Euclan: Plato

Plato

Source
Born: c. 428 B.C.
Birthplace: Athens, Greece
Died: 347 B.C.
Best Known As: The ancient philosopher who wrote The Republic
Plato was one of the early stars of Western philosophy. The son of an aristocrat, he studied under the great Greek thinker, Socrates. After years of travel and study, Plato founded the Academy in his native Athens in 387 B.C.; it became a famous hotbed of philosophical and scientific discussion, and is regarded by many as the first known university in the world. Plato's writings mostly take the form of dialogues, or "dialectics," in which knowledge is revealed as two characters ask and answer questions of each other. (Socrates was often one of the characters.) Plato's text The Republic, in which he lays out his ideas on the perfect state, remains a staple of college reading lists around the world.
Plato's most famous pupil was that other great Greek thinker, Aristotle... Plato's exact date of birth is unknown; most scholars believe it was during the years 429-427 B.C.

Plato
Library of Congress
[b. Athens, Greece, 427 bce, d. Athens, 347 bce]
Plato had a career in the military and politics and traveled widely before (and even after) starting his famous school, the Academy, in Athens. Many of his views are known from imagined dialogues that feature his friend Socrates [b. Athens, Greece, 469 bce, d. Athens. 399 bce]. Plato, although not a mathematician himself, viewed geometry as the basis of the study of any science. This fit with his philosophical concept of ideal forms, such as a perfectly onedimensional line that drawn lines imitate. He also emphasized proof in mathematics. His views were generally followed by Greek mathematicians throughout Antiquity.
The Greek philosopher Plato (428-347 B.C.) founded the Academy, one of the great philosophical schools of antiquity. His thought had enormous impact on the development of Western philosophy.
Plato was born in Athens, the son of Ariston and Perictione, both of Athenian aristocratic ancestry. He lived his whole life in Athens although he traveled to Sicily and southern Italy on several occasions, and one story says he traveled to Egypt. Little is known of his early years, but he was given the finest education Athens had to offer the scions of its noble families, and he devoted his considerable talents to politics and the writing of tragedy and other forms of poetry. His acquaintance with Socrates altered the course of his life. The compelling power which Socrates's methods and arguments had over the minds of the youth of Athens gripped Plato as firmly as it did so many others, and he became a close associate of Socrates.
The end of the Peloponnesian War (404 B.C.) left Plato in an irreconcilable position. His uncle, Critias, was the leader of the Thirty Tyrants who were installed in power by the victorious Spartans. One means of perpetuating themselves in power was to implicate as many Athenians as possible in their atrocious acts. Thus Socrates, as we learn in Plato's Apology, was ordered to arrest a man and bring him to Athens from Salamis for execution. When the great teacher refused, his life was in jeopardy, and he was probably saved only by the overthrow of the Thirty and the reestablishment of the democracy.
Plato was repelled by the aims and methods of the Thirty and welcomed the restoration of the democracy, but his mistrust of the whimsical demos was deepened some 4 years later when Socrates was tried on trumped up charges and sentenced to death. Plato was present at the trial, as we learn in the Apology, but was not present when the hemlock was administered to his master, although he describes the scene in vivid and touching detail in the Phaedo. He then turned in disgust from contemporary Athenian politics and never took an active part in government, although through friends he did try to influence the course of political life in the Sicilian city of Syracuse.
Plato and several of his friends withdrew from Athens for a short time after Socrates's death and remained with Euclides in Megara. His productive years were punctuated by three voyages to Sicily, and his literary output, all of which has survived, may conveniently be discussed within the framework of those voyages.
The first trip, to southern Italy and Syracuse, took place in 388-387 B.C., when Plato made the acquaintance of Archytas of Tarentum, the Pythagorean, and Dion of Syracuse and his infamous brother-in-law, Dionysius I, ruler of that city. Dionysius was then at the height of his power and prestige in Sicily for having freed the Greeks there from the threat of Carthaginian overlordship. Plato became better friends with Dion, however, and Dionysius's rather callous treatment of his Athenian guest may be ascribed to the jealously which that close friendship aroused. On Plato's return journey to Athens, Dionysius's crew deposited him on the island of Aegina, which at that time was engaged in a minor war with Athens, and Plato might have been sold as a prisoner of war had he not been ransomed by Anniceris of Cyrene, one of his many admirers.
His Dialogues
On his return to Athens, Plato began to teach in the Gymnasium Academe and soon afterward acquired property nearby and founded his famous Academy, which survived until the philosophical schools were closed by the Christian emperor Justinian in the early 6th century A.D. At the center of the Academy stood a shrine to the Muses, and at least one modern scholar suggests that the Academy may have been a type of religious brotherhood. Plato had begun to write the dialogues, which came to be the hallmark of his philosophical exposition, some years before the founding of the Academy. To this early period, before the first trip to Sicily, belong the Laches, Charmides, Euthyphro, Lysis, Protagoras, Hippias Minor, Ion, Hippias Major, Apology, Crito, and Gorgias. Socrates is the main character in these dialogues, and various abstractions are discussed and defined. The Laches deals with courage, Charmides with sophrosyne (common sense), Euthyphro with piety, Lysis with friendship, Protagoras with the teaching of arete (virtue), and so on. The Apology and Crito stand somewhat apart from the other works of this group in that they deal with historical events, Socrates's trial and the period between his conviction and execution. The unifying element in all of these works is the figure of Socrates and his rather negative function in revealing the fallacies in the conventional treatment of the topics discussed.
Plato's own great contributions begin to appear in the second group of writings, which date from the period between his first and second voyages to Sicily. To this second group belong the Meno, Cratylus, Euthydemus, Menexenus, Symposium, Phaedo, Republic, Phaedrus, Parmenides, and Theaetetus. Development of ideas in the earlier dialogues is discernible in these works. The Meno carries on the question of the teachability of virtue first dealt with in Protagoras and introduces the doctrine of anamnesis (recollection), which plays an important role in Plato's view of the human's ability to learn the truth. Since the soul is immortal and has at an earlier stage contemplated the Forms, or Ideas, which are the eternal and changeless truths of the universe, humans do not learn, but remember.
The impetus for learning or remembering the truth is revealed in the Symposium, where the ascent from corporeal reality to eternal and incorporeal truth is described. The scene is a dinner party at the house of the tragic poet Agathon, and each guest contributes a short speech on the god Eros. Socrates, however, cuts through the Sophistic arguments of his friends and praises Eros not as a separate and independent god but as an intermediary between gods and men. It is Eros who causes men to seek beauty, although for a time the unenlightened lover may think that what he is really seeking is the corporeal body of his beloved. Ultimately, however, one progresses from love of the body to love of the beauty which the body represents, and so forth, until one realizes that the ultimate goal sought is contemplation of beauty itself and of the Forms. The Forms are the true reality and impart their essence in some way to ephemeral, corporeal objects, and man may come to know this true reality through rigorous discipline of mind and body, and Plato went so far as to draw up a rough outline for a utopian state in his Republic.
The Republic
Socrates is again the main character in the Republic, although this work is less a dialogue than a long discussion by Socrates of justice and what it means to the individual and the city-state. The great utopian state is described only as an analogue to the soul in order to understand better how the soul might achieve the kind of balance and harmony necessary for the rational element to control it. Just as there are three elements to the soul, the rational, the less rational, and the impulsive irrational, so there are three classes in the state, the rulers, the guardians, and the workers. The rulers are not a hereditary clan or self-perpetuating upper class but are made up of those who have emerged from the population as a whole as the most gifted intellectually. The guardians serve society by keeping order and by handling the practical matters of government, including fighting wars, while the workers perform the labor necessary to keep the whole running smoothly. Thus the most rational elements of the city-state guide it and see that all in it are given an education commensurate with their abilities.
The wisdom, courage, and moderation cultivated by the rulers, guardians, and workers ideally produce the justice in society which those virtues produce in the individual soul when they are cultivated by the three elements of that soul. Only when the three work in harmony, with intelligence clearly in control, does the individual or state achieve the happiness and fulfillment of which it is capable. The Republic ends with the great myth of Er, in which the wanderings of the soul through births and rebirths are recounted. One may be freed from the cycle after a time through lives of greater and greater spiritual and intellectual purity.
Plato's second trip to Syracuse took place in 367 B.C. after the death of Dionysius I, but his and Dion's efforts to influence the development of Dionysius II along the lines laid down in the Republic for the philosopher-king did not succeed, and he returned to Athens.
Last Works
Plato's final group of works, written after 367, consists of the Sophist, the Statesman, Philebus, Timaeus, Critias, and the Laws. The Sophist, takes up the metaphysical question of being and not-being, while the Statesman concludes that the best type of city-state would be the one in which the expert is given absolute authority with no hindrance to his rule from laws or constitution. The Timaeus discusses the rationality inherent in the universe which confirms Plato's scheme, while the Laws, Plato's last work, once again takes up the question of the best framework in which society might function for the betterment of its citizens. Here great stress is laid on an almost mystical approach to the great truth of the rational universe.
Plato's third and final voyage to Syracuse was made some time before 357 B.C., and he was no more successful in his attempts to influence the young Dionysius than he had been earlier. Dion fared no better and was exiled by the young tyrant, and Plato was held in semicaptivity before being released. Plato's Seventh Letter, the only one in the collection of 13 considered accurate, perhaps even from the hand of Plato himself, recounts his role in the events surrounding the death of Dion, who in 357 B.C. entered Syracuse and overthrew Dionysius. It is of more interest, however, for Plato's statement that the deepest truths may not be communicated.
Plato died in 347 B.C., the founder of an important philosophical school, which existed for almost 1, 000 years, and the most brilliant of Socrates's many pupils and followers. His system attracted many followers in the centuries after his death and resurfaced as Neoplatonism, the great rival of early Christianity.
Further Reading
A readable translation of the Platonic corpus may be found in the edition by Benjamin Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato (1953), which contains analyses. Special treatments may be found in J. Burnett, Greek Philosophy (1914); A.E. Taylor, Plato: The Man and His Work (1927); and Paul Shorey, What Plato Said (1933).

