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Plato

Life

  • c. 428/427 BCE: Born in Athens, Greece, into an aristocratic family.
  • c. 407 BCE: Becomes a follower of Socrates, which proved to be the defining relationship of his life.
  • c. 399 BCE: After the execution of Socrates, leaves Athens, traveling extensively to Egypt, Italy, and Sicily.
  • c. 387 BCE: Founds the Academy in Athens, often considered the first institution of higher learning in the Western world.
  • c. 367 BCE: Invites Aristotle to study at the Academy, where he remains for 20 years.
  • c. 347 BCE: Dies in Athens.

People Who Influenced Their Thought

  • Socrates: His teacher; Plato's early works are memorials to Socrates' life and thought, and the Socratic method of questioning is central to his dialogues.
  • Pythagoras: Influenced Plato's belief in the immortality of the soul, the importance of mathematics, and the concept of a hidden, mathematical order to reality.
  • Heraclitus: His doctrine that the sensible world is in constant flux ("you cannot step into the same river twice") led Plato to seek stable reality in the Forms.
  • Parmenides: Influenced Plato's conception of the Forms as eternal, unchanging, and perfect realities.

Main Ideas and Publications

  • The Republic: His most famous work, outlining his ideal state, the theory of Forms, the allegory of the Cave, and the role of the Philosopher-King.
  • The Symposium: Explores the nature of love (Eros) as a means of ascending to the Form of Beauty.
  • Phaedo: Depicts the death of Socrates and argues for the immortality of the soul through several philosophical proofs.
  • Theory of Forms (or Ideas): The doctrine that the visible world is an imperfect shadow of a transcendent, eternal, and intelligible realm of perfect Forms (e.g., the Form of Justice, the Form of Beauty).
  • The Tripartite Soul: The human soul is composed of Reason (logistikon), Spirit (thumoeides), and Appetite (epithumetikon).
  • The Philosopher-King: The ideal ruler is one who has knowledge of the Forms, especially the Form of the Good.
  • Anamnesis (Recollection): Learning is a process of remembering knowledge the immortal soul possessed before birth.

Controversies around his main work or thought

  • Totalitarianism: The Republic has been criticized for its authoritarian elements, including censorship, a rigid class system, and the "noble lie" used to maintain social order.
  • Theory of Forms: Even in his own time (e.g., in Parmenides), Plato acknowledged and explored logical problems with his theory, such as the relationship between Forms and particulars (the "participation" problem).
  • Political Involvement in Syracuse: His attempts to educate the tyrant Dionysius II of Syracuse as a philosopher-king ended in failure and danger, raising questions about the practicality of his political ideas.
  • Poetry and Art: His proposal to banish most poets from the ideal state for appealing to the lower parts of the soul and being imitations of an imitation (the Form) is a perennial point of debate.

Key People Influenced by Their Thought

  • Aristotle: His most famous student, who, while building on Plato's work, developed his own philosophical system that often critiqued the Theory of Forms.
  • Plotinus: The founder of Neoplatonism, who developed Plato's ideas into a comprehensive mystical and metaphysical system.
  • Augustine of Hippo: Christianized Plato's thought, adapting the Theory of Forms into the Divine Ideas in the mind of God and framing human life as a journey toward the ultimate Good.
  • Galileo Galilei: Famously stated that "the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics," a view deeply influenced by Plato's Pythagorean leanings.
  • Immanuel Kant: His transcendental idealism, which distinguishes between the phenomenal and noumenal worlds, is a direct descendant of Plato's distinction between the sensible world and the intelligible Forms.
  • Alfred North Whitehead: Famously characterized the entire European philosophical tradition as "a series of footnotes to Plato."

Legacy

He founded the Western philosophical tradition by systematically exploring fundamental questions of ethics, politics, metaphysics, and epistemology, establishing a framework and a set of problems that have preoccupied thinkers for over two millennia.