PLATO
Three
Greek Gems in the British
Museum
PLATO
AT
last the threads that we have been
spinning in our previous lectures run together into warp and woof. I
had
to start with the Goethe lecture in order to speak of “ideas“ so that
my meaning should be perceived:
without the Leonardo lecture, — in which I endeavoured to draw an
accurate
distinction between that which is “pure“ and that which is “empirical,“
and consequently between mathematical natural science, and artistic
intuition
of nature, I could hardly have attained a consideration of the true
Plato,
in the face of so many deeply rooted misunderstandings which had to be
swept away: the Descartes lecture is adapted to lay the foundation of
the
present lecture, as teaching the importance of the dualistic method of
observation for all criticism of the human intellect, of which it, at
the
same time, furnishes you with a plastic conception; finally, the Bruno
lecture has laid down once for all the difference between dogmatism and
criticism, so that we know where to seek for Plato and where not.
Towards the
close of the lecture,
when we shall know Plato better, we shall return to these heroes of our
earlier lectures: for the moment I must content myself with these brief
hints, only calling your attention to a special relation between the
different
lectures in order that you may from the very outset correctly grasp the
distinguishing feature of the goal in view.
It will have
struck you that we
have made very varying use of the personalities which we have brought
4 PLATO
forward
for our purposes of
comparison.
In the Goethe lecture it was the personality itself, with its physical
properties reaching into the very volutes of the brain, that we placed
in contrast with the Sage of Königsberg and his individual
capacities:
Leonardo, on the contrary, possessed for our purpose rather a general
than
an individual importance, and helped us to fix more exactly the points
that Kant has in common with Goethe, as well as those in which their
modes
of perception differ. In Descartes it was once more the personality
which
held us, but not so much, as in Goethe, by way of contrast or in
opposition
to that of Kant, but because it opened up for us an access to the
labyrinthine
depths of Kantian thought, —
while, on the other hand, Bruno served
as the sharply stamped type of a numerous tribe of thinkers who stand
as
the very antipodes of Kant. Now we must introduce the lens by which we
may collect these various rays and focus them upon the burning point of
our interest, Immanuel Kant. For in Plato we, for the first time, meet
a man whose genius and whose “mode of seeing,“ inborn and developed to
perfection through a whole life of incessant thinking, are almost
exactly
in harmony with Kant. If we had singled out Plato earlier, we should
not
rightly have understood him: all that we have in the meanwhile done for
Kant is equally of value in his case; but if we were to leave him out
now
I should despair of being able to add the indispensable sharpness of
outline
to the plastic picture of Kant's intellectual personality, of which the
general features should now be clearly before you. Plato alone can
serve
this end. With reference to the great central fact, namely the
awakening
of the human intellect to critical consideration of itself, the two men
are identical: Kant occupies the same relation to Plato as Copernicus
did to Aristarchus: yet at the
same time, as you will
presently
see more exactly, they stand in relation to one another as two
5 PLATO
counterparts,
two pendants. It is the
same thing, but seen from opposite sides like the obverse and reverse
of
a medal. Where Kant with great pains develops a final abstraction which
few only are capable of attaining, Plato boldly gives a picture which
may
be grasped palpably: whereas for Kant all criticism of reason leads to
negation and limitation, Plato presents it in principle in the shape of
an affirmative and limitless recognition. Of course, on that very
account,
Plato has in all ages been even more misunderstood than Kant; but we
need
not trouble ourselves here about the organic incompetence of many, even
gifted men, to understand Plato, and you no doubt guess what an
important
revelation it must be to be able to see this critical intellectual
disposition
and its effects from both sides, from the obverse and from the reverse;
from the conventional individual it seems as remote as the conception
of
the earth's motion. Every step which we take in the understanding of
Plato
is a direct help to the understanding of Kant; in order to put matters
right we shall have later, as it were, to turn the medal round here and
there, but that will cost little trouble; the only difficulty lies in
grasping
the central, creative thought which is common to Plato and Kant, and
which
springs from their personal method of seeing: we shall succeed more easily with Plato
than with Kant.
So much by way of preliminary explanation.
Here, as in
the Goethe lecture,
it will be advisable to attack the comparison from outside. In great
men
the outer fits the inner, and their character is more exactly mirrored
in their face than is the case with others. What I indicated above as
the
tendency of the one man to affirm and of the other to deny, is rooted
indeed
in their physical form. Kant is a small, weakly man with a sunken
chest,
who, thanks to his moderation and an almost anxious carefulness, was
able
to reach an advanced old age in tolerable health: Plato, on the
contrary,
6 PLATO
whose
real name was Aristocles,
earned
the surname of Platon in the
wrestling school, on account of his
extraordinary
size and strength. That this nickname of the ring should have stuck to
the man for all time, and have supplanted his true name, testifies to
the
admiration in which his rare, handsome figure was unanimously held by
the
world. He was not only big and strong; even his enemies, and he had
many,
praise his beauty, his symmetry, his height. That a Greek of such
powerful
build should over and over again have appeared in the public athletic
competitions,
and more than once have gained the wreath of victory, will not astonish
you, even though it should be little in harmony with our present idea
of
the career of a philosopher. He seems to have taken part as a cavalry
officer
in several campaigns, furnishing his men and horses at his own expense.
For in addition to his bodily advantages Plato was also favoured by
birth.
Kant, the son of a poor saddler in a small provincial town, passes
two-thirds
of his life in very necessitous circumstances; even as a student he was
compelled to earn his bread by giving lessons, and it was only by
painfully
self-sacrificing economy and daily self-denial that towards the close
of
his life he was able to realise a modest independence. Plato, on the
contrary,
belongs by birth to the great and wealthy nobility of the headquarters
of culture in the world of those days, and traces his pedigree both on
his father's and on his mother's side to kingly ancestors: from these
exalted forebears he inherits wide estates administered by honest
slaves: he knows nothing of care
for daily
bread,
or of any business or professional duties: never in his life has he
been
under any constraint for a single day: he travels whither he chooses
and
comes home when it pleases him; he is without wants so far as material
enjoyment is concerned, because it is his pleasure to take independence
of wants as a philosophical maxim of life, and yet he is no
