A Future State

Spens, Harry 1763. Preface. In: The Republic of Plato. In ten books. Translated from the Greek by Harry Spends. With a preliminary discourse concerning the philosophy of the ancients by the translator. Glasgow: Robert and Andrew Foulis, v-xl. [Internet Archive]

It is impossible in a translation of PLATO, to preserve the spirit and elegance of the original; to avoid more material defects, can hardly be expected. But if there be nothing here to merit praise from the lovers of ancient literature, they may probably approve at least of the attempt; and as this celebrated Treatise never appeared in our language before, it may possibly prove acceptable to the English Reader, as well as of some advantage to the youth, in their study of the original. (Spens 1763: v)

1763 may very well also be the earliest original I've read thus far (EB 3rd ed is 35 years later). Nope, Locke's essay was 22 years earlier.

[...] but when their pupils are entered on the world, they frequently hear ancient literature decried; and company and conversation recommended as the only schools of accomplishment. (Spens 1763: v)

You'll learn everything you ever need to know from talking to people.

Every one has heard of PLATO's REPUBLIC; every one has a curiosity of knowling something further about it. The Dialogue of PLATO which bears the title of THE REPUBLIC, is, concerning justice, or virtue: and shows us, 1st, Wha tit is that renders a man just or what justice is. And, 2dly, The intrinsic excellence of justice in itself; together with the reward with which it is honoured both here, and in a future state. (Spens 1763: vii)

Plato's Republic - so hot right now.

The several principles or parties in the soul he explains by the several orders in a civil government, and by showing that justice is the health, harmony, nad good order of the whole, he points out at once its nature and its utility. (Spens 1763: vii)

Hingejaod = põhimõtted või osalised.

The national temper of the Spartans was slow and cautious; that of the Athenians, was quick, and enterprizing. At Sparta, all were of one character, modest and reserved; and all of one profession, namely, that of arms. At Athens were to be found, men of every profession, and of every character, of the highest politeness, and of the greatest insolence; and in short, of all inconstancy, and contrariety of manners. Nothing was to be seen at Sparta, but military exercises, and fatigue, accompanied with the greatest plainness and simplicity of life. But at Athens, you saw every kind of luxury, and elegance; all the mechanic, all the liberal arts; together with all the splendour and magnificence of an opulent and commercial state. An austere virtue prevailed in the one; in the other reigned a liberty altogether licentious. (Spens 1763: ix)

At one point Socrates argues that the spartan' laconicity was deceptive and they strategically pretended to be slower and dumber than they actually were. Looking at these descriptions it does indeed look like both Pythagoras and Plato has a distinct preference for one of these.

In this troublesome period it was that Socrates lived at Athens. With him were cotemporary, Polignotus the painter, Phidias the statuary, Thucydides the historian, the poets Euripides, and Sophocles; the philosophers, Xenophon and Plato; together with Alcibiades the general, and Pericles, renowned no less as an uncorrupted patriot, than as a most eloquent, and able statesman. (Spens 1763: x)

A rundown of Socrates' contemporaries.

The young men of birth and fortune were ambitious of being in offices of power and diginity; and these offices were generally conferr'd by the people: hence eloquence became a most necessary accomplishment, and every one who was desirous of power and influence among the people, studied the art of perwasion, and applied himself to rhetoric. This gave rise to a set of men, who pretended to be teachers of politics, and eloquence, and who understood for hire, to make any one, in a short time, a consummate orator, philosopher, and statesman. These were the Sophists, a vain and conceited set of men, who were void of all real ability; but the prodigious arrogance, and specious appearances of learning, had the address to impose on the unwary youth, and met with the greatest encouragement, particularly at Athens. These were the instructors and tutors of the great, and the opulent. (Spens 1763: x)

A pretty standard admonishion of the sophists.

In every Democracy the people are enemies of the good, whilst they caress cunning and self-designing men, who, to serve their own ends, sooth the passions of others, and give countenance and encouragement to popular vices and corruptions. (Spens 1763: xi)

Isekavaldavad mehed.

