List

Plato

Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world.

63 Notes

427 BC - 348 BC

Classical Athensece

"Pythagoras was unwilling to profess to be a wise man, but acknowledged himself, "a lover of wisdom." "

Thomas Aquinas

Discuss
Summary
Plato, a renowned philosopher in ancient Greece, has received criticisms from various philosophers throughout history. Aristotle, one of Plato's most famous students, pointed out several weaknesses in Plato's theories. He argued that Plato's two causes (essence and material cause) were insufficient, and assigning the cause of good and evil to the elements was problematic. Aristotle also criticized Plato's communism scheme, claiming that it would create difficulties and contradict human experience. Additionally, he noted that Plato's Laws and Republic had weaknesses and failed to address certain issues properly.

Despite these criticisms, other philosophers praised Plato's ideas. Cicero, another notable philosopher, admired Plato's wisdom and inspiration. He referred to Plato's definition of pleasure as "vice' bait" and praised his calm and gentle life, which produced a peaceful old age. Seneca discussed Plato's views on various topics, including his ideas on the five causes and his ability to control desires. Boethius quoted Plato in his writings and acknowledged his authority on language in relation to subject matter. Aquinas agreed with some of Plato's philosophies, such as the existence of separate ideas that individuals participated in and the belief that good is convertible with being. However, he disagreed with Plato's views on other topics, such as the true man being separate from the corporeal man.

Lastly, Michel de Montaigne, a French philosopher and essayist from the 16th century, made several remarks and quotes about Plato in his works. He agreed with Plato's statement that education should encompass not only the mind but also social behavior and personal demeanor. However, Montaigne disagreed with some of Plato's views, such as the importance he placed on slight conjectures and prognostications of children's actions in his Republic. Moreover, he believed that Plato attached too much importance to them. Montaigne also disagreed with Plato's opinion that excessive sleep is worse than excessive drinking and considered the natural bent of a person as a great difficulty.

In conclusion, Plato's ideas have received both criticism and praise from various philosophers throughout history. While some have praised his wisdom and inspiration, others have pointed out weaknesses in his theories. Despite these criticisms, Plato's ideas have been influential in the field of philosophy and continue to be studied and debated today.

Aristotle(384 BC -322 BC)

"Plato, then, declared himself thus on the points in question; it is evident from what has been said that he has used only two causes, that of the essence and the material cause (for the Forms are the causes of the essence of all other things, and the One is the cause of the essence of the Forms); and it is evident what the underlying matter is, of which the Forms are predicated in the case of sensible things, and the One in the case of Forms, viz. that this is a dead, the great and the small. Further, he has assigned the cause of good and that of evil to the elements, one to each of the two, as we say some of his predecessors sought to do, e.g. Empedocles and Anaxagoras"

Book & Page: Aristotle Metaphysics Translated by W. D. Ross p.9

#Quotes#Analysis

"Plato in the Timaeus fashioned the soul out of elements in the same manner. For he says that the like is known by the like, and that things are composed of principles."

Book & Page: Aristotle On the soul (Oxford) p. 6

#Quotes

"This argument seems to show it to be one of the goods, and no more a good than any other; for every good is more worthy of choice along with another good than taken alone. And so it is by an argument of this kind that Plato proves the good not to be pleasure; he argues that the pleasant life is more desirable with wisdom than without, and that if the mixture is better, pleasure is not the good; for the good cannot become more desirable by the addition of anything to it."

Book & Page: Aristotle The Nicomachean Ethics, p. 26

#Quotes#Agrees

"The process of cyclical pushing, which is described in the Timaeus, is not a definitive account of how heat is conserved in the case of the other animals, and whether it is due to the same or some other cause. For if breathing occurs only in footed animals, the cause of their uniqueness should be explained. But if it occurs in the other animals, but in a different manner, this should also be described, if indeed they are all capable of breathing"

Book & Page: Aristotle On the soul, (Oxford) p.142

#Disagree

"Even on Platos system it is impossible to avoid the chance that some of the citizens might guess who are their bothers, or children, or fathers, or mothers. That this actually happens in real life is stated as fact in some of the writers on descriptive geography."

Book & Page: Aristotle Politics, (Oxford) p.43

#Disagree

"Community of property. Three possible systems of property. The difficulties of a system under which ownership and use are both common: the merits of a system under which ownership is private and use is common - it gives more pleasure, and it encourages goodness more, Communism cannot remedy evils which really spring from the defects of human nature: it is also based on a false conception of unity, and neglect the true unity which comes from education; finally, it is contradicted by experience. Plato's particular scheme of community of property leaves the position of the farming class obscure. The system of government which he connects with his scheme is too absolute, and is likely to cause discontent: it also deprives the ruling class of any happiness."

Book & Page: Aristotle Politics, (Oxford) p.46

#Disagree#Analysis

"Plato's Laws. The scheme of the laws is not greatly different from that of the Republic. It postulates too large a territory, but fails to pay proper attention to the problem of foreign relations. It does not sufficiently define the amount of property required, or the object for which it is required; nor does it make proper provision for a balance between property and population. The system of government is a sort of ‘ constitutional government’, but it is not property balanced: the method of electing officials and councillors is too oligarchical."

Book & Page: Aristotle pdf Ethics p3305

#Disagree#Analysis

"Plato's Republic. Before describing our own conception of the best constitution, we must consider both those constitutions that are in force in cities considered to be well governed and those constitutions that have been proposed by our predecessors. In doing so, we should note that political association is a sharing: so we may ask ‘How much should be shared?’ In Plato’s Republic it is proposed that women, children, and property should be held in common."

Book & Page: Aristotle The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford) p.26

#Analysis

"For that wise Solon was directly a poet it is manifest, having written in verse the notable fable of the Atlantic Island, which was continued by Plato. And truly even Plato whosoever well considered, shall find in the body of his work, though the inside and strength were philosophy, the skin, as it were, and beauty depended on most of the poetry"

Book & Page: Aristotle Poetics (Penguin) p.60

#Analysis

"And so Plato was in a sense not wrong in ranking sophistic as dealing with that which is not. For the arguments of the sophists deal, we may say, above all with the accidental; e.g. the question whether ‘musical’ and ‘lettered’ are different or the same, and whether ‘musical Coriscus’ and ‘Coriscus’ are the same, and whether ‘everything which is, but is not eternal, has come to be’, with the paradoxical conclusion that if one who was musical has come to be lettered, he must also have been lettered and have come to be musical, and all the other arguments of this sort; the accidental is obviously akin to non-being."

Book & Page: Aristotle pdf Ethics p2819

#Agrees#Analysis

"And so Plato was not far wrong when he said that there are as many Forms as there are kinds of natural object (if there are Forms distinct from the things of this earth). The moving causes exist as things preceding the effects, but causes in the sense of definitions are simultaneous with their effects."

Book & Page: Aristotle pdf Ethics p2819

#Agrees

"Let us not fail to notice, however, that there is a difference between argument from and those to the first principle. For Plato, too, was right in raising this question and asking, as he used to do, ‘Are we on the way from or to the first principles?’"

