"You … are responsible for compelling me to tell my opinions about it." (509c)
So tell what the character of the power of dialectic is, and, then, into exactly what forms it is e divided; and finally what are its ways. For these, as it seems, would lead at last toward that place which is for the one who reaches it a haven from the road, as it were, and an end of his journey."
To which Socrates responds:
"You will no longer be able to follow, my dear Glaucon," I said, "although there wouldn't be any lack of eagerness on my part. But you would no longer be seeing an image of what we are saying, but rather the truth itself, at least as it looks to me. Whether it is really so or not can no longer be properly insisted on. But that there is some such thing to see must be insisted on. Isn't it so?"
Opinions! Not the truth itself as he knows it to be, or even an image of the truth, but opinions. — Fooloso4
Why can’t Socrates insist that the truth as it looks to him is the truth? And why should seeing "some such thing" be insisted on? The answer is because he does not have knowledge of the Forms. He has not escaped the cave. — Fooloso4
The character of Socrates as depicted by Plato is not always consistent with the historical personage of Socrates. — Merkwurdichliebe
He knew nothing. He was not a skeptic, he was absolutely ignorant. — Merkwurdichliebe
And through his method, he discovered these men did not know what they believed themselves to know. — Merkwurdichliebe
But he never assented to a knowledge of the forms, that was a Platonic fabrication. — Merkwurdichliebe
In fact, "The Republic" is entirely Platonic, not Socratic. — Merkwurdichliebe
But thus much I can certainly declare concerning all these writers, or prospective writers, who claim to know the subjects which I seriously study, whether as hearers of mine or of other teachers, or from their own discoveries; it is impossible, in my judgement at least, that these men should understand anything about this subject. There does not exist, nor will there ever exist, any treatise of mine dealing therewith. For it does not at all admit of verbal expression like other studies (341c)
Socrates came to reject the notion that "man is the measure of all things". — Merkwurdichliebe
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