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“In his numerous historical and Scriptural works Bauer rejects all supernatural religion, and represents Christianity as a natural product of the mingling of the Stoic and Alexandrian philosophies...”
― Joseph McCabe, A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists

“Kadang cinta yang bertepuk sebelah tangan lebih mudah untuk dijalani dari pada cinta yang saling mencintai.”
― nom de plume

“In fifth–sixth-century Athens, philosophy appears more and more as a systematic whole, its study guided by a canon of authoritative works, including both Aristotle and Plato. The peak of the philosophical curriculum is no longer metaphysics, but theology, i.e.,a philosophical discourse about the divine principles, whose sources lie first and foremost in the revelations of late paganism and then in Plato’s dialogues, allegorically interpreted as conveying his theological doctrine. […] Both the Platonic Theology and the Elements of Theology begin with the One, the First Principle. Departing from Plotinus, who was convinced that the suprasensible causes were but three â€� the One-Good, Intellect, and Soul â€� the two Proclean works expound the procession of multiplicity from the One as the derivation of a series of intermediate principles, first between the One and the intelligible being, then between the intelligible being and the divine Intellect (and intellects), and then between the divine Intellect and the divine Soul (and souls). For Proclus, an entire hierarchy of divine principles lies both outside the visible universe and within it, and the human soul, fallen into the world of coming-to-be and passing away, can return to the First Principle only through the “appropriate mediations.â€� [...] Philosophy, insofar as it celebrates the truly divine principles of the visible cosmos, is prayer.”
― Peter S. Adamson, The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy

“how if you help someone maybe you loved to get someone her love? it's complicated? no it's interesting.”
― nom de plume

“Those who listened to the teachings of Socrates became the best philosophers. But those who studied under Plato, relied more on the rhetorical path and therefore, the greatest opportunists.”
― Mwanandeke Kindembo

“According to Plato, internal strife, class war, fomented by self-interest and especially material or economic self-interest, is the main force of ‘social dynamicsâ€�. The Marxian formula ‘The history of all hitherto existing societies is a history of class struggleâ€�8 fits Plato’s historicism nearly as well as that of Marx. The four most conspicuous periods or ‘landmarks in the history of political degenerationâ€�, and, at the same time, ‘the most important â€� varieties of existing statesâ€�, are described by Plato in the following order. First after the perfect state comes ‘timarchyâ€� or ‘timocracyâ€�, the rule of the noble who seek honour and fame; secondly, oligarchy, the rule of the rich families; ‘next in order, democracy is bornâ€�, the rule of liberty which means lawlessness; and last comes ‘tyranny â€� the fourth and final sickness of the cityâ€�.
As can be seen from the last remark, Plato looks upon history, which to him is a history of social decay, as if it were the history of an illness: the patient is society; and, as we shall see later, the statesman ought to be a physician (and vice versa)—a healer, a saviour.
[...]
We see that Plato aimed at setting out a system of historical periods, governed by a law of evolution; in other words, he aimed at a historicist theory of society. This attempt was revived by Rousseau, and was made fashionable by Comte and Mill, and by Hegel and Marx; but considering the historical evidence then available, Plato’s system of historical periods was just as good as that of any of these modern historicists. (The main difference lies in the evaluation of the course taken by history. While the aristocrat Plato condemned the development he described, these modern authors applauded it, believing as they did in a law of historical progress.)
[...]
It is important to note that Plato explicitly identified this best and oldest among the existing states with the Dorian constitution of Sparta and Crete, and that these two tribal aristocracies did in fact represent the oldest existing forms of political life within Greece. Most of Plato’s excellent description of their institutions is given in certain parts of his description of the best or perfect state, to which timocracy is so similar. (Through his doctrine of the similarity between Sparta and the perfect state, Plato became one of the most successful propagators of what I should like to call ‘the Great Myth of Sparta’—the perennial and influential myth of the supremacy of the Spartan constitution and way of life.)”
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato

