Abstract

In his dialogues Plato has frequently expanded ideas that he considered wrong from the start into new and interesting theories, only to throw them, it seems, demonstratively into his waste paper basket. Some of them have been taken out again only much later and have been declared, without mentioning their originator, to be milestones of progress. The paper illustrates Plato's intriguing play with theories by the example of the Cratylus, and then proceeds to two further examples that at the same time display the fundamental difference between Plato's view of human nature, and that of philosophers who have adopted his discarded thoughts after over 2000 years: the hedonistic calculus in the Protagoras, and the rationalistic foundation of law in the Republic