what is the biography of plato

Ancient Greek philosopher Plato founded the Academy and is the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence in Western thought.

Who Was Plato?

Ancient Greek philosopher Plato was a student of Socrates and a teacher of Aristotle. His writings explored justice, beauty and equality, and also contained discussions in aesthetics, political philosophy, theology, cosmology, epistemology and the philosophy of language. Plato founded the Academy in Athens, one of the first institutions of higher learning in the Western world.

Due to a lack of primary sources from the time period, much of Plato's life has been constructed by scholars through his writings and the writings of contemporaries and classical historians. Traditional history estimates Plato's birth was around 428 B.C.E., but more modern scholars, tracing later events in his life, believe he was born between 424 and 423 B.C.E. Both of his parents came from the Greek aristocracy. Plato's father, Ariston, descended from the kings of Athens and Messenia. His mother, Perictione, is said to be related to the 6th century B.C.E. Greek statesman Solon.

Some scholars believe that Plato was named for his grandfather, Aristocles, following the tradition of the naming the eldest son after the grandfather. But there is no conclusive evidence of this, or that Plato was the eldest son in his family. Other historians claim that "Plato" was a nickname, referring to his broad physical build. This too is possible, although there is record that the name Plato was given to boys before Aristocles was born.

As with many young boys of his social class, Plato was probably taught by some of Athens' finest educators. The curriculum would have featured the doctrines of Cratylus and Pythagoras as well as Parmenides. These probably helped develop the foundation for Plato's study of metaphysics (the study of nature) and epistemology (the study of knowledge).

Plato's father died when he was young, and his mother remarried her uncle, Pyrilampes, a Greek politician and ambassador to Persia. Plato is believed to have had two full brothers, one sister and a half brother, though it is not certain where he falls in the birth order. Often, members of Plato's family appeared in his dialogues. Historians believe this is an indication of Plato's pride in his family lineage.

As a young man, Plato experienced two major events that set his course in life. One was meeting the great Greek philosopher Socrates. Socrates's methods of dialogue and debate impressed Plato so much that he soon he became a close associate and dedicated his life to the question of virtue and the formation of a noble character. The other significant event was the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, in which Plato served for a brief time between 409 and 404 B.C.E. The defeat of Athens ended its democracy, which the Spartans replaced with an oligarchy. Two of Plato's relatives, Charmides and Critias, were prominent figures in the new government, part of the notorious Thirty Tyrants whose brief rule severely reduced the rights of Athenian citizens. After the oligarchy was overthrown and democracy was restored, Plato briefly considered a career in politics, but the execution of Socrates in 399 B.C.E. soured him on this idea and he turned to a life of study and philosophy.

After Socrates's death, Plato traveled for 12 years throughout the Mediterranean region, studying mathematics with the Pythagoreans in Italy, and geometry, geology, astronomy and religion in Egypt. During this time, or soon after, he began his extensive writing. There is some debate among scholars on the order of these writings, but most believe they fall into three distinct periods.

Early, Middle and Late Periods: An Overview

The first, or early, period occurs during Plato's travels (399-387 B.C.E.). The Apology of Socrates seems to have been written shortly after Socrates's death. Other texts in this time period include Protagoras , Euthyphro , Hippias Major and Minor and Ion . In these dialogues, Plato attempts to convey Socrates's philosophy and teachings.

In the second, or middle, period, Plato writes in his own voice on the central ideals of justice, courage, wisdom and moderation of the individual and society. The Republic was written during this time with its exploration of just government ruled by philosopher kings.

In the third, or late, period, Socrates is relegated to a minor role and Plato takes a closer look at his own early metaphysical ideas. He explores the role of art, including dance, music, drama and architecture, as well as ethics and morality. In his writings on the Theory of Forms, Plato suggests that the world of ideas is the only constant and that the perceived world through our senses is deceptive and changeable.

Founding the Academy

Sometime around 385 B.C.E., Plato founded a school of learning, known as the Academy, which he presided over until his death. It is believed the school was located at an enclosed park named for a legendary Athenian hero. The Academy operated until 529 C.E.., when it was closed by Roman Emperor Justinian I, who feared it was a source of paganism and a threat to Christianity. Over its years of operation, the Academy's curriculum included astronomy, biology, mathematics, political theory and philosophy. Plato hoped the Academy would provide a place for future leaders to discover how to build a better government in the Greek city-states.

In 367 B.C.E., Plato was invited by Dion, a friend and disciple, to be the personal tutor of his nephew, Dionysius II, the new ruler of Syracuse (Sicily). Dion believed that Dionysius showed promise as an ideal leader. Plato accepted, hoping the experience would produce a philosopher king. But Dionysius fell far short of expectations and suspected Dion, and later Plato, of conspiring against him. He had Dion exiled and Plato placed under "house arrest." Eventually, Plato returned to Athens and his Academy. One of his more promising students there was Aristotle, who would take his mentor's teachings in new directions.

Final Years and Death

Plato's final years were spent at the Academy and with his writing. The circumstances surrounding his death are clouded, though it is fairly certain that he died in Athens around 348 B.C.E., when he was in his early 80s. Some scholars suggest that he died while attending a wedding, while others believe he died peacefully in his sleep.

Plato's impact on philosophy and the nature of humans has had a lasting impact far beyond his homeland of Greece. His work covered a broad spectrum of interests and ideas: mathematics, science and nature, morals and political theory. His beliefs on the importance of mathematics in education have proven to be essential for understanding the entire universe. His work on the use of reason to develop a more fair and just society that is focused on the equality of individuals established the foundation for modern democracy.

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By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 16, 2023 | Original: November 9, 2009

The Athenian philosopher Plato (c. 428-347 B.C.) is one of the most important figures of the Ancient Greek world and the entire history of Western thought. In his written dialogues he conveyed and expanded on the ideas and techniques of his teacher Socrates. 

The Academy he founded was by some accounts the world’s first university and in it he trained his greatest student, the equally influential philosopher Aristotle. Plato’s recurring fascination was the distinction between ideal forms and everyday experience, and how it played out both for individuals and for societies. In the “Republic,” his most famous work, he envisioned a civilization governed not by lowly appetites but by the pure wisdom of a philosopher-king.

Plato: Early Life and Education

Plato was born around 428 B.C., during the final years of the Golden Age of Pericles’ Athens. He was of noble Athenian lineage on both sides. His father Ariston died when Plato was a child. His mother Perictione remarried the politician Pyrilampes. Plato grew up during the Peloponnesian War (431-404) and came of age around the time of Athens’ final defeat by Sparta and the political chaos that followed. He was educated in philosophy, poetry and gymnastics by distinguished Athenian teachers including the philosopher Cratylus.

Plato's Influences

The young Plato became a devoted follower of Socrates—indeed, he was one of the youths Socrates was condemned for allegedly corrupting. Plato’s recollections of Socrates’ lived-out philosophy and style of relentless questioning, the Socratic method, became the basis for his early dialogues. Plato’s dialogues, along with “Apologia,” his written account of the trial of Socrates, are viewed by historians as the most accurate available picture of the elder philosopher, who left no written works of his own.

Following Socrates’ forced suicide, Plato spent 12 years traveling in southern Italy, Sicily and Egypt, studying with other philosophers including followers of the mystic mathematician Pythagoras including Theodorus of Cyrene (creator of the spiral of Theodorus or Pythagorean spiral), Archytas of Tarentum and Echecrates of Phlius. Plato’s time among the Pythagoreans piqued his interest in mathematics.

Plato’s Theory of Forms, stating that the physical world we know is but a shadow of the real one, was strongly influenced by Parmenides and Zeno of Elea. The two appear as characters in Plato’s dialogue “The Parmenides.”

Plato had a lifelong relationship with the ruling family of Syracuse, who would later seek his advice on reforming their city’s politics.

Platonic Academy

Around 387, the 40-year-old Plato returned to Athens and founded his philosophical school in the grove of the Greek hero Academus, just outside the city walls. In his open-air Academy he delivered lectures to students gathered from throughout the Greek world (nine-tenths of them from outside Athens). 

Did you know? The section on music in Plato's "Republic" suggests that in an ideal society flutes would be banned in favor of the more dignified lyre, but on his deathbed Plato reportedly summoned a young girl to play her flute for him, tapping out the rhythm with his finger while he breathed his last.

Many of Plato’s writings, especially the so-called later dialogues, seem to have originated in his teaching there. In establishing the Academy Plato moved beyond the precepts of Socrates, who never founded a school and questioned the very idea of a teacher’s ability to impart knowledge.

Aristotle arrived from northern Greece to join the Academy at age 17, studying and teaching there for the last 20 years of Plato’s life. Plato died in Athens, and was probably buried on the Academy grounds.

Plato's Dialogues

With the exception of a set of letters of dubious provenance, all of Plato’s surviving writings are in dialogue form, with the character of Socrates appearing in all but one of them. His 36 dialogues are generally ordered into early, middle and late, though their chronology is determined by style and content rather than specific dates. 

The earliest of Plato’s dialogues offer a deep exploration of Socrates’ dialectic method of breaking down and analyzing ideas and presumptions. In the “Euthpyro,” Socrates’ endless questioning pushes a religious expert to realize that he has no understanding of what “piety” means. Such analyses pushed his students towards grappling with so-called Platonic forms—the ineffable perfect models (truth, beauty, what a chair should look like) by which people judge objects and experiences. 

In the middle dialogues, Plato’s individual ideas and beliefs, though never advocated outright, emerge from the Socratic form. The “Symposium” is a series of drinking-party speeches on the nature of love, in which Socrates says the best thing to do with romantic desire is to convert it into amicable truth-seeking (an idea termed “Platonic love” by later writers). In the “Meno,” Socrates demonstrates that wisdom is less a matter of learning things than “recollecting” what the soul already knows, in the way that an untaught boy can be led to discover for himself a geometric proof. 

The monumental “Republic” is a parallel exploration of the soul of a nation and of an individual. In both, Plato finds a three-part hierarchy between rulers, auxiliaries and citizens and between reason, emotion and desire. Just as reason should reign supreme in the individual, so should a wise ruler control a society. 

Only those with wisdom (ideally a sort of “philosopher-king”) are able to discern the true nature of things. The experiences of the lower tiers of the state and of the soul are—as Plato’s famous analogy has it—related to true knowledge the way the shadows on the wall of a cave are related to, yet wholly different from, the forms that cast them. 

Plato’s late dialogues are barely dialogues at all but rather explorations of specific topics. The “Timeaus” explains a cosmology intertwined with geometry, in which perfected three-dimensional shapes—cubes, pyramids, icosahedrons—are the “Platonic solids” out of which the whole universe is made. In the “Laws,” his final dialogue, Plato retreats from the pure theory of the “Republic,” suggesting that experience and history as well as wisdom can inform the running of an ideal state. 

Plato Quotes 

Plato is credited with coining several phrases that are still popular today. Here are some of Plato’s most famous quotes: 

· “Love is a serious mental disease.” 