(c.427-347 BC) Greek philosopher. Born into an aristocratic Athenian family, he was expected to take up a political career, but circumstances and inclination persuaded him to turn to philosophy instead. The most significant factor in his disillusionment with contemporary politics was the execution in 399 of his close friend and teacher Socrates at the hands of the Athenian democracy; he remained profoundly critical of democratic institutions and liberalism all his life. He did, however, make one foray into the world of realpolitik, when in middle age he attempted—entirely unsuccessfully—to put some of his political theories into practice in the Greek city-state of Syracuse.He wrote a number of dialogues on a very wide range of issues; and the positions taken on various topics can vary considerably between works. The main character is almost always Socrates and it is often hard to know whether the views this ‘Socrates’ expresses are those of the historical Socrates or are original to Plato himself. It is generally agreed that the influence of the historical Socrates is particularly in evidence in the early dialogues, while the middle and late works articulate—constantly developing—positions original to Plato (though many of these still have clear Socratic roots).Thus, while several early dialogues raise key political issues (cf. e.g. the Apology, Crito, and particularly Gorgias, the last being a remarkable exploration of the nature of power and the philosophy of ‘might is right’ which influenced Nietzsche considerably), it is the Republic that is usually considered to be Plato's first big contribution to political theory. In the first of its ten books, the sophist Thrasymachus issues a challenge to conventional views of justice. Justice, he claims, is simply the interest of whatever person or party is in power: all rulers make the laws to their own advantage and it is these laws that are called ‘justice’. The shrewd and resourceful subject, therefore, will disobey the laws whenever he can escape detection and further his own interests instead. Being ‘just’ simply does not pay.The rest of the Republic consists of an attempt by Plato to prove that, on the contrary, it does pay to be just. To show this, however, we first need to define justice. Given that justice is, Plato thinks, the same in both individual and state, it will be easier if we begin our search by examining the broader canvas of the just state and then see if our findings are applicable to the individual.Plato locates the origin of all states, just or otherwise, in economic need. Such economic associations are best organized if each person performs the job for which they are naturally most suited: this will result in an efficient and harmonious state in which sufficient leisure is possible to allow for civilized life. Over time this minimal state will become more complex, until eventually it divides into three classes, corresponding to three natural types: the Producers, who supply all the economic needs of the state; the Auxiliaries, who act as a combined military, executive, and police force (the state is only ideally just, not just simpliciter, and war will still be a feature of life); and the Philosopher-Rulers, whose rule is sanctioned by the fact that only they have knowledge of an abstract and transcendent metaphysical entity called the Form of the Good, which alone enables one to act for the good of the whole. Most children will naturally be of the same type as their parents, and thus will form part of the same class; if they are of a different natural type, however, then the state must remove them to the appropriate class. Justice in the state consists in each member fulfilling the class function to which he or she is naturally fitted.It is argued that these three classes correspond to three divisions within the psyche of the individual: the reasoning element, in virtue of which the individual is wise; the spirited element, in virtue of which he or she is courageous, and the appetitive element, the task of which is to obey. As in the state, justice in the individual consists in each part performing its own proper function. Furthermore it becomes clear that except in rare cases this internal harmony of the just individual can only fully develop in the harmony of the ideally just state. Plato claims that in the case of both individual and state this internal harmony will equal health and happiness; and—even more controversially—in being ruled by wisdom rather than by the tyrannical appetites, both just individual and just state will also be free. The interdependence in general of state and individual is illustrated by portraits of what Plato sees as the four degenerate types of individual and state: the timocratic, the oligarchic, the democratic, and the tyrannical, and their respective goals of glory, wealth, liberty, and an unspecified obsessive appetite.The cornerstone of the just state is the government of the Philosopher-Rulers, supported by the Auxiliaries; the education of these two classes (collectively termed ‘Guardians’) is consequently of paramount importance, and its principal aim is to train the Auxiliaries to obey the Rulers and the Rulers to act for the good of the state as a whole. Plato describes the Guardians' training in great detail, and several times refers to it as the element which holds the entire state together. Until the age of 18 all future Guardians receive an identical education in literature, music, and athletics. There follow two years of military training, and then some are selected for further studies in mathematics and philosophy, followed by a period of practical administrative experience. Finally, when these select few are 50, they will be directed towards that knowledge of the Form of the Good which alone both legitimates and necessitates their becoming the Rulers of the state.Plato also prescribes for the two Guardian classes an austere and communistic way of life, so that they may devote all their time and loyalties to the state. They are forbidden to possess private property or money, all their material needs being supplied by the Producers. The family unit is to be abolished, and both Rulers and Auxiliaries are to live together in common halls; children are to be conceived according to an organized breeding programme and brought up in state nurseries, having been removed from their natural mothers at birth. No one will know who their parents, siblings, or children are, and consequently everyone, Plato believes, will regard everyone else as a possible relative and be bonded accordingly. Amongst these two Guardian classes, too, women are to receive exactly the same education and perform exactly the same tasks as men, including ruling the state and going to war.Plato's radical conceptions in the Republic of justice, social harmony, education, and freedom are enormously rich and have informed the thought of philosophers as diverse as Rousseau, Hegel, and J. S. Mill; his attitudes to property, the family, and the position of women have also proved highly influential. His ideal, however, has also come in for some fierce criticism. The convenient match claimed between the division of natural talents and the class divisions required by the state has been regarded as entirely without foundation. In making the state more important than its parts, and allowing it to enter every sphere of the individual's life, Plato has been accused of totalitarianism, while charges of paternalism have been laid against the claim that the Philosopher-Rulers alone know what is best for the other classes. Nor are there any legal checks on the Rulers' behaviour. Their methods of rule are also problematic: the analogy drawn between the Producers and the unreasoning appetites raises questions about whether the Producers can really be willingly persuaded or whether they have to be forced, and Plato's language is ambivalent on this point. In any case, the means of persuasion are themselves disturbing, involving both propaganda and extreme censorship of the arts.In the Statesman (Politicus), Plato takes a more pragmatic approach. While still maintaining that the best form of rule would be that of the true doctor-statesman, acting on the basis of trained judgement rather than formal law, he nevertheless allows that in the absence of such a statesman, a system of laws is a good second-best. Although too general and inflexible, laws at least have the merit of having been created by rational thought, and obedience to them makes for political stability. Another development is Plato's increased awareness of temporality and history and their relations to politics and political theory. The true art of statecraft weaves together opposing qualities in human nature and this can only happen over a period of time; it also requires an awareness of changing circumstances and an ability to select the fitting moment for action.In Plato's last work, the Laws, laws are again promoted as a good second-best to the rule of the truly wise statesman, always providing that they are framed in the interests of the community as a whole; indeed, owing to the continuing failure of such a statesman to emerge, the rule of law is the only practicable system at all. Good (i.e. true) laws are perceived as the dispensation of divine reason, and their function is to establish and nurture the civic virtues; the most important of these for the majority of citizens is the self-control that ensures obedience, and it is self-control that the basic education system is mainly designed to promote. In a sympathetic addition to conventional education, the self-control of the young is to be tested in state-organized drinking parties.The state envisaged by the Laws remains authoritarian in the extreme, and is considerably influenced by the strict regimes of Sparta and Crete. There is legislation to cover the minutest details of both public and private life, and a large number of official bodies are established, headed by the Nocturnal Council, to ensure that the laws are maintained; the Nocturnal Council may also occasionally adjust the laws to suit changing circumstances. Religious belief, largely ignored by the Republic, is now viewed as a crucial factor in ensuring the cohesion and stability of the state, and recalcitrant atheists are to be put to death. In general, the individual continues to be perceived simply as part of an infinitely more important whole.Nevertheless the imaginary state of the Laws is both more egalitarian and, except in religious aspects, more moderate than that of the Republic. Though the officials form a temporary ruling class, they are selected mainly by election, coupled with subsequent tests, and sometimes by lot from the main citizen body: there are no longer three castes purportedly in accordance with three natural kinds, though slavery is unequivocally condoned (the Republic is unclear on this point). All citizens are to receive the same basic education, including all females, and the restricted communism of the Republic is abandoned; everyone is to live within their family unit and possess a limited amount of private property.It is important to stress, too, that for Plato the training in the civic virtues is not just social engineering for the sake of stability, but an attempt to educate the individual to love and wish to do what is true and fine. The good life is always objective for Plato and he always believes that it is the main task of the state to promote this good life for its citizens: he certainly desires stability, but only the stability of the good regime (this is admittedly made easier for him in that he believes all bad regimes to be inherently lacking in stability). Hence in the Laws the dispositional training of the child is not conceived as an attempt to stifle reason, but, as in the Republic, it is seen as the necessary introduction to it. This is shown by the novel and extremely important requirement that each law be preceded by a lengthy attempt rationally to persuade the citizens of its goodness. The laws must undoubtedly rule, but obedience to them should ideally be voluntary and intelligent.
— Angela Hobbs

(click to enlarge)Plato, Roman herm probably copied from a Greek original, 4th century ; in the Staatliche … (credit: Courtesy of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)
(born 428/427, Athens, or Aegina, Greece — died 348/347 BC, Athens) Greek philosopher, who with his teacher Socrates and his student Aristotle laid the philosophical foundations of Western culture. His family was highly distinguished; his father claimed descent from the last king of Athens, and his mother was related to Critias and Charmides, extremist leaders of the oligarchic terror of 404. Plato (whose acquired name refers to his broad forehead, and thus his range of knowledge) must have known Socrates from boyhood. After Socrates was put to death in 399, Plato fled Athens for Megara, then spent the next 12 years in travel. Upon his return, he founded the Academy, an institute of scientific and philosophical research, where Aristotle was one of his students. Building on but also departing from Socrates' thought, he developed a profound and wide-ranging philosophical system, subsequently known as Platonism. His thought has logical, epistemological, and metaphysical aspects, but much of its underlying motivation is ethical. It is presented in his many dialogues, in most of which Socrates plays a leading role. See also Neoplatonism.

