Plato for the Uninitiated

Abstract

Plato is the world's greatest philosopher, far transcending those who went before and a pattern to those who have come after. No other philosophical writer has had such enduring value and interest. He has been, down the ages, the companion and friend of the world's great thinkers and poets; for, though he lived in a world that, compared with our own with its vast resources of travel and knowledge, seems small and primitive, he is unique among men who have endeavoured to teach the things that matter, that are permanent. He ventured into realms of thought never before approached and had to find Greek words to match his thought while as yet the language had no technical phraseology. This tends to make some of the important theories he expounds difficult to grasp. But the dialogue form in which he wrote, the characterization of which he was master, and the vivid illustrations that light up his teaching awaken in the reader intense interest and help to make easier the task of following Plato in his ‘speculation upon all time and all place’, which he tells us is Philosophy.