· “When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.”

 · “Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.” 

· “Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” 

· “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” 

· “Man-a being in search of meaning.” 

· “Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of lover, everyone becomes a poet.” 

· “There are two things a person should never be angry at: What they can help, and what they cannot.” 

· “People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.” 

Plato: Legacy and Influence 

The Academy flourished for nearly three centuries following Plato’s death, but was destroyed in the sacking of Athens by the Roman general Sulla in 86 B.C. Though continually read in the  Byzantine Empire  and in the Islamic world, Plato was overshadowed by Aristotle in the Christian west. 

It was only in the Renaissance that scholars like Petrarch led a revival of Plato’s thought, in particular his explorations of logic and geometry. William Wordsworth, Percy Shelly and others in the 19th-century Romantic movement found philosophical solace in Plato’s dialogues.

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GREAT THINKERS Plato

Plato is one of the most brilliant and far-reaching writers to have ever lived. Our very conception of philosophy—of rigorous thinking concerning the true situation of man, the nature of the whole, and the perplexity of being—owes a great debt to his work. No area of inquiry seems foreign to him: his writings investigate ethics, politics, mathematics, metaphysics, logic, aesthetics, and epistemology in tremendous depth and breadth. In the words of Alfred North Whitehead, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”

There are few contemporary sources for the life of Plato. According to Diogenes Laertius, who lived many centuries later than the philosophers about whom he was writing, Plato was born to Ariston, an Athenian aristocrat who traced his lineage to Codrus, the king of Athens, and to Melanthus, the king of Messina. The family of his mother, Perictione, boasted a relationship with the great Athenian legislator Solon. Diogenes Laertius also reports that the philosopher’s name was Aristocles, for his grandfather, but that his wrestling coach dubbed him “Platon,” meaning “broad,” either on account of his robust physique, or the width of his forehead, or eloquence of his speech. And yet modern scholars are in doubt, since the name “Plato” was not uncommon in the Athens of Plato’s day.

Well before his encounter with Socrates, Plato was known to accompany philosophers such as Cratylus, a disciple of Heraclitus. Later in life, after the death of Socrates, Plato traveled around Egypt, Italy, Sicily, and Cyrene, Libya. Upon his return to Athens at around 40 years of age, Plato founded the first known institution of higher learning in the West, the Academy, named for its location in the Grove of Academus. The Academy was open until its destruction by Sulla in 84 BCE. It counts among its illustrious alumni many fine minds, but none more renowned than Aristotle .

After founding the Academy, Plato became involved in the politics of Syracuse. According to Diogenes, Plato visited Syracuse while it was under the rule of Dionysius. While there, Dionysius’ brother-in-law, Dion, became Plato’s disciple. Dion, however, later turned against Plato, selling him into slavery. During this time, Plato nearly faced death in Cyrene. Fortunately, chancing upon an admirer who purchased his freedom, Plato was spared and found his way home.

Upon the death of Dionysius, according to Plato’s account in his Seventh Letter , Dion requested that Plato return to Syracuse to tutor young Dionysius II. In another reversal of fortune, Dionysius II expelled his uncle Dion, and compelled Plato to remain. Plato would eventually leave Syracuse, while Dion later returned to Syracuse and overthrew Dionysius II, only to be usurped by Callipus, another disciple of Plato.

Ancient sources offer differing accounts of Plato’s death. According to one source, Plato died peacefully in his bed listening to the sweet sounds of a Thracian flute girl. Another source reports that he died while attending a friend’s wedding feast. Still another account simply says he died in his sleep.

For further biographical reading, see also:

The Cambridge Companion to Plato , ed. Richard Kraut, Cambridge: 1992.

Biography Online

Plato Biography

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Early life of Plato

The early life of Plato is only partially recorded, but he was born in 428/427 BCE to an aristocratic family in Athens. His father’s side claimed descent from the god Poseidon and the last kings of Athens. Some sources suggest that his real name was Aristocles, and that ‘Plato’ was a nickname given to him later in life. Plato roughly translates as the ‘broad’ It may have been a reflection of the breadth of interests that Plato considered.

He was given a good education, and he soon impressed those around him with his speed of learning and clarity of thought. He was also drawn to the philosopher Socrates . Socrates was a great and independent thinker who gathered a group of young men to talk and discuss philosophy. Plato was deeply impressed by the personality, spirit and philosophic detachment of his mentor Socrates. As Plato writes:

“Oh dear Pan and all the other Gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside.  Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within.  May I consider the wise man rich.  As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him.”

– Plato, “Phaedrus” – a prayer of Socrates, as portrayed in the dialogue.

Plato was deeply hurt after Socrates’ trial in 399 BC where he was condemned for ‘corrupting the youth of Athens’ and sentenced to death – being forced to drink hemlock. After the death of Socrates, Plato left Athens, disgusted with the mob-mentality of Athenian democracy. He travelled widely around the Meditteranean region, visiting Greece, Italy and Egypt. He came into contact with followers of Pythagoras and he was influenced by some of their philosophic ideas.

Relationship with Socrates

Socrates appears in most of Plato’s writings, and it is clear that Socrates and his Socratic dialogues had a big influence on Plato’s own writing and style of teaching.

It is only through Plato, that we get a clear idea of Socrates’ philosophy and way of life. In ‘ Apology of Socrates ‘ , Plato writes an account of Socrates defending himself in a trial which ultimately led to his own death. It presents Socrates as a model philosopher, calmly putting the ideals of justice above any personal desire.

“It would be better for me … that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.”

Plato (Words spoken by Socrates,) “The Gorgias”

However, Plato was not merely transcribing the words of Socrates; he was also using his own interpretations and ideas to those which he learned from him.

Plato Academy

The School of Athens by Raffael. Plato and Aristotle are depicted together

In the 380s, Plato returned to Athens where he founded “The Academy” a school of learning, philosophy and research. It was a pioneer of future universities and became a magnet for the leading minds of the time. The polymath Aristotle spent 20 years at Plato’s Academy and further heightened its reputation. It was at the Academy that Plato wrote his great works and taught a range of students.

Plato’s Central Doctrines

Plato in the Academy picture

Plato wrote on a whole range of topics, but it is his ethics and general philosophy which seemed to be his biggest interest. Plato was fundamentally a rationalist who felt the role of philosophy was to help people to live a good life. He sought to make sense of the world through reason and empiricism and he used this basic approach to a range of different topics. On metaphysics, he saw a distinction between the body (corporeal world) and the soul. To Plato, the soul could become captive to the material desires of the body, and to gain lasting happiness, the higher-wisdom of the soul and mind should be in control of a man’s lower passions.

“The inexperienced in wisdom and virtue, ever occupied with feasting and such, are carried downward, and there, as is fitting, they wander their whole life long, neither ever looking upward to the truth above them nor rising toward it, nor tasting pure and lasting pleasures.” – Plato, “The Republic”

Plato also saw a distinction between the imperfection of the material world and the highest ideals which transcend material imperfections. Plato felt that someone of a ‘philosophic mind’ could differentiate between outward limitations and the highest ideals of beauty, truth, unity and justice. It is a philosophy which hints at the limitations of the material and the mental world and encourages an aspiration to higher ideals.

“I only wish that wisdom were the kind of thing that flowed … from the vessel that was full to the one that was empty.” – Plato, “The Symposium”

He also mentions that the life we live is based on previous choices in either this incarnation or previous incarnations. Plato’s philosophy was also heavily influenced by Pythagoras , especially his religious views on transmigration.

In Politics , Plato developed the idea of a ‘Philosopher King’ someone who would be a wisdom lover and develop the necessary qualities to rule over his people with wisdom and justice. This may have partly been a reaction to the demographic democracy he saw in Athens and a hesitation to rely on the ‘wisdom of the crowds,’ that prevailed in Athens at the time. He made the analogy that the philosopher-king was like a ship’s captain or doctor. Someone who knows best what his patient needs.

“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)

To guard against philosopher-kings becoming tyrants, Plato also stated that they should be subject to the rule of law that limits the ruler’s actions

Style of Teaching

Plato didn’t write treatises and lectures, but wrote in an indirect way, encouraging the reader to ask questions and think for himself. Inspired by Socrates, he makes use of informal conversation and humorous anecdote. Like his teacher Socrates, Plato was happy to play the role of observer rather than a preacher. There is also signs of development and changes in thought, though some of this is due to uncertainty over whether letters ascribed to Plato, were actually written by him.

Plato and Aristotle

Aristotle didn’t agree with many conclusions of his teacher. For example, Aristotle felt the soul was an intrinsic part of the body. However, although Aristotle disagreed with Plato in some regards, he revered him as a supreme authority and person. His esteem for Plato was so great that he felt it would be “Blasphemy in the extreme even to praise him.” After Plato’s death, Aristotle started his own school – The Lyceum.

Death of Plato

There are conflicting reports on the death of Plato. But, he died between the ages of 81 and 84, and so was long-lived by ancient standards.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Plato”, Oxford, UK. www.biographyonline.net , Originally published 26 February 2012. Last updated 8 March 2020.

Plato Quotes

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”

“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”

“One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”

“I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”

― Plato, The Republic

“There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.”

Plato: Complete Works

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Plato: A Complete Overview of His Life, Work, and Philosophy

Did you know that Plato, one of the most prominent thinkers in history, thought there may be a perfect world that exists outside of our senses?

Plato is among the most renowned philosophers of ancient Greece and is the founder of academic philosophy. His influence over Western culture is immense, and his writings constitute a source of great philosophical thought. Plato’s philosophy is a system of teachings that includes metaphysics, ethics, politics, and more.

The basic idea of the philosophy of Plato is that there is a higher reality, beyond the reality we see with our eyes, that is constituted by ideal forms or ideas that are objective and eternal. His theories about ideas and his dialectics laid the groundwork for a philosophical tradition known as Platonism. Let’s examine the legacy of Plato in detail!

Plato’s Early Life

The early life of Plato , one of the greatest philosophers in history, is clouded with mystery due to the lack of reliable sources. However, scholars have gathered some information about his upbringing.

Plato was born around 428 or 427 BCE in an aristocratic family in Athens, Greece. His birth name was Aristocles, but he would later be called Plato due to his broad physique and shoulders ( platýs means “broad” in ancient Greek). His family had a long lineage of influential politicians as well as thinkers, and his mother, Perictione, was related to the legendary lawmaker Solon .

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From a very young age, Plato showed great intellectual promise and an inclination for philosophy. According to ancient biographical sources such as Diogenes Laertius’ Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers , he received an excellent education in music, poetry, grammar, gymnastics, and mathematics.

Philosopher Cratylus of Ephesos was a pupil of Heraclitus and taught Plato. He inspired the future thinker to study literature, rhetoric, ethics, as well as other subjects. Plato succeeded academically in literature, arts, and wrestling. He even participated in Olympic and Nemean Games rallies.