Plato (Plātōn) (427–347 BC), Greek philosopher, founder of philosophical idealism and one of the greatest of Greek prose-writers.
1. Plato was born of a noble family which claimed descent from Codrus, an early king of Athens. His life and writings show the enormous influence upon him of Socrates' life and the manner of his death. At first he wrote poetry (probably none of the epigrams attributed to him is genuine) but meeting Socrates in about 407 BC turned his attention to philosophy. He was ill at the time of Socrates' execution in 399 and was not present during his last moments. Shortly afterwards Plato retired to Megara with other disciples of Socrates; he travelled widely in the next twelve years, visiting Egypt and making the acquaintance of the Pythagoreans in Magna Graecia, in particular Archytas of Tarentum. In c.387 he visited Sicily where he met (and soon fell out with) Dionysius I tyrant of Syracuse and, most importantly, the young Dion, who became Plato's pupil and absorbed his teaching.After a while Plato returned to Athens and there founded a school, the Academy. Here Plato and his pupils, who included Aristotle, engaged in mathematics, dialectic, and all studies that seemed relevant for the education of future statesmen and politicians; and in this activity Plato spent the remaining forty years of his life. According to his Seventh Epistle (see 6 below) he had twice made some attempt to enter politics: at the end of the Peloponnesian War in 404, under the Thirty Tyrants (among whom were numbered Critias, his mother's cousin, and Charmidēs, his maternal uncle), and after the restoration of the democracy in 403 (see ATHENS 2 (iii)); but he had been repelled by the criminal acts of the former and by the condemnation of Socrates under the latter. He was driven to the conclusion that there was no hope for cities until philosophers became rulers or rulers philosophers. He made two more visits to Syracuse, one when Dionysius I died in 367 and was succeeded by his son Dionysius II; Dion summoned Plato to try to create in his nephew Dionysius II, then aged about 30, the Platonic philosopherking. But Dionysius banished Dion, whose motives he suspected, and Plato returned to Athens. Another visit at Dionysius' request in 361 had no better outcome, and many of Plato's Epistles are devoted to explaining his very unsuccessful role in the affairs of Syracuse. Plato died at Athens in 347.
2. Philosophical writings. Plato published perhaps twenty-five philosophical dialogues (the authenticity of some is disputed) and the Apology (not a dialogue but a reproduction of Socrates' defence at his trial), written over a period of fifty years, and they all survive. There are also thirteen letters (the Epistles) whose genuineness is much debated. Plato himself thought that the spoken word was superior to the written (see PHAEDRUS and the Seventh Epistle), and Aristotle makes reference to doctrines not found in the dialogues; hence it may be that only Plato's lectures would have given the authentic statement of his views. The precise chronological order of the dialogues is not known, but the evidence of style and the evaluation of doctrine allow a rough division into three periods. The early period includes Apology, Charmides, Crito, Euthyphro, Hippias Minor, Ion, Lachēs, and perhaps Lysis (which may be later). In these Socrates is the principal figure, examining and demolishing the views put forward by his interlocutors. The second period includes Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno, Menexenus, Euthydemus, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Cratylus, Parmenidēs, Republic, Symposium, and Theaetetus. In these Socrates is still the foremost figure, and now puts forward positive doctrines which may be regarded as Plato's own, or at least Plato's interpretation and development of the views of Socrates. The third group, the work of Plato's later years, includes the Critias, Philebus, Politicus, Sophist and Timaeus; the Laws, Plato's longest and last work, was published after his death, probably unrevised.Of the dialogues, Charmides, Laches, and Lysis are concerned with the nature of, respectively, temperance, courage, and friendship. In the Hippias Minor, a discussion with the Elean sophist of that name, Socrates shows by a sophistic argument that he who does evil intentionally is less blameworthy than he who does it unintentionally. Ion is the genial mockery of a rhapsodist who is shown to possess no knowledge of his art. Euthydemus is a humorous satire on the sophists. In the Menexenus, which some have hesitated to ascribe to Plato, Socrates recites a funeral oration (after the style of Pericles' Funeral Oration in book 2 of Thucydides' history) which he says was composed by the hetaera Aspasia (see PERICLES) and which is apparently satirical. In Parmenides, the young Socrates meets the older Eleatic philosophers Parmenides and Zeno, defends rather naïvely the theory of Ideas (see below) and receives some telling criticisms; it is a difficult dialogue. The Critias is an unfinished dialogue, a sequel to the Timaeus. It includes the legend of the Athenian victory over the people of the lost island of Atlantis. The Philebus is a discussion of the relative merits of pleasure and wisdom as ingredients in the good life. In the Politicus (‘statesman’) the nature of the Platonic ideal of king or statesman is investigated; in the absence of the ideal ruler, the best practical course is for the citizens to frame the laws with care and make them inviolable.Much of the charm of Plato's dialogues consists in their dramatic setting, the description of the scenes in which they take place, the amusing and interesting characters whom he stages, and the genial irony of Socrates.
3. It is difficult to know in the early dialogues how far Plato is reproducing Socrates' views and to what extent he has moved beyond them, but in the later dialogues it is reasonable to think that Plato is propounding his own doctrines. His primary concern is with moral education. Plato believes that on the one hand it is possible to be a good man without properly knowing what it means to be a good man or what goodness is. This is to have right opinion (orthē doxa); as one might think correctly that a road leads to Larisa (Plato's example in Meno) without having been along it and reached Larisa oneself. But on the other hand only to have right opinion is to be in a precarious state: meeting a new idea about goodness might throw one into confusion so that one could not judge its value. True knowledge is needed, which is different from right opinion in that with it one is able to define or give an account of what one knows. The early dialogues portray Socrates seeking definitions of particular virtues, of courage in Laches, temperance in Charmides, piety in Euthyphro, or virtue in general in Meno, but without reaching positive conclusions. Virtue is a matter of knowledge. Both Socrates and Plato were attracted by the notion that knowledge of virtue is similar in kind to knowledge of how to practise a craft, such as cobbling shoes. It followed for Socrates and Plato (though not for many others) that wrong-doing is the result of ignorance; if people truly knew the good they were bound to do it. In any case knowledge of what goodness is would enable people both to be good themselves and to lead others to knowledge of goodness. A man having such knowledge would constitute the ideal ruler. Only philosophical enquiry, that is, the practice of dialectic, can lead to true knowledge, and it must be preceded by the study of mathematics and of abstract thinking in general, including logic, as well as of the science of government. Only a select few may be capable of gaining this kind of true knowledge; the rest must be content with having the right opinions.
4. For Plato all objects of knowledge, abstractions such as ‘beauty’ as well as concrete things, were real entities, but like the objects of mathematical knowledge, the ideal triangle or circle, they did not exist in our world of the senses. Plato postulated another world, the world of Ideas or Forms (of things), leaving the relationship between Ideas and the material things of this world somewhat vague; but the things we see now in this world remind us of the Ideas that they imitate and in some sense partake of. Knowledge of the world of Ideas is attainable in this world only by thought (as is true of the objects of mathematical knowledge; see 5 below) and true knowledge can only be of these Ideas, because they are eternal and unvarying whereas the objects of this world are forever changing. (Aristotle's criticism of this doctrine was that ideas only had reality in so far as they were embodied in particular objects.)
5. Plato believed in a dualism of immortal soul and mortal body. The soul before birth (that is, before its incarnation) was acquainted with the world of Ideas; knowledge of the Ideas in this life is achieved through the soul's recollection of what it has previously known, a recollection which is brought about by the practice of philosophy (i.e. dialectic). Life should therefore be devoted to the cultivation of the soul and the suppression of the body (which may hinder the soul's activities). Beyond all other Ideas is that of the Good (which in some way that is never explained is the cause of things), knowledge of which it is the soul's ambition to attain. Love of what is good and beautiful in this world can lead by stages, through philosophy, to the soul's contemplation of the Idea of Goodness in another world, for which it yearns.Plato once advertised a lecture on the Good. A large audience collected expecting to hear about the good things they valued—health, wealth, and material happiness. When they found themselves listening to a discourse on mathematics in which they were told that the Good is Limit (peras), they went away contemptuous and angry. This was a favourite story of Aristotle, who drew from it the moral that a prospective audience should always be told in advance what a lecture is really going to be about.
6. Thirteen Epistles attributed to Plato have come down to us. They were regarded as genuine in antiquity and are quoted by Cicero and Plutarch. They are addressed to correspondents in Sicily, and all relate to Plato's dealings with Dion and Dionysius, which they were intended to defend. Perhaps none of them was written by Plato himself, but it is generally accepted that the Seventh Epistle, which is addressed to the friends of Dion after the murder of the latter in 353 BC, is a reliable record of the events of Plato's life even if not written by him. It contains a defence of Plato's political ideals and is a passionate lament for his friend Dion.
7. In the disciplines and methods of philosophy, and the rigour of their application, Plato's immediate heir was Aristotle, but ultimately his intellectual heirs are all those who have tried to think systematically about morals and politics, science and mathematics. Plato has exerted an enormous influence on subsequent philosophic and religious thought by his theory of Ideas, his sense of an unseen and eternal world behind the changing unrealities of the world of the senses, his conception of God, and his connection of morality with religion. In Judaism his influence is felt in the Book of Wisdom and in the system of Philo. Among the Romans his philosophy appealed to Cicero in particular, as it did to all who revolted against materialism. In the third century AD Plotinus and others provided systematic exegesis of the dialogues as well as reinterpretations, which together made Neoplatonism the dominant pagan philosophy of that time. Christian thought was infused with Platonic notions from the time of (the Greek) Clement of Alexandria and Origen (second century AD), and Latin Christianity too was influenced indirectly by Platonic teaching from a variety of sources including Boethius and (from the ninth century) translations of (pseudo)-Dionysius the Areopagite. At the beginning of the Renaissance, reaction by humanists against scholasticism took the form of disparagement of Aristotle and enthusiasm for Plato. Latin translations of his works were made in the fifteenth century by the Italian humanist Marsilio Ficino (1433–99). Knowledge of Plato came to England in the sixteenth century and Platonism was embraced enthusiastically by the seventeenth-century Cambridge Platonists, so-called, who were in this as in much else opposed to the thought of their age. Although nowadays a Platonist philosophy is not usually thought to be tenable, Plato remains a source of philosophical inspiration.
(c. 429-347 BC) Plato was born in Athens of an aristocratic family. He recounts in the Seventh Letter, which, if genuine, is part of his autobiography, that the spectacle of the politics of his day brought him to the conclusion that only philosophers could be fit to rule. After the death of Socrates in 399, he travelled extensively. During this period he made his first trip to Sicily, with whose internal politics he became much entangled; sceptics about the authenticity of the Seventh Letter suppose it to be a forgery designed to support the opposition party of Dion against the tyrant Dionysius II. He visited Sicily at least three times in all and may have been richly subsidized by Dionysius. On return from Sicily he began formal teaching at what became the Academy. Details of Plato's life are surprisingly sparse, partly because of the Athenian convention against naming contemporaries in literary works; Aristotle, for example, although a student at the Academy for some twenty years, gives us no information about Plato's life. As a result the dating of his works has to be established on internal evidence, and is subject to scholarly dispute.Plato's fame rests on his Dialogues which are all preserved. They are usually divided into three periods, early, middle, and late. Early dialogues include Hippias Minor, Laches, Charmides, Ion, Protagoras, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Gorgias, Meno, Cratylus, and the doubtful Hippias Major, Lysis, Menexenus, and Euthydemus; middle dialogues include Phaedo, Philebus, Symposium, Republic, Theaetetus; and to the late period belong Critias, Parmenides, Phaedrus, Sophist, Statesman, Timaeus, and Laws. The early dialogues establish the figure of Socrates, portrayed as endlessly questioning, ruthlessly shattering the false claims to knowledge of his contemporaries. The aim of the elenctic method (see elenchus) is allegedly to clear the ground for establishing a just appreciation of virtue, but more is done negatively than positively. When Socrates asks ‘What is x?’ (virtue, justice, friendship, etc.), he is shown as brushing aside mere examples of x in favour of pursuit of the essence or form of x, or that which makes things x. In the middle dialogues, concern switches to the philosophical underpinnings of this notion of a form, possibly in response to pressure on Plato to justify the dialectical method as more than a sceptical game. The middle dialogues are not in dialogue form, and do not exhibit the Socratic method. The change may have been connected with Plato's belief that the young should not be exposed to such drastic solvents (the teaching method of the Academy prohibited students younger than thirty years old from such exercises).It is the middle dialogues that defend the doctrines commonly thought of as Platonism, and the positive doctrines are certainly uncompromising. A pivotal concept is that of the forms. These are independent, real, divine, invisible, and changeless; they share features of the things of which they are the form, but also cause them (so they are not simply common properties, or universals). Unique amongst them is the form of the good, the quasi-divine goal of mystical apprehension that could be achieved, if at all, only at the end of the philosophical pilgrimage.Apprehension of the forms is knowledge (noēsis) whereas belief about the changing everyday world is at best opinion (doxa). Knowledge is recollection of the acquaintance we had with the forms before our immortal souls became imprisoned in our bodies (see anamnesis, beauty). The Republic develops the celebrated comparison between justice and order in the soul, and that in the state; the famous myth of the cave introduces the doctrine that only those who apprehend the form of the good are fit to rule.The Parmenides and Theaetetus are late middle or early late dialogues, and the former contains sufficiently devastating criticism of the doctrine of forms to throw Plato's later views into doubt. The latter is a brilliant investigation of the concept of knowledge that ushers in the classical and still widely accepted account of knowledge as true belief plus a logos, or certification by reason. In the late works, especially the last and longest dialogue, the Laws, Plato returns to the character of the ideal republic in a more sober manner, with civic piety and religion taking much of the burden of education away from philosophy. The Timaeus is especially interesting as a scientific treatise, whose cosmology echoed on in the Neoplatonism of the Christian era. Plato is generally regarded as the inventor of philosophical argument as we know it, and many would claim that the depth and range of his thought have never been surpassed.
