| Notes on Plato's |
| Notes on Plato's |
1. The whole of life is the only limit which wise men assign to dialectic. 450b
2. In dialectic, to speak when one is unsure of oneself and searching for the truth is a frightening and insecure thing to do.
3. If women are to have the same duties as men, they must have the same nurture and education. 451e
4. In dialectic, many persons think that they are reasoning when they are really disputing. This occurs because they are unable to examine what has been said by dividing it up according to forms, and thus pursue a merely verbal opposition in the spirit of contention and not of fair discussion. 454a
5. Though women are generally physically weaker than men, many women are better in some things than men. 455d
6. Men and women alike possess the qualities which make an overseer; they differ only in their comparative physical strength or weakness. 456a
7. Sexual unions shall be arranged by the overseers. 459d
8. By having all things in common, the citizens rejoice and are pained by the same successes and failures, uniting them in a common bond. 462b
9. Captives in war should not be made slaves and corpses should not be mutilated and should be buried. 469b
10. Houses of enemies should not be burned. 470a
11. Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils, nor the human race, as I believe, and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day. 473d
12. He who has a taste for every sort of knowledge and who is curious to learn and is never satisfied, may be justly termed a philosopher. 475c
13. A true philosopher recognizes the existence of absolute beauty and is able to distinguish the form from the objects which participate in the form, neither putting the objects in the place of the form nor the form in the place of the objects. 476d
14.The many ideas which the multitude entertain about the beautiful and about all other things are tossing about in some region which is halfway between pure being and pure not-being. 479d
15. Those who see the many beautiful, and who yet neither see absolute beauty, nor can follow any guide who points the way thither; who see only the many, and not absolute justice, and the like, such persons may be said to have opinion but not knowledge. 479e
16. Those who see the absolute and eternal and immutable may be said to know. 479e
17. Those who in each case embrace the thing itself are to be called philosophers. 480a