Book & Page: Aristotle The Nicomachean Ethics, (Oxford)p.6

#Agrees

"For moral virtue is concerned with  pleasures and pains, is a coward. For moral virtue is concerned with pleasure and pains ; it is on account of the pleasure that we do bad things, and on account of the pain that we abstain from noble ones. Hence, we ought to have been brought up in a particular way from our very youth, as Plato says, so as both to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought; this is the right education."

Book & Page: Aristotle pdf Ethics p. 2825

#Agrees

  Cicero(427 BC -347 BC)

"For that is the maxim of that same great Plato, whom I emphatically regard as my master:“Maintain a political controversy only so far as you can convince your fellow citizens of its justice: never offer violence to parent or fatherland.”"

Book & Page: Cicero Penguin, p.89

#Praise#Quotes

"Moreover, while entertaining these feelings, I was above all shaken by the pledge which Pompey had given for me to Cæsar, and my brother to Pompey. Besides, I was forced to take into consideration the state maxim so divinely expressed by our master Plato—“Such as are the chief men in a republic, such are ever want to be the other citizens.”"

Book & Page: Cicero Penguin, p.57

#Praise#Quotes#Agrees

"But, you will say, it is deprived of the pleasures of the table, the heaped up board, the rapid passing of the wine-cup. Well, then, it is also free from headache, disordered digestion, broken sleep. But if we must grant pleasure something, since we do not find it easy to resist its charms, —for Plato, with happy inspiration, calls pleasure “vice’bait,” because of course men are caught by it as fish by a hook, —yet, although old age has to abstain from extravagant banquets, it is still capable of enjoying modest festivities.”

Book & Page: Cicero Penguin, p.57

#Quotes#Agrees

"Besides this there is a quiet, pure, and cultivated life which produces a calm and gentle old age, such as we have been told Plato’s was, who died at his writing-desk in his eighty-first year.”

Book & Page: Cicero Penguin p.42

#Facts

Seneca(4 BC - 64 AC)

"Now I return to the topic I promised you: how Plato divides all the things that are into six senses. The first ‘what is’ is not grasped by vision, by touch, or by any sense. It is thinkable. What is in a generic way, e.g., generic human, is not subject to being seen. But a specific human is, such as Cicero and Cato. Animal is not seen; it is thought. But its species, horse and dog, are seen."

Book & Page: Seneca pdf p.26

#Quotes#Analysis

"Listen to what an ‘idea’ is, i.e., what Plato thinks it is. ‘An idea is the eternal model of those things which are produced by nature.’ I will add to the definition an interpretation so that it will be clearer to you. I want to produce an image of you. I have you as a model for the painting, from which our mind derives a certain disposition which it imposes on its work. In this way the appearance which teaches me and guides me, the source of the imitation, is an idea. Nature, then, contains an indefinite number of such models—of humans, fish, trees. Whatever is to be produced by nature is shaped with reference to them."

Book & Page: Seneca pdf p.28

#Quotes#Analysis

"‘Form’ will have fourth place. You need to pay close attention to the account of what ‘form’ is. Blame Plato, not me, for the difficulty of the topic: there is no technicality without difficulty. A moment ago I used the example of a painter. When he wanted to render Virgil with colors, he looked at Virgil himself. The ‘idea’ was Virgil’s appearance, a model for the intended work. The form is that which the artisan derives from the appearance and imposed on his own work. You ask, what is the difference between idea and form? The one is a model, while the other is a shape taken from the model and imposed on the work. The artisan imitates the one and produces the other. A statue has a certain appearance—this is its form. The model itself has a certain appearance which the workman looked at when he shaped the statue. This is the idea. If you still want a further distinction, the form is in the work and the idea outside it—and not only outside it but prior to it."

Book & Page: Seneca pdf p.6

#Analysis

"This, Lucilius, is what I normally do: from every notion, even if it is quite remote from philosophy, I try to dig out something and make it useful. What is more remote from the improvement of our habits than the discourse I just gave? How can the Platonic ideas make me better? What could I derive from them that might control my desires? Maybe just this, that all those things which serve the senses, which inflame and stimulate us—Plato says that they are not among the things which truly are."

Book & Page: Seneca pdf p.7

#Analysis#Quotes

"So, on Plato’s view, there are five causes: that from which, that by which, that in which, that with reference to which, that because of which. Last of all is that which comes from them. For example, a statue (since I have already begun to use this example). The ‘from which’ is bronze, the ‘by which’ is the artisan, the ‘in which’ is the form which is fitted to the matter, the ‘with reference to which’ is the model which the maker imitates, the ‘because of which’ is the purpose of the maker, and ‘what comes from them’ is the statue itself. The cosmos too, according to Plato, has all of them: a maker (this is god), a ‘from which’ (this is matter), a form (this is the configuration and order of the visible cosmos), a model (i.e., what god looked to in making this vast and most beautiful work), and a purpose because of which he made it. "

Book & Page: Seneca pdf p.7

#Analysis#Quotes

"Plato himself extended his life into old age by taking care of himself. To be sure, he was fortunate enough to have a strong and healthy body (his broad chest gave him his name), but his voyages and dangerous adventures had greatly diminished his strength. But frugality, moderation with respect to things that elicit greed, and attentive care for himself got him through to old age despite many adverse factors. For I think you know that thanks to his attentive care for himself, it was Plato’s fortune to die on his own birthday, having lived exactly years."

Book & Page: Seneca pdf p.8

#Facts

Boethius(480 - 524)

"'Well, since, as Plato maintains in the "Timæus," we ought to even in the most trivial matters to implore the Divine protection, what thinnest thou should we now do in order to deserve to find the seat of that highest good?'"

Book & Page: Boethius IV.

#Quotes

"And if I have also employed reasoning not drawn from without, but lying within the compass of our subject, there is no cause for thee to marvel, since thou hast learned Plato's authority that words ought to be akin to the matter of which they treat."

Book & Page: Boethius IV.

#Quotes

"From all which considerations appeared the power of the good, and the indubitable weakness of the bad, and it is clear that Plato's judgment was true; the wise alone are able to do what they would, while the wicked follow their own hearts' lust, but can not accomplish what they would. For they go on in their willfulness, fancying they will attain what they wish for in the paths of delight; but they are very far from its attainment, since shameful deeds lead not to happiness.'"

Book & Page: Boethius IV.

#Quotes#Agrees

"So, if we are minded to give things their right names, we shall follow Plato in saying that God indeed is eternal, but the world everlasting."

Book & Page: Boethius IV.