Plato (plā'tō) , 427?–347 B.C., Greek philosopher. Plato's teachings have been among the most influential in the history of Western civilization.
Life
After pursuing the liberal studies of his day, he became in 407 B.C. a pupil and friend of Socrates. From about 388 B.C. he lived for a time at the court of Dionysius the Elder, tyrant of Syracuse. On his return to Athens, Plato founded a school, the Academy, where he taught mathematics and philosophy until his death. His teaching was interrupted by two more visits to Syracuse (367 and 361 B.C.), which he made in the vain hope of seeing his political ideals realized in Sicily.
Works and Philosophy
Plato was a superb writer, and his works are part of the world's great literature. His extant work is in the form of dialogues and epistles. Some of the dialogues and many of the epistles attributed to him are known to be spurious, while others are doubtful. In the various dialogues he touched upon almost every problem that has occupied subsequent philosophers. The dialogues are divided into three groups according to the probable order of composition.
Early Works
The earliest group of dialogues, called Socratic, include chiefly the Apology, which presents the defense of Socrates; the Meno, which asks whether virtue can be taught; and the Gorgias, which concerns the absolute nature of right and wrong. These early dialogues present Socrates in conversations that illustrate his main ideas—the unity of virtue and knowledge and of virtue and happiness. Each dialogue treats a particular problem without necessarily resolving the issues raised.
Philosophical Themes and Mature Works
Plato was always concerned with the fundamental philosophical problem of working out a theory of the art of living and knowing. Like Socrates, Plato began convinced of the ultimately harmonious structure of the universe, but he went further than his mentor in trying to construct a comprehensive philosophical scheme. His goal was to show the rational relationship between the soul, the state, and the cosmos. This is the general theme of the great dialogues of his middle years: the Republic, Phaedo, Symposium, Phaedrus, Timaeus, and Philebus. In the Republic he shows how the operation of justice within the individual can best be understood through the analogy of the operation of justice within the state, which Plato proceeds to set out in his conception of the ideal state. However, justice cannot be understood fully unless seen in relation to the Idea of the Good, which is the supreme principle of order and truth.
It is in these dialogues that the famous Platonic Ideas (see realism) are discussed. Plato argued for the independent reality of Ideas as the only guarantee of ethical standards and of objective scientific knowledge. In the Republic and the Phaedo he postulates his theory of Forms. Ideas or Forms are the immutable archetypes of all temporal phenomena, and only these Ideas are completely real; the physical world possesses only relative reality. The Forms assure order and intelligence in a world that is in a state of constant flux. They provide the pattern from which the world of sense derives its meaning.
The supreme Idea is the Idea of the Good, whose function and place in the world of Ideas is analogous to that of the sun in the physical world. Plato saw his task as that of leading men to a vision of the Forms and to some sense of the highest good. The principal path is suggested in the famous metaphor of the cave in the Republic, in which man in his uninstructed state is chained in a world of shadows. However, man can move up toward the sun, or highest good, through the study of what Plato calls dialectic. The supreme science, dialectic, is a method of inquiry that proceeds by a constant questioning of assumptions and by explaining a particular idea in terms of a more general one until the ultimate ground of explanation is reached.
The Republic, the first Utopia in literature, asserts that the philosopher is the only one capable of ruling the just state, since through his study of dialectic he understands the harmony of all parts of the universe in their relation to the Idea of the Good. Each social class happily performs the function for which it is suited; the philosopher rules, the warrior fights, and the worker enjoys the fruits of his labor. In the Symposium, perhaps the most poetic of the dialogues, the path to the highest good is described as the ascent by true lovers to eternal beauty, and in the Phaedo the path is viewed as the pilgrimage of the philosopher through death to the world of eternal truth.
Late Works
Many of the late dialogues are devoted to technical philosophic issues. The most important of these are the Theaetetus; the Parmenides, which deals with the relation between the one and the many; and the Sophist, which discusses the nature of nonbeing. Plato's longest work, the Laws, written during his middle and late periods, discusses in practical terms the nature of the state.
Bibliography
See translation of the dialogues by B. Jowett, ed. by D. J. Allan and H. E. Daley (4 vol., 4th ed., rev. 1953); A. E. Taylor, Plato: The Man and His Work (1927); R. Bambrough, ed., New Essays on Plato and Aristotle (1965); G. Vlastos, Platonic Studies (1973); G. F. Else, Plato and Aristotle on Poetry (1987); Jacob A. Kline, A Commentary on Plato's Meno (1989); C. Hampton, Pleasure, Knowledge, and Being: An Analysis of Plato's Philebus (1990).
(427?–347 B.C.E.)
Plato (427? - 347 B.C.E.) was a prominent Athenian philosopher who posed fundamental questions about education, human nature, and justice.
A student of the famous philosopher Socrates, Plato left Athens upon his mentor's death in 399 B.C.E. After traveling to other parts of Greece, Italy, and Sicily, Plato returned to Athens in 387 B.C.E. and founded a school of mathematics and philosophy called the Academy, which became the most prominent intellectual institution in all of ancient Greece. Plato authored a number of dialogues that often depicted Socrates engaging in the educational mode of dialectic. Like his mentor, Plato suspected that most people did not know what they claimed to know, and hence wondered why rigorous qualifications for rulers did not exist. Challenging the Sophists' claims that knowledge and truth were relative to the perspective of each individual, Plato developed an epistemology and metaphysics that suggested an absolute truth that could only be gleaned through rigorous self-examination and the development of reason - skills crucial for enlightened political leaders.
The Ideal State
Plato's educational ideas derived in part from his conception of justice, both for individuals and for the ideal state. He viewed individuals as mutually dependent for their survival and well-being, and he proposed that justice in the ideal state was congruent with justice in the individual's soul.
Plato's ideal state was a republic with three categories of citizens: artisans, auxiliaries, and philosopher-kings, each of whom possessed distinct natures and capacities. Those proclivities, moreover, reflected a particular combination of elements within one's tripartite soul, composed of appetite, spirit, and reason. Artisans, for example, were dominated by their appetites or desires, and therefore destined to produce material goods. Auxiliaries, a class of guardians, were ruled by spirit in their souls and possessed the courage necessary to protect the state from invasion. Philosopher-kings, the leaders of the ideal state, had souls in which reason reigned over spirit and appetite, and as a result possessed the foresight and knowledge to rule wisely. In Plato's view, these rulers were not merely elite intellectuals, but moral leaders. In the just state, each class of citizen had a distinct duty to remain faithful to its determined nature and engage solely in its destined occupation. The proper management of one's soul would yield immediate happiness and well-being, and specific educational methods would cultivate this brand of spiritual and civic harmony.
The Dialectical Method
Plato's educational priorities also reflected his distinct pedagogy. Challenging the Sophists - who prized rhetoric, believed in ethical and epistemological relativism, and claimed to teach "excellence" - Plato argued that training in "excellence" was meaningless without content and that knowledge was absolute, certain, and good. As a result, teachers assumed a high moral responsibility. Plato doubted whether a standard method of teaching existed for all subjects, and he argued that morally neutral education would corrupt most citizens. He preferred the dialectical method over the Sophists' rhetorical pedagogy. For Plato, the role of the teacher was not to fill an empty reservoir with specific skills, but to encourage the student to redirect his or her soul and to rearrange the priorities within it to allow reason to rule over the irrational elements of spirit and appetite.
In the Meno, Plato examined a paradox that challenged the dialectical method of education: if one knows nothing, then how will one come to recognize knowledge when he encounters it? In response, Plato's Socrates proposed a different idea. Through a geometry lesson with a slave boy, he attempted to demonstrate that all possessed some minimal knowledge that served as a window into one's eternal and omniscient soul. Through dialectic, the teacher could refute the student's false opinions until the student pursued a true opinion that survived the rigors of critical examination. Unacquainted with the storehouse of knowledge in one's soul, a person needed to learn how to access or "recollect" it. Plato distanced himself further from the Sophists by distinguishing knowledge (eternal and certain) from opinion (unreliable and ephemeral).
Plato developed this idea more fully in the Republic, declaring knowledge superior to opinion in both an epistemological and ontological sense. Opinion reflected a misapprehension of reality, while knowledge belonged to an essential or "intelligible" realm. In particular, Plato proposed a linear hierarchy of knowledge starting with the "visible" realms of imagination and then belief, and moving to the "intelligible" realms of reason, and ultimately, knowledge. In his celebrated cave metaphor, Plato's Socrates depicted chained prisoners, who presumed shadows of representations cast by artificial light to be real. The first step of education, then, was to turn one's soul away from this artificial world of shadows and toward the representations of objects and ideas themselves - leading one to the realm of belief. The objects of belief, however, were still empirical, and thus, ephemeral, relative, and unreliable. Beyond the cave lay the intelligible realm of reason and knowledge. Plato asserted that ideas did not possess any physical qualities, and to ascend beyond the world of tangible objects and ideas, one needed to develop the power of abstract thinking through the use of postulates to draw conclusions about the universal essence or "form" of an object or idea. Mathematics constituted a particularly useful tool for the development of reason, as it relied heavily on logic and abstract thought. The ultimate stage of awareness for Plato was knowledge of the "form of the good" - a transcendence of all postulates and assumptions through abstract reasoning that yielded a certain and comprehensive understanding of all things.
Educational Programs
Plato also made clear that not all citizens of the ideal state possessed the same capacity to realize the "form of the good." As a result, he proposed distinct educational programs for future artisans, auxiliaries, and philosopher-kings. Plato favored mathematics as a precise and abstract model for the development of thought in the future rulers of the just state. Knowledge, however, could only be attained through the use of dialectic to shed all assumptions and to glean the first principle of all, the "form of the good." After many years of mathematical and dialectical study, followed by fifteen years of public service, the best of this group would have come to understand the "form of the good" and have become philosopher-kings. Cognizant of the interrelationship of all things and confident of the reasons behind them, the intellectually and morally elite would be equipped to rule the just state in an enlightened manner.
The Cultivation of Morals
In addition, Plato advocated the removal of all infants from their natural families to receive a proper aesthetic education - literary, musical, and physical - for the development of character in the soul and the cultivation of morals necessary for sustaining the just state. Suspecting that most writers and musicians did not know the subjects they depicted - that they cast mere shadows of representations of real objects, ideas, and people - Plato feared that artistic works could endanger the health of the just state. Consequently, he wanted to hold artists and potential leaders accountable for the consequences of their creations and policies. This is why Plato advocated the censorship of all forms of art that did not accurately depict the good in behavior. Art, as a powerful medium that threatened the harmony of the soul, was best suited for philosophers who had developed the capacity to know and could resist its dangerous and irrational allures. Exposure to the right kinds of stories and music, although not sufficient to make a citizen beautiful and good, would contribute to the proper development of the elements within one's soul. For Plato, aesthetics and morality were inextricable; the value of a work of art hinged on its propensity to lead to moral development and behavior.
A Less-Ideal State
In the Laws, Plato considered the possibility that not only the majority, but all citizens could be incapable of reaching the "form of the good." He thus envisioned a second-best state with rulers ignorant of the "form of the good" but capable of thought. Such a society had absolute and unyielding rulers who eradicated any idea or thing that questioned their authority. Acting as if they possessed wisdom, such leaders established laws that reflected their opinions and their imperfect conception of the good.
Modern Scholarship
Contemporary advocates of popular democracy have criticized Plato's republican scheme as elitist and tyrannical in prizing order over individual liberty. Indeed, Plato believed that individuals could not stand alone, and as most would never reach internal harmony or virtue, the majority needed to be told how to conduct its life by those who possessed that knowledge. Incapable of understanding the reasons behind the laws, most citizens needed merely to obey them.
Some scholars have also questioned Plato's treatment of women in his just state. For instance, Jane Roland Martin has argued that although he did not differentiate education or societal roles on the basis of sex, Plato was not committed to gender equality. Despite his abolition of the family, gender distinctions would have likely persisted, as Plato did not seek to ensure the equal portrayal of men and women in literature. According to this view, Plato's female guardians-in-training warranted a distinct education from men to help mitigate the cultural, symbolic, and epistemological assumptions of female subordination. Identical education, then, did not necessarily constitute equal education, a point that holds significant implications for contemporary assumptions about the effects of coeducation.
These criticisms illustrate the longevity of Plato's educational, metaphysical, and ethical ideas. In addition, other scholars have eschewed the tendency to evaluate the modern implications of Plato's specific educational doctrines, and instead have highlighted his assumption that education could address fundamental social problems. They view Plato's method of inquiry - critical self-examination through the dialectical interplay of teacher and student - as his primary contribution to educational thought. Indeed, perhaps education itself embodied the highest virtue of Plato's just state.
Bibliography
Barrow, Robin. 1976. Plato and Education. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Blankenship, J. David. 1996. "Education and the Arts in Plato's Republic." Journal of Education 178:67 - 98.
Martin, Jane Roland. 1985. Reclaiming a Conversation: The Ideal of the Educated Woman. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Parry, Richard D. 1996. "Morality and Happiness: Book IV of Plato's Republic." Journal of Education 178:31 - 47.
Plato. 1976. Meno, trans. G. M. A. Grube. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
Plato. 1976. Protagoras, trans. C. C. W. Taylor. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Plato. 1980. The Laws of Plato, trans. Thomas L. Pangle. New York: Basic Books.
Plato. 1992. Republic, trans. G. M. A. Grube and rev. C. D. C. Reeve. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
Scolnicov, Samuel. 1988. Plato's Metaphysics of Education. London and New York: Routledge.
— SEVAN G. TERZIAN
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IN BRIEF: n. - Ancient Athenian philosopher.