The post- Periclean era, during which the childhood and teenage years of Plato went on, witnessed a rise in laziness, cowardice, as well as greed. Military hostilities between the Delian League and the Peloponnesian only served to exacerbate it.

Plato’s father, the politician Ariston, tried to improve the lives of fellow citizens. Because of this, he wanted his son to also become a politician after school. But Plato had other plans for the future. He tried writing in an attempt to create poems and dramas as well.

In 408 BC, a young Plato decided to take his presentation of the tragedy he had written all the way to the nearby theater. On his way back home, he met an elderly yet vivacious man who sparked a conversation that profoundly changed the young man’s life and marked the beginning line of a new story in his life. This influential person turned out to be none other than Socrates himself.

Study In Athens And Establishment Of The Academy

Plato’s study in Athens played an important period in his life, wherein he further knit and crystallized his philosophical ideas. In his early twenties, Plato became Socrates’ devoted student. He was mesmerized by Socrates’ unique teaching, which took the form of the Socratic Dialogues , where questions were used to dig deeper truths and challenge preconceived notions. This transforming experience tremendously affected Plato’s philosophical outlook.

Living through the execution of Socrates for allegedly corrupting the youth, Plato spent a lot of time secluded. He left Athens for Egypt, going through Italy and Sicily before returning again. Such long tours affected him very much as he met so many different cultures and learned about various philosophical traditions as well as deepened his knowledge of mathematics and astronomy.

In 388 BCE, Plato founded the Academy in Athens . This was a center for intellectual pursuits, where soon it grew into the recognized institution of higher education among Western history’s earliest institutions. The Academy influenced discussions and debates among philosophers who used it as their main ground of convergence.

Here, Plato pursued his passion for philosophy by engaging students through lectures and discussions. His teachings have covered diverse areas such as ethics, metaphysics, epistemology (the theory of knowledge), political philosophy, etc. The concept of “ Forms ” or “Ideas” was central to his teachings.

Plato’s work also included the writing of dialogues that had Socrates as the central character involved in debates with fellow philosophers or common citizens on a number of subjects. The dialogues not only became philosophical treatises but likewise, literary proceedings capturing both intellectual contention and ethical challenges.

Plato’s time in Athens also helped him develop relationships with notable people like Aristotle , who later on would become Plato’s most eminent student. This mentor-mentee relationship would leave a deep mark on the development of some of Aristotle’s own philosophical ideas.

Socrates And Plato

Plato’s relationship with Socrates is fundamental and complex—penetrated with deep admiration, intellectual influence, and the profound impact the latter had on Plato’s philosophical development.

Plato first met Socrates when he was still a youth and immediately fell under the spell of his untraditional teaching methods, deep wisdom, and charismatic aura. Socrates became famous for his relentless determination to look for the truth through questioning, as well as shaking up conventional opinions.

Socrates’ method of teaching greatly influenced Plato. His use of questions to challenge assumptions had a long-lasting impact on Plato’s philosophical approach. This can be observed in Plato’s own dialogues, where he often uses similar methods to explore ideas intensively.

Moreover, as has been indicated earlier, the execution of Socrates by Athens’ democratic government left a deep mark on Plato. The unjust nature of this event made him question both democracy and those set limits of public opinion in matters that fell under philosophy and morality. This failure of democracy caused him to seek other forms of governance.

However, it is worth mentioning here that though Socrates had a profound impact on Plato’s way of thinking, they were two separate persons with their own individual ways of seeing things. While the Socratic Dialogues mainly dealt with ethical and moral questions, Plato also broadened his philosophy to include broader metaphysical as well as ontological discussions.

In other words, the relationship between Socrates and Plato can be said to have been an intellectual kinship, with Socrates being a strong motivating factor in Plato’s philosophical development. Through their dialogue-based interrogation sessions, they both molded as well as transformed the landscape of Western philosophy.

Plato’s Works

The works of Plato have withstood the test of time for thousands of years because they carried deep insights, great timeless themes, and intellectual rigor.

The Republic is among the most celebrated and influential works by Plato. Written in dialogue form, it tackles subjects like justice, political philosophy, education, and metaphysics. In The Republic , Plato puts forward his vision of an ideal state ruled by philosopher-kings endowed with the appropriate kind of wisdom.

Another work, The Symposium , explores the meaning of love or eros through a series of speeches delivered at a social gathering. Each character delivers his interpretation of love varying from physical desire to Platonic ideals. This work scrutinizes various aspects of human relations and cemented the pursuit of beauty and knowledge as elements that are essential to love.

In the dialogue Phaedrus , Plato focuses on rhetoric and speaks about the strength of speech through a conversation between Socrates and Phaedrus. It examines issues such as persuasion, truth-seeking, and communication skills. This work gives us an idea of how rhetoric can either mindlessly manipulate minds or give real philosophical insight if applied correctly.

Phaedo explores one’s relationship with death and immortality. The dialogue’s setting is Socrates’ last day before he was executed. Plato asks the participants in the dialogue to delve into different arguments for the immortality of the soul. Plato also provides an insightful reflection about the existence of knowledge and what a soul needs to know when it dies.

In Apology , Plato summarizes Socrates’ defense at his trial and highlights his unwavering commitment to truth-seeking in philosophical inquiry. The text explores the confines of societal norms and beliefs while shedding light on Socrates’ rebellious attitude toward defying conventional wisdom.

Style Of Thought

The style of thought developed by Plato was characterized by rationalism , idealism, and a great focus on the pursuit of truth and knowledge. Plato’s philosophical ideas often transcended conventionally understood reality and delved into abstract concepts.

One aspect of Plato’s style of thought is that he emphasized reason and logic . He believed that by critical thinking and logical analysis, one could arrive at objective truths about the world. In establishing his philosophical arguments, Plato used deductive reasoning using premises to draw valid conclusions.

Another notable feature of Plato’s thought is idealism. He suggested that the physical world we experience with our senses is only a flawed copy or reflection of an ultimate realm of “Forms” or “Ideas,” which represent perfect, eternal, and changeless essences beneath the imperfect appearances found in the empirical world.

Plato demonstrated an interest in metaphysics : he was deeply concerned with questions about existence, reality, and the nature of being. His dualistic view noted a distinction between body and soul—where the physical body was regarded as transitory and mortal while the immaterial soul represented our true essence.

As far as epistemology is concerned (the theory of knowledge), Plato believed in a kind of knowledge stored within the soul. He posited that learning is actually a process of remembering these pre-existing truths rather than acquiring new information. Therefore, true wisdom will involve reconnecting with this innate knowledge through philosophical inquiry.

Besides, Plato’s political philosophy reflected his manner of thought as he stressed the ideal city-state governed by philosopher-kings . In what he termed a “philosopher-king,” in fact, he has imagined virtuous rulers who both have intellectual power and moral integrity—something required for wise governance.

Lastly, Plato often used dialogue as a format to present his ideas. Such literary style allowed him to explore complex subjects by way of engaging in conversations between Socrates (and sometimes other characters), who would debate multiple viewpoints. Such a method gave room for examining diverse perspectives and resolving philosophical challenges via dialectical reasoning.

The Platonic Dialogues

One of the most important parts of Plato’s legacy is his dialogues. Platonic dialogues are a unique form of literature through which Plato presents his philosophical ideas in dialogue forms, with Socrates being the main character engaged in conversations with different people.

This collection includes more than thirty dialogues describing various philosophical themes and giving different arguments. Some of the most popular dialogues include The Republic , Phaedrus , Symposium , Phaedo , and Meno .

The dialogues are dramatic because they contain Socrates conducting intellectual debates with friends, students, or adversaries. Plato makes use of these conversations to give rise to arguments from multiple viewpoints implicating his philosophical ideas.

Another aspect of the Platonic dialogues includes using the elenchus or Socratic method . This approach entails lots of questioning and exploring others’ ideas to understand contradictions or differences. Through this dialectical process, Plato seeks to induce readers into gaining comprehension of fundamental truths and knowledge.

Another important element is that Plato often used allegory and metaphorical language to illustrate deeper concepts. At times, for example, in The Republic , he used the cave allegory to explain his theory of Forms or Ideas. Metaphors help make philosophical ideas accessible while encouraging readers to interpret deeper meanings as well.

Plato’s dialogues are also proof of his interest in ethics and moral philosophy. He talks a lot about questions pertaining to justice, wisdom, courage, temperance (self-control), and how they contribute toward living a virtuous life.

Dating Of Platonic Dialogues

Precise dating of the Platonic Dialogues has become the topic of scholarly conjecture and debate, as evidence for it is scarce. Plato himself gives no precise dates for his works, leaving further difficulty in establishing a chronology with much precision.

On the other hand, scholars have approximated dates through analysis of the internal evidence within the dialogues and cross-referenced them with external historical events. Some factors which are used in this analysis comprise references to contemporary figures, political situations, as well as the development of Plato’s philosophical ideas across different dialogues.

In turn, according to the considerations given above, Plato’s dialogues are divided into three periods. The dialogues written by Plato while he was associated with Socrates up until his death in 399 BCE are generally regarded as belonging to the early period . Examples of works found within this duration include Euthyphro , Apology , and Crito .

The middle period is considered to be the most productive stage in Plato’s career, from about 388-368 BCE. Within this time span, his most acclaimed dialogues were composed, such as Symposium , Phaedrus , Meno , Phaedo , and Republic . These works center on numerous philosophical topics concentrating on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics.

The late period consisted of dialogues like Parmenides , Theaetetus , Sophist , and Timaeus . It refers to the last years of Plato’s life—about 367–347 BCE. And these works often result in making more complex speculations about the Theory of Forms or Ideas.

Still, pinpointing the exact chronological order remains totally impossible due to overlapping themes or ideas found throughout different periods. Additionally, there are debates among scholars relative to certain specific dates within each period.

In the philosophy of Plato, the concept of “Forms” or “Ideas” plays a central role. The Forms refer to an independent realm of perfect, eternal, unchanging ideals that exist in their own world alongside ours, which we see as mere physical reflections or imperfect representations of these higher truths.

Plato believes that the world of physical objects is characterized by change and imperfection. It is perceived through our senses, subjective interpretations as well as individual perspectives. The Forms, on the other hand, are absolute and objective in their nature. They stand for the essential qualities and characteristics that define what a thing really is.

For example, in Plato’s view, there exists an ideal Form of beauty that embodies all aspects of what it means to be beautiful. Physical objects or individuals may possess varying degrees of beauty but can never fully capture or replicate this perfect Form of beauty.

Plato believed that humans are somehow endowed with innate knowledge or recognition of these Forms since the human soul had previous experience with them before they entered into the body. By means of philosophical inquiry and contemplation, one could strive to remember these divine truths.

Plato also perceived the Forms as hierarchical in nature. The Form of Goodness represented the ultimate truth and ultimate reality at the top of the hierarchy. This Form illuminated all other Forms and offered a guiding principle for understanding morality and ethics.

