柏拉图著作集4（英文本）

这套《柏拉图著作集》收入本杰明·乔伊特所译的全部柏拉图作品，每篇附有乔伊特所作的导读和分析；另附其他人所译的《大希庇阿斯》、《第七封信》等，以及英文原版的柏拉图著作索引。 本杰明·乔伊特(Benjamin Jowett，1817—1893)，牛津大学教授，19世纪英国杰出的古典学学者，以翻译和研究古希腊哲学著作知名。乔伊特所译柏拉图著作英译本首次出版于1871年，收录柏拉图绝大部分作品，迄今为止是由同一人所译的篇幅最多、最完整的英译本。百余年来，该译本经多次再版，广为传播，为柏拉图著作的研究和阐释作出了历史性的贡献，至今仍具有独特的文学魅力和学术价值。 　　此套英文版《柏拉图著作集》是为适应中国读者阅读、研究柏拉图著作的需要而编辑出版的，收录了本杰明·乔伊特所译的全部柏拉图著作，以及乔伊特为每篇作品所撰写的导读性文字，共六卷。尽管柏拉图的著作，尤其是一些名篇，至20世纪出现了不少优秀译文，但一百余年前乔伊特这套完整的英译本仍然具有不可替代的地位和价值。百余年来，该译本经多次再版，广为传播，为柏拉图的研究和阐释作出了历史性的贡献，至今仍具有不可替代的文学魅力和学术价值。 此英译本在中国国内的出版有着重要的学术意义，一方面可以澄清以往的中译本中那些含混不清的译法或者误译、漏译的地方，另一方面可以为读者提供不同的阐释，以供对照，这对于像柏拉图这样重要的哲学家而言是非常必要的。 本书为该套文集之第四卷。

本杰明·乔伊特（Benjamin Jowett，1817—1893），牛津大学教授，19世纪英国杰出的古典学学者，以翻译和研究古希腊哲学著作知名。乔伊特所译柏拉图著作英译本首次出版于1871年，收录柏拉图绝大部分作品，迄今为止是由同一人所译的篇幅最多、最完整的英译本。百余年来，该译本经多次再版，广为传播，为柏拉图著作的研究和阐释作出了历史性的贡献，至今仍具有独特的文学魅力和学术价值。

Introduction
　Phaedrus
Introduction
　Cratylus
Introduction
　Theaetetus
Introduction
　Parmenides
　Appendix
The Seventh Letter

If we seek to go deeper, we can still only describe the outward nature of the clouds or darkness which were spread over the heavens during so many ages without relief or light. We may say that this, like several other long periods in the history of the human race, was destitute, or deprived of the moral qualities which are the root of literary excellence. It had no life or aspiration, no national or political force, no desire for consistency, no love of knowledge for its own sake. It did not attempt to pierce the mists which surrounded it. It did not propose to itself to go forward and scale the heights of knowledge, but to go backwards and seek at the beginning what can only be found towards the end. It was lost in doubt and ignorance. It rested upon tradition and authority. It had none of the higher play of fancy which creates poetry; and where there is no true poetry, neither can there be any good prose. It had no great characters, and therefore it had no great writers. It was incapable of distinguishing between words and things. It was so hopelessly below the ancient standard of classical Greek art and literature that it had no power of understanding or of valuing them. It is doubtful whether any Greek author was justly appreciated in antiquity except by his own contemporaries; and this neglect of the great authors of the past led to the disappearance of the larger part of them, while the Greek fathers were mostly preserved. There is no reason to suppose that, in the century before the taking of Constantinople, much more was in existence than the scholars of the Renaissance carried away with them to Italy. The character of Greek literature sank lower as time went on. It consisted more and more of compilations, of scholia, of extracts, of commentaries, forgeries, imitations. The commentator or interpreter had no conception of his author as a whole, and very little of the context of any passage which he was explaining. The least things were preferred by him to the greatest. The question of a reading, or a grammatical form, or an accent, or the uses of a word, took the place of the aim or subject of the book. He had no sense of the beauties of an author, and very little light is thrown by him on real difficulties. He interprets past ages by his own. The greatest classical writers are the least appreciated by him. This seems to be the reason why so many of them have perished, why the lyric poets have almost wholly disappeared; why, out of the eighty or ninety tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles, only seven of each had been preserved.