Quotes By: Plato
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Quotes: "These, then, will be some of the features of democracy... it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, parti-colored commonwealth, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not." "Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike." "Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment." "Old age has a great sense of calm and freedom. When the passions have relaxed their hold and have escaped, not from one master, but from many." "He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden." "Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty."

The Dream Encyclopedia: Plato
Plato (c. 429-347 b.c.e.) was born of a family who had long played a considerable part in Athenian politics. He declined to follow the same course, however, because he was disgusted by the corruption of political life in Athens, which was among the causes of the execution in 399 of Socrates, his friend and teacher. The death of Socrates encouraged Plato to protect and preserve his memory by writing dramatic conversations in which Socrates employed the same methods of argument that he had used when he was alive.
Plato dedicated the rest of his life to philosophy, convinced that it was the only cure for the ills of society, which would never cease unless philosophers became rulers or rulers became philosophers. He traveled broadly, especially to Sicily, and founded in Athens the Academy, an institution devoted to the study of philosophy.
Although Plato did not discuss dreams at any length, using them rather as a structure for symbolic action and philosophical speculation, various passages of some of his dialogues report his observations about this phenomenon. In his early dialogues, such as Apologia and Symposium, dreams are regarded as a channel for messages received from the gods and are used as a theological method of acquiring knowledge concerning the gods and their will. An enlightened theology of dreams appears also in the last dialogues, such as Sophistes, in which Plato asserts that all four truly existing realities-human and animal, fire and water-possess their specific images, which are created by the gods and are not the product of the realities themselves. Man's image, for example, is his dreaming world. In Sophistes, Plato also considers the dream as a philosophical method through which a particular kind of knowledge can be achieved.
A Homeric description of the dream experience prevails in Crito and Phaedo, both about the last days of Socrates. In each dialogue, Socrates attributes great importance to his dreams by following their suggestions. The first dream pictures the land of the soul's afterlife, whereas in the second dream Socrates speaks of a shift in attention from philosophy to poetry.
Plato gives a definition of the act of dreaming in Politeia, asserting that it means "to take the copy not as a copy, but as reality itself." According to Plato, in the actual act of dreaming the dreamer does not have the power to associate the dream experience with waking life, thus establishing his firm belief in the reality of his dreams.
According to Plato's biological theory of dreams, dreams originate in a persistent activity of the respective organs in the belly. The liver, in particular, is described as the biological seat of dreams. Dreaming may be caused either by over-gratification or by frustration of those organs in waking life. Plato maintained that when the rule of reason is suspended in sleep, the other two elements of the soul-desire and anger-and all the repressed aspects of personality break through with all their power, and the soul can accept incest, murder, and sacrilege.
Plato delineates a relationship between ethics and dreams by asserting, in Politeia, Theaitetos, and Nomoi, that even the individual whose life is considered decent may be subject to very unethical dreams, and a man's dreams are generally indicative of his ethical attitude or the level of his education. He also maintains that a theological explanation can be given for terror dreams, which may be caused by unethical behavior.

Plato
Western PhilosophyAncient philosophy
Plato
Full name
Plato (Πλάτων)
Birth
c. 424–423 BC, Athens
Death
c. 348–347 BC, Athens (aged 76 approx)
School/tradition
Platonism
Main interests
Rhetoric, Art, Literature, Epistemology, Justice, Virtue, Politics, Education, Family, Militarism
Notable ideas
Platonic realism
Influenced by
Socrates, Homer, Hesiod, Aristophanes, Aesop, Protagoras, Parmenides, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Orphism
Influenced
Much of subsequent western philosophy, Aristotle, Augustine, Neoplatonism, Cicero, Plutarch, Stoicism, Anselm, Machiavelli, Descartes, Hobbes, Leibniz, Mill, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Arendt, Gadamer, Russell and countless other philosophers and theologians

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Plato

Formation and naming
Early life Works Platonism Epistemology Idealism / Realism Theory of Forms Form of the Good Third Man Argument Immortality of the soul Five regimes Philosopher-king Utopia (Callipolis)
Allegories
Ring of Gyges Allegory of the cave Analogy of the divided line Metaphor of the sun Ship of state Myth of Er Chariot Allegory
Dialogues
Philosophy Moderation Death Piety Beauty Dishonesty Art Courage Friendship Language Argumentation Rhetoric Virtue Afterlife Education Love Justice Passion Monism Knowledge Physics Atlantis Sophistry Politics Pleasure Nature & Humanity
Influences and Followers
Heraclitus Parmenides Socrates Aristotle Plotinus Iamblichus Proclus St. Augustine Al-Farabi
Related
Academy in Athens Socratic problem Commentaries on Plato Middle Platonism Neoplatonism Platonic Christianity

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Plato (pronounced /ˈpleɪtoʊ/) (Greek: Πλάτων, Plátōn, "broad")[1] (428/427 BC[a] – 348/347 BC), was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of natural philosophy, science, and Western philosophy.[2] Plato was originally a student of Socrates, and was as much influenced by his thinking as by what he saw as his teacher's unjust death.
Plato's sophistication as a writer is evident in his Socratic dialogues; thirty-five dialogues and thirteen letters have traditionally been ascribed to him, although modern scholarship doubts the authenticity of at least some of these.[3] Plato's writings have been published in several fashions; this has led to several conventions regarding the naming and referencing of Plato's texts.
Although there is little question that Plato lectured at the Academy that he founded, the pedagogical function of his dialogues, if any, is not known with certainty. The dialogues since Plato's time have been used to teach a range of subjects, mostly including philosophy, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, and other subjects about which he wrote.
Contents
[hide]
1 Biography
1.1 Early life
1.1.1 Birth and family
1.1.2 Name
1.1.3 Education
1.2 Later life
1.3 Plato and Socrates
2 Philosophy
2.1 Recurrent Themes
2.2 Metaphysics
2.3 Theory of Forms
2.4 Epistemology
2.5 The State
2.6 Unwritten Doctrine
3 Works
3.1 Plato's Dialogues
3.1.1 Early dialogues
3.1.2 Middle dialogues
3.1.3 Late dialogues
3.2 Narration of the dialogues
3.3 Trial of Socrates
3.4 Unity and Diversity of the Dialogues
3.5 Platonic Scholarship
3.6 Text history
4 See also
5 Notes
6 Notes
7 References
7.1 Primary sources (Greek and Roman)
7.2 Secondary sources
8 Further reading
9 External links
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Biography
Early life
Birth and family
Based on ancient sources, most modern scholars estimate that he was born in Athens or Aegina [b] between 429 and 423 BC[a] His father was Ariston. According to a disputed tradition, reported by Diogenes Laertius, Ariston traced his descent from the king of Athens, Codrus, and the king of Messenia, Melanthus.[4] Plato's mother was Perictione, whose family boasted of a relationship with the famous Athenian lawmaker and lyric poet Solon.[5] Perictione was sister of Charmides and niece of Critias, both prominent figures of the Thirty Tyrants, the brief oligarchic regime, which followed on the collapse of Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War (404-403 BC).[6] Besides Plato himself, Ariston and Perictione had three other children; these were two sons, Adeimantus and Glaucon, and a daughter Potone, the mother of Speusippus (the nephew and successor of Plato as head of his philosophical Academy).[6] According to the Republic, Adeimantus and Glaucon were older than Plato.[7] Nevertheless, in his Memorabilia, Xenophon presents Glaucon as younger than Plato.[8]
Ariston tried to force his attentions on Perictione, but failed of his purpose; then the ancient Greek god Apollo appeared to him in a vision, and, as a result of it, Ariston left Perictione unmolested.[9] Another legend related that, while he was sleeping as an infant, bees had settled on the lips of Plato; an augury of the sweetness of style in which he would discourse philosophy.[10]
Ariston appears to have died in Plato's childhood, although the precise dating of his death is difficult.[11] Perictione then married Pyrilampes, her mother's brother,[12] who had served many times as an ambassador to the Persian court and was a friend of Pericles, the leader of the democratic faction in Athens.[13] Pyrilampes had a son from a previous marriage, Demus, who was famous for his beauty.[14] Perictione gave birth to Pyrilampes' second son, Antiphon, the half-brother of Plato, who appears in Parmenides.[15]
In contrast to his reticence about himself, Plato used to introduce his distinguished relatives into his dialogues, or to mention them with some precision: Charmides has one named after him; Critias speaks in both Charmides and Protagoras; Adeimantus and Glaucon take prominent parts in the Republic.[16] From these and other references one can reconstruct his family tree, and this suggests a considerable amount of family pride. According to Burnet, "the opening scene of the Charmides is a glorification of the whole [family] connection ... Plato's dialogues are not only a memorial to Socrates, but also the happier days of his own family".[17]
Name
According to Diogenes Laërtius, the philosopher was named Aristocles after his grandfather, but his wrestling coach, Ariston of Argos, dubbed him "Platon", meaning "broad," on account of his robust figure.[18] According to the sources mentioned by Diogenes (all dating from the Alexandrian period), Plato derived his name from the breadth (platytês) of his eloquence, or else because he was very wide (platýs) across the forehead.[19] In the 21st century some scholars disputed Diogenes, and argued that the legend about his name being Aristocles originated in the Hellenistic age.[c]
Education
Apuleius informs us that Speusippus praised Plato's quickness of mind and modesty as a boy, and the "first fruits of his youth infused with hard work and love of study".[20] Plato must have been instructed in grammar, music, and gymnastics by the most distinguished teachers of his time.[21] Dicaearchus went so far as to say that Plato wrestled at the Isthmian games.[22] Plato had also attended courses of philosophy; before meeting Socrates, he first became acquainted with Cratylus (a disciple of Heraclitus, a prominent pre-Socratic Greek philosopher) and the Heraclitean doctrines.[23]
Later life
Plato may have traveled in Italy, Sicily, Egypt and Cyrene.[24] Said to have returned to Athens at the age of forty, Plato founded one of the earliest known organized schools in Western Civilization on a plot of land in the Grove of Hecademus or Academus.[25] The Academy was "a large enclosure of ground which was once the property of a citizen at Athens named Academus... some, however, say that it received its name from an ancient hero",[26] and it operated until AD 529, when it was closed by Justinian I of Byzantium, who saw it as a threat to the propagation of Christianity. Many intellectuals were schooled in the Academy, the most prominent one being Aristotle.[27]
Plato and Socrates