Forms also had a big role in Plato’s political philosophy. He asserted that society should be directed by philosopher-kings who have gained knowledge of the Forms through philosophical training. These enlightened rulers would govern with wisdom and justice based on their deep insight into true reality.

The Forms And Society

In Plato’s philosophy, the concept of Forms has huge implications for how society should be structured. In Plato’s teaching, society must be organized hierarchically so that it reflects the nature of the Forms themselves and similarly aspires to conform with their essence.

In Plato’s ideal society, philosophers are considered to have the greatest knowledge and wisdom. He said that these philosopher-kings, who undergo rigorous training in philosophy, should rule over society. Their governance would be founded on their deep understanding of true reality, ensuring order, justice, and harmony.

Plato had three classes in his proposed social structure: rulers (philosopher-kings), guardians (auxiliaries or warriors), and producers (the working class). There are specific roles that go with each of these classes connected to their nature and skills.

The philosopher-kings are responsible for governing wisely because of their knowledge of the Forms which they apply to make just laws and policies. They guide society towards flourishing by promoting virtue while ensuring that individuals don’t pursue mere material desires rather than aligning with higher ideals.

The guardians stand as protectors of the state, guarding it from any outside threat. They are also trained in military skills, at the same time being educated to build a rounded character.

The producers carry out what is necessary for providing goods and services within society. Though they do not possess philosophical insight in the same way as the rulers or warriors, their labor still contributes valuable meaning that supports the functioning of the state.

Plato’s Political Views

Plato’s political views are best expressed via his famous dialogue, The Republic . He offers his ideal state and gives insights into the nature of justice, governance, and the function of philosophers within society.

During his days, Plato was quite skeptical of democracy as it existed in Athens. He believed that a just and well-ordered society should be guided by philosopher-kings who have access to wisdom, knowledge, and deep insight into truth. In Plato’s opinion, only these individuals could make impartial decisions based on rationality instead of self-interest or populist appeal.

As was mentioned, Plato believed that society should be divided into three classes: the rulers or philosopher-kings at the top, the guardians (auxiliaries) who defend and maintain order in society through military service and enforcement of laws, and the producers who engage in various crafts and provide for the needs of all. Each class is determined by one’s inherent abilities and talents.

Secondly, Plato insisted that private property should be abolished within this ideal state. That is to say, the philosopher-kings would live a communal life without personal possessions in order to prevent conflicts stemming from disparities in material wealth. In other words, this vision wanted to eradicate greed and create unity between citizens.

Plato contended that education is a basic element of social coherence and individual development. The children within this ideal state would undergo intensive educational programs created by philosophers for the development of their intellectual abilities as well as virtues such as wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice.

Plato also recommended the idea of specialization within this society that is based on merit. Different individuals possess different natural talents or skills; therefore, they should fulfill different roles based on their aptitude rather than social status or hereditary lineage.

The Theory Of Knowledge

Plato’s theory of knowledge is an important aspect of his philosophical framework. In his dialogues, especially in the Theaetetus , the nature of exploring and acquiring knowledge is considered.

A central aspect of this theory is the notion of recollection or anamnesis . Plato says that we have in our souls an innate knowledge that predates our being here and now. This knowledge was acquired when the soul resided in the realm of the Forms, before being embodied. The learning process in this life is something like an act of remembrance—you learn what you already knew, but forgot.

According to Plato, true knowledge ( episteme ) is characterized by the firmness and certainty that one attains. True knowledge does not arise from sensory perception in conjunction with opinion. It is a product of rational understanding and contemplation of eternal and unchanging truths to be found within the realm of Forms.

Plato argued that while our senses can deceive us or provide only partial information about physical objects, genuine knowledge arises through reasoning and intellect. This intellectual apprehension allows us to grasp universal concepts or Forms that underlie individual instances perceived by the senses.

Plato distinguished between two dimensions of reality: the visible world, which we perceive with our senses, and the intelligible world comprising timeless, perfect Forms. While physical objects are subject to change and are characterized by imperfections, their corresponding Forms exist eternally and embody ideal qualities.

According to Plato’s theory of knowledge, true understanding requires rigorous intellectual investigation rather than relying solely on sensory information. So, philosophical inquiry involves dialectic reasoning—an exchange between individuals engaged in questioning assumptions to arrive at higher levels of insight.

The Immortality Of The Soul

In The Phaedo, Plato talks about the immortality of the soul . In this work, Socrates takes part in a discussion with his friends on the day of his execution and starts delving into philosophical arguments for the belief that the soul outlives the physical body and is still alive after death.

According to Plato, the soul is eternal, which means that it cannot come into being or pass away. He argues that everything that is subject to change and decay is impermanent, whereas the soul, being unchanging and incorporeal, remains unaffected by physical disturbances.

Among Plato’s chief arguments for the immortality of the soul is his theory of Forms. He holds that for any instance of an object or attribute we see in the material world (such as beauty or justice), there must be an absolute and unchanging Form, or Idea, behind it.

These Forms actually exist independently of their visible embodiments and are known through reason rather than sensory experience. Therefore, since our knowledge of these Forms exceeds what we encounter here in our terrestrial life, Plato argues that our souls must have previously been in contact with them before they were embodied.

Another important aspect discussed in The Phaedo is Socrates’ observation about how knowledge is acquired through remembrance rather than learning. He says that the ability to recognize mathematical principles or universal concepts implies a pre-existing knowledge within us—knowledge acquired by our souls before being embodied. This innate knowledge points towards an existence beyond death since it transcends transient experiences.

Socrates also provides a teleological argument. He emphasizes that human beings have an instinctual desire for wisdom and truth-seeking, which can never be fulfilled within the confines of our physical existence. Therefore, he concludes that the soul is immortal, so it could possibly achieve true wisdom and ultimate reality.

The Problem Of Evil

The problem of evil is a theological and philosophical dilemma trying to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and benevolent God. It poses a challenge: in case such a God exists, why do evil and suffering exist?

In Plato’s philosophy, he believed that there is an ultimate reality exterior to this physical world—that of Forms. For him, the physical world that we see today is, in a sense, essentially imperfect and changing all the time. The Forms stand for perennial truths and ideals which do exist in this higher reality.

From this point of view, one may argue that within Plato’s metaphysical framework, there are some possible insights into the way forward in dealing with the problem of evil. In his opinion, evil arises from a lack or deficiency rather than being an essence itself. Evil is regarded as being a result of imperfection or deviation from these ideal Forms.

Plato also believed that human souls possessed prior knowledge or memory of these Forms before being incarnated into the bodies. He held that individuals commanded an inborn desire for goodness and truth but could easily be corrupted or misled by physical complexes or influences from the outside.

Thus, one could interpret in Plato’s understanding that evils come about through ignorance or misalignment with the true nature, which is represented by the Forms. It would suggest that people do morally wrong actions because of their lack of understanding or distance from genuine knowledge.

The Moral Theory

Plato’s moral theory presented in his dialogues and mostly developed in works like Republic and Phaedrus is based upon the concept of the soul. To Plato, morality is not only a set of rules or an external standard but something that lies deep at the core of an individual’s self, their alignment with the ultimate Good.

In Plato’s moral theory, there is the claim that every human being has an eternal soul. Plato held that souls exist at birth and they remain present after death.

The soul, for Plato, was made up of three parts: reason (the rational element), appetite (the desires and emotions), and spirit (the part that seeks honor). These three parts have unique functions, but they have to harmonize themselves so that a person may attain moral excellence.

Plato argues that true virtue lies in cultivating a unified soul by allowing reason to govern over appetite and spirit. In Plato’s understanding, reason would represent wisdom and knowledge guiding our actions by recognizing what is really good and just. It allows people to understand abstract concepts—such as justice, truth, beauty, and other abstract notions that are beyond the physical world.

Plato felt that true knowledge of these higher truths would only be gained through philosophical inquiry, reflection, and contemplation. Education was important to Plato’s ideas on how to build individuals’ characters because he felt it was crucial for people to be exposed to the teachings of philosophy so their souls “align with the good.”

Plato also considered societal harmonization to be of vital significance for morality. He suggested an ideal society run by philosopher-kings who have a profound understanding of truth and are capable of ruling with wisdom and justice. In this just society, each person would fulfill their role solely based on inherent ability and talent.

Plato’s moral theory was the foundation for future ethical theories in Western philosophy. The reason, self-reflection, and education as basic requirements to arrive at personal and societal virtue continue inspiring discussions today. His concepts inspire readers to seek a deeper discussion on ethics and the quest for moral excellence.

The Allegory Of The Cave

The myth of the cave (or “Plato’s cave,” “ Allegory of the cave ”) is considered the cornerstone of Platonism and objective idealism in general.

The allegory is as follows. Non-philosophers are like prisoners in a cave who can only look in one direction. A fire burns behind them, and a wall juts out in front of them. There is nothing between them and the wall, they see only their own shadow and the shadow of things that pass between their backs and the fire. They are forced to believe in the reality of these shadows; moreover, they have no idea about what causes the shadows.

In the end, one of the prisoners manages to escape from the cave. For the first time, he can see true things in the light of the sun and realizes that he has been deceived by the shadows. If he is a philosopher, he must return to the cave and free all the other prisoners, which may prove to be a difficult task; prisoners could resist their ignorance.

So, for Plato, the cave is a metaphor for the sensual world in which people live. Like the prisoners of the cave, they believe that thanks to the senses, they know true reality. However, such a life is just an illusion. Only vague shadows reach them from the true world of ideas.

A philosopher can get a more complete picture of the world of ideas by constantly asking himself questions and looking for answers to them. However, it is pointless to try to share the acquired knowledge with a crowd that is unable to break away from the illusions of everyday perception.

Criticism Of Plato

Despite enduring influence, the philosophy of Plato has endured many criticisms throughout history.

First, some critics argue that the theory of Forms by Plato is abstract and disconnected from reality. For Plato, there exists a separate realm of perfect ideals which exist divorced from our reality. Critics, in this case, state that this dualistic perspective undermines both the relevance of empirical observations as well as the complexity of the natural world.

Secondly, Plato’s ideal city-state, as he had described in his book The Republic , has been blamed for being utopian and impractical. Ideas of philosopher-kings ruling with absolute wisdom were thought to be unrealistic, as well as seemingly amounting to oppression.

In addition, some critics find Plato’s notion of knowledge as a recollection or remembering the Forms as misguided. They say that his epistemology dwells too much on innate ideas rather than on the process of learning through experience and sense perception.

Moreover, some scholars argue whether Plato presents an accurate picture of Socrates’ real beliefs as clearly as possible in his dialogues. As all the teachings of Socrates are communicated through Plato’s writings, it becomes difficult to determine where Socrates ends and where Plato begins as an independent thinker.

