The Gospel of Hellas - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

the gospel of hellas
that he might live forever! When he died at the age of eighty, after a night at a
wedding feast in the house of a friend, he appeared simply to fall asleep.
Plato was to become a dramatist of dialectics. The principles of the
dialogue as dialectic, like those of the drama, had their origin in the mission of
Dionysus. The meaning of the drama revealed itself in the element of katharsis,
the purification of the soul. Plato’s philosophy aimed at this spiritual katharsis,
too. In the era of the decadence of the drama, Plato repudiated the theatre and
trusted in philosophizing as the only true way to perpetuate the message of the
Attic tragedy which had passed.
Plato became the philosopher who continued the way towards the
conscience which the Greek drama had triumphantly opened. It is true that
neither in the words of Socrates nor elsewhere in Plato’s books does the word
syneidesis (conscience) appear. The decision for Good or Evil is for him a matter
of reason and cognition. 163 There is not yet a strict distinction between the
objective cognition of truth and justice and their subjective perception within
the soul. 164 Yet in the writings of Plato there lay the most important step
which immediately afterwards led to the perception of conscience. ulrich von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff points to Socrates and Plato as those who prepared
for the coming of conscience. Indeed, Socrates cannot be better characterized
than as the incarnation of the living and moving conscience of all human beings.
Although neither he nor Plato used the Hellenic word syneidesis, it is essential
to observe that the expression syneidenai to heauto (to become conscious of
oneself ) already existed in the form of a verb. It was but a short step which now
led to the formulation of the noun syneidesis—conscience! 165
The cognition of the daimon, as Socrates taught it, led from the objective
reasoning about the good and beautiful to the subjective perception of the
voice of the divine. When Plato described Socrates as teaching justice, he had
Socrates ask: “Who is better in grammar, he who writes right with intention
or he who does it without?” And speaking of justice: “Who is worse, he who
lies intentionally or he who does not?” Plato’s point was always to show the
importance of our intentions, through which we become conscious of ourselves.
That was the reason why he felt that virtue had to be taught.
The dialogues of Plato inaugurated the method of thinking, just as the
Dionysian mysteries previously led to clairvoyance. In Plato the principle of