In all attempts to determine the chronological he order of the
Platonic writings on internal evidence, this uncertainty about any single Dialogue being composed at one time is a disturbing element, which must be admitted to affect longer works, such as the Republic and the Laws, more than shorter ones.
And in
platonic love there can be no tragedy, because in that love all is clear and pure, because..."
We are advancing now to some kind of confidence, and in short are likely to be engaged in a sort of
platonic friendship.
And we may perhaps even indulge in the fancy that the actual defence of Socrates was as much greater than the
Platonic defence as the master was greater than the disciple.
The period has the great variety of almost unlimited creative force; it includes works of many kinds in both verse and prose, and ranges in spirit from the loftiest
Platonic idealism or the most delightful romance to the level of very repulsive realism.
But though he had, as we have said, formed his morals on the
Platonic model, yet he perfectly agreed with the opinion of Aristotle, in considering that great man rather in the quality of a philosopher or a speculatist, than as a legislator.
The main character of the Dialogue is Socrates; but to the 'general definitions' of Socrates is added the
Platonic doctrine of reminiscence.
At the time, I devoted three days to the studious digesting of all this beer, beef, and bread, during which many profound thoughts were incidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental and
Platonic application; and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary tables of my own, touching the probable quantity of stock-fish, etc., consumed by every Low Dutch harpooneer in that ancient Greenland and Spitzbergen whale fishery.
Consequently, the clubrooms became deserted, the servants dozed in the antechambers, the newspapers grew mouldy on the tables, sounds of snoring came from dark corners, and the members of the Gun Club, erstwhile so noisy in their seances, were reduced to silence by this disastrous peace and gave themselves up wholly to dreams of a
Platonic kind of artillery.
He formed a
platonic friendship with a lady some years older than himself, who lived in Kensington Square; and nearly every afternoon he drank tea with her by the light of shaded candles, and talked of George Meredith and Walter Pater.
There he sits enthroned, with room for a fair admirer on either side of him--the clerical sultan of a
platonic harem.
You must swear the whole thing has been
platonic. It's the only chance for your happiness.