Note 6 — Chapter VII · PLATONIC CANON AS APPRECIATED AND MODIFIED BY MODERN CRITICS.

The general view here taken by Ast — dwelling upon the separate individuality as well as upon the dramatic character of each dialogue — calling attention to the purpose of intellectual stimulation, and of reasoning out different aspects of ethical and dialectical questions, as distinguished from endoctrinating purpose — this general view coincides more nearly with my own than that of any other critic. But Ast does not follow it out consistently. If he were consistent with it, he ought to be more catholic than other critics, in admitting a large and undefinable diversity in the separate Platonic manifestations: instead of which, he is the most sweeping of all repudiators, on internal grounds. He is not even satisfied with the Parmenides as it now stands; he insists that what is now the termination was not the real and original termination; but that Plato must have appended to the dialogue an explanation of its ἀπορίαι, puzzles, and antinomies; which explanation is now lost.