#Quotes#Agrees

Thomas Aquinas(1225 - 1274)

"I answer that, As regards relative things, we must admit extrinsic denomination; as, a thing is denominated "placed" from "place," and "measured" from "measure." But as regards absolute things, opinions differ. Plato held the existence of separate ideas (Question 84, Article 4) of all things, and that individuals were denominated by them as participating in the separate ideas; for instance, that Socrates is called man according to the separate idea of man. Now just as he laid down separate ideas of man and horse which he called absolute man and absolute horse, so likewise he laid down separate ideas of "being" and of "one," and these he called absolute being and absolute oneness; and by participation of these, everything was called "being" or "one"; and what was thus absolute being and absolute one, he said was the supreme good. And because good is convertible with being, as one is also; he called God the absolute good, from whom all things are called good by way of participation."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p.847

#Analysis

"If form only, and not matter, belonged to natural things, then in all respects natural things would exist more truly in the divine mind, by the ideas of them, than in themselves. For which reason, in fact, Plato held that the "separate" man was the true man; and that man as he exists in matter, is man only by participation."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 5231

#Analysis

"I answer that, It was the opinion of some, that all corporeal forms are derived from spiritual substances, which we call the angels. And there are two ways in which this has been stated. For Plato held that the forms of corporeal matter are derived from, and formed by, forms immaterially subsisting, by a kind of participation. Thus, he held that there exists an immaterial man, and an immaterial horse, and so forth, and that from such the individual sensible things that we see are constituted, in so far as in corporeal matter there abides the impression received from these separate forms, by a kind of assimilation, or as he calls it, "participation" (Phaedo xlix)."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p.1700

#Analysis

"Plato, however, drew a distinction between intellect and sense; yet he referred both to an incorporeal principle, maintaining that sensing, just as understanding, belongs to the soul as such. From this, it follows that even the souls of brute animals are subsistence."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1798

#Agrees#Analysis

"I answer that, It is absolutely impossible for one intellect to belong to all men. This is clear if, as Plato maintained, man is the intellect itself. For it would follow that Socrates and Plato are one man; and that they are not distinct from each other, except by something outside the essence of each subsistence."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1798

#Agrees#Analysis

"But, according to the opinion of Plato, the thing understood exists outside the soul in the same condition as those under which it is understood; for he supposed that the natures of things exist separate from matter."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1819

#Analysis#Quotes

"Plato, who said that the first mover moves Himself, calling every operation a moment, even as the acts of understanding, and willing, and loving, are called movements. Therefore, because God understands and loves Himself, in that respect they said that God moves Himself, not, however, as movement and change belong to a thing existing in potentiality, as we now speak of change and movement."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p.872

#Quotes#Agrees

"But since that which has a form actually, is sometimes unable to act according to that form on account of some hindrance, as a light thing may be hindered from moving upwards; for this reason did Plato hold that naturally man's intellect is filled with all intelligible species, but that, by being united to the body, it is hindered from the realization of its act. But this seems to be unreasonable."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1966

#Analysis#Quotes

"I answer that, As ideas, according to Plato, are principles of the knowledge of things and of their generation, an idea has this twofold office, as it exists in the mind of God."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p.1022

#Quotes#Agrees

"Boethius says that genera and species subsist, inasmuch as it belongs to some individual things to subsist, from the fact that they belong to genera and species comprised in the predicament of substance, but not because the species and genera themselves subsist; except in the opinion of Plato, who asserted that the species of things subsisted separately from singular things."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1220

#Quotes

"Therefore it must be that all things which are diversified by the diverse participation of being, so as to be more or less perfect, are caused by one First Being, Who possesses being most perfectly. Hence, Plato said (Parmen. xxvi) that unity must come before multitude; and Aristotle said (Metaph. ii, text 4) that whatever is greatest in being and greatest in truth, is the cause of every being and of every truth; just as whatever is the greatest in heat is the cause of all heat."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1419

#Quotes#Agrees

"I answer that, There have been various opinions with regard to the number of the separate substances. Plato contended that the separate substances are the species of sensible things; as if we were to maintain that human nature is a separate substance of itself: and according to this view it would have to be maintained that the"

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1419

#Quotes

"Further, Plato says in the Timaeus: "O gods of gods, whose maker and father am I: You are indeed my works, dissoluble by nature, yet indissoluble because I so will it." But gods such as these can only be understood to be the angels. Therefore, the angels are corruptible by their nature"

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1510

#Quotes

"The opinion of Plato might be maintained if, as he held, the soul was supposed to be united to the body, not as its form, but as its motor."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1824

#Quotes

"For Plato supposed that the forms of natural things subsisted apart from matter, and consequently that they are intelligible: since a thing is actually intelligible from the very fact that it is immaterial."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1889

#Quotes

"Thus, according to Plato, neither does intellectual knowledge proceed from sensible knowledge, nor sensible knowledge exclusively from sensible things; but these rouse the sensible soul to the sentient act, while the senses rouse the intellect to the act of understanding."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1976

#Quotes

"Now it seems that Plato strayed from the truth because, having observed that all knowledge takes place through some kind of similitude, he thought that the form of the thing known must of necessity be in the knower in the same manner as in the thing known. Then he observed that the form of the thing understood is in the intellect under conditions of universality, immateriality, and immobility: which is apparent from the very operation of the intellect, whose act of understanding has a universal extension, and is subject to a certain amount of necessity: for the mode of action corresponds to the mode of the agent's form. Wherefore he concluded that the things which we understand must have in themselves an existence under the same conditions of immateriality and immobility. But there is no necessity for this. For even in sensible things it is to be observed that the form is otherwise in one sensibler than in another: for instance, whiteness may be of great intensity in one, and of a less intensity in another: in one we find whiteness with sweetness, in another without sweetness."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p.1959

#Quotes#Disagree

"But some things can be abstracted even from common intelligible matter, such as "being," "unity," "power," "act," and the like; all these can exist without matter, as it is plain regarding immaterial things. Because Plato failed to consider the twofold kind of abstraction, as above explained (ad 1), he held that all those things which we have stated to be abstracted by the intellect, are abstract in reality."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1988

#Disagree

"Plato's opinion is to be rejected, because he held that God did not govern all things immediately, even in the design of government; this is clear from the fact that he divided providence, which is the design of government, into three parts."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 2215

#Disagree

" I answer that, Plato held neither with the Stoics, who asserted that all pleasures are evil, nor with the Epicureans, who maintained that all pleasures are good; but he said that some are good, and some evil;yet, so that no pleasure be the sovereign or greatest good. But, judging from his arguments, he fails in two points. First, because, from observing that sensible and bodily pleasure consists in a certain movement and "becoming," as is evident in satiety from eating and the like; he concluded that all pleasure arises from some"becoming" and movement: and from this, since "becoming" and movement are the acts of something imperfect, it would follow that pleasure is not of the nature of ultimate perfection."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 2909

#Disagree

Michel de Montaigne(1533 - 1592)

"I would have the pupil's outward graces, his social behavior, and his personal demean our, formed at the same time as his mind. It is not a soul or a body that one is training, but a man; the two must not be separated. And, as Plato says also, we must not train one without the other, but must drive them side by side, like a pair of horses harnessed to the same shaft."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p74

#Quotes#Facts

"And Plato gives us this remarkable advice, that for the health of our whole bodies, we should give the feet and the head no other covering than nature has provided."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p123

#Facts

"Plato would have no one marry before 30, but he rightly laughs at those who perform their connubial duties after 55, and considers their offspring undeserving of life and sustenance."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p145

#Facts

"Plato condemns excessive sleep more than excessive drinking."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p384

#Facts

"Yet it is difficult to overcome the natural bent; and so it happens that, having chosen the wrong course, we often labor to no purpose, and spend much of our lives training children up to callings in which they cannot establish themselves. But my advice is that, this being a great difficulty, they should always be directed towards what is best and most profitable, and that we should pay little heed to the slight conjectures and prognostications which we base on their childish actions. Even Plato in his Republic seems to me to attach too much importance to them."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p53

#Quotes#Disagree

"How poor is the proficiency that is merely bookish! I would have it be an ornament, not a foundation; and this was Plato's opinion when he said that firmness, faith, and sincerity are the true philosophy, and that other sciences that are directed to other ends are just face painting."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p.57

