Plato
"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical
tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato"
--Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, 1929
Plato (born in Athens about 427 BC, died about 347 BC) was an immensely influential classical Greek philosopher, student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle. His most famous work is The Republic (Greek Politeia, 'city') in which he outlines his vision of the ideal state. He is also well known for Laws and his many dialogues featuring Socrates. He founded the Academy, one of the earliest known organized schools in Western civilization, named after the spot it was founded on, holy to the hero Academus. He also began the discussion of Atlantis by mentioning it in his Timaeus and Critias.
Plato was an aristocrat decended from a moderately well-off family. His ancestor, Glaucon (not to be confused with his older brother Glaucon and a character in the Republic), was one of the best-known members of the Athenian aristocracy. Unlike his teacher Socrates, Plato wrote down his philosophical views and left a considerable number of manuscripts (see below).
Plato was deeply influenced by the Pythagoreans, whose notions of numerical harmony have clear echos in Plato's notion of the Forms (sometimes thus capitalized); see below.
In Plato’s writings, many centuries before Copernicus and Galileo, one finds the heliocentric theory of the universe. One finds debates concerning aristocratic and democratic forms of government. One finds debates concerning the role of heredity and environment in human intelligence and personality long before the publication of “The Bell Curve” or the formation of Human Genome Project or the discovery that schizophrenia has a genetic basis. One finds arguments for the subjectivity--and the objectivity--of human knowledge which foreshadow modern debates between Hume and Kant, or between the postmodernists and their opponents.
Plato wrote in a form known as Socratic Dialogue, in which several characters discuss a topic by asking questions of one another. The main character in the dialogue is Socrates; Plato himself is usually not present, or only appears as a listener. This can make it difficult to determine whether an opinion expressed in one of these dialogues is an idea of Socrates', or Plato's. It is generally agreed that Plato's earlier works are more closely based on Socrates' thought, whereas his later writing increasingly breaks away with the views of his former teacher.
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Plato's metaphysics: Platonism, or realism
One of Plato's legacies, and perhaps his greatest, was his dualistic metaphysics, often called (in metaphysics) simply "realism" or "Platonism." Whatever it is called, Plato's metaphysics divides the world into two distinct aspects: the intelligible world of "forms" and the perceptual world we see around us. He saw the perceptual world, and the things in it, as imperfect copies of the intelligible forms or ideas. These forms are unchangable and perfect, and are only comprehensible by the use of the intellect or understanding (i.e., a capacity of the mind that does not include sense-perception or imagination).
In the Republic Books VI and VII, Plato used a number of metaphors to explain his metaphysical views: the metaphor of the sun, the well-known allegory of the cave, and most explicitly, the divided line. Taken together, these metaphors convey a complex and, in places, difficult theory: there is something called The Form of the Good (often interpreted as Plato's God), which is the ultimate object of knowledge and which as it were sheds light on all the other forms (i.e., universals: abstract kinds and attributes) and from which all other forms "emanate." The Form of the Good does this in somewhat the same way as the sun sheds light on, or makes visible and "generates," things in the perceptual world. (See Plato's metaphor of the sun.) But indeed, in the perceptual world, the particular objects we see around us bear only a dim resemblance to the more ultimately real forms of Plato's intelligible world: it is as if we are seeing shadows of cut-out shapes on the walls of a cave, which are mere representations of the reality outside the cave, illuminated by the sun. (See Plato's allegory of the cave.) We can imagine everything in the universe represented on a line of increasing reality; it is divided once in the middle, and then once again in each of the resulting parts. The first division represents that between the intelligible and the perceptual worlds. Then there is a corresponding division in each of these worlds: the segment representing the perceptual world is divided into segments representing "real things" on the one hand, and shadows, reflections, and representations on the other. Similarly, the segment representing the intelligible world is divided into segments representing first principles and most general forms, on the one hand, and more derivative, "reflected" forms, on the other. (See the divided line of Plato.)
Plato's metaphysics, and particularly the dualism between the intelligible and the perceptual, would inspire later Neoplatonic thinkers (see Plotinus) and Gnosticism) and other metaphysical realists. For more on Platonic realism in general, see Platonic realism and the Forms.
A short history of Plato scholarship
Plato’s thought is often compared with that of his best and most famous student, Aristotle, whose reputation during the Middle Ages so completely eclipsed that of Plato that the Scholastic philosophers referred to Aristotle as "the Philosopher."
One of the characteristics of the Middle Ages was reliance on authority and on scholastic commentaries on writings of Plato and other historically important philosophers, rather than accessing their original works. In fact, Plato’s original writings were essentially lost to western civilization until their reintroduction in the twelfth century through the agency of Arab scholars who had maintained the original Greek texts of the ancients. These were eventually translated into Latin and later, into the local vernacular.
Only in the Renaissance, with the general resurgence of interest in classical civilization, did knowledge of Plato's philosophy become more widespread. Many of the greatest early modern scientists (e.g., Galileo) and artists (with the support of the Plato-inspired Lorenzo de Medici) who broke with Scholasticism and fostered the flowering of the Renaissance saw Plato’s philosophy as the basis for progress in the arts and sciences.
Today, Plato's reputation is as easily on a par with Aristotle's. Many college students have read Plato but not Aristotle, in large part because the former's greater accessibility.
Works by Plato
A work is marked (1) if it is not generally agreed by scholars that Plato is the author of the work. A work is marked (2) if it is generally agreed by scholars that Plato is not the author of the work.
- Alcibiades (1)
- Apology
- Axiochus (2)
- Charmides
- Clitophon (1)
- Cratylus
- Critias
- Crito
- Definitions (2)
- Demodocus (2)
- Epigrams
- Epinomis (2)
- Eryxias (2)
- Euthydemus
- Euthyphro
- Gorgias
- Greater Hippias (1)
- Halcyon (2)
- Hipparchus (2)
- Ion
- Laches
- Laws
- Lesser Hippias
- Letters
- Lysis
- Menexenus
- Meno
- Minos (2)
- On Justice (2)
- On Virtue (2)
- Parmenides
- Phædo
- Phædrus
- Philebus
- Protagoras
- Rival Lovers (2)
- Republic
- Second Alcibiades (2)
- Sisyphus (2)
- Sophist
- Statesman
- Symposium
- Theætetus
- Theages (2)
- Timæus