In the following Treatise, we find some of the more eminent lawgivers, philosophers, and poets, occasionally mentioned. With respect to Greece, Thales and Pythagoras, are generally allowed to have been the heads of the two philosophic schools; Thales, the head of the Ionic, and Pythagoras of the Italic. The former cotemporary with Cyrus who caused the city and temple of Jerusalem to be rebuilt. The latter cotemporary with Brutus who delivered Rome from the tyranny of Tarquin. The grand philosophic inquiry of these, and of all others who pretended to philosophize, was, concerning the origin, and the cause of things; a question, truly worthy of philosophers, and on the proper solution of which, depend many others of the highest importance. (Spens 1763: xii)

This is was Lucius Junius Brutus who was a consul in 509 BC.

Cicero, who merits high esteem for his accounts of ancient philosophy, informs us, that according to the doctrine of Thales, mind was the cause of all. But some of the philosophers who succeeded him, acknowledged no principle besides matter in the universe; 'till the true philosophy, being again revived by Anaxagoras, was afterwards by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and some other of the wiser Ancients, most happily restored. They taught, that an all perfect mind is the cause of all those regular motions, and goodly constitutions, so conspicuous in the whole of things. But to this supreme cause, philosophers did not always sufficiently attend. (Spens 1763: xiv)

Thales was the first idealist? This I have not met before.

The poetical and oratorial manner of our Author, being, to the generality, more engaging than the unadorned and simple manner of the other disciple, afforded likewise a reason for offering to the public this view of antient philosophy in preference to any other. In our age, when, with the many, the taste for pleasure is so prevalent, and the prejudice so great against every thing that has the appearance of philosophy, a writer is likely to be but ill received, who shall venture to entertain the public, with a treatise on morals, delivered in a dry didactic manner; which hath derived no aids from dress and ornament; in order to succeed, he must call in assistance from proper incidents, and characters; from striking images, and allegories, and the like; that he may give his performance those natural charms and graces which are not only highly useful; but at present, absolutely necessary to recommend so grave a subject as philosophy to the general esteem, or even to procure it a decent reception. Now, in this method, our Author eminently surpassed all others, and from his example, we may see the advantage of it. (Spens 1763: xv)

Plato is preferred over Xenophon because of his literary flourish.

Besides, this manner, is, of all others, the fittest to give us a fair repreresntation of the sentiments of Socrates, as they were at first delivered by that philosopher himself. He did not, like the Sophists, keep any particular school, or make a gainful trade of his philosophy, by formal set discourses on politics, eloquence or other topics of the kind; but every where, and on all occasions, made it his business, with the freedom and ease of conversation, to instruct his fellow citizens in piety, and virtue: this being the original manner in which this eminent philosopher delivered his sentiments, what manner of recording these sentiments, and of transmitting them to posterity, can be supposed so natural, and so proper as that of dialogue? (Spens 1763: xvi)

The impression I get is that the sophists like Gorgias and Prodicus had written speeches, which they delivered for paying audiences.

Some, indeed, of his admirers, by the mysticism introduced into their commentaries upon him, have rather occasioned his falling under some neglect, and others have been led to depreciate the whole of his writings, for the sake of a very few passages, that are indeed obscure: but it is to be considered, that there is the gretaset difference between superificially looking into an author, and carefully studying his scope, his style, and the whole of his philosophy. (Spens 1763: xvii)

Plotinus and Proclus.

[...] and our Author, who had for ages been neglected, and forgotten, rose again to just esteem, and seems now to be in a fair way of recovering that high rank in philosophy which he held in the judgment of Horace, Virgil, Cicero, Quintilian, and other renowned Sages of ancient times. (Spens 1763: xviii)

Some notable ancient philosophers who had a platonic streak.

In his opinion, the perfectly just man, can never thoroughly appear to be such, unless he be tried and proved, by the most severe adversity. He must, at last, says he, be even crucified. These judicious sentiments concerning the character of the just man, and the indignities and sufferings by which he must needs be tried and proved, are truly worthy of so great a philosopher, who appears to have had the deepest insight into human nature, and the justest sense of the present state of mankind. One can hardly reflect on these sentiments of PLATO, without being ready to imagine, that he had a kind of foresight of what was to befal the just one. Surely, if the pretenders to wisdom of old, had attended to this representation, they could not, well, have taken so great offence, at that part of our Saviour's history which relates to his sufferings. (Spens 1763: xx)

Huh. ""According to Clement, "Plato all but predicts the history of salvation." Clement believed he saw a clear reference to Jesus in book 2 of Plato's Republic." (Freethought & Rationalism Archive) - J. O. had the same thought in our reading notes. I should not be surprised that people used to take this more seriously in the 18th century.