#Quotes

"With all our efforts we cannot imitate the nest of the very smallest bird, its structure, its beauty, or the suitability of its form, nor even the web of the lowly spider. All things, said Plato, are produced either by nature, or by chance, or by art;the greatest and most beautiful by one or other of the first two, the least and most imperfect by the last. These nations, then, seem to me barbarous"

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p.111

#Quotes

"Plato says that length and brevity are qualities that neither detract from nor enhance the value of language. If I tried to imitate the smooth, even, and"

Book & Page:Michael Montaigne p.200

#Quotes

"Let us always have this saying of Plato's on our lips: 'If I find a thing unsound, is it not because I am myself unsound? Am I not myself at fault? May not my observations reflect on myself?' A wise and divine saying which lashes the most common and widespread error of mankind! Not only the blame we cast at another, but also our reasoning, our arguments, and our subjects of dispute may generally be turned against us; we stab ourselves with our own weapons; and of this antiquity has left enough weighty examples"

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p.200

#Quotes

"e. 'Nothing has a more deceptive face than a corrupt religion, in which the divine will acts as a screen for crimes.'The extreme form of injustice,  according to Plato, is one in which wrong passes for right."

Book & Page:Michael Montaigne p.321

#Quotes

"Plato demands three things of anyone who wishes to examine another's soul: knowledge, goodwill, and boldness"

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p.391

#Quotes

"For this reason, says Plato, let such death as comes by wounds or sickness be considered violent, but such as overtakes us when old age is at our side is the easiest of all, and in some degree pleasant. 'It is violence that takes life from the young; it is maturity that brings it to the old.'ft"

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p.391

#Quotes

"Plato couples them together, and maintains that it is a brave man's duty to fight equally against pain and against the immoderate charms and blandishments of pleasure."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p.402

#Quotes

"Besides the natural inconvenience that I suffer on this account - for assuredly, considering how necessary it is, Plato was right in calling memory a great and powerful goddess — in my country, when they want to say that a man has no sense, they say that he has no memory; and when I complain of the shortcomings of my own, people correct me and refuse to believe me, as if I were accusing myself of being a fool. They can see no difference between memory and intellect."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p.28

#Quotes#Agrees

"So Plato was right when he said that, to be a true physician, anyone entering the profession should himself have suffered from all the maladies that he proposed to cure, and should have experience of all the accidents and circumstances on which he had to deliver judgement."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p.363

#Agrees

"When I feel a distaste for Plato's Axiochus, as a work which, coming from such an author, seems lacking in power, my judgement will not trust itself. For it is not so foolish as to oppose the authority of so many other famous minds of antiquity, which it regards as its teachers and masters, and with whom it would be quite content to be wrong."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p163

#Disagree

Aristotle(384 BC -322 BC)

"Plato, then, declared himself thus on the points in question; it is evident from what has been said that he has used only two causes, that of the essence and the material cause (for the Forms are the causes of the essence of all other things, and the One is the cause of the essence of the Forms); and it is evident what the underlying matter is, of which the Forms are predicated in the case of sensible things, and the One in the case of Forms, viz. that this is a dead, the great and the small. Further, he has assigned the cause of good and that of evil to the elements, one to each of the two, as we say some of his predecessors sought to do, e.g. Empedocles and Anaxagoras"

Book & Page: Aristotle Metaphysics Translated by W. D. Ross p.9

#Quotes

"Plato in the Timaeus fashioned the soul out of elements in the same manner. For he says that the like is known by the like, and that things are composed of principles."

Book & Page: Aristotle On the soul (Oxford) p. 6

#Quotes

"This argument seems to show it to be one of the goods, and no more a good than any other; for every good is more worthy of choice along with another good than taken alone. And so it is by an argument of this kind that Plato proves the good not to be pleasure; he argues that the pleasant life is more desirable with wisdom than without, and that if the mixture is better, pleasure is not the good; for the good cannot become more desirable by the addition of anything to it."

Book & Page: Aristotle The Nicomachean Ethics, p. 26

#Quotes

Cicero(427 BC -347 BC)

"For that is the maxim of that same great Plato, whom I emphatically regard as my master:“Maintain a political controversy only so far as you can convince your fellow citizens of its justice: never offer violence to parent or fatherland.”"

Book & Page: Cicero Penguin, p.89

#Quotes

"Moreover, while entertaining these feelings, I was above all shaken by the pledge which Pompey had given for me to Cæsar, and my brother to Pompey. Besides, I was forced to take into consideration the state maxim so divinely expressed by our master Plato—“Such as are the chief men in a republic, such are ever want to be the other citizens.”"

Book & Page: Cicero Penguin, p.57

#Quotes

"But, you will say, it is deprived of the pleasures of the table, the heaped up board, the rapid passing of the wine-cup. Well, then, it is also free from headache, disordered digestion, broken sleep. But if we must grant pleasure something, since we do not find it easy to resist its charms, —for Plato, with happy inspiration, calls pleasure “vice’bait,” because of course men are caught by it as fish by a hook, —yet, although old age has to abstain from extravagant banquets, it is still capable of enjoying modest festivities.”

Book & Page: Cicero Penguin, p.57

#Quotes

Seneca(4 BC - 64 AC)

"Now I return to the topic I promised you: how Plato divides all the things that are into six senses. The first ‘what is’ is not grasped by vision, by touch, or by any sense. It is thinkable. What is in a generic way, e.g., generic human, is not subject to being seen. But a specific human is, such as Cicero and Cato. Animal is not seen; it is thought. But its species, horse and dog, are seen."

Book & Page: Seneca pdf p.26

#Quotes

"Listen to what an ‘idea’ is, i.e., what Plato thinks it is. ‘An idea is the eternal model of those things which are produced by nature.’ I will add to the definition an interpretation so that it will be clearer to you. I want to produce an image of you. I have you as a model for the painting, from which our mind derives a certain disposition which it imposes on its work. In this way the appearance which teaches me and guides me, the source of the imitation, is an idea. Nature, then, contains an indefinite number of such models—of humans, fish, trees. Whatever is to be produced by nature is shaped with reference to them."

Book & Page: Seneca pdf p.28

#Quotes

"This, Lucilius, is what I normally do: from every notion, even if it is quite remote from philosophy, I try to dig out something and make it useful. What is more remote from the improvement of our habits than the discourse I just gave? How can the Platonic ideas make me better? What could I derive from them that might control my desires? Maybe just this, that all those things which serve the senses, which inflame and stimulate us—Plato says that they are not among the things which truly are."

Book & Page: Seneca pdf p.7

#Quotes

"So, on Plato’s view, there are five causes: that from which, that by which, that in which, that with reference to which, that because of which. Last of all is that which comes from them. For example, a statue (since I have already begun to use this example). The ‘from which’ is bronze, the ‘by which’ is the artisan, the ‘in which’ is the form which is fitted to the matter, the ‘with reference to which’ is the model which the maker imitates, the ‘because of which’ is the purpose of the maker, and ‘what comes from them’ is the statue itself. The cosmos too, according to Plato, has all of them: a maker (this is god), a ‘from which’ (this is matter), a form (this is the configuration and order of the visible cosmos), a model (i.e., what god looked to in making this vast and most beautiful work), and a purpose because of which he made it. "

Book & Page: Seneca pdf p.7

#Quotes

Boethius(480 - 524)

"'Well, since, as Plato maintains in the "Timæus," we ought to even in the most trivial matters to implore the Divine protection, what thinnest thou should we now do in order to deserve to find the seat of that highest good?'"

