Note 98 — Chapter XXXII · PHILEBUS.

Ueberweg (Æchtheit und Zeitf. Platon. Schriften, pp. 204-207) considers the Philêbus, as well as the Sophistês and Timæus, to be compositions of Plato’s very late age — partly on the ground of their didactic and expository style, the dialogue serving only as form to the exponent Sokrates — partly because he thinks that the nearest approach is made in them to that manner of conceiving the doctrine of Ideas which Aristotle ascribes to Plato in his old age — that is, the two στοιχεῖα or factors of the Ideas. 1. Τὸ ἓν. 2. Τὸ μέγα καὶ μικρόν. This last argument seems to me far-fetched. I see no real and sensible approach in the Philêbus to this Platonic doctrine of the στοιχεῖα of the Ideas: at least, the approach is so vague, that one can hardly make it a basis of reasoning. But the didactic tone is undoubtedly a characteristic of the Philêbus, and seems to indicate that the dialogue was composed after Plato had been so long established in his school, as to have acquired a pedagogic ostentation.