Plato and Socrates in a medieval depiction
Plato makes it clear, especially in his Apology of Socrates, that he was one of Socrates' devoted young followers. In that dialogue, Socrates is presented as mentioning Plato by name as one of those youths close enough to him to have been corrupted, if he were in fact guilty of corrupting the youth, and questioning why their fathers and brothers did not step forward to testify against him if he was indeed guilty of such a crime (33d-34a). Later, Plato is mentioned along with Crito, Critobolus, and Apollodorus as offering to pay a fine of 30 minas on Socrates' behalf, in lieu of the death penalty proposed by Meletus (38b). In the Phaedo, the title character lists those who were in attendance at the prison on Socrates' last day, explaining Plato's absence by saying, "Plato was ill" (Phaedo 59b).
The relationship between Plato and Socrates is problematic, however. Aristotle, for example, attributes a different doctrine with respect to the ideas to Plato and Socrates (Metaphysics 987b1–11), but Plato never speaks in his own voice in his dialogues. In the Second Letter, it says, "no writing of Plato exists or ever will exist, but those now said to be his are those of a Socrates become beautiful and new" (341c); if the Letter is Plato's, the final qualification seems to call into question the dialogues' historical fidelity. In any case, Xenophon and Aristophanes seem to present a somewhat different portrait of Socrates than Plato paints. Some have called attention to the problem of taking Plato's Socrates to be his mouthpiece, given Socrates' reputation for irony.[28]
The precise relationship between Plato and Socrates remains an area of contention among scholars.
Philosophy
Recurrent Themes

Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael. Aristotle gestures to the earth, representing his belief in knowledge through empirical observation and experience, while holding a copy of his Nicomachean Ethics in his hand. Plato holds his Timaeus and gestures to the heavens, representing his belief in The Forms
For more details on this topic, see Aristotle's theory of universals.
Plato often discusses the father-son relationship and the "question" of whether a father's interest in his sons has much to do with how well his sons turn out. A boy in ancient Athens was socially located by his family identity, and Plato often refers to his characters in terms of their paternal and fraternal relationships. Socrates was not a family man, and saw himself as the son of his mother, who was apparently a midwife. A divine fatalist, Socrates mocks men who spent exorbitant fees on tutors and trainers for their sons, and repeatedly ventures the idea that good character is a gift from the gods. Crito reminds Socrates that orphans are at the mercy of chance, but Socrates is unconcerned. In the Theaetetus, he is found recruiting as a disciple a young man whose inheritance has been squandered. Socrates twice compares the relationship of the older man and his boy lover to the father-son relationship (Lysis 213a, Republic 3.403b), and in the Phaedo, Socrates' disciples, towards whom he displays more concern than his biological sons, say they will feel "fatherless" when he is gone. Many dialogues, like these, suggest that man-boy love (which is "spiritual") is a wise man's substitute for father-son biology (which is "bodily").
In several dialogues, Socrates floats the idea that Knowledge is a matter of recollection, and not of learning, observation, or study.[29] He maintains this view somewhat at his own expense, because in many dialogues, Socrates complains of his forgetfulness. Socrates is often found arguing that knowledge is not empirical, and that it comes from divine insight. He is quite consistent in believing in the immortality of the soul, and several dialogues end with long speeches imagining the afterlife. More than one dialogue contrasts knowledge and opinion, perception and reality, nature and custom, and body and soul. The only contrast to this is his Parmenides.
Several dialogues tackle questions about art: Socrates says that poetry is inspired by the muses, and is not rational. He speaks approvingly of this, and other forms of divine madness (drunkenness, eroticism, and dreaming) in the Phaedrus (265a–c), and yet in the Republic wants to outlaw Homer's great poetry, and laughter as well. In Ion, Socrates gives no hint of the disapproval of Homer that he expresses in the Republic. The dialogue Ion suggests that Homer's Iliad functioned in the ancient Greek world as the bible does today in the modern Christian world: as divinely inspired literature that can provide moral guidance, if only it can be properly interpreted.
On politics and art, religion and science, justice and medicine, virtue and vice, crime and punishment, pleasure and pain, rhetoric and rhapsody, human nature and sexuality, love and wisdom, Socrates and his company of disputants had something to say.
Metaphysics
Main article: Platonic realism
"Platonism" is a term coined by scholars to refer to the intellectual consequences of denying, as Socrates often does, the reality of the material world. In several dialogues, most notably the Republic, Socrates inverts the common man's intuition about what is knowable and what is real. While most people take the objects of their senses to be real if anything is, Socrates is contemptuous of people who think that something has to be graspable in the hands to be real. In the Theaetetus, he says such people are "eu a-mousoi", an expression that means literally, "happily without the muses" (Theaetetus 156a). In other words, such people live without the divine inspiration that gives him, and people like him, access to higher insights about reality.
Socrates's idea that reality is unavailable to those who use their senses is what puts him at odds with the common man, and with common sense. Socrates says that he who sees with his eyes is blind, and this idea is most famously captured in his allegory of the cave, and more explicitly in his description of the divided line. The allegory of the cave (begins Republic 7.514a) is a paradoxical analogy wherein Socrates argues that the invisible world is the most intelligible ("noeton") and that the visible world ("(h)oraton") is the least knowable, and the most obscure. (This is exactly the opposite of what Socrates says to Euthyphro in the soothsayer's namesake dialogue. There, Socrates tells Euthyphro that people can agree on matters of logic and science, and are divided on moral matters, which are not so easily verifiable.)
Socrates says in the Republic that people who take the sun-lit world of the senses to be good and real are living pitifully in a den of evil and ignorance. Socrates admits that few climb out of the den, or cave of ignorance, and those who do, not only have a terrible struggle to attain the heights, but when they go back down for a visit or to help other people up, they find themselves objects of scorn and ridicule.
According to Socrates, physical objects and physical events are "shadows" of their ideal or perfect forms, and exist only to the extent that they instantiate the perfect versions of themselves. Just as shadows are temporary, inconsequential epiphenomena produced by physical objects, physical objects are themselves fleeting phenomena caused by more substantial causes, the ideals of which they are mere instances. For example, Socrates thinks that perfect justice exists (although it is not clear where) and his own trial would be a cheap copy of it.
The allegory of the cave (often said by scholars to represent Plato's own epistemology and metaphysics) is intimately connected to his political ideology (often said to also be Plato's own), that only people who have climbed out of the cave and cast their eyes on a vision of goodness are fit to rule. Socrates claims that the enlightened men of society must be forced from their divine contemplations and compelled to run the city according to their lofty insights. Thus is born the idea of the "philosopher-king", the wise person who accepts the power thrust upon him by the people who are wise enough to choose a good master. This is the main thesis of Socrates in the Republic, that the most wisdom the masses can muster is the wise choice of a ruler.
The word metaphysics derives from the fact that Aristotle's musings about divine reality came after ("meta") his lecture notes on his treatise on nature ("physics"). The term is in fact applied to Aristotle's own teacher, and Plato's "metaphysics" is understood as Socrates' division of reality into the warring and irreconcilable domains of the material and the spiritual. The theory has been of incalculable influence in the history of Western philosophy and religion.
Theory of Forms
Main article: Theory of Forms
The Theory of Forms typically refers to Plato's belief that the material world as it seems to us is not the real world, but only a shadow of the real world. Plato spoke of forms in formulating his solution to the problem of universals. The forms, according to Plato, are roughly speaking archetypes or abstract representations of the many types and properties (that is, of universals) of things we see all around us.
Epistemology
Main article: Platonic epistemology
Many have interpreted Plato as stating that knowledge is justified true belief, an influential view which informed future developments in modern analytic epistemology. This interpretation is based on a reading of the Theaetetus wherein Plato argues that belief is to be distinguished from knowledge on account of justification. Many years later, Edmund Gettier famously demonstrated the problems of the justified true belief account of knowledge. This interpretation, however, imports modern analytic and empiricist categories onto Plato himself and is better read on its own terms than as Plato's view.
Really, in the Sophist, Statesman, Republic, and the Parmenides Plato himself associates knowledge with the apprehension of unchanging Forms and their relationships to one another (which he calls "expertise" in Dialectic). More explicitly, Plato himself argues in the Timaeus that knowledge is always proportionate to the realm from which it is gained. In other words, if one derives their account of something experientially, because the world of sense is in flux, the views therein attained will be mere opinions. And opinions are characterized by a lack of necessity and stability. On the other hand, if one derives their account of something by way of the non-sensible forms, because these forms are unchanging, so too is the account derived from them. It is only in this sense that Plato uses the term "knowledge."
In the Meno, Socrates uses a geometrical example to expound Plato's view that knowledge in this latter sense is acquired by recollection. Socrates elicits a fact concerning a geometrical construction from a slave boy, who could not have otherwise known the fact (due to the slave boy's lack of education). The knowledge must be present, Socrates concludes, in an eternal, non-experiential form.
The State

Papirus Oxyrhynchus, with fragment of Plato's Republic
Plato's philosophical views had many societal implications, especially on the idea of an ideal state or government. There is some discrepancy between his early and later views. Some of the most famous doctrines are contained in the Republic during his middle period, as well as in the Laws and the Statesman. However, because Plato wrote dialogues, it is assumed that Socrates is often speaking for Plato. This assumption may not be true in all cases.
Plato, through the words of Socrates, asserts that societies have a tripartite class structure corresponding to the appetite/spirit/reason structure of the individual soul. The appetite/spirit/reason stand for different parts of the body. The body parts symbolize the castes of society.[30]
Productive Which represents the abdomen.(Workers) — the labourers, carpenters, plumbers, masons, merchants, farmers, ranchers, etc. These correspond to the "appetite" part of the soul.
Protective Which represents the chest.(Warriors or Guardians) — those who are adventurous, strong and brave; in the armed forces. These correspond to the "spirit" part of the soul.
Governing Which represents the head. (Rulers or Philosopher Kings) — those who are intelligent, rational, self-controlled, in love with wisdom, well suited to make decisions for the community. These correspond to the "reason" part of the soul and are very few.
According to this model, the principles of Athenian democracy (as it existed in his day) are rejected as only a few are fit to rule. Instead of rhetoric and persuasion, Plato says reason and wisdom should govern. As Plato puts it:
"Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophise, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide, while the many natures who at present pursue either one exclusively are forcibly prevented from doing so, cities will have no rest from evils,... nor, I think, will the human race." (Republic 473c-d)