Book & Page: Boethius IV.

#Quotes

"And if I have also employed reasoning not drawn from without, but lying within the compass of our subject, there is no cause for thee to marvel, since thou hast learned Plato's authority that words ought to be akin to the matter of which they treat."

Book & Page: Boethius IV.

#Quotes

"From all which considerations appeared the power of the good, and the indubitable weakness of the bad, and it is clear that Plato's judgment was true; the wise alone are able to do what they would, while the wicked follow their own hearts' lust, but can not accomplish what they would. For they go on in their willfulness, fancying they will attain what they wish for in the paths of delight; but they are very far from its attainment, since shameful deeds lead not to happiness.'"

Book & Page: Boethius IV.

#Quotes

"So, if we are minded to give things their right names, we shall follow Plato in saying that God indeed is eternal, but the world everlasting."

Book & Page: Boethius IV.

#Quotes

Thomas Aquinas(1225 - 1274)

"But, according to the opinion of Plato, the thing understood exists outside the soul in the same condition as those under which it is understood; for he supposed that the natures of things exist separate from matter."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1819

#Quotes

"Plato, who said that the first mover moves Himself, calling every operation a moment, even as the acts of understanding, and willing, and loving, are called movements. Therefore, because God understands and loves Himself, in that respect they said that God moves Himself, not, however, as movement and change belong to a thing existing in potentiality, as we now speak of change and movement."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p.872

#Quotes

"But since that which has a form actually, is sometimes unable to act according to that form on account of some hindrance, as a light thing may be hindered from moving upwards; for this reason did Plato hold that naturally man's intellect is filled with all intelligible species, but that, by being united to the body, it is hindered from the realization of its act. But this seems to be unreasonable."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1966

#Quotes

"I answer that, As ideas, according to Plato, are principles of the knowledge of things and of their generation, an idea has this twofold office, as it exists in the mind of God."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p.1022

#Quotes

"Boethius says that genera and species subsist, inasmuch as it belongs to some individual things to subsist, from the fact that they belong to genera and species comprised in the predicament of substance, but not because the species and genera themselves subsist; except in the opinion of Plato, who asserted that the species of things subsisted separately from singular things."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1220

#Quotes

"Therefore it must be that all things which are diversified by the diverse participation of being, so as to be more or less perfect, are caused by one First Being, Who possesses being most perfectly. Hence, Plato said (Parmen. xxvi) that unity must come before multitude; and Aristotle said (Metaph. ii, text 4) that whatever is greatest in being and greatest in truth, is the cause of every being and of every truth; just as whatever is the greatest in heat is the cause of all heat."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1419

#Quotes

"I answer that, There have been various opinions with regard to the number of the separate substances. Plato contended that the separate substances are the species of sensible things; as if we were to maintain that human nature is a separate substance of itself: and according to this view it would have to be maintained that the"

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1419

#Quotes

"Further, Plato says in the Timaeus: "O gods of gods, whose maker and father am I: You are indeed my works, dissoluble by nature, yet indissoluble because I so will it." But gods such as these can only be understood to be the angels. Therefore, the angels are corruptible by their nature"

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1510

#Quotes

"The opinion of Plato might be maintained if, as he held, the soul was supposed to be united to the body, not as its form, but as its motor."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1824

#Quotes

"For Plato supposed that the forms of natural things subsisted apart from matter, and consequently that they are intelligible: since a thing is actually intelligible from the very fact that it is immaterial."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1889

#Quotes

"Thus, according to Plato, neither does intellectual knowledge proceed from sensible knowledge, nor sensible knowledge exclusively from sensible things; but these rouse the sensible soul to the sentient act, while the senses rouse the intellect to the act of understanding."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1976

#Quotes

"Now it seems that Plato strayed from the truth because, having observed that all knowledge takes place through some kind of similitude, he thought that the form of the thing known must of necessity be in the knower in the same manner as in the thing known. Then he observed that the form of the thing understood is in the intellect under conditions of universality, immateriality, and immobility: which is apparent from the very operation of the intellect, whose act of understanding has a universal extension, and is subject to a certain amount of necessity: for the mode of action corresponds to the mode of the agent's form. Wherefore he concluded that the things which we understand must have in themselves an existence under the same conditions of immateriality and immobility. But there is no necessity for this. For even in sensible things it is to be observed that the form is otherwise in one sensibler than in another: for instance, whiteness may be of great intensity in one, and of a less intensity in another: in one we find whiteness with sweetness, in another without sweetness."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p.1959

#Quotes

Michel de Montaigne(1533 - 1592)

"I would have the pupil's outward graces, his social behavior, and his personal demean our, formed at the same time as his mind. It is not a soul or a body that one is training, but a man; the two must not be separated. And, as Plato says also, we must not train one without the other, but must drive them side by side, like a pair of horses harnessed to the same shaft."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p74

#Quotes

"Yet it is difficult to overcome the natural bent; and so it happens that, having chosen the wrong course, we often labor to no purpose, and spend much of our lives training children up to callings in which they cannot establish themselves. But my advice is that, this being a great difficulty, they should always be directed towards what is best and most profitable, and that we should pay little heed to the slight conjectures and prognostications which we base on their childish actions. Even Plato in his Republic seems to me to attach too much importance to them."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p53

#Quotes

"How poor is the proficiency that is merely bookish! I would have it be an ornament, not a foundation; and this was Plato's opinion when he said that firmness, faith, and sincerity are the true philosophy, and that other sciences that are directed to other ends are just face painting."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p.57

#Quotes

"With all our efforts we cannot imitate the nest of the very smallest bird, its structure, its beauty, or the suitability of its form, nor even the web of the lowly spider. All things, said Plato, are produced either by nature, or by chance, or by art;the greatest and most beautiful by one or other of the first two, the least and most imperfect by the last. These nations, then, seem to me barbarous"

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p.111

#Quotes

"Plato says that length and brevity are qualities that neither detract from nor enhance the value of language. If I tried to imitate the smooth, even, and"

Book & Page:Michael Montaigne p.200

#Quotes

"Let us always have this saying of Plato's on our lips: 'If I find a thing unsound, is it not because I am myself unsound? Am I not myself at fault? May not my observations reflect on myself?' A wise and divine saying which lashes the most common and widespread error of mankind! Not only the blame we cast at another, but also our reasoning, our arguments, and our subjects of dispute may generally be turned against us; we stab ourselves with our own weapons; and of this antiquity has left enough weighty examples"

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p.200

#Quotes

"e. 'Nothing has a more deceptive face than a corrupt religion, in which the divine will acts as a screen for crimes.'The extreme form of injustice,  according to Plato, is one in which wrong passes for right."