These criticisms provide important points of criticism with Plato’s philosophical framework, from issues of abstraction and practicality to questions regarding gender equality, epistemology, elitism, etc. Interestingly enough, even with these criticisms, there is still much serious philosophical debate over Plato’s ideas, and they continue to influence contemporary thought.

So, Who Was Plato?

Plato was much more than just an ancient Greek philosopher; he was a deep thinker whose ideas still speak to generations of scholars and seekers of truth. His study at Athens had been one of the most transformative periods in his life, where he got into the teachings of Socrates and set out on a quest for philosophical truths.

Plato’s intellectual engagements were not confined to the abstract domain alone but extended to the establishment of the Academy, a well-known institution that fostered intellectual curiosity and philosophical discourse. Through his lectures, dialogues, and writings, Plato ventured into various philosophical domains in which ethics was included alongside metaphysics, epistemology, and other political philosophy.

At the center of Plato’s worldview were Forms or Ideas — abstract but perfect ideals that somehow transcended our imperfect physical reality. Though subject to scrutiny and criticism over time, this theory sparked contemplation about objective truths beyond mere appearances.

Of course, some will criticize Plato’s arguably utopian beliefs or perceived disconnect from empirical observation. Yet it is worth remembering that his ideas have had a lasting influence on Western philosophy.

His critics may rail against his exclusivity or apparent sexism when it comes to political rights or artistic expression. Yet still, as they fling their bait over and again, Plato’s legacy rests within the depth and breadth of those intellectual conversations he started.

So, Plato’s philosophy calls us to engage with deep questions about knowledge, justice, and morality, as well as the very nature of reality itself. He calls us to embark upon our own lifelong journeys toward wisdom and self-discovery.

Who Was Plato?

By Viktoriya Sus MA Philosophy Viktoriya is a writer from L’viv, Ukraine. She has knowledge about the main thinkers. In her free time, she loves to read books on philosophy and analyze whether ancient philosophical thought is relevant today. Besides writing, she loves traveling, learning new languages, and visiting museums.

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We explain who Plato was and what his most significant contributions were. In addition, we explore the stages of his thought and his relationship with Socrates.

Who was Plato?

Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Athens, who lived between 427 and 347 BC . A disciple of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle , he is one of the most influential philosophers in the history of philosophy.

He is primarily known for having been the first philosopher to present his work in a rather systematic way . Among his most important ideas are: the theory of Forms (or theory of Ideas), the allegory of the cave and the famous Platonic dualism, which divides the world into a visible realm and an intelligible one.

In 387 BC he founded the Academy, a school of philosophy that lasted for 900 years and where mathematics, medicine, rhetoric and astronomy were taught, among other disciplines. Today the Academy is unanimously considered the first university in the Western world.

Plato's philosophy was compiled in various works, generally known as "Platonic dialogues" or “Plato’s dialogues” because of the way they are structured, which follows dialogue form. In them, Platonic concepts and ideas are presented through the different characters.

Traditionally divided according to the period in which they were written (youth, maturity and old age), most of the dialogues have Socrates as the main character. Only The Apology of Socrates , which presents his defense before the court that sentenced him to death, is not written in dialogue form.

• See also: Thales of Miletus

Life of Plato

Plato was born in Athens around 428 BC and died in the same city in 348 BC, at the age of 80. Son of Ariston and Perictione, he grew up alongside his three siblings (Adeimantus, Glaucon and Potone) and a stepbrother, Antiphon, son of his mother and Pyrilampes, a former friend of Pericles. His family was wealthy and aristocratic, descendants of the ancient king Codrus on his mother's side, niece of Critias.

Plato’s actual name was Aristocles , but was given the nickname "Plato", a reference to his physical broadness. According to Diogenes Laërtius, the nickname was given to him by his wrestling coach and is translated as "he who has broad shoulders".

Initially trained in arts such as painting, poetry and drama , before meeting Socrates Plato frequented Cratylus, the philosopher who introduced him to the ideas of Heraclitean “becoming”. Aristotle maintains that the theory of Ideas stems from the intersection of the Heraclitean impossibility of knowledge and Socrates' pursuit of definitions.

At the age of twenty he met Socrates. From that moment and until the death of his teacher, he constantly frequented his circle, becoming his disciple and close friend. Most of Plato's works feature Socrates as the main interlocutor , in the role of teacher and guide of those with whom he converses, discusses and frequents. Although the degree of fidelity of the Platonic Socrates (i.e. the Socrates described by Plato) to the historical Socrates is debated, it is undeniable that Plato knew him deeply and was his most prominent disciple.

Socrates died in 399 BC. Plato was then 28 years old and after the death of his teacher, he traveled to Sicily and Italy, where he came into contact with the Eleatics and Pythagoreans, schools that would have influenced him greatly.

After his journey to Sicily, and after being sold into slavery by the tyrant Dionysius and ransomed by the Cyrenaic Anniceris, Plato returned to Athens and settled in the suburbs, where he bought a country estate and founded the Academy . It operated both as a school and a university until the Middle Ages, that is as a center of academic and religious activities, where the gods were worshiped and anyone seeking tutoring was instructed.

At the Academy and for twenty years, Plato was teacher of Aristotle, his most prominent and most disruptive pupil.

Plato died in 347 BC at the age of 80 in the city of Athens, after devoting the last years of his life to teaching and educating young thinkers, friends and politicians.

Plato's contributions

The theory of ideas.

The theory of Ideas or theory of Forms is one of Plato's most significant contributions to philosophy. Broadly speaking, it draws a clear distinction between what is perceived through the senses and what can be known through the intellect , which are ideas or the forms of things. The word "idea" comes from the Greek eidos (εἶδος) and can be translated as "form”, "aspect," "type," or "species," depending on the use.

The most comprehensive presentation of this theory is in Parmenides , one of Plato’s works allegedly from his late period. A more accessible explanation appears in the Republic , in the Allegory of the Cave. In both cases, the distinction is made between the visible world of the senses and the invisible or intelligible realm, where ideas dwell.

• In the physical world are the things we know through the senses. These things are like images or traces of the forms or ideas in the intelligible world, which is inaccessible through the senses.
• In the intelligible realm are the ideas of which sensible objects are imitations. Ideas are the object of study of dialectic as the supreme science, and sensible objects mirror them because, as Plato vaguely states, they "participate" in the ideas and resemble them in an imperfect, degraded form.

One of the major criticisms to the theory of Ideas was made by Aristotle himself, a disciple of Plato. Aristotle argued that, while it is true that the essence of things as well as their form is what defines them, form is not independent of things. For Aristotle, form is inseparably linked to matter, and together they compose substance.

The Allegory of the Cave

The Allegory of the Cave is an allegory, i.e. a symbolic literary representation whose aim is pedagogical-philosophical . Alongside the Chariot allegory, it is the most decisive allegory in the history of philosophy. It tells the story of a group of prisoners, born chained inside a cave where they could only see a back blank wall, upon which the shadows of the real world were projected.

Plato introduces the Allegory of the Cave at the beginning of Book VII of the Republic to explain the situation of humans in relation to knowledge . This text describes how both the physical world and the intelligible realm are perceived (the former through the senses and the latter through the soul, since like it in the intelligible world all things are eternal and immortal).

According to Plato, the prisoners who inhabit the cave, chained from birth, can only see the shadows that a fire hidden behind a wall reflects against the back of the cave . These shadows are produced by men walking along a corridor carrying different objects. The prisoners, unaware of where the shadows come from, believe they are the truth of things.

What the Allegory of the Cave holds is that if any of the prisoners were freed and turned their gaze towards the light of the fire, they would be confronted with a higher reality , which is the cause of the reality of the shadows. Eventually, the prisoner could escape to the outside of the cave where he would see a more perfect world, until forced to look directly at the sun. This would, however, blind him and if he wanted to return to the cave and free his companions, they would do nothing but mock him and, according to Plato, might even be capable of killing him (a clear reference to what happened to Socrates).

There are various interpretations of the allegory . Plato himself offers one towards the end of Book VI and in Book VII of the Republic . Possible explanations are epistemological (regarding knowledge), ontological (concerning being), educational, and even political. These interpretations remain an area of contention among scholars up to the present.

Platonic dualism

Platonic dualism is the conception of the body and soul as separate . In Plato, dualism spans to a division of the world into the perfect and the imperfect. If perfection is that which is immortal, everlasting, eternal, unchangeable and necessary, imperfection is that which is temporal, changeable and corruptible.

This results in the division between the physical world and the intelligible realm . The physical world is imperfect, formed by matter, to which the body is subject. All things that exist in the sensible world are made in the manner and likeness of the perfect, represented by forms in the intelligible realm. This is related to the soul, and is the place where things like it reside: like the soul, ideas are eternal, unchangeable and necessary.

From this separation arises the Platonic idea that the body is the prison of the soul and that with the end of the body, the soul is free and perfect once again until it reincarnates in a different body.

There are other possible interpretations or readings of dualism, such as its implications on knowledge: according to Platonic dualism, opinion (which is the form of sensible knowledge) is opposed to episteme (which is intelligible knowledge). This conception of knowledge is known as epistemological dualism.

Finally, it is possible to observe emerge even deeper traits of ontological dualism (the dualism which explains the separation of reality into two worlds), such as the problem of the interaction between both worlds, or the problem of anthropological dualism, for example, which sees the human being as a composite of body and soul and questions how this is possible.

The works of Plato

It is believed that Plato's entire body of work has survived intact to the present day . All of his works with the exception of the Apology of Socrates are written in dialogue form. Beyond the theme or question that concerns each one, most of the works present an explanation of the Socratic method, shown through the conversations between Socrates and the various interlocutors embodied in the people or famous thinkers of the time.

Although some are based on real facts, many of Plato’s dialogues are fictional scenarios created by Plato to provide the setting to postulate his various theses and fundamental ideas. Narrated in the form of myths or allegories, these ideas relate to the immortality of the soul (expounded in the Phaedrus ), the myth of Eros (presented in the Symposium ), and the example of the slave and reminiscence (which appears in Meno ), among others.

While it is true that these works constitute the corpus of writings published during his lifetime, they should not be considered Plato's explicit teachings. The fact that they are narrated in dialogue form and through the use of myth and allegory indicates that, in any case, what is actually found there is material for interpretation. In addition to publishing his works, Plato taught orally at the Academy, and it is therefore believed that there is a written teaching, which is found in the dialogues, as well as an oral teaching , possibly dedicated to the exegesis (the philosophical interpretation of his ideas), reserved for his pupils.

Plato believed that the written language was only a copy of the spoken language, and the voice was the direct access to intelligence and knowledge accumulated in the soul , which was intelligible. This interpretative thesis is supported in Phaedrus , as well as in other works of Plato, such as the Seventh Letter , where he asserts that some things cannot be expressed in words. Nonetheless, the fact that Plato advocated oral teaching does not detract from the merit and philosophical prestige of his published works, a legacy that has survived to the present day.

