A History of Greek Philosophy / PLATO

Page 22

Next follows an extraordinary analysis of the ideas of ‘Being’ and ‘Unity,’ remarkable not only for its subtlety, but for the relation which it historically bears to the modern philosophic system of Hegel. “Every affirmation is ipso facto a negation;” “the negation of a negation is an affirmation;” these are the psychological (if not metaphysical) facts, on which the analysis of Parmenides and the philosophy of Hegel are both founded.

We may pass more rapidly by the succeeding dialogues of the series: the Theaetetus, which is a close and powerful investigation of the nature of knowledge on familiar Platonic lines; the Sophist, which is an analysis of fallacious reasoning; and the Statesman, which, under the guise of a dialectical search for the true ruler of men, represents once more Plato’s ideal of government, and contrasts this with the ignorance and charlatanism of actual politics.

In relation to subsequent psychology, and more particularly to the logical system of Aristotle, these dialogues are extremely important. We may indeed say that the systematic logic of Aristotle, as contained in the Organon, is little more than an abstract or digest of the logical theses of these dialogues. Definition and division, the nature and principle of classification, the theory of predication, the processes of induction and deduction, the classification and criticism of fallacies,—all these are to be found in them. The only addition really made by Aristotle was the systematic theory of the syllogism.

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Cf.  Plato Complete Works, Plato Home Page & Anthology, Guthrie : Life of Plato and philosophical influences, Research a KeyWord in Plato's Works

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