Book & Page:Michael Montaigne p.321

#Quotes

"Plato demands three things of anyone who wishes to examine another's soul: knowledge, goodwill, and boldness"

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p.391

#Quotes

"For this reason, says Plato, let such death as comes by wounds or sickness be considered violent, but such as overtakes us when old age is at our side is the easiest of all, and in some degree pleasant. 'It is violence that takes life from the young; it is maturity that brings it to the old.'ft"

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p.391

#Quotes

"Plato couples them together, and maintains that it is a brave man's duty to fight equally against pain and against the immoderate charms and blandishments of pleasure."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p.402

#Quotes

"Besides the natural inconvenience that I suffer on this account - for assuredly, considering how necessary it is, Plato was right in calling memory a great and powerful goddess — in my country, when they want to say that a man has no sense, they say that he has no memory; and when I complain of the shortcomings of my own, people correct me and refuse to believe me, as if I were accusing myself of being a fool. They can see no difference between memory and intellect."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p.28

#Quotes

Aristotle(384 BC -322 BC)

"This argument seems to show it to be one of the goods, and no more a good than any other; for every good is more worthy of choice along with another good than taken alone. And so it is by an argument of this kind that Plato proves the good not to be pleasure; he argues that the pleasant life is more desirable with wisdom than without, and that if the mixture is better, pleasure is not the good; for the good cannot become more desirable by the addition of anything to it."

Book & Page: Aristotle The Nicomachean Ethics, p. 26

#Agrees

"And so Plato was in a sense not wrong in ranking sophistic as dealing with that which is not. For the arguments of the sophists deal, we may say, above all with the accidental; e.g. the question whether ‘musical’ and ‘lettered’ are different or the same, and whether ‘musical Coriscus’ and ‘Coriscus’ are the same, and whether ‘everything which is, but is not eternal, has come to be’, with the paradoxical conclusion that if one who was musical has come to be lettered, he must also have been lettered and have come to be musical, and all the other arguments of this sort; the accidental is obviously akin to non-being."

Book & Page: Aristotle pdf Ethics p2819

#Agrees

"And so Plato was not far wrong when he said that there are as many Forms as there are kinds of natural object (if there are Forms distinct from the things of this earth). The moving causes exist as things preceding the effects, but causes in the sense of definitions are simultaneous with their effects."

Book & Page: Aristotle pdf Ethics p2819

#Agrees

"Let us not fail to notice, however, that there is a difference between argument from and those to the first principle. For Plato, too, was right in raising this question and asking, as he used to do, ‘Are we on the way from or to the first principles?’"

Book & Page: Aristotle The Nicomachean Ethics, (Oxford)p.6

#Agrees

"For moral virtue is concerned with  pleasures and pains, is a coward. For moral virtue is concerned with pleasure and pains ; it is on account of the pleasure that we do bad things, and on account of the pain that we abstain from noble ones. Hence, we ought to have been brought up in a particular way from our very youth, as Plato says, so as both to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought; this is the right education."

Book & Page: Aristotle pdf Ethics p. 2825

#Agrees

Cicero(427 BC -347 BC)

"Moreover, while entertaining these feelings, I was above all shaken by the pledge which Pompey had given for me to Cæsar, and my brother to Pompey. Besides, I was forced to take into consideration the state maxim so divinely expressed by our master Plato—“Such as are the chief men in a republic, such are ever want to be the other citizens.”"

Book & Page: Cicero Penguin, p.57

#Agrees

"But, you will say, it is deprived of the pleasures of the table, the heaped up board, the rapid passing of the wine-cup. Well, then, it is also free from headache, disordered digestion, broken sleep. But if we must grant pleasure something, since we do not find it easy to resist its charms, —for Plato, with happy inspiration, calls pleasure “vice’bait,” because of course men are caught by it as fish by a hook, —yet, although old age has to abstain from extravagant banquets, it is still capable of enjoying modest festivities.”

Book & Page: Cicero Penguin, p.57

#Agrees

Boethius(480 - 524)

"From all which considerations appeared the power of the good, and the indubitable weakness of the bad, and it is clear that Plato's judgment was true; the wise alone are able to do what they would, while the wicked follow their own hearts' lust, but can not accomplish what they would. For they go on in their willfulness, fancying they will attain what they wish for in the paths of delight; but they are very far from its attainment, since shameful deeds lead not to happiness.'"

Book & Page: Boethius IV.

#Agrees

"So, if we are minded to give things their right names, we shall follow Plato in saying that God indeed is eternal, but the world everlasting."

Book & Page: Boethius IV.

#Agrees

Thomas Aquinas(1225 - 1274)

"Plato, however, drew a distinction between intellect and sense; yet he referred both to an incorporeal principle, maintaining that sensing, just as understanding, belongs to the soul as such. From this, it follows that even the souls of brute animals are subsistence."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1798

#Agrees

"I answer that, It is absolutely impossible for one intellect to belong to all men. This is clear if, as Plato maintained, man is the intellect itself. For it would follow that Socrates and Plato are one man; and that they are not distinct from each other, except by something outside the essence of each subsistence."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1798

#Agrees

"Plato, who said that the first mover moves Himself, calling every operation a moment, even as the acts of understanding, and willing, and loving, are called movements. Therefore, because God understands and loves Himself, in that respect they said that God moves Himself, not, however, as movement and change belong to a thing existing in potentiality, as we now speak of change and movement."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p.872

#Agrees

"I answer that, As ideas, according to Plato, are principles of the knowledge of things and of their generation, an idea has this twofold office, as it exists in the mind of God."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p.1022

#Agrees

"Therefore it must be that all things which are diversified by the diverse participation of being, so as to be more or less perfect, are caused by one First Being, Who possesses being most perfectly. Hence, Plato said (Parmen. xxvi) that unity must come before multitude; and Aristotle said (Metaph. ii, text 4) that whatever is greatest in being and greatest in truth, is the cause of every being and of every truth; just as whatever is the greatest in heat is the cause of all heat."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1419

#Agrees

Michel de Montaigne(1533 - 1592)

"Besides the natural inconvenience that I suffer on this account - for assuredly, considering how necessary it is, Plato was right in calling memory a great and powerful goddess — in my country, when they want to say that a man has no sense, they say that he has no memory; and when I complain of the shortcomings of my own, people correct me and refuse to believe me, as if I were accusing myself of being a fool. They can see no difference between memory and intellect."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p.28

#Agrees

"So Plato was right when he said that, to be a true physician, anyone entering the profession should himself have suffered from all the maladies that he proposed to cure, and should have experience of all the accidents and circumstances on which he had to deliver judgement."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p.363

#Agrees

Aristotle(384 BC -322 BC)

"The process of cyclical pushing, which is described in the Timaeus, is not a definitive account of how heat is conserved in the case of the other animals, and whether it is due to the same or some other cause. For if breathing occurs only in footed animals, the cause of their uniqueness should be explained. But if it occurs in the other animals, but in a different manner, this should also be described, if indeed they are all capable of breathing"

Book & Page: Aristotle On the soul, (Oxford) p.142

#Disagree

"Even on Platos system it is impossible to avoid the chance that some of the citizens might guess who are their bothers, or children, or fathers, or mothers. That this actually happens in real life is stated as fact in some of the writers on descriptive geography."

