Book Description

Excerpt from A Day in Athens With Socrates: Translations From the Protagoras and the Republic of Plato Ethical problems, to solve which was the avowed object of this new school bf philosophy, but too frequently were abandoned for a training intended to ensure worldly success and fame; high ideals, sometimes even moral standards, were practically ignored; ability in discussion, facility of expression, came to be regarded not merely as helps to reach truth, but as the sole end of education, the greatest good of man.2 It is doubtless true that to class all the immediate predecessors of Socrates indiscriminately in one school is as unfair as to make their supposed method a mere synonyme for specious argument Also in their favour it should be remembered that an inestimable service was ren dered by these men in preparing the ground for Socrates himself, and through him for all subsequent philosophers. Had the doctrine that Man is the measure of all things not been proclaimed by Protagoras, the conclusion would less soon have been reached, that not only IS philosophy made for man, but that man also is made for philosophy; and that hence his bounden duty, nay, his privilege it is, to apply to each act of his life the test whereby the true may be separated from the false, the real from the unreal. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.