saw the truth at the top of the "ladder", yet returned to the cave to help others come to see the true world. -=mark=-

Didn't the idea of Atlantis come from one of Plato's writings?

Yep. From the Dialogues Timaeus and Critias. -- AnonymousDonor

I just finished the Dialogue "Theaetetus" and Socrates is in rare form. The geometrician Theodorus tells Socrates of young Theaetetus, "I never knew any one who was his equal in natural gifts: for he has a quickness of apprehension which is almost unrivalled, and he is exceedingly gentle, and also the most courageous of men." In "Theaetetus" Socrates compares himself to a mid-wife - one who brings forth life from others, but generates no new life of his own (one who helps others give birth to ideas, while he claims to know nothing himself). Theodorus compares Socrates to Destiny, for "no one can escape from an argument you weave for him."

Quotations from "Theaetetus"

"Isn't learning growing wiser about that which you learn?"
"How can a man understand the name of anything, when he does not know the nature of it?"
". . . my art of midwifery is in most respects like theirs; but differs, in that I attend men and not women; and look after their souls when they are in labor, and not after their bodies: and the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth. And like the midwives, I am barren, and the reproach which is often made against me, that I ask questions of others and have not the wit to answer them myself, is very just - the reason is, that the god compels me to be a midwife, but does not allow me to bring forth."
"Man, Protagoras says, is the measure of all things, of the existence of things that are, and of the non-existence of things that are not."
(correcting Protagoras' universal statement)"...a wise man only is a measure."
..."Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder."
"Now by the uninitiated I mean the people who believe in nothing but what they can grasp in their hands, and who will not allow that action or generation or anything invisible can have real existence."
"...in the language of nature all things are being created and destroyed, coming into being and passing into new forms..."
"I say that the wise man is he who makes the evils which appear and are to a man, into goods which are and appear to him."
"He who utters the beautiful is himself beautiful and good."
"...But as the inferior habit of mind has thoughts of kindred nature, so I conceive that a good mind causes men to have good thoughts."
"...every man has had thousands and ten thousands of progenitors, and among them have been rich and poor, kings and slaves, Hellenes and barbarians, innumerable."
"Knowledge has now been most distinctly proved to be different from perception."
"Knowledge is true opinion."
"Conceiving . . .is the conversation that the soul holds with herself in considering of anything."
"But when the heart of any one is shaggy - a quality which the all-wise poet commends, or muddy and of impure wax, or very soft, or very hard, then there is a corresponding defect in the mind - the soft are good at learning, but apt to forget."

And one final exchange:

THEODORUS: If you could only persuade everybody, Socrates, as you do me, of the truth of your words, there would be more peace and fewer evils among men."
SOCRATES: Evils, Theodorus, can never pass away; for there must always remain something which is antagonistic to good."

Whenever we have come to an impasse, we read Plato to go back to the beginning and find out where we made a wrong turn. -- Prof Taylor

CategoryPhilosophy