“According to Plato, internal strife, class war, fomented by self-interest and especially material or economic self-interest, is the main force of ‘social dynamicsâ€�. The Marxian formula ‘The history of all hitherto existing societies is a history of class struggleâ€� fits Plato’s historicism nearly as well as that of Marx. The four most conspicuous periods or ‘landmarks in the history of political degenerationâ€�, and, at the same time, ‘the most important â€� varieties of existing statesâ€�, are described by Plato in the following order. First after the perfect state comes ‘timarchyâ€� or ‘timocracyâ€�, the rule of the noble who seek honour and fame; secondly, oligarchy, the rule of the rich families; ‘next in order, democracy is bornâ€�, the rule of liberty which means lawlessness; and last comes ‘tyranny â€� the fourth and final sickness of the cityâ€�.
As can be seen from the last remark, Plato looks upon history, which to him is a history of social decay, as if it were the history of an illness: the patient is society; and, as we shall see later, the statesman ought to be a physician (and vice versa)—a healer, a saviour.
[...]
We see that Plato aimed at setting out a system of historical periods, governed by a law of evolution; in other words, he aimed at a historicist theory of society. This attempt was revived by Rousseau, and was made fashionable by Comte and Mill, and by Hegel and Marx; but considering the historical evidence then available, Plato’s system of historical periods was just as good as that of any of these modern historicists. (The main difference lies in the evaluation of the course taken by history. While the aristocrat Plato condemned the development he described, these modern authors applauded it, believing as they did in a law of historical progress.)
[...]
It is important to note that Plato explicitly identified this best and oldest among the existing states with the Dorian constitution of Sparta and Crete, and that these two tribal aristocracies did in fact represent the oldest existing forms of political life within Greece. Most of Plato’s excellent description of their institutions is given in certain parts of his description of the best or perfect state, to which timocracy is so similar. (Through his doctrine of the similarity between Sparta and the perfect state, Plato became one of the most successful propagators of what I should like to call ‘the Great Myth of Sparta’—the perennial and influential myth of the supremacy of the Spartan constitution and way of life.)”
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato

“How does Plato solve the problem of avoiding class war? Had he been a progressivist, he might have hit on the idea of a classless, equalitarian society; for, as we can see for instance from his own parody of Athenian democracy, there were strong equalitarian tendencies at work in Athens. But he was not out to construct a state that might come, but a state that had been—the father of the Spartan state, which was certainly not a classless society. It was a slave state, and accordingly Plato’s best state is based on the most rigid class distinctions. It is a caste state. The problem of avoiding class war is solved, not by abolishing classes, but by giving the ruling class a superiority which cannot be challenged. As in Sparta, the ruling class alone is permitted to carry arms, it alone has any political or other rights, and it alone receives education, i.e. a specialized training in the art of keeping down its human sheep or its human cattle.”
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato

“The communism of the ruling caste of his best city can thus be derived from Plato’s fundamental sociological law of change; it is a necessary condition of the political stability which is its fundamental characteristic. But although an important condition, it is not a sufficient one. In order that the ruling class may feel really united, that it should feel like one tribe, i.e. like one big family, pressure from without the class is as necessary as are the ties between the members of the class. This pressure can be secured by emphasizing and widening the gulf between the rulers and the ruled. The stronger the feeling that the ruled are a different and an altogether inferior race, the stronger will be the sense of unity among the rulers. We arrive in this way at the fundamental principle, announced only after some hesitation, that there must be no mingling between the classes.”
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato

“The main difficulty which besets Plato is that guardians and auxiliaries must be endowed with a character that is fierce and gentle at the same time. It is clear that they must be bred to be fierce, since they must ‘meet any danger in a fearless and unconquerable spiritâ€�. Yet ‘if their nature is to be like that, how are they to be kept from being violent against one another, or against the rest of the citizens?â€� Indeed, it would be ‘simply monstrous if the shepherds should keep dogs â€� who would worry the sheep, behaving like wolves rather than dogsâ€�.”
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato

“Not only poetry but also music in the ordinary sense of the term are to be controlled by a rigid censorship, and both are to be devoted entirely to strengthening the stability of the state by making the young more conscious of class discipline, and thus more ready to serve class interests. Plato even forgets that it is the function of music to make the young more gentle, for he demands such forms of music as will make them braver, i.e. fiercer. (Considering that Plato was an Athenian, his arguments concerning music proper appear to me almost incredible in their superstitious intolerance, especially if compared with a more enlightened contemporary criticism. But even now he has many musicians on his side, possibly because they are flattered by his high opinion of the importance of music, i.e. of its political power. The same is true of educationists, and even more of philosophers, since Plato demands that they should rule.)
The political principle that determines the education of the soul, namely, the preservation of the stability of the state, determines also that of the body. The aim is simply that of Sparta.”
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato

“The internal disunion of human nature, the schism of the soul, leads to the schism of the ruling class. And as with Heraclitus, war, class war, is the father and promoter of all change, and of the history of man, which is nothing but the history of the breakdown of society. We see that Plato’s idealist historicism ultimately rests not upon a spiritual, but upon a biological basis; it rests upon a kind of meta-biology of the race of men. Plato was not only a naturalist who proffered a biological theory of the state, he was also the first to proffer a biological and racial theory of social dynamics, of political history.”
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato

“[Plato's] achievements are impaired by his hatred of the society in which he was living, and by his romantic love for the old tribal form of social life. It is this attitude which led him to formulate an untenable law of historical development, namely, the law of universal degeneration or decay. And the same attitude is also responsible for the irrational, fantastic, and romantic elements of his otherwise excellent analysis. On the other hand, it was just his personal interest and his partiality which sharpened his eye and so made his achievements possible. He derived his historicist theory from the fantastic philosophical doctrine that the changing visible world is only a decaying copy of an unchanging invisible world. But this ingenious attempt to combine a historicist pessimism with an ontological optimism leads, when elaborated, to difficulties. These difficulties forced upon him the adoption of a biological naturalism, leading (together with ‘psychologismâ€�, i.e. the theory that society depends on the ‘human natureâ€� of its members) to mysticism and superstition, culminating in a pseudo-rational mathematical theory of breeding. They even endangered the impressive unity of his theoretical edifice.”
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato

“This ground-plan, conceived by a great architect, exhibits a fundamental metaphysical dualism in Plato’s thought. [...]
In politics, it is the opposition between the one collective, the state, which may attain perfection and autarchy, and the great mass of the people—the many individuals, the particular men who must remain imperfect and dependent, and whose particularity is to be suppressed for the sake of the unity of the state (see the next chapter). And this whole dualist philosophy, I believe, originated from the urgent wish to explain the contrast between the vision of an ideal society, and the hateful actual state of affairs in the social field—the contrast between a stable society, and a society in the process of revolution.”
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato

“Collective or group egoism, for instance class egoism, is a very common thing (Plato knew this very well), and this shows clearly enough that collectivism as such is not opposed to selfishness. On the other hand, an anti-collectivist, i.e. an individualist, can, at the same time, be an altruist; he can be ready to make sacrifices in order to help other individuals.
[...]
This individualism, united with altruism, has become the basis of our western civilization. It is the central doctrine of Christianity (‘love your neighbourâ€�, say the Scriptures, not ‘love your tribeâ€�); and it is the core of all ethical doctrines which have grown from our civilization and stimulated it. It is also, for instance, Kant’s central practical doctrine (‘always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as mere means to your endsâ€�). There is no other thought which has been so powerful in the moral development of man.”
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato

“At the same time, the reader is led to identify individualism with the views of Thrasymachus, and to think that Plato, in his fight against it, is fighting against all the subversive and nihilistic tendencies of his time. But we should not allow ourselves to be frightened by an individualist bogy such as Thrasymachus (there is a great similarity between his portrait and the modern collectivist bogy of ‘bolshevismâ€�) into accepting another more real and more dangerous because less obvious form of barbarism. For Plato replaces Thrasymachusâ€� doctrine that the individual’s might is right by the equally barbaric doctrine that right is everything that furthers the stability and the might of the state.”
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato

“[. . .] The philosophy of Plato, which is the human preface of the Gospel [. . .]”
― Joseph de Maistre, St Petersburg Dialogues: Or Conversations on the Temporal Government of Providence

“Sin, the Fall, salvation, grace, election-how is it that they loom so large in the vocabulary of a movement which should have been Platonist, should have been theocentric? It is due, I think, to the overmastering influence of one man, St. Augustine. A Platonist if ever there was one, yet Fenelon quarried no material from him in writing the Maximes des saints. St. Augustine was a man in whom the moral struggle had become inextricably entwined with the search for God; further, he had to enter the lists against the great heresy of Pelagius, which sought to by-pass the mystery of redemption. Consequently, the doctrine of grace became a major preoccupation with him, and he darkened in, perhaps too unsparingly, the outlines of St. Paul's world-picture. Moreover, he sought to pluck the heart out of a mystery by his theory of the two rival delectations. If you avoided sin, it was only because conscious love for God then and there neutralized the attraction of it; your decision was made on a balance of motives. Exaggerated now from this angle, now from that, St. Augustine's theology has provided, ever since, the dogmatic background of revivalism.”
― Ronald Knox, Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion

“To understand Plato, we have to break free of the lazy assumption that everything real must have some location in time and space; indeed, his whole point is that the Theory of Forms, if correct, proves that there is more to reality than the world of time and space. We also have to break free of the lazy habit (as Plato sees it) of assuming that our senses are our only sources of knowledge of reality. For the highest level of reality is not knowable through the senses, but only via the intellect. The world of the senses â€� of particular geometrical objects, particular human beings, particular just or unjust actions, and the like â€� might serve at most as kind of a pointer to something beyond itself, to a realm that includes the Form of Triangularity, the Form of Humanness, and the Form of Justice. We can see, hear, taste, touch, and smell the former world, but not the latter, which we know instead through pure thought or unaided reason.”
― Edward Feser, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism

“The Gnostics derived their leading doctrines and ideas from Plato and Philo, the Zend-avesta and the Kabalah, and the Sacred books of India and Egypt; and thus introduced into the bosom of Christianity the cosmological and theosophical speculations, which had formed the larger portion of the ancient religions of the Orient, joined to those of the Egyptian, Greek, and Jewish doctrines, which the Neo-Platonists had equally adopted in the Occident. Emanation from the Deity of all spiritual beings, progressive degeneration of these beings from emanation to emanation, redemption and return of all to the purity of the Creator; and, after the re-establishment of the primitive harmony of all, a fortunate and truly divine condition of all, in the bosom of God; such were the fundamental teachings of Gnosticism. The genius of the Orient, with its contemplations, irradiations, and intuitions, dictated its doctrines. Its language corresponded to its origin. Full of imagery, it had all the magnificence, the inconsistencies, and the mobility of the figurative style. Behold, it said, the light, which emanates from an immense centre of Light, that spreads everywhere its benevolent rays; so do the spirits of Light emanate from the Divine Light. Behold, all the springs which nourish, embellish, fertilize, and purify the Earth; they emanate from one and the same ocean; so from the bosom of the Divinity emanate so many streams, which form and fill the universe of intelligences. Behold numbers, which all emanate from one primitive number, all resemble it, all are composed of its essence, and still vary infinitely; and utterances, decomposable into so many syllables and elements, all contained in the primitive Word, and still infinitely various; so the world of Intelligences emanated from a Primary Intelligence, and they all resemble it, and yet display an infinite variety of existences. It revived and combined the old doctrines of the Orient and the Occident; and it found in many passages of the Gospels and the Pastoral letters, a warrant for doing so. Christ himself spoke in parables and allegories, John borrowed the enigmatical language of the Platonists, and Paul often indulged in incomprehensible rhapsodies, the meaning of which could have been clear to the Initiates alone.”
― Albert Pike, Morals And Dogma Of The Ancient And Accepted Scottish Rite (Illustrated): Chapter of Rose Croix

“A mind persuaded that it lives among things that, like words, are essentially significant, and that what they signify is the magic attraction, called love, which draws all things after it, is a mind poetic in its intuition, even if its language be prose. The science and philosophy of Dante did not have to be put into verse in order to become poetry: they were poetry fundamentally and in their essence. When Plato and Aristotle, following the momentous precept of Socrates, decreed that observation of nature should stop and a moral interpretation of nature should begin, they launched into the world a new mythology, to take the place of the Homeric one which was losing its authority. The power the poets had lost of producing illusion was possessed by these philosophers in a high degree; and no one was ever more thoroughly under their spell than Dante. He became to Platonism and Christianity what Homer had been to Paganism; and if Platonism and Christianity, like Paganism, should ever cease to be defended scientifically, Dante will keep the poetry and wisdom of them alive; and it is safe to say that later generations will envy more than they will despise his philosophy. When the absurd controversies and factious passions that in some measure obscure the nature of this system have completely passed away, no one will think of reproaching Dante with his bad science, and bad history, and minute theology. These will not seem blemishes in his poetry, but integral parts of it.”
― George Santayana, Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante And Goethe

“Maternal love is an instinctive and natural impulse, and animals possess it in a degree as high as that of human beings. This alone is enough to show that it is not true love, that it is not of moral origin ; for all morality proceeds from the intelligible character which animals, having no free will, do not possess. The ethical imperative can be heard only by a rational creature ; there is no such thing as natural morality, for all morality must be self-conscious.”
― Otto Weininger, Sex and Character: An Investigation of Fundamental Principles

“This famous doctrine of Ideas, embellished and obscured by the fancy and poetry of Plato, is a discouraging maze to the modern student, and must have offered another severe test to the survivors of many sittings. The Idea of a thing might be the "general idea" of the class to which it belongs (the Idea of John, or Dick, or Harry, is Man) ; or it might be the law or laws according to which the thing operates (the Idea of John would be the reduction of all hig behavior to "natural laws") ; or it might be the perfect purpose and ideal towards which the thing and its class may develop (the Idea of John is the John of Utopia). Very probably the Idea is all of these—idea, law and ideal.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy