Plato's Theory of Ideas

In this lies their imperishable importance for educating one toward logical consciousness.

This expression, too—"the logical"—gives cause for linguistic reflection. Logos, from λέγειν to say, to speak, means in ordinary life either the (individual) statement or the (coherent) discourse: the statement always with regard to its rational sense, the discourse with regard to its rational connection—the connection in which the sense of one statement emerges from or leads to another, and thus the context of thought in which it originates and continues to act, was generated, and generates. For this, a primary requirement is the precise delimitation and strictly identical maintenance of the concept, that is, the sense of the predication; for that is what is newly posited in every "sentence." Furthermore, it requires the unanimity and preservation of unity—the mental linking of all such posited elements with one another—which is first conditioned by this but then subject to its own conditions. It involves the linking of two thought-posits, as premise and conclusion. The unity, the consistency of thought with itself—in which alone the thought-object consists or "is," takes place, and is true—which, as at least an aspiration, distinguishes thought from wandering imagination, is the governing principle for both the unity of the concept and the unity of the thought-context.

This is mainly what appears with increasing clarity, in ever more precise highlighting, in the more strictly Socratic dialogues of Plato—that is, those that not only most faithfully adhere to the external form of the Socratic conversation but also stray the least from the Socratic manner of philosophizing and its subject matter: moral questions. These are therefore, although not very comprehensive in their logical content, of inestimable importance for understanding the genesis of Platonic doctrine. At the same time, it will be shown that even in them, a turn in logical investigation that leads far beyond these simple limits announces itself early on.

1. Apology and Crito.

It may be entirely disregarded here whether the account that the "Defense of Socrates" provides of its hero—which is kept rhetorical enough despite the declared contempt for the arts of rhetoric—faithfully reproduces his historical personality in every trait.