Book & Page: Aristotle Politics, (Oxford) p.43

#Disagree

"Community of property. Three possible systems of property. The difficulties of a system under which ownership and use are both common: the merits of a system under which ownership is private and use is common - it gives more pleasure, and it encourages goodness more, Communism cannot remedy evils which really spring from the defects of human nature: it is also based on a false conception of unity, and neglect the true unity which comes from education; finally, it is contradicted by experience. Plato's particular scheme of community of property leaves the position of the farming class obscure. The system of government which he connects with his scheme is too absolute, and is likely to cause discontent: it also deprives the ruling class of any happiness."

Book & Page: Aristotle Politics, (Oxford) p.46

#Disagree

"Plato's Laws. The scheme of the laws is not greatly different from that of the Republic. It postulates too large a territory, but fails to pay proper attention to the problem of foreign relations. It does not sufficiently define the amount of property required, or the object for which it is required; nor does it make proper provision for a balance between property and population. The system of government is a sort of ‘ constitutional government’, but it is not property balanced: the method of electing officials and councillors is too oligarchical."

Book & Page: Aristotle pdf Ethics p3305

#Disagree

Thomas Aquinas(1225 - 1274)

"Now it seems that Plato strayed from the truth because, having observed that all knowledge takes place through some kind of similitude, he thought that the form of the thing known must of necessity be in the knower in the same manner as in the thing known. Then he observed that the form of the thing understood is in the intellect under conditions of universality, immateriality, and immobility: which is apparent from the very operation of the intellect, whose act of understanding has a universal extension, and is subject to a certain amount of necessity: for the mode of action corresponds to the mode of the agent's form. Wherefore he concluded that the things which we understand must have in themselves an existence under the same conditions of immateriality and immobility. But there is no necessity for this. For even in sensible things it is to be observed that the form is otherwise in one sensibler than in another: for instance, whiteness may be of great intensity in one, and of a less intensity in another: in one we find whiteness with sweetness, in another without sweetness."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p.1959

#Disagree

"But some things can be abstracted even from common intelligible matter, such as "being," "unity," "power," "act," and the like; all these can exist without matter, as it is plain regarding immaterial things. Because Plato failed to consider the twofold kind of abstraction, as above explained (ad 1), he held that all those things which we have stated to be abstracted by the intellect, are abstract in reality."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1988

#Disagree

"Plato's opinion is to be rejected, because he held that God did not govern all things immediately, even in the design of government; this is clear from the fact that he divided providence, which is the design of government, into three parts."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 2215

#Disagree

" I answer that, Plato held neither with the Stoics, who asserted that all pleasures are evil, nor with the Epicureans, who maintained that all pleasures are good; but he said that some are good, and some evil;yet, so that no pleasure be the sovereign or greatest good. But, judging from his arguments, he fails in two points. First, because, from observing that sensible and bodily pleasure consists in a certain movement and "becoming," as is evident in satiety from eating and the like; he concluded that all pleasure arises from some"becoming" and movement: and from this, since "becoming" and movement are the acts of something imperfect, it would follow that pleasure is not of the nature of ultimate perfection."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 2909

#Disagree

Michel de Montaigne(1533 - 1592)

"Yet it is difficult to overcome the natural bent; and so it happens that, having chosen the wrong course, we often labor to no purpose, and spend much of our lives training children up to callings in which they cannot establish themselves. But my advice is that, this being a great difficulty, they should always be directed towards what is best and most profitable, and that we should pay little heed to the slight conjectures and prognostications which we base on their childish actions. Even Plato in his Republic seems to me to attach too much importance to them."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p53

#Disagree

"When I feel a distaste for Plato's Axiochus, as a work which, coming from such an author, seems lacking in power, my judgement will not trust itself. For it is not so foolish as to oppose the authority of so many other famous minds of antiquity, which it regards as its teachers and masters, and with whom it would be quite content to be wrong."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p163

#Disagree

Cicero(427 BC -347 BC)

"Besides this there is a quiet, pure, and cultivated life which produces a calm and gentle old age, such as we have been told Plato’s was, who died at his writing-desk in his eighty-first year.”

Book & Page: Cicero Penguin p.42

#Facts

Seneca(4 BC - 64 AC)

"Plato himself extended his life into old age by taking care of himself. To be sure, he was fortunate enough to have a strong and healthy body (his broad chest gave him his name), but his voyages and dangerous adventures had greatly diminished his strength. But frugality, moderation with respect to things that elicit greed, and attentive care for himself got him through to old age despite many adverse factors. For I think you know that thanks to his attentive care for himself, it was Plato’s fortune to die on his own birthday, having lived exactly years."

Book & Page: Seneca pdf p.8

#Facts

Michel de Montaigne(1533 - 1592)

"I would have the pupil's outward graces, his social behavior, and his personal demean our, formed at the same time as his mind. It is not a soul or a body that one is training, but a man; the two must not be separated. And, as Plato says also, we must not train one without the other, but must drive them side by side, like a pair of horses harnessed to the same shaft."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p74

#Facts

"And Plato gives us this remarkable advice, that for the health of our whole bodies, we should give the feet and the head no other covering than nature has provided."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p123

#Facts

"Plato would have no one marry before 30, but he rightly laughs at those who perform their connubial duties after 55, and considers their offspring undeserving of life and sustenance."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p145

#Facts

"Plato condemns excessive sleep more than excessive drinking."

Book & Page: Michael Montaigne p384

#Facts

Cicero(427 BC -347 BC)

"For that is the maxim of that same great Plato, whom I emphatically regard as my master:“Maintain a political controversy only so far as you can convince your fellow citizens of its justice: never offer violence to parent or fatherland.”"

Book & Page: Cicero Penguin, p.89

#Praise

"Moreover, while entertaining these feelings, I was above all shaken by the pledge which Pompey had given for me to Cæsar, and my brother to Pompey. Besides, I was forced to take into consideration the state maxim so divinely expressed by our master Plato—“Such as are the chief men in a republic, such are ever want to be the other citizens.”"

Book & Page: Cicero Penguin, p.57

#Praise

Aristotle(384 BC -322 BC)

"Plato, then, declared himself thus on the points in question; it is evident from what has been said that he has used only two causes, that of the essence and the material cause (for the Forms are the causes of the essence of all other things, and the One is the cause of the essence of the Forms); and it is evident what the underlying matter is, of which the Forms are predicated in the case of sensible things, and the One in the case of Forms, viz. that this is a dead, the great and the small. Further, he has assigned the cause of good and that of evil to the elements, one to each of the two, as we say some of his predecessors sought to do, e.g. Empedocles and Anaxagoras"

Book & Page: Aristotle Metaphysics Translated by W. D. Ross p.9

#Analysis

"Community of property. Three possible systems of property. The difficulties of a system under which ownership and use are both common: the merits of a system under which ownership is private and use is common - it gives more pleasure, and it encourages goodness more, Communism cannot remedy evils which really spring from the defects of human nature: it is also based on a false conception of unity, and neglect the true unity which comes from education; finally, it is contradicted by experience. Plato's particular scheme of community of property leaves the position of the farming class obscure. The system of government which he connects with his scheme is too absolute, and is likely to cause discontent: it also deprives the ruling class of any happiness."

Book & Page: Aristotle Politics, (Oxford) p.46

#Analysis

"Plato's Laws. The scheme of the laws is not greatly different from that of the Republic. It postulates too large a territory, but fails to pay proper attention to the problem of foreign relations. It does not sufficiently define the amount of property required, or the object for which it is required; nor does it make proper provision for a balance between property and population. The system of government is a sort of ‘ constitutional government’, but it is not property balanced: the method of electing officials and councillors is too oligarchical."

