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Schopenhauer
Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher and student of Socrates. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Plato’s entire body of work survived, and he has had a lasting influence on philosophy. Plato developed several important theories, including those of forms, the soul, knowledge, and ethics. Nietzsche credits Plato with the origin of the moral problem in philosophy—and blames him for an incorrect, insufficient answer. In Nietzsche’s eyes, Plato invented the theoretical category of “the good” with disregard for individual perspective, leading to abstract morality’s domination of social life. Nietzsche also refers to Christianity as “Platonism for ‘the people,’” echoing scholarship on the influence Plato’s thought had on later religious doctrine.
Plato Quotes in Beyond Good and Evil
The Beyond Good and Evil quotes below are all either spoken by Plato or refer to Plato. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Preface
Quotes
Let us not be ungrateful to it, although it must certainly be conceded that the worst, most durable, and most dangerous of all errors so far was a dogmatist’s error—namely, Plato’s invention of the pure spirit and the good as such. But now that it is overcome, now that Europe is breathing freely again after this nightmare and at least can enjoy a healthier sleep, we whose task is wakefulness itself, are the heirs of all that strength which has been fostered by the fight against this error. To be sure, it meant standing truth on her head and denying perspective, the basic condition of all life, when one spoke of spirit and the good as Plato did.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
1. On the Prejudices of Philosophers
Quotes
Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir; also that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constituted the real germ of life from which the whole plant had grown.
4. Epigrams and Interludes
Quotes
There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena—
8. Peoples and Fatherlands
Quotes
What Europe owes to the Jews? Many things good and bad, and above all one thing that is both of the best and of the worst: the grand style in morality, the terribleness and majesty of infinite demands, infinite meanings, the whole romanticism and sublimity of moral questionabilities—and hence precisely the most attractive, captious, and choicest part of those plays of color and seductions to life in whose afterglow the sky of our European culture, its evening sky, is burning now—perhaps burning itself out. We artists among the spectators and philosophers are—grateful for this to the Jews.
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Plato Quotes in Beyond Good and Evil
The Beyond Good and Evil quotes below are all either spoken by Plato or refer to Plato. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Preface
Quotes
Let us not be ungrateful to it, although it must certainly be conceded that the worst, most durable, and most dangerous of all errors so far was a dogmatist’s error—namely, Plato’s invention of the pure spirit and the good as such. But now that it is overcome, now that Europe is breathing freely again after this nightmare and at least can enjoy a healthier sleep, we whose task is wakefulness itself, are the heirs of all that strength which has been fostered by the fight against this error. To be sure, it meant standing truth on her head and denying perspective, the basic condition of all life, when one spoke of spirit and the good as Plato did.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
1. On the Prejudices of Philosophers
Quotes
Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir; also that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constituted the real germ of life from which the whole plant had grown.
4. Epigrams and Interludes
Quotes
There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena—
8. Peoples and Fatherlands
Quotes
What Europe owes to the Jews? Many things good and bad, and above all one thing that is both of the best and of the worst: the grand style in morality, the terribleness and majesty of infinite demands, infinite meanings, the whole romanticism and sublimity of moral questionabilities—and hence precisely the most attractive, captious, and choicest part of those plays of color and seductions to life in whose afterglow the sky of our European culture, its evening sky, is burning now—perhaps burning itself out. We artists among the spectators and philosophers are—grateful for this to the Jews.
