Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas
Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas (translated: “Plato is dear to me, but I prefer the truth.”) Is a Latin sentence that goes back to statements by Greek philosophers and was first handed down in Latin form by the medieval philosopher Roger Bacon .
In his Nicomachean Ethics , Aristotle, in connection with his criticism of Plato's theory of ideas, decides against his teacher and in favor of the truth: "Since both are dear to us, we can be responsible for preferring the truth" over what philosopher friends would have claimed. This passage is itself an allusion to a passage in Plato's Politeia , in which Plato speaks of love and reverence for Homer , but this does not prevent him from initiating his fundamental criticism of the poets on the grounds: “But no man should us go beyond the truth. "
The first passage that comes very close to the Latin wording, but which ascribes the quote to Plato, can be found in Roger Bacon's Opus Maius : "Amicus est Socrates, magister meus, sed magis est amica veritas."
literature
- Hellmut Flashar : Aristotle. Teacher of the West. CH Beck, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-406-64506-8 , p. 74 f.
- Henry Guerlac: Amicus Plato and Other Friends . In: Journal of the History of Ideas . Volume 39, Number 4, pp. 627-633 ( JSTOR 2709446 ).
- Leonardo Tarán: Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas: From Plato and Aristotle to Cervantes . In: Antiquity and the Occident . Volume 30, 1984, pp. 93-124; also in Collected Papers (1962-1999) , Brill Academic Publishers, 2001, pp. 3-46.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1096 a. (Translation: Aristoteles, Die Nikomachische Ethik. Translated and edited by Olof Gigon . Munich 1975, dtv-Taschenbuch 6011)
- ^ Plato, Politeia 595 bc. (Translation: Friedrich Schleiermacher , in: Plato, Complete Works , Volume 3, edited by Walther F. Otto and others. Rowohlt)