Plato in his academy, drawing after a painting by Swedish painter Carl Johan Wahlbom
Plato describes these "philosopher kings" as "those who love the sight of truth" (Republic 475c) and supports the idea with the analogy of a captain and his ship or a doctor and his medicine. Sailing and health are not things that everyone is qualified to practice by nature. A large part of the Republic then addresses how the educational system should be set up to produce these philosopher kings.
However, it must be taken into account that the ideal city outlined in the Republic is qualified by Socrates as the ideal luxurious city, examined to determine how it is that injustice and justice grow in a city (Republic 372e). According to Socrates, the "true" and "healthy" city is instead the one first outlined in book II of the Republic, 369c–372d, containing farmers, craftsmen, merchants, and wage-earners, but lacking the guardian class of philosopher-kings as well as delicacies such as "perfumed oils, incense, prostitutes, and pastries", in addition to paintings, gold, ivory, couches, a multitude of occupations such as poets and hunters, and war.
In addition, the ideal city is used as an image to illuminate the state of one's soul, or the will, reason, and desires combined in the human body. Socrates is attempting to make an image of a rightly ordered human, and then later goes on to describe the different kinds of humans that can be observed, from tyrants to lovers of money in various kinds of cities. The ideal city is not promoted, but only used to magnify the different kinds of individual humans and the state of their soul. However, the philosopher king image was used by many after Plato to justify their personal political beliefs. The philosophic soul according to Socrates has reason, will, and desires united in virtuous harmony. A philosopher has the moderate love for wisdom and the courage to act according to wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge about the Good or the right relations between all that exists.
Wherein it concerns states and rulers, Plato has made interesting arguments. For instance he asks which is better - a bad democracy or a country reigned by a tyrant. He argues that it is better to be ruled by a bad tyrant, than be a bad democracy (since here all the people are now responsible for such actions, rather than one individual committing many bad deeds.) This is emphasised within the Republic as Plato describes the event of mutiny onboard a ship.[31] Plato suggests the ships crew to be in line with the democratic rule of many and the captain, although inhibited through ailments, the tyrant. Plato's description of this event is parallel to that of democracy within the state and the inherent problems that arise.
According to Plato, a state which is made up of different kinds of souls, will overall decline from an aristocracy (rule by the best) to a timocracy (rule by the honorable), then to an oligarchy (rule by the few), then to a democracy (rule by the people), and finally to tyranny (rule by one person, rule by a tyrant)[citation needed].
Unwritten Doctrine
For a long time Plato's unwritten doctrine[32][33][34] had been considered unworthy of attention. Most of the books on Plato seem to diminish its importance. Nevertheless the first important witness who mentions its existence is Aristotle, who in his Physics (209 b) writes: "It is true, indeed, that the account he gives there [i.e. in Timaeus] of the participant is different from what he says in his so-called unwritten teaching (ἄγραφα δόγματα)." The term ἄγραφα δόγματα literally means unwritten doctrine and it stands for the most fundamental metaphysical teaching of Plato which he disclosed only to his most trusted fellows and kept secret from the public.
The reason for not revealing it to everyone is partially discussed in Phaedrus (276 c) where Plato criticizes the written transmission of knowledge as faulty, favoring instead the spoken logos: "he who has knowledge of the just and the good and beautiful ... will not, when in earnest, write them in ink, sowing them through a pen with words which cannot defend themselves by argument and cannot teach the truth effectually." The same argument is repeated in Plato's Seventh Letter (344 c): "every serious man in dealing with really serious subjects carefully avoids writing." In the same letter he writes (341 c): "I can certainly declare concerning all these writers who claim to know the subjects which I seriously study ... there does not exist, nor will there ever exist, any treatise of mine dealing therewith." Such secrecy is necessary in order not "to expose them to unseemly and degrading treatment" (344 d).
It is however said that Plato once disclosed this knowledge to the public in his lecture On the Good (Περὶ τἀγαθοῦ), in which the Good (τὸ ἀγαθόν) is identified with the One (the Unity, τὸ ἕν), the fundamental ontological principle. The content of this lecture has been transmitted by several witnesses, among others Aristoxenus who describes the event in the following words: "Each came expecting to learn something about the things which are generally considered good for men, such as wealth, good health, physical strength, and altogether a kind of wonderful happiness. But when the mathematical demonstrations came, including numbers, geometrical figures and astronomy, and finally the statement Good is One seemed to them, I imagine, utterly unexpected and strange; hence some belittled the matter, while others rejected it." Simplicius quotes Alexander of Aphrodisias who states that "according to Plato, the first principles of everything, including the Forms themselves are One and Indefinite Duality (ἡ ἀόριστος δυάς) which he called Large and Small (τὸ μέγα καὶ τὸ μικρόν) ... one might also learn this from Speusippus and Xenocrates and the others who were present at Plato's lecture on the Good"
Their account is in full agreement with Aristotle's description of Plato's metaphysical doctrine. In Metaphysics he writes: "Now since the Forms are the causes of everything else, he [i.e. Plato] supposed that their elements are the elements of all things. Accordingly the material principle is the Great and Small [i.e. the Dyad], and the essence is the One (τὸ ἕν), since the numbers are derived from the Great and Small by participation in the One" (987 b). "From this account it is clear that he only employed two causes: that of the essence, and the material cause; for the Forms are the cause of the essence in everything else, and the One is the cause of it in the Forms. He also tells us what the material substrate is of which the Forms are predicated in the case of sensible things, and the One in that of the Forms - that it is this the duality (the Dyad, ἡ δυάς), the Great and Small (τὸ μέγα καὶ τὸ μικρόν). Further, he assigned to these two elements respectively the causation of good and of evil" (988 a).
The most important aspect of this interpretation of Plato's metaphysics is the continuity between his teaching and the neoplatonic interpretation of Plotinus [35] or Ficino [36] which has been considered erroneous by many but may in fact have been directly influenced by oral transmission of Plato's doctrine. The first scholar who recognized the importance of the unwritten doctrine of Plato was Heinrich Gomperz who described it in his speech during the 7th International Congress of Philosophy in 1930.[37] All the sources related to the ἄγραφα δόγματα have been collected by Konrad Gaiser and published as Testimonia Platonica.[38] These sources have subsequently been interpreted by scholars from the German Tübingen School such as Hans Joachim Krämer or Thomas A. Szlezák.[39]
Works

Part of the series on:The Dialogues of Plato
Early dialogues:
Apology – Charmides – Crito
Euthyphro – First Alcibiades
Hippias Major – Hippias Minor
Ion – Laches – Lysis
Transitional & middle dialogues:
Cratylus – Euthydemus – Gorgias
Menexenus – Meno – Phaedo
Protagoras – Symposium
Later middle dialogues:
Republic – Phaedrus
Parmenides – Theaetetus
Late dialogues:
Timaeus – Critias
Sophist – Statesman
Philebus – Laws
Of doubtful authenticity:
Clitophon – Epinomis
Epistles – Hipparchus
Minos – Rival Lovers
Second Alcibiades – Theages
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Plato's The Republic, Latin edition cover, 1713
Thirty-five dialogues and thirteen letters have traditionally been ascribed to Plato, though modern scholarship doubts the authenticity of at least some of these. Plato's writings have been published in several fashions; this has led to several conventions regarding the naming and referencing of Plato's texts.
The usual system for making unique references to sections of the text by Plato derives from a 16th century edition of Plato's works by Henricus Stephanus. An overview of Plato's writings according to this system can be found in the Stephanus pagination article.
One tradition regarding the arrangement of Plato's texts is according to tetralogies. This scheme is ascribed by Diogenes Laertius to an ancient scholar and court astrologer to Tiberius named Thrasyllus.
In the list below, works by Plato are marked (1) if there is no consensus among scholars as to whether Plato is the author, and (2) if scholars generally agree that Plato is not the author of the work. Unmarked works are assumed to have been written by Plato.
I. Euthyphro, (The) Apology (of Socrates), Crito, Phaedo
II. Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman
III. Parmenides, Philebus, (The) Symposium, Phaedrus
IV. First Alcibiades (1), Second Alcibiades (2), Hipparchus (2), (The) (Rival) Lovers (2)
V. Theages (2), Charmides, Laches, Lysis
VI. Euthydemus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno
VII. (Greater) Hippias (major) (1), (Lesser) Hippias (minor), Ion, Menexenus
VIII. Clitophon (1), (The) Republic, Timaeus, Critias
IX. Minos (2), (The) Laws, Epinomis (2), Epistles (1).
The remaining works were transmitted under Plato's name, most of them already considered spurious in antiquity, and so were not included by Thrasyllus in his tetralogical arrangement. These works are labelled as Notheuomenoi ("spurious") or Apocrypha.
Axiochus (2), Definitions (2), Demodocus (2), Epigrams, Eryxias (2), Halcyon (2), On Justice (2), On Virtue (2), Sisyphus (2).
Plato's Dialogues
The exact order in which Plato's dialogues were written is not known, nor is the extent to which some might have been later revised and rewritten.
Lewis Campbell was the first[40] to make exhaustive use of stylometry to prove objectively that the Critias, Timaeus, Laws, Philebus, Sophist, and Statesman were all clustered together as a group, while the Parmenides, Phaedrus, Republic, and Theaetetus belong to a separate group, which must be earlier (given Aristotle's statement in his Politics[41] that the Laws was written after the Republic; cf. Diogenes Laertius Lives 3.37). What is remarkable about Campbell's conclusions is that, in spite of all the stylometric studies that have been conducted since his time, perhaps the only chronological fact about Plato's works that can now be said to be proven by stylometry is the fact that Critias, Timaeus, Laws, Philebus, Sophist, and Statesman are the latest of Plato's dialogues, the others earlier.[42]
Increasingly in the most recent Plato scholarship, writers are skeptical of the notion that the order of Plato's writings can be established with any precision,[43] though Plato's works are still often characterized as falling at least roughly into three groups.[44] The following represents one such division which is relatively common.[45] It should, however, be kept in mind that many of the positions in the ordering are still highly disputed, and also that the very notion that Plato's dialogues can or should be "ordered" is by no means universally accepted.
Early dialogues
Socrates figures in all of these, and they are considered the most faithful representations of the historical Socrates; hence they are also called the "Socratic dialogues." Most of them consist of Socrates discussing a subject, often an ethical one (friendship, piety) with a friend or with someone presumed to be an expert on it. Through a series of questions he will show that apparently they do not understand it at all. It is left to the reader to figure out if "he" really understands "it". This makes these dialogues "indirect" teachings.
Apology
Charmides
Crito
Euthyphro
Ion
Laches
Lesser Hippias
Lysis
Menexenus
Protagoras is often considered one of the last of these "earlier" dialogues.
The following are often considered "transitional" or "pre-middle" dialogues:
Euthydemus
Gorgias
Meno
Middle dialogues
Late in the early dialogues Plato's Socrates actually begins supplying answers to some of the questions he asks, or putting forth positive doctrines. This is generally seen as the first appearance of Plato's own views. The first of these, that goodness is wisdom and that no one does evil willingly, was perhaps Socrates' own view. What becomes most prominent in the middle dialogues is the idea that knowledge comes of grasping unchanging forms or essences, paired with the attempts to investigate such essences. The immortality of the soul, and specific doctrines about justice, truth, and beauty, begin appearing here. The Symposium and the Republic are considered the centerpieces of Plato's middle period. The Parmenides and Theaetetus are often considered to come late in this period and transitional to the next, as they seem to treat the Theory of Forms critically (Parmenides) or not at all (Theaetetus).
Cratylus
Parmenides
Phaedo
Phaedrus
Republic
Symposium
Theaetetus
Late dialogues

Latin incunabulum of Plato's Timaeus, 1491
The Parmenides presents a series of criticisms of the theory of Forms which are widely taken to indicate Plato's abandonment of the doctrine. Some recent publications (e.g., Meinwald (1991)) have challenged this characterisation. In most of the remaining dialogues the theory is either absent or at least appears under a different guise in discussions about kinds or classes of things (the Timaeus may be an important, and hence controversially placed, exception). Socrates is either absent or a minor figure in the discussion. An apparently new method for doing dialectic known as "collection and division" is also featured, most notably in the Sophist and Statesman, explicitly for the first time in the Phaedrus, and possibly in the Philebus. A basic description of collection and division would go as follows: interlocutors attempt to discern the similarities and differences among things in order to get clear idea about what they in fact are. One understanding, suggested in some passages of the Sophist, is that this is what philosophy is always in the business of doing, and is doing even in the early dialogues.
The late dialogues are also an important place to look for Plato's mature thought on most of the issues dealt with in the earlier dialogues. There is much work still to be done by scholars on the working out of what these views are. The later works are agreed to be difficult and challenging pieces of philosophy. On the whole they are more sober and logical than earlier works, but may hold out the promise of steps towards a solution to problems which were systematically laid out in prior works.
Critias
Laws
Philebus
Sophist
Statesman
Timaeus
Narration of the dialogues
Plato never presents himself as a participant in any of the dialogues, and with the exception of the Apology, there is no suggestion that he heard any of the dialogues firsthand. Some dialogues have no narrator but have a pure "dramatic" form (examples: Meno, Gorgias, Phaedrus, Crito, Euthyphro), some dialogues are narrated by Socrates, wherein he speaks in first person (examples: Lysis, Charmides, Republic). One dialogue, Protagoras, begins in dramatic form but quickly proceeds to Socrates' narration of a conversation he had previously with the sophist for whom the dialogue is named; this narration continues uninterrupted till the dialogue's end.

