Sublime

Platon suggère que la vie politique, la vie de la pólis (« la cité »), concerne celle-ci d'une manière beaucoup plus englobante : elle est à l'œuvre non seulement dans les lieux officiels et leur pompe partisane, mais aussi dans ses rues, ses faubourgs, ses gymnases, ses places du marché et ses maisons particulières. Tels sont les lieux où Socrate,

The Stoics held that there are certain principles which are luminously obvious, and are admitted by all men; these could be made, as in Euclid’s Elements, the basis of deduction. Innate ideas, similarly, could be used as the starting-point of definitions. This point of view was accepted throughout the Middle Ages, and even by Descartes.

I would have you know, that if you kill such an one as I am, you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me. Nothing will injure me, not Meletus nor yet Anytus—they cannot, for a bad man is not permitted to injure a better than himself.

Cependant, c’est avec Platon que l’on va avoir pour la première fois une œuvre philosophique véritablement constituée, pleinement développée dans chacun des trois niveaux constitutifs de la discipline : une théorie de la connaissance, une conception du juste et de l’injuste (une morale et une politique), et une réflexion sur la vie bonne, une sotér

the tale begins with Socrates—in particular, with the Socrates who wore the same cloak both summer and winter, who was guided by a divine sign, and who taught that it is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and that nobody willingly does wrong. The combination of asceticism (or “voluntary simplicity”), providentialism (being guided by a mysterious

more than human virtue is needed to save a man, and that he only praises justice who is incapable of injustice.

pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.

• He is only a philosopher in the manner of Socrates, whom he revered above all others because he left behind no dogma, no teachings, no law, no system, only an example: the man who seeks himself in all and who seeks all in himself.

Milton and Locke, Rousseau, Jean Paul, and Goethe are the legitimate descendants. Like Dante or Bunyan, he has a revelation of another life; like Bacon, he is profoundly impressed with the unity of knowledge;