Book & Page: Aristotle pdf Ethics p3305

#Analysis

"Plato's Republic. Before describing our own conception of the best constitution, we must consider both those constitutions that are in force in cities considered to be well governed and those constitutions that have been proposed by our predecessors. In doing so, we should note that political association is a sharing: so we may ask ‘How much should be shared?’ In Plato’s Republic it is proposed that women, children, and property should be held in common."

Book & Page: Aristotle The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford) p.26

#Analysis

"For that wise Solon was directly a poet it is manifest, having written in verse the notable fable of the Atlantic Island, which was continued by Plato. And truly even Plato whosoever well considered, shall find in the body of his work, though the inside and strength were philosophy, the skin, as it were, and beauty depended on most of the poetry"

Book & Page: Aristotle Poetics (Penguin) p.60

#Analysis

"And so Plato was in a sense not wrong in ranking sophistic as dealing with that which is not. For the arguments of the sophists deal, we may say, above all with the accidental; e.g. the question whether ‘musical’ and ‘lettered’ are different or the same, and whether ‘musical Coriscus’ and ‘Coriscus’ are the same, and whether ‘everything which is, but is not eternal, has come to be’, with the paradoxical conclusion that if one who was musical has come to be lettered, he must also have been lettered and have come to be musical, and all the other arguments of this sort; the accidental is obviously akin to non-being."

Book & Page: Aristotle pdf Ethics p2819

#Analysis

Seneca(4 BC - 64 AC)

"Now I return to the topic I promised you: how Plato divides all the things that are into six senses. The first ‘what is’ is not grasped by vision, by touch, or by any sense. It is thinkable. What is in a generic way, e.g., generic human, is not subject to being seen. But a specific human is, such as Cicero and Cato. Animal is not seen; it is thought. But its species, horse and dog, are seen."

Book & Page: Seneca pdf p.26

#Analysis

"Listen to what an ‘idea’ is, i.e., what Plato thinks it is. ‘An idea is the eternal model of those things which are produced by nature.’ I will add to the definition an interpretation so that it will be clearer to you. I want to produce an image of you. I have you as a model for the painting, from which our mind derives a certain disposition which it imposes on its work. In this way the appearance which teaches me and guides me, the source of the imitation, is an idea. Nature, then, contains an indefinite number of such models—of humans, fish, trees. Whatever is to be produced by nature is shaped with reference to them."

Book & Page: Seneca pdf p.28

#Analysis

"‘Form’ will have fourth place. You need to pay close attention to the account of what ‘form’ is. Blame Plato, not me, for the difficulty of the topic: there is no technicality without difficulty. A moment ago I used the example of a painter. When he wanted to render Virgil with colors, he looked at Virgil himself. The ‘idea’ was Virgil’s appearance, a model for the intended work. The form is that which the artisan derives from the appearance and imposed on his own work. You ask, what is the difference between idea and form? The one is a model, while the other is a shape taken from the model and imposed on the work. The artisan imitates the one and produces the other. A statue has a certain appearance—this is its form. The model itself has a certain appearance which the workman looked at when he shaped the statue. This is the idea. If you still want a further distinction, the form is in the work and the idea outside it—and not only outside it but prior to it."

Book & Page: Seneca pdf p.6

#Analysis

"This, Lucilius, is what I normally do: from every notion, even if it is quite remote from philosophy, I try to dig out something and make it useful. What is more remote from the improvement of our habits than the discourse I just gave? How can the Platonic ideas make me better? What could I derive from them that might control my desires? Maybe just this, that all those things which serve the senses, which inflame and stimulate us—Plato says that they are not among the things which truly are."

Book & Page: Seneca pdf p.7

#Analysis

"So, on Plato’s view, there are five causes: that from which, that by which, that in which, that with reference to which, that because of which. Last of all is that which comes from them. For example, a statue (since I have already begun to use this example). The ‘from which’ is bronze, the ‘by which’ is the artisan, the ‘in which’ is the form which is fitted to the matter, the ‘with reference to which’ is the model which the maker imitates, the ‘because of which’ is the purpose of the maker, and ‘what comes from them’ is the statue itself. The cosmos too, according to Plato, has all of them: a maker (this is god), a ‘from which’ (this is matter), a form (this is the configuration and order of the visible cosmos), a model (i.e., what god looked to in making this vast and most beautiful work), and a purpose because of which he made it. "

Book & Page: Seneca pdf p.7

#Analysis

Thomas Aquinas(1225 - 1274)

"I answer that, As regards relative things, we must admit extrinsic denomination; as, a thing is denominated "placed" from "place," and "measured" from "measure." But as regards absolute things, opinions differ. Plato held the existence of separate ideas (Question 84, Article 4) of all things, and that individuals were denominated by them as participating in the separate ideas; for instance, that Socrates is called man according to the separate idea of man. Now just as he laid down separate ideas of man and horse which he called absolute man and absolute horse, so likewise he laid down separate ideas of "being" and of "one," and these he called absolute being and absolute oneness; and by participation of these, everything was called "being" or "one"; and what was thus absolute being and absolute one, he said was the supreme good. And because good is convertible with being, as one is also; he called God the absolute good, from whom all things are called good by way of participation."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p.847

#Analysis

"If form only, and not matter, belonged to natural things, then in all respects natural things would exist more truly in the divine mind, by the ideas of them, than in themselves. For which reason, in fact, Plato held that the "separate" man was the true man; and that man as he exists in matter, is man only by participation."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 5231

#Analysis

"I answer that, It was the opinion of some, that all corporeal forms are derived from spiritual substances, which we call the angels. And there are two ways in which this has been stated. For Plato held that the forms of corporeal matter are derived from, and formed by, forms immaterially subsisting, by a kind of participation. Thus, he held that there exists an immaterial man, and an immaterial horse, and so forth, and that from such the individual sensible things that we see are constituted, in so far as in corporeal matter there abides the impression received from these separate forms, by a kind of assimilation, or as he calls it, "participation" (Phaedo xlix)."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p.1700

#Analysis

"Plato, however, drew a distinction between intellect and sense; yet he referred both to an incorporeal principle, maintaining that sensing, just as understanding, belongs to the soul as such. From this, it follows that even the souls of brute animals are subsistence."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1798

#Analysis

"I answer that, It is absolutely impossible for one intellect to belong to all men. This is clear if, as Plato maintained, man is the intellect itself. For it would follow that Socrates and Plato are one man; and that they are not distinct from each other, except by something outside the essence of each subsistence."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1798

#Analysis

"But, according to the opinion of Plato, the thing understood exists outside the soul in the same condition as those under which it is understood; for he supposed that the natures of things exist separate from matter."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1819

#Analysis

"But since that which has a form actually, is sometimes unable to act according to that form on account of some hindrance, as a light thing may be hindered from moving upwards; for this reason did Plato hold that naturally man's intellect is filled with all intelligible species, but that, by being united to the body, it is hindered from the realization of its act. But this seems to be unreasonable."

Book & Page: Aquinas pdf p. 1966

#Analysis
Back to top