Plato's Symposium (Anselm Feuerbach, 1873)
The three dialogues, Phaedo, Symposium, and Theaetetus, also begin in dramatic form but then proceed to virtually uninterrupted narration by followers of Socrates, and all, apparently, based on their distant memory or secondhand reports. Phaedo, an account of Socrates' final conversation and hemlock drinking, is narrated by Phaedo to Echecrates in a foreign city many years after the execution took place. The Symposium is narrated by Apollodorus, a Socratic disciple, apparently to Glaucon. Apollodorus assures his listener that he is recounting the story, which took place when he himself was an infant, not from his own memory, but as remembered by Aristodemus, who told him the story years ago. In the beginning of the Theaetetus (142c-143b), Euclides says that he compiled the conversation from notes he took based on what Socrates told him of his conversation with the title character. The rest of the Theaetetus is presented as a "book" written in dramatic form and read by one of Euclides' slaves (143c). Some scholars take this as an indication that Plato had by this date wearied of the narrated form.[46] With the exception of the Theaetetus, Plato gives no explicit indication as to how these orally transmitted conversations came to be written down. Other dialogues, such as the Phaedo, Symposium, and Parmenides, do suggest that such conversations were faithfully recalled and transmitted by Socrates' followers.[47]
Trial of Socrates
Main article: Trial of Socrates
The trial of Socrates is the central, unifying event of the great Platonic dialogues. Because of this, Plato's Apology is perhaps the most often read of the dialogues. In the Apology, Socrates tries to dismiss rumors that he is a sophist and defends himself against charges of disbelief in the gods and corruption of the young. Socrates insists that long-standing slander will be the real cause of his demise, and says the legal charges are essentially false. Socrates famously denies being wise, and explains how his life as a philosopher was launched by the Oracle at Delphi. He says that his quest to resolve the riddle of the oracle put him at odds with his fellow man, and that this is the reason he has been mistaken for a menace to the city-state of Athens.
Unity and Diversity of the Dialogues
If Plato's important dialogues do not refer to Socrates' execution explicitly, they allude to it, or use characters or themes that play a part in it. Five dialogues foreshadow the trial: In the Theaetetus (210d) and the Euthyphro (2a–b) Socrates tells people that he is about to face corruption charges. In the Meno (94e–95a), one of the men who brings legal charges against Socrates, Anytus, warns him about the trouble he may get into if he does not stop criticizing important people. In the Gorgias, Socrates says that his trial will be like a doctor prosecuted by a cook who asks a jury of children to choose between the doctor's bitter medicine and the cook's tasty treats (521e–522a). In the Republic (7.517e), Socrates explains why an enlightened man (presumably himself) will stumble in a courtroom situation. The Apology is Socrates' defense speech, and the Crito and Phaedo take place in prison after the conviction. In the Protagoras, Socrates is a guest at the home of Callias, son of Hipponicus, a man whom Socrates disparages in the Apology as having wasted a great amount of money on sophists' fees.
Two other important dialogues, the Symposium and the Phaedrus, are linked to the main storyline by characters. In the Apology (19b, c), Socrates says Aristophanes slandered him in a comic play, and blames him for causing his bad reputation, and ultimately, his death. In the Symposium, the two of them are drinking together with other friends. The character Phaedrus is linked to the main story line by character (Phaedrus is also a participant in the Symposium and the Protagoras) and by theme (the philosopher as divine emissary, etc.) The Protagoras is also strongly linked to the Symposium by characters: all of the formal speakers at the Symposium (with the exception of Aristophanes) are present at the home of Callias in that dialogue. Charmides and his guardian Critias are present for the discussion in the Protagoras. Examples of characters crossing between dialogues can be further multiplied. The Protagoras contains the largest gathering of Socratic associates.
In the dialogues for which Plato is most celebrated and admired, Socrates is concerned with human and political virtue, has a distinctive personality, and friends and enemies who "travel" with him from dialogue to dialogue. This is not to say that Socrates is consistent: a man who is his friend in one dialogue may be an adversary or subject of his mockery in another. For example, Socrates praises the wisdom of Euthyphro many times in the Cratylus, but makes him look like a fool in the Euthyphro. He disparages sophists generally, and Prodicus specifically in the Apology, yet tells Theaetetus in his namesake dialogue that he admires Prodicus and has directed many pupils to him. In Cratylus (384b-c), Socrates says that he studied with Cratylus, and took his one-drachma course because he could not afford the full fifty-drachma course. Socrates' ideas are also not consistent within or between or among dialogues.
Platonic Scholarship

"The safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." (Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, 1929).
Plato's thought is often compared with that of his most famous student, Aristotle, whose reputation during the Western Middle Ages so completely eclipsed that of Plato that the Scholastic philosophers referred to Aristotle as "the Philosopher". However, in the Byzantine Empire, the study of Plato continued.
The Medieval scholastic philosophers did not have access to the works of Plato, nor the knowledge of Greek needed to read them. Plato's original writings were essentially lost to Western civilization until they were brought from Constantinople in the century of its fall, by George Gemistos Plethon. It is believed that Plethon passed a copy of the Dialogues to Cosimo de' Medici when in 1438 the Council of Ferrara, called to unify the Greek and Latin Churches, was adjourned to Florence, where Plethon then lectured on the relation and differences of Plato and Aristotle, and fired Cosimo with his enthusiasm.[citation needed] Medieval scholars knew of Plato only through translations into Latin from the translations into Arabic by Persian and Arab scholars. These scholars not only translated the texts of the ancients, but expanded them by writing extensive commentaries and interpretations on Plato's and Aristotle's works (see Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes).
Only in the Renaissance, with the general resurgence of interest in classical civilization, did knowledge of Plato's philosophy become widespread again in the West. Many of the greatest early modern scientists and artists who broke with Scholasticism and fostered the flowering of the Renaissance, with the support of the Plato-inspired Lorenzo de Medici, saw Plato's philosophy as the basis for progress in the arts and sciences. By the 19th century, Plato's reputation was restored, and at least on par with Aristotle's.
Notable Western philosophers have continued to draw upon Plato's work since that time. Plato's influence has been especially strong in mathematics and the sciences. He helped to distinguish between pure and applied mathematics by widening the gap between "arithmetic", now called Number Theory and "logistic", now called arithmetic. He regarded logistic as appropriate for business men and men of war who "must learn the art of numbers or he will not know how to array his troops," while arithmetic was appropriate for philosophers "because he has to arise out of the sea of change and lay hold of true being."[48] Plato's resurgence further inspired some of the greatest advances in logic since Aristotle, primarily through Gottlob Frege and his followers Kurt Gödel, Alonzo Church, and Alfred Tarski; the last of these summarised his approach by reversing Aristotle's famous declaration of sedition from the Nicomachean Ethics (1096a15: Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas - "Plato is a friend, but truth is a greater friend") to Inimicus Plato sed magis inimica falsitas ("Plato is an enemy, but falsehood is a greater enemy"). Albert Einstein drew on Plato's understanding of an immutable reality that underlies the flux of appearances for his objections to the probabilistic picture of the physical universe propounded by Niels Bohr in his interpretation of quantum mechanics.[citation needed] Conversely, thinkers that diverged from ontological models and moral ideals in their own philosophy, have tended to disparage Platonism from more or less informed perspectives. Thus Friedrich Nietzsche attacked Plato's moral and political theories, Martin Heidegger argued against Plato's alleged obfuscation of Being, and Karl Popper argued in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) that Plato's alleged proposal for a government system in the Republic was prototypically totalitarian. Leo Strauss is considered by some as the prime thinker involved in the recovery of Platonic thought in its more political, and less metaphysical, form. Deeply influenced by Nietzsche and Heidegger, Strauss nonetheless rejects their condemnation of Plato and looks to the dialogues for a solution to what all three thinkers acknowledge as 'the crisis of the West.'
Academic Genealogy
Notable teachers
Notable students
Socrates
Amyclus of Heraclea
Aristonymus Aristotle Axiothea of Phlius Callippus of Athens Coriscus of Scepsis Demetrius of Amphipolis Dion of Syracuse Erastus of Scepsis Euaeon of Lampsacus Eudoxus of Cnidus Heraclides of Aenus Heraclides of Pontus Hermias of Atarneus Hestiaeus of PerinthusHippothales of AthensLastheneia of Mantinea Philippus of Opus Phormio Python of Aenus Speusippus of Athens Timolaus of Cyzicus Theophrastus Xenocrates of Chalcedon
Text history
The oldest surviving manuscript for about half of Plato's dialogues is the Clarke Plato (MS. E. D. Clarke 39), which was written in Constantinople in 895 and acquired by the Oxford University in 1809.[49]
See also
Allan Bloom
Alexander Nehamas
Cambridge Platonists
Eric A. Havelock
Jacob Klein (philosopher)
Platonic love
Platonic Realism
Mitchell Miller
Seth Benardete
Leo Strauss
Seventh Letter (Plato)
Notes
a. ^ The grammarian Apollodorus argues in his Chronicles that Plato was born in the first year of the eighty-eighth Olympiad (427 BC), on the seventh day of the month Thargelion; according to this tradition the god Apollo was born this day.[50] According to another biographer of him, Neanthes, Plato was eighty-four years of age at his death.[50] If we accept Neanthes' version, Plato was younger than Isocrates by six years, and therefore he was born in the second year of the 87th Olympiad, the year Pericles died (429 BC).[51] According to the Suda, Plato was born in Aegina in the 88th Olympiad amid the preliminaries of the Peloponnesian war, and he lived 82 years.[52] Sir Thomas Browne also believes that Plato was born in the 88th Olympiad.[53] Renaissance Platonists celebrated Plato's birth on November 7.[54] Wilamowitz-Moellendorff estimates that Plato was born when Diotimos was archon eponymous, namely between July 29 428 BC and July 24 427 BC.[55] Greek philologist Ioannis Kalitsounakis believes that the philosopher was born on May 26 or 27 427 BC, while Jonathan Barnes regards 428 BC as year of Plato's birth.[56] For her part, Debra Nails asserts that the philosopher was born in 424/423 BC.[54]
b. ^ Diogenes Laertius mentions that Plato "was born, according to some writers, in Aegina in the house of Phidiades the son of Thales". Diogenes mentions as one of his sources the Universal History of Favorinus. According to Favorinus, Ariston, Plato's family, and his family were sent by Athens to settle as cleruchs (colonists retaining their Athenian citizenship), on the island of Aegina, from which they were expelled by the Spartans after Plato's birth there.[57] Nails points out, however, that there is no record of any Spartan expulsion of Athenians from Aegina between 431-411 BC.[58] On the other hand, at the Peace of Nicias, Aegina was silently left under Athens' control, and it was not until the summer of 411 that the Spartans overran the island.[59] Therefore, Nails concludes that "perhaps Ariston was a cleruch, perhaps he went to Aegina in 431, and perhaps Plato was born on Aegina, but none of this enables a precise dating of Ariston's death (or Plato's birth).[58] Aegina is regarded as Plato's place of birth by Suda as well.[52]
c. ^ Plato was a common name, of which 31 instances are known at Athens alone.[60]

Euclan

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Plato

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