【英文原著类】GORGIAS(哥吉亚斯).pdf

GORGIAS
GORGIAS
by Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
1
GORGIAS
INTRODUCTION.
In several of the dialogues of Plato, doubts have arisen among his
interpreters as to which of the various subjects discussed in them is the
main thesis. The speakers have the freedom of conversation; no severe
rules of art restrict them, and sometimes we are inclined to think, with one
of the dramatis personae in the Theaetetus, that the digressions have the
greater interest. Yet in the most irregular of the dialogues there is also a
certain natural growth or unity; the beginning is not forgotten at the end,
and numerous allusions and references are interspersed, which form the
loose connecting links of the whole. We must not neglect this unity, but
neither must we attempt to confine the Platonic dialogue on the
Procrustean bed of a single idea. (Compare Introduction to the
Phaedrus.)
Two tendencies seem to have beset the interpreters of Plato in this
matter. First, they have endeavoured to hang the dialogues upon one
another by the slightest threads; and have thus been led to opposite and
contradictory assertions respecting their order and sequence. The mantle
of Schleiermacher has descended upon his essors, who have applied
his method with the most various results. The value and use of the
method has been hardly, if at all, examined either by him or them.
Secondly, they have extended almost indefinitely the scope of each
separate dialogue; in this way they think that they have escaped all
difficulties, not seeing that what they have gained in generality they have
lost in truth and distinctness. Metaphysical conceptions easily pass into
one another; and the simpler notions of antiquity, which we can only
realize by an effort, imperceptibly blend with the more familiar theories of
modern philosophers. An eye for proportion is needed (his own art of
measuring) in the study of Plato, as well as of other great artists. We may
hardly admit that the mor