Sublime

Lying, Plato says explicitly, is to be a prerogative of the government, just as giving medicine is of physicians.

But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets;—because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom;

“Ô le meilleur des hommes, toi qui es athénien, un citoyen de la cité la plus importante et la plus renommée dans les domaines de la sagesse et de la puissance, n'as-tu pas honte de te soucier de la façon d'augmenter le plus possible richesses, réputation [29e] et honneurs, alors que tu n'as aucun souci de la pensée, de la vérité et de l'améliorati

There is nothing which for my part I like better, Cephalus, than conversing with aged men; for I regard them as travellers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to enquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult.

Plato is quite precise in what he says about love: a seed of universality resides in the impulse towards love.

‘Socrates is an evil-doer, and a curious person,

Even Plato, without comparison the most transcendental philosopher of pre-Christian antiquity, knows no higher virtue than Justice; he alone recommends it unconditionally and for its own sake, while all the other philosophers make a happy life--vita beata--the aim of all virtue; and it is acquired through the medium of moral behaviour. Christianity