Plato in the abundance
of his dramatic power has chosen to write a play upon a play, just as he
often gives us an argument within an argument. At the same time he takes
the opportunity of assailing another class of persons who are as alien from
the spirit of philosophy as Euthydemus and Dionysodorus. The Eclectic, the
Syncretist, the Doctrinaire, have been apt to have a bad name both in
ancient and modern times. The persons whom Plato ridicules in the epilogue
to the Euthydemus are of this class. They occupy a border-ground between
philosophy and politics; they keep out of the dangers of politics, and at
the same time use philosophy as a means of serving their own interests.
Plato quaintly describes them as making two good things, philosophy and
politics, a little worse by perverting the objects of both. Men like
Antiphon or Lysias would be types of the class. Out of a regard to the
respectabilities of life, they are disposed to censure the interest which
Socrates takes in the exhibition of the two brothers. They do not
understand, any more than Crito, that he is pursuing his vocation of
detecting the follies of mankind, which he finds 'not unpleasant.'
(Compare Apol.)
Education is the common subject of all Plato's earlier Dialogues.
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