Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato — Plato — John Shaqi
Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato
Plato · en
"But if it be requisite to lay before the reader those dialogues out of
many which principally unfold to us the mystic discipline about the gods,
I shall not err in ranking among this number the Phaedo and Phaedrus, the
Banquet and the Philebus, and together with these the Sophista and
Politicus, the Cratylus and the Timaeus. For all these are full through
the whole of themselves, as I may say, of the divine science of Plato.
But I should place in the second rank after these, the fable in the
Gorgias, and that in the Protagoras, likewise the assertions about the
providence of the gods in the Laws, and such things as are delivered
about the Fates, or the mother of the Fates, or the circulations of the
universe, in the tenth book of the Republic. Again you may, if you
please, place in the third rank those Epistles through which we may be
able to arrive at the science about divine natures. For in these, mention
is made of the three kings; and many other divine dogmas worthy the
Platonic theory are delivered. It is necessary therefore, regarding
these, to explore in them each order of the gods.
Thus from the Philebus, we may receive the science respecting the one
good, and the two first principles of things (bound and infinity) together
with the triad subsisting from these. For you will find all these
distinctly delivered to us by Plato in that dialogue. But from the Timaeus
you may obtain the theory about intelligibles, a divine narration about the
demiurgic monad, and the most full truth about the mundane gods. From the
Phaedrus you may learn all the intelligible and intellectual genera, and
the liberated orders of the gods, which are proximately established above
the celestial circulations. From the Politicus you may obtain the theory of
the fabrication in the heavens, of the periods of the universe, and of the
intellectual causes of those periods. But from the Sophista you may learn
the whole sublunary generation, and the idiom of the gods who are allotted
the sublunary region, and preside over its generations and corruptions. And
with respect to each of the gods, we may obtain many sacred conceptions
from the Banquet, many from the Cratylus, and many from the Phaedo. For in
each of these dialogues more or less mention is made of divine names, from
which it is easy for those who are exorcised in divine concerns to discover
by a reasoning process the idioms of each.