Our Author's subterraneous cave, so elegantly described, and so universally known, may be considered as another instance of a conformity in his sentiments with those contained in Revelation. It gives us a lively representation of the ignorance and degeneracy of mankind in the present state, where numbers are busied in pursuing after shadows, as the only real and substantial goods; while they neglect the culture of the mind, and never raise their ideas to the beauty and perfection of that supreme intelligence, which is the origin and the end of all. (Spens 1763: xxi)

Wait - how well known was the cave allegory in the 18th century? Arvukalt inimesi jälitab varjusid. If one extends this from shadows and reflections to images, it'd do even better for our time, as we are sat in front of screens. Now they recommend fiddling with your phone's settings and make it monochrome so that you can have a chance to escape the addiction to pretty colours constantly blasting from short videos and funny picturse.

Besides, there are difficulties, it must be owned, in philosophy, as well as in religion; to exercise the wit, and discover the candour of sober enquiries after truth: Of this nature, for instance, may be considered what relates to our Author's numbers in the Eight Book of the REPUBLIC; their difficulties has been celebrated even from the early days of antiquity. Those, in the Timaeus, are more intelligible, being all of the Harmonic kind. Some are of opinion, that possibly no more wsa meant, either by Plato, or Pythagoras, in any of those arithmetical exhibitions, than a kind of symbolical method of informing us, that order and proportion run through the whole of things. (Spens 1763: xxiv)

Perhaps... there is some order in the universe.

The passage in the tenth book, concerning the sphere, is, indeed, wrapt up in darkness and obscurity; nor will we scruple to acknowledge, that the Pythagoreans, - and from them our Author, sometimes delivered their sentiments in abstruse, and mystical expressions: from which it cannot, with candour, be inferred, that they grudged to communicate to others, the knowledge of sublime and valuable truths. Their meaning, truly, was, to convey some of their doctrines, which were difficult to be apprehended, and, perhaps, clashed with the received and vulgar opinions of the times, to such of their disciplines only, as had abilities to understand them: and at the same time to guard against exhibiting them in too plain a dress, for fear of exposing them to the contempt and ridicule of the ignornat, and the unprepared. Besides, those passages which are obscure to us, might possibly have been abundantly obvious to those who were intimately acquainted with the Pythagorean philosophy, and its symbolical method of exhibiting the knowledge of nature. (Spens 1763: xxv)

Perhaps they were embarassingly simple-minded and would have meant loss of privilege if they had been made widely known.

We have likewise, in the following Dialogue, a very striking representation given us of tyranny, of the wretchedness of the tyrant himself, and of the misery of those over whom he domineers. How judicious this sentiment is, concerning the tyrant, and the wretchedness of his temper, the Roman historian acknowledges, whilst he observes, that this very representation which PLATO hath given us of a tyrant, was in fact fully verified to the observation of mankind, in the character of the Emperor TIBERIUS. (Spens 1763: xxx)

This damn Tiberius again.

The Sophists pretended to be able to make any man a philosopher, and to pour into him wisdom, as one pours wine into a cask by a funnel. It signifies little what were his temper, his genius, or capacity: they could give fight as it were to the blind. (Spens 1763: xxxiii)

A folk-triad: (1) temper; (2) capacity; (3) genius.

Thus, for instance, in how striking a manner does the apologue of Erus, in the following Treatise, represent the sentiments of philosophers, concerning the rewards of good men in another world, and the punishments that await the wicked, [|] especially tyrants, who abusing the power with which they are entrusted for the public good, become guilty of oppression, cruelty, and the blackest crimes. (Spens 1763: xxxiv-xxxv)

Ah, the story of Erastarchus.