Among Plato's most important works are:

• The Apology of Socrates . It is the only Platonic text which is not written in dialogue form. It presents the trial and defense of Socrates before he is sentenced to drink the hemlock.
• Gorgias . It is a dialogue that presents Platonic ideas regarding rhetoric, politics and justice.
• Meno . It is the text in which the teaching of virtue and the idea of knowledge as reminiscence appear for the first time.
• Phaedo . It is a text that deals with the immortality of the soul, a thesis defended by Socrates before his death, already in prison.
• The Symposium . It is a text in which, during a banquet or dinner among friends, they discuss what is love is, its various myths and the erotic ascent proposed by Socrates to attain beauty.
• The Republic . It consists of a reflection on the concept of justice and how it is expressed in the human being. It also includes the famous Allegory of the Cave, that of the sun, and other myths and metaphors.
• Phaedrus . This dialogue focuses on the ideas of love, beauty and the destiny of the soul. It presents the Chariot allegory to explain the Platonic view of the soul.
• The Timaeus . It is one of the last dialogues written by Plato, where he presents complex issues regarding cosmology and physics, such as the origin of the universe and of living beings.

Stages of Plato's thought according to his works

Plato's philosophical work, through his dialogues, is usually divided into four major periods:

• Socratic period (393-389 B.C.). During this period Plato disseminated some of his theses based on the teachings of Socrates. In them he addresses concepts such as falsehood, piety and friendship. Some of his works published during this period were: Apology of Socrates, Crito, Ion or On Poetry, Lysis or On Friendship, Charmides and Protagoras.
• Transition period (389-385 B.C.). During this period Plato founded the Academy, which proved key in deepening and developing sciences such as mathematics and astronomy. He postulated theories based on the teachings of Socrates and Pythagoras , and developed his own concepts about the immortality of the soul, virtue and language. Some of his works published during this period were: Hippias Major, Gorgias, Menexenus and Meno.
• Maturity period (385-361 B.C.). In this period, which was the most outstanding, Plato developed his ideas on the immortality of the soul, the Theory of Reminiscence (which asserted the existence of certain innate knowledge in the human being), the Theory of Ascending Dialectics (which refined Socrates' maieutics and contemplated the cause-effect relationship of that which is observed), the concept of love (which opposed to "Platonic love") and his political philosophy. Some of his works published during this period are: The Republic, Phaedrus, Phaedo and The Symposium.
• Late period (361-347 B.C.). During his old age, Plato made a thorough revision of the Theory of Ideas . This theory posits a duality of reality in the sensible world (what is perceived through the senses), and the intelligible realm (what can be known through the intellect). In addition, he explored concepts related to nature and medicine. Some of his works published during this period were: Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophist and The Statesman.
• Guthrie, W. (1988). Historia de la filosofía griega, vol. IV. Platón, el hombre y sus diálogos: primera época. Gredos.
• Guthrie, W. (1988). Historia de la filosofía griega, vol. V. Platón, segunda época y la Academia. Gredos.
• Guthrie, W. (1953). Los filósofos griegos. De Tales a Aristóteles . FCE.
• Ross, W. D. (1993). Teoría de las Ideas de Platón . Cátedra.
• Cordero, N. (2008). La invención de la filosofía. Una introducción a la filosofía antigua . Editorial Biblos.
• “Plato” in Britannica .
• “Una introducción a la Teoría de las ideas de Platón” in Universia .
• “Platón” in Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes .

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• World Biography

Plato Biography

Born: c. 427 B.C.E. Athens, Greece Died: c. 347 B.C.E. Athens, Greece Greek philosopher

Plato was born in Athens, Greece, the son of Ariston and Perictione, both of Athenian noble backgrounds. He lived his whole life in Athens, although he traveled to Sicily and southern Italy on several occasions. 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 noble families, and he devoted his considerable talents to politics and the writing of tragedy (works that end with death and sadness) and other forms of poetry. His acquaintance with Socrates (c. 469–c. 399 B.C.E. ) altered the course of his life. The power that Socrates's methods and arguments had over the minds of the youth of Athens gripped Plato as firmly as it did many others, and he became a close associate of Socrates.

The end of the Peloponnesian War (431–04 B.C.E. ), which caused the destruction of Athens by the Spartans, left Plato in a terrible position. His uncle, Critias (c. 480–403 B.C.E. ), was the leader of the Thirty Tyrants (a group of ruthless Athenian rulers) who were installed in power by the victorious Spartans. One means of holding onto power was to connect as many Athenians as possible with terrible acts committed during the war. Thus Socrates, as we learn in Plato's Apology, was ordered to arrest a man and bring him to Athens from Salamis for execution (to be put to death). When the great teacher refused, his life was threatened, and he was probably saved only by the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants and the reestablishment of the democracy (a system of government in which government officials are elected by the people).

Death of Socrates

Plato welcomed the restoration of the democracy, but his mistrust was deepened some four years later when Socrates was tried on false charges and sentenced to death. Plato was present at the trial, as we learn in the Apology, but was not present when the hemlock (poison) was given to his master, although he describes the scene in clear and touching detail in the Phaedo. He then turned in disgust from 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 (c. 450–373 B.C.E. ) in Megara. His productive years were highlighted by three voyages to Sicily, and his writings, all of which have survived.

The first trip, to southern Italy and Syracuse, took place in 388 and 387 B.C.E. , when Plato met Dionysius I (c. 430–367 B.C.E. ). Dionysius was then at the height of his power in Sicily for having freed the Greeks there from the threat of Carthaginian rule. Plato became better friends with the philosopher Dion (c. 408–353 B.C.E. ), however, and Dionysius grew jealous and began to treat Plato harshly.

His dialogues

When Plato returned to Athens, he began to teach in the Gymnasium Academe and soon afterward acquired property nearby and founded his famous Academy, which survived until the early sixth century C.E. At the center of the Academy stood a shrine to the Muses (gods of the arts), 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 (writings in the form of conversation), which came to be the basis of his philosophical (having to do with the search for knowledge and truth) teachings, some years before the founding of the Academy. To this early period Plato wrote the Laches which deals with courage, Charmides with common sense, Euthyphro with piety (religious dedication), Lysis with friendship, Protagoras with the teaching of virtues, or goodness, and many others. 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.

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. The Meno carries on the question of the teachability of virtue first dealt with in Protagoras and introduces the teaching of anamnesis (recollection), which plays an important role in Plato's view of the human's ability to learn the truth.

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 (independent states). 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 family of rulers 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 equal to their abilities.

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 retold. One may be freed from the cycle after a time through lives of greater and greater spiritual and intellectual purity.

Plato's third and final voyage to Syracuse was made some time before 357 B.C.E. , and he tried for the second time to influence the young Dionysius II. Plato was unsuccessful and was held in semicaptivity before being released. Plato's Seventh Letter, the only one in the collection of thirteen 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.E. 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.E. the founder of an important philosophical school, which existed for almost one thousand 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.

For More Information

Kahn, Charles H. Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Shorey, Paul. What Plato Said. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1933.

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An Introduction to Plato and His Philosophical Ideas

One of the Most Important Philosophers and a Student of Socrates

• Major Philosophers
• Philosophical Theories & Ideas
• M.A., Linguistics, University of Minnesota
• B.A., Latin, University of Minnesota

Plato was one of the most famous, respected, and influential philosophers of all time. A type of love ( Platonic ) is named for him. We know the Greek philosopher Socrates mostly through Plato's dialogues. Atlantis enthusiasts know Plato for his parable about it in Timaeus and other descriptions from Critias .

He saw tripartite structures in the world around him. His social structure theory had a governing class, warriors, and workers. He thought the human soul contained reason, spirit, and appetite.

He may have founded an institution of learning known as the Academy , from which we get the word academic.

• Name: Aristocles [ don't confuse the name with Aristotle ], but known as Plato
• Place of Birth: Athens
• Dates 428/427 to 347 B.C.
• Occupation: Philosopher

The Name 'Plato'

Plato was originally named Aristocles, but one of his teachers gave him the familiar name, either because of the breadth of his shoulders or his speech.

Birth of Plato

Plato was born around May 21 in 428 or 427 B.C., a year or two after Pericles died and during the Peloponnesian War . He was related to Solon and could trace his ancestry to the last legendary king of Athens, Codrus .

Plato and Socrates

Plato was a student and follower of Socrates until 399, when the condemned Socrates died after drinking the prescribed cup of hemlock. It is through Plato that we are most familiar with Socrates' philosophy because he wrote dialogues in which his teacher took part, usually asking leading questions -- the Socratic method. Plato's Apology is his version of the trial and the Phaedo , the death of Socrates .

The Legacy of the Academy

When Plato died, in 347 B.C., after Philip II of Macedonia had begun his conquest of Greece, leadership of the Academy passed not to Aristotle , who had been a student and then teacher there for 20 years, and who expected to follow, but to Plato's nephew Speusippus. The Academy continued for several more centuries.

Plato's Symposium contains ideas on love held by various philosophers and other Athenians. It entertains many points of view, including the idea that people were originally doubled -- some with the same gender and others with the opposite, and that, once cut, they spend their lives looking for their other part. This idea "explains" sexual preferences.

The mythical place known as Atlantis appears as part of a parable in a fragment of Plato's late dialogue Timaeus and also in Critias .

Tradition of Plato

In the Middle Ages, Plato was known mostly through Latin translations of Arabic translations and commentaries. In the Renaissance, when Greek became more familiar, far more scholars studied Plato. Since then, he has had an impact on math and science, morals, and political theory.

The Philosopher King

Instead of following a political path, Plato thought it more important to educate would-be statesmen. For this reason, he set up a school for future leaders. His school was called the Academy, named for the park in which it was located. Plato's Republic contains a treatise on education.

Plato is considered by many to be the most important philosopher who ever lived. He is known as the father of idealism in philosophy. His ideas were elitist, with the philosopher king the ideal ruler.

Plato is perhaps best known to college students for his parable of a cave , which appears in Plato's Republic .

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• Summary and Analysis of Meno by Plato
• The Allegory of the Cave From the Republic of Plato
• Plato and Aristotle on Women: Selected Quotes
• Analysis of Plato's 'Crito'
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• Philosophers and Great Thinkers From Ancient Greece
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 MacTutor

It was claimed that Plato's real name was Aristocles, and that 'Plato' was a nickname ( roughly 'the broad' ) derived either from the width of his shoulders, the results of training for wrestling, or from the breadth of his style, or from the size of his forehead.

... that the reality which scientific thought is seeking must be expressible in mathematical terms, mathematics being the most precise and definite kind of thinking of which we are capable. The significance of this idea for the development of science from the first beginnings to the present day has been immense.

... makes it clear that the popular conception of Plato as an aloof unworldly scholar, spinning theories in his study remote from practical life, is singularly wide of the mark. On the contrary, he was a man of the world, an experienced soldier, widely travelled, with close contacts with many of the leading men of affairs, both in his own city and elsewhere.

They show the mastery of language, the power of indicating character, the sense of a situation, and the keen eye for both its tragic and its comic aspects, which set Plato among the greatest writers of the world. He uses these gifts to the full in inculcating the lessons he wants to teach.

The instance taken there is the mathemtical relation of equality, and the contrast is drawn between the absolute equality we think of in mathematics and the rough, approximate equality which is what we have to be content with in dealing with objects with our senses.

Let no one unversed in geometry enter here.

All of the most important mathematical work of the 4 th century was done by friends or pupils of Plato. The first students of conic sections , and possibly Theaetetus , the creator of solid geometry, were members of the Academy. Eudoxus of Cnidus - author of the doctrine of proportion expounded in Euclid 's "Elements", inventor of the method of finding the areas and volumes of curvilinear figures by exhaustion , and propounder of the astronomical scheme of concentric spheres adopted and altered by Aristotle - removed his school from Cyzicus to Athens for the purpose of cooperating with Plato; and during one of Plato's absences he seems to have acted as the head of the Academy. Archytas , the inventor of mechanical science, was a friend and correspondent of Plato.

... the exact sciences - arithmetic, plane and solid geometry, astronomy, and harmonics - would first be studied for ten years to familiarise the mind with relations that can only be apprehended by thought. Five years would then be given to the still severer study of ' dialectic '. Dialectic is the art of conversation, of question and answer; and according to Plato, dialectical skill is the ability to pose and answer questions about the essences of things. The dialectician replaces hypotheses with secure knowledge, and his aim is to ground all science, all knowledge, on some 'unhypothetical first principle'.

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• R S Brumbaugh, The philosophers of Greece ( Albany, N.Y., 1981) .
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• G C Field, The philosophy of Plato ( Oxford, 1956) .
• D H Fowler, The mathematics of Plato's Academy : A new reconstruction ( New York, 1990) .
• W K C Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy 4 (1975) , 5 (1978) .
• F Lasserre, The birth of mathematics in the age of Plato ( London, 1964) .
• J Moravcsik, Plato and Platonism : Plato's conception of appearance and reality in ontology, epistemology, and ethics, and its modern echoes ( Oxford, 1992) .
• K Reidemeister, Das exakte Denken der Griechen. Beiträge zur Deutung von Euklid, Plato, Aristoteles ( Hamburg, 1949) .
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• C J Rowe, Plato ( Bristol Classical Press, London, 1984) .
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• A E Taylor, Plato, the Man and His Work (7 th ed., London, 1969) .
• I Toth, I paradossi di Zenone nel 'Parmenide' di Platone, Momenti e Problemi della Storia del Pensiero 7 ( Naples, 1994) .
• A Wedberg, Plato's Philosophy of Mathematics (1977) .
• B Artmann and L Schäfer, On Plato's 'fairest triangles', Historia Math. 20 (3) (1993) , 255 - 264 .
• J d D Bares, The genesis of dimensions in Plato ( Spanish ) , Theoria ( San Sebastián ) (2) 7 (16 - 18) (1992) , 451 - 471 .
• E Filloy, Geometry and the axiomatic method. III : The era of Plato and Aristotle ( Spanish ) , Mat. Ense nanza 7 - 8 (1976) , 39 - 63 .
• G Fine, Forms as causes : Plato and Aristotle, in Mathematik und Metaphysik bei Aristoteles ( Bern, 1987) , 69 - 112 .
• V Hösle, Platons Grundlegung der Euklidizität der Geometrie, Philologus 126 (2) (1982) , 180 - 197 .
• J-P Kahane, Platon et mathématique, Bull. Soc. Franco-Japon. Sci. Pures Appl. 40 (1984) , 16 - 30 .
• W R Knorr, Plato and Eudoxus on the planetary motions, J. Hist. Astronom. 21 (4) (1990) , 313 - 329 .
• T Koetsier, Negation in the development of mathematics : Plato, Lakatos, Mannoury and the history of the intermediate-value theorem in analysis, in Perspectives on negation ( Tilburg, 1995) , 105 - 121 .
• D G Kontogiánnes and E Ntziachrestos, The geometric and didactic concepts of Plato ( Greek ) , in Mathematics - education and applications ( Nicosia, 1997) , 132 - 138 .
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• K Maurin, Plato's cave parable and the development of modern mathematics, Rend. Sem. Mat. Univ. Politec. Torino 40 (1) (1982) , 1 - 31 .
• R D Mohr, The number theory in Plato's 'Republic VII' and 'Philebus', Isis 72 (264) (1981) , 620 - 627 .
• V N Molodsii, Was Euclid a follower of Plato? ( Russian ) , Trudy Sem. MGU Istor. Mat. Istor.-Mat. Issledov. 1949 (2) (1949) , 499 - 504 .
• D D Moukanos, Die Idee einer mathematischen Physik Platons, Philos. Natur. 24 (1) (1987) , 78 - 82 .
• A P D Mourelatos, Astronomy and kinematics in Plato's project of rationalist explanation, Stud. Hist. Philos. Sci. 12 (1) (1981) , 1 - 32 .
• A P D Mourelatos, Plato's science - his view and ours of his, in Science and philosophy in classical Greece, Sources Stud. Hist. Philos. Classical Sci. 2 ( New York, 1991) , 11 - 30 .
• I Mueller, On the notion of a mathematical starting point in Plato, Aristotle, and Euclid, in Science and philosophy in classical Greece, Sources Stud. Hist. Philos. Classical Sci. 2 ( New York, 1991) , 59 - 97 .
• M E Paiow, Die mathematische 'Theaetetsstelle', Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. 27 (1) (1982) , 87 - 99 .
• M Pihl, The place of Theodoros in Plato's 'Theaitetos' and the earliest history of irrational numbers ( Danish ) , Mat. Tidsskr. A. 1951 (1951) , 19 - 38 .
• W Pohle, The mathematical foundations of Plato's atomic physics, Isis 62 (211) (1971) , 36 - 46 .
• B Russell, History of Western Philosophy ( London, 1961) , 112 - 172 .
• K M Sayre, Propositional logic in Plato's Protagoras, Notre Dame J. Formal Logic 4 (1963) , 306 - 312 .
• E Stamatis, The theory of sets by Plato ( Greek ) , Prakt. Akad. Athenon 33 (1958) , 299 - 303 .
• I Toth, Le problème de la mesure dans la perspective de l'être et du non-être. Zénon et Platon, Eudoxe et Dedekind : une généalogie philosophico-mathématique, in Mathématiques et philosophie de l'antiquité à l'âge classique ( Paris, 1991) , 21 - 99 .
• R von Erhardt and E von Erhardt-Siebold, The helix in Plato's astronomy, Isis 34 (1942) , 108 - 110 .
• S V Zhitomirskii, The geometry of Plato's universe ( Russian ) , Voprosy Istor. Estestvoznan. i Tekhn. (4) (1985) , 104 - 107 .

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• Dictionary of Scientific Biography
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• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Google books
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Happiness and virtue

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Glimpsed darkly even through translation’s glass, Plato is a great literary artist. Yet he also made notoriously negative remarks about the value of writing. Similarly, although he believed that at least one of the purposes—if not the main purpose—of philosophy is to enable one to live a good life, by composing dialogues rather than treatises or hortatory letters he omitted to tell his readers directly any useful truths to live by.

One way of resolving these apparent tensions is to reflect on Plato’s conception of philosophy. An important aspect of this conception, one that has been shared by many philosophers since Plato’s time, is that philosophy aims not so much at discovering facts or establishing dogmas as at achieving wisdom or understanding (the Greek term philosophia means “love of wisdom”). This wisdom or understanding is an extremely hard-won possession; it is no exaggeration to say that it is the result of a lifetime’s effort, if it is achieved at all. Moreover, it is a possession that each person must win for himself. The writing or conversation of others may aid philosophical progress but cannot guarantee it. Contact with a living person, however, has certain advantages over an encounter with a piece of writing. As Plato pointed out, writing is limited by its fixity: it cannot modify itself to suit the individual reader or add anything new in response to queries. So it is only natural that Plato had limited expectations about what written works could achieve. On the other hand, he clearly did not believe that writing has no philosophical value. Written works still serve a purpose, as ways of interacting with inhabitants of times and places beyond the author’s own and as a medium in which ideas can be explored and tested.

Dialogue form suits a philosopher of Plato’s type. His use of dramatic elements, including humour, draws the reader in. Plato is unmatched in his ability to re-create the experience of conversation. The dialogues contain, in addition to Socrates and other authority figures, huge numbers of additional characters, some of whom act as representatives of certain classes of reader (as Glaucon may be a representative of talented and politically ambitious youth). These characters function not only to carry forward particular lines of thought but also to inspire readers to do the same—to join imaginatively in the discussion by constructing arguments and objections of their own. Spurring readers to philosophical activity is the primary purpose of the dialogues.

Because Plato himself never appears in any of these works and because many of them end with the interlocutors in aporia, or at a loss, some scholars have concluded that Plato was not recommending any particular views or even that he believed that there was nothing to choose between the views he presented. But the circumstance that he never says anything in his own person is also compatible with the more common impression that some of the suggestions he so compellingly puts forward are his own. Further, there are cases where one may suppose that Plato sets an exercise that the reader must work through so as to gain the benefit of philosophical progress that cannot be obtained merely by being told “the answer.” Although attributing views to Plato on the basis of such reconstructions must be conjectural, it is clear that the process of engaging in such activity so as to arrive at adequate views is one that he wanted his readers to pursue.

The characteristic question of ancient ethics is “How can I be happy?” and the basic answer to it is “by means of virtue.” But in the relevant sense of the word, happiness—the conventional English translation of the ancient Greek eudaimonia —is not a matter of occurrent mood or affective state. Rather, as in a slightly archaic English usage, it is a matter of having things go well. Being happy in this sense is living a life of what some scholars call “human flourishing.” Thus, the question “How can I be happy?” is equivalent to “How can I live a good life?”

Whereas the notion of happiness in Greek philosophy applies at most to living things, that of arete —“virtue” or “excellence”—applies much more widely. Anything that has a characteristic use, function, or activity has a virtue or excellence, which is whatever disposition enables things of that kind to perform well. The excellence of a race horse is whatever enables it to run well; the excellence of a knife is whatever enables it to cut well; and the excellence of an eye is whatever enables it to see well. Human virtue, accordingly, is whatever enables human beings to live good lives. Thus the notions of happiness and virtue are linked.

In the case of a bodily organ such as the eye, it is fairly clear wherein good functioning consists. But it is far from obvious what a good life consists of, and so it is difficult to say what virtue, the condition that makes it possible, might be. Traditional Greek conceptions of the good life included the life of prosperity and the life of social position, in which case virtue would be the possession of wealth or nobility (and perhaps physical beauty). The overwhelming tendency of ancient philosophy, however, was to conceive of the good life as something that is the achievement of an individual and that, once won, is hard to take away.

Already by Plato’s time a conventional set of virtues had come to be recognized by the larger culture; they included courage, justice , piety, modesty or temperance, and wisdom. Socrates and Plato undertook to discover what these virtues really amount to. A truly satisfactory account of any virtue would identify what it is, show how possessing it enables one to live well, and indicate how it is best acquired.

In Plato’s representation of the activity of the historical Socrates, the interlocutors are examined in a search for definitions of the virtues. It is important to understand, however, that the definition sought for is not lexical, merely specifying what a speaker of the language would understand the term to mean as a matter of linguistic competence. Rather, the definition is one that gives an account of the real nature of the thing named by the term; accordingly, it is sometimes called a “real” definition. The real definition of water , for example, is H 2 O, though speakers in most historical eras did not know this.

In the encounters Plato portrays, the interlocutors typically offer an example of the virtue they are asked to define (not the right kind of answer) or give a general account (the right kind of answer) that fails to accord with their intuitions on related matters. Socrates tends to suggest that virtue is not a matter of outward behaviour but is or involves a special kind of knowledge (knowledge of good and evil or knowledge of the use of other things).

The Protagoras addresses the question of whether the various commonly recognized virtues are different or really one. Proceeding from the interlocutor’s assertion that the many have nothing to offer as their notion of the good besides pleasure , Socrates develops a picture of the agent according to which the great art necessary for a good human life is measuring and calculation; knowledge of the magnitudes of future pleasures and pains is all that is needed. If pleasure is the only object of desire, it seems unintelligible what, besides simple miscalculation, could cause anyone to behave badly. Thus the whole of virtue would consist of a certain kind of wisdom. The idea that knowledge is all that one needs for a good life, and that there is no aspect of character that is not reducible to cognition (and so no moral or emotional failure that is not a cognitive failure), is the characteristically Socratic position.

In the Republic , however, Plato develops a view of happiness and virtue that departs from that of Socrates. According to Plato, there are three parts of the soul , each with its own object of desire. Reason desires truth and the good of the whole individual, spirit is preoccupied with honour and competitive values, and appetite has the traditional low tastes for food, drink, and sex. Because the soul is complex, erroneous calculation is not the only way it can go wrong. The three parts can pull in different directions, and the low element, in a soul in which it is overdeveloped, can win out. Correspondingly, the good condition of the soul involves more than just cognitive excellence. In the terms of the Republic , the healthy or just soul has psychic harmony—the condition in which each of the three parts does its job properly. Thus, reason understands the Good in general and desires the actual good of the individual, and the other two parts of the soul desire what it is good for them to desire, so that spirit and appetite are activated by things that are healthy and proper.

Although the dialogue starts from the question “Why should I be just?,” Socrates proposes that this inquiry can be advanced by examining justice “writ large” in an ideal city. Thus, the political discussion is undertaken to aid the ethical one. One early hint of the existence of the three parts of the soul in the individual is the existence of three classes in the well-functioning state : rulers, guardians, and producers. The wise state is the one in which the rulers understand the good; the courageous state is that in which the guardians can retain in the heat of battle the judgments handed down by the rulers about what is to be feared; the temperate state is that in which all citizens agree about who is to rule; and the just state is that in which each of the three classes does its own work properly. Thus, for the city to be fully virtuous, each citizen must contribute appropriately.

Justice as conceived in the Republic is so comprehensive that a person who possessed it would also possess all the other virtues, thereby achieving “the health of that whereby we live [the soul].” Yet, lest it be thought that habituation and correct instruction in human affairs alone can lead to this condition, one must keep in view that the Republic also develops the famous doctrine according to which reason cannot properly understand the human good or anything else without grasping the form of the Good itself. Thus the original inquiry, whose starting point was a motivation each individual is presumed to have (to learn how to live well), leads to a highly ambitious educational program. Starting with exposure only to salutary stories, poetry, and music from childhood and continuing with supervised habituation to good action and years of training in a series of mathematical disciplines , this program—and so virtue—would be complete only in the person who was able to grasp the first principle, the Good , and to proceed on that basis to secure accounts of the other realities. There are hints in the Republic , as well as in the tradition concerning Plato’s lecture “On the Good” and in several of the more technical dialogues that this first principle is identical with Unity, or the One.

Plato (429–347 B.C.E.) is, by any reckoning, one of the most dazzling writers in the Western literary tradition and one of the most penetrating, wide-ranging, and influential authors in the history of philosophy. An Athenian citizen of high status, he displays in his works his absorption in the political events and intellectual movements of his time, but the questions he raises are so profound and the strategies he uses for tackling them so richly suggestive and provocative that educated readers of nearly every period have in some way been influenced by him, and in practically every age there have been philosophers who count themselves Platonists in some important respects. He was not the first thinker or writer to whom the word “philosopher” should be applied. But he was so self-conscious about how philosophy should be conceived, and what its scope and ambitions properly are, and he so transformed the intellectual currents with which he grappled, that the subject of philosophy, as it is often conceived — a rigorous and systematic examination of ethical, political, metaphysical, and epistemological issues, armed with a distinctive method — can be called his invention. Few other authors in the history of philosophy approximate him in depth and range: perhaps only Aristotle (who studied with him), Aquinas, and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same rank.

1. Plato's central doctrines

2. plato's puzzles, 3. dialogue, setting, character, 4. socrates, 5. plato's indirectness, 6. can we know plato's mind, 7. socrates as the dominant speaker, 8. links between the dialogues, 9. does plato change his mind about forms, 10. does plato change his mind about politics, 11. the historical socrates: early, middle, and late dialogues, 12. why dialogues, translations into english, general overviews, on socrates, interpretive strategies, chronology of the dialogues, other internet resources, related entries.

Many people associate Plato with a few central doctrines that are advocated in his writings: The world that appears to our senses is in some way defective and filled with error, but there is a more real and perfect realm, populated by entities (called “forms” or “ideas”) that are eternal, changeless, and in some sense paradigmatic for the structure and character of our world. Among the most important of these abstract objects (as they are now called, because they are not located in space or time) are goodness, beauty, equality, bigness, likeness, unity, being, sameness, difference, change, and changelessness. (These terms — “goodness”, “beauty”, and so on — are often capitalized by those who write about Plato, in order to call attention to their exalted status; similarly for “Forms” and “Ideas.”) The most fundamental distinction in Plato's philosophy is between the many observable objects that appear beautiful (good, just, unified, equal, big) and the one object that is what beauty (goodness, justice, unity) really is, from which those many beautiful (good, just, unified, equal, big) things receive their names and their corresponding characteristics. Nearly every major work of Plato is, in some way, devoted to or dependent on this distinction. Many of them explore the ethical and practical consequences of conceiving of reality in this bifurcated way. We are urged to transform our values by taking to heart the greater reality of the forms and the defectiveness of the corporeal world. We must recognize that the soul is a different sort of object from the body — so much so that it does not depend on the existence of the body for its functioning, and can in fact grasp the nature of the forms far more easily when it is not encumbered by its attachment to anything corporeal. In a few of Plato's works, we are told that the soul always retains the ability to recollect what it once grasped of the forms, when it was disembodied (see especially Meno ), and that the lives we lead are to some extent a punishment or reward for choices we made in a previous existence (see especially the final pages of Republic ). But in many of Plato's writings, it is asserted or assumed that true philosophers — those who recognize how important it is to distinguish the one (the one thing that goodness is, or virtue is, or courage is) from the many (the many things that are called good or virtuous or courageous ) — are in a position to become ethically superior to unenlightened human beings, because of the greater degree of insight they can acquire. To understand which things are good and why they are good (and if we are not interested in such questions, how can we become good?), we must investigate the form of good.

Although these propositions are often identified by Plato's readers as forming a large part of the core of his philosophy, many of his greatest admirers and most careful students point out that few, if any, of his writings can accurately be described as mere advocacy of a cut-and-dried group of propositions. Often Plato's works exhibit a certain degree of dissatisfaction and puzzlement with even those doctrines that are being recommended for our consideration. For example, the forms are sometimes described as hypotheses (see for example Phaedo ). The form of good in particular is described as something of a mystery whose real nature is elusive and as yet unknown ( Republic ). Puzzles are raised — and not overtly answered — about how any of the forms can be known and how we are to talk about them without falling into contradiction ( Parmenides ), or about what it is to know anything ( Theaetetus ) or to name anything ( Cratylus ). When one compares Plato with some of the other philosophers who are often ranked with him — Aristotle, Aquinas, and Kant, for example — he can be recognized to be far more exploratory, incompletely systematic, elusive, and playful than they. That, along with his gifts as a writer and as a creator of vivid character and dramatic setting, is one of the reasons why he is often thought to be the ideal author from whom one should receive one's introduction to philosophy. His readers are not presented with an elaborate system of doctrines held to be so fully worked out that they are in no need of further exploration or development; instead, what we often receive from Plato is a few key ideas together with a series of suggestions and problems about how those ideas are to be interrogated and deployed. Readers of a Platonic dialogue are drawn into thinking for themselves about the issues raised, if they are to learn what the dialogue itself might be thought to say about them. Many of his works therefore give their readers a strong sense of philosophy as a living and unfinished subject (perhaps one that can never be completed) to which they themselves will have to contribute. All of Plato's works are in some way meant to leave further work for their readers, but among the ones that most conspicuously fall into this category are: Euthyphro , Laches , Charmides , Euthydemus , Theaetetus , and Parmenides .

There is another feature of Plato's writings that makes him distinctive among the great philosophers and colors our experience of him as an author. Nearly everything he wrote takes the form of a dialogue. (There is one striking exception: his Apology , which purports to be the speech that Socrates gave in his defense — the Greek word apologia means “defense” — when, in 399, he was legally charged and convicted of the crime of impiety. However, even there, Socrates is presented at one point addressing questions of a philosophical character to his accuser, Meletus, and responding to them. In addition, since antiquity, a collection of 13 letters has been included among his collected works, but their authenticity as compositions of Plato is not universally accepted among scholars, and many or most of them are almost certainly not his. Most of them purport to be the outcome of his involvement in the politics of Syracuse, a heavily populated Greek city located in Sicily and ruled by tyrants.)

We are of course familiar with the dialogue form through our acquaintance with the literary genre of drama. But Plato's dialogues do not try to create a fictional world for the purposes of telling a story, as many literary dramas do; nor do they invoke an earlier mythical realm, like the creations of the great Greek tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Nor are they all presented in the form of a drama: in many of them, a single speaker narrates events in which he participated. They are philosophical discussions — “debates” would, in some cases, also be an appropriate word — among a small number of interlocutors, many of whom can be identified as real historical figures; and often they begin with a depiction of the setting of the discussion — a visit to a prison, a wealthy man's house, a celebration over drinks, a religious festival, a visit to the gymnasium, a stroll outside the city's wall, a long walk on a hot day. As a group, they form vivid portraits of a social world, and are not