Volume 18 (Plants to Raym): Plato.
Plato (427 -347 BC) survives as a major influencer on philosophic and political thought. The man himself stayed out of active politics having become convinced that there was no place in that field for a man of conscience. I hope that conclusion is wrong but it is a difficult proposition to name men or women of absolute conscience who have played on the major stages of political life. Britannica explains the foundation of platonic philosophy thus:
The reason why men forfeit felicity is that they mistake apparent good for real, the conditionally for the absolutely good. If a man ever knew with assurance what absolute good is, he would in practice never pursue anything else. It is this sense that 'all virtue is knowledge' and that 'all wrong-doing is involuntary' (i.e. consists in the pursuit of what is falsely supposed to be good).
No comments:
Post a Comment