Preface

I do not hesitate to name Hermann Cohen as the one who opened our eyes to Plato just as he did for Kant. One will therefore not be able to accuse me of being blinded by the concepts of a specific philosophical school. It will not easily be overlooked that in the interpretation of details we reach different conclusions on several occasions, and not merely in minor matters. But we share the concept of idealism, and the fundamental view that idealism—named after the ideas of Plato, and not, for instance, those of Berkeley—has found its first, most original, and one must almost say most unmistakable expression in Plato’s theory of ideas. I have only one request for the reader here: let them read Plato himself and this presentation as impartially as they can; let them, if possible, rid themselves of any memory of what stands in books, be it about the idealism of Plato or Kant, or indeed of his evil successors of today.

For this very reason, I had to let Plato speak for himself as much as possible. But in order not to have written merely for philologists—for others, the saying goes again today: graeca sunt, non leguntur they are Greek, they are not read—I had to decide to let him speak German. I am very much aware that subjectivity begins with this alone; but does one avoid it when one sets down the texts in the original language and then draws one’s conclusions from them in German? Special attention has been paid to the terminology. Where it seemed useful, the Greek word has been added in parentheses next to the most appropriate terms of today’s philosophical technical language; in individual cases, I have not shrunk from taking the terms of the original language, such as Logos word/reason/principle, Eidos form/idea, Doxa opinion/belief, directly into our language. The index provides precise information on all terminology, and it intends to offer the philologist at least a good part of what the text could not provide because it was not intended for philologists alone. I believe I may say, without conceit, that some entries in the index replace treatises.

Finally, a word about the use of literature. It is cited very sparingly and, even indirectly, has not been taken into account to a great extent. That I am familiar with it and have learned from it, I probably do not need to call upon my earlier works as witnesses; experts will ferret this out everywhere without that. The intention of that sparingness, however, will surely not be misunderstood; the reader was to be led as directly as possible to Plato himself and not be bothered more than absolutely necessary with the various opinions about Plato. I hesitated over whether I should preface or append a survey of the literature; I refrained from doing so because there is no lack of aids for finding it, and a comprehensive survey might sooner confuse, while a limited one might easily turn out to be, or at least appear to be, too subjective.