Calcutta University Readership Lectures for the year 1930. The Historical Socrates and the Platonic Form of the God

They believe that some of the doctrines ascribed to Socrates in. the Philebus and, as we have seen, the doctrines of the Form of the Good in the Republic, are the doctrines of Plato and not of Socrates. [...] It is the contrast between this unsatisfied seeker after knowledge and the ex- pounder of positive theories, such as is the Socrates of the later books of the Republic that makes us see that the historical Socrates and the Platonic Socrates are not identical and makes us wish to enquire into the relation between the two. [...] The problem which concerns me is that it does not appear to be so, at least not at first sight. 16 HISTORICAL SOCRATES As we said before in the transition from the teaching of the early dialogues, even in the transition from the early books of the Republic to the Doctrine of the Form of the Good, there seems to be a leap somewhere from the ordinary to a transcendent world. [...] In the first part of the simile the Form of the Good is said to be to the intelligible world as the sun is to the world we see. [...] In his account of the city and the soul the recognition of the superiority of the love of honour over the bodily appetites and of the love of truth over both are certainties as primary and absolute as any apprehension of mathematical relations.