metonymy4u

Was Plato a rationalist? If so, why did he write poetry? Was it merely to escape state sanctioned murder for espousing, like Socrates, unpopular opinions? I don’t think so. Because there are things he put into his poetry that don’t need to be there to protect him from the revenge of the masses. Consider the following statement from the Meno:

…we ought not to listen to this sophistical argument about the impossibility of enquiry: for it will make us idle; and is sweet only to the sluggard; but the other saying will make us active and inquisitive. In that confiding, I will gladly enquire with you into the nature of virtue.

Plato argues not for the truth of the doctrine of recollection, but for its practical utility. In fact I believe Plato was the first pragmatist, searching out the specific wisdoms of all words that came before him. Trying to find what was useful in the rationalism of the Eleatics, the empiricism of the Ephesians, and the romanticism of the Pythagoreans. And presenting this unified field theory of being to us as a poem, for our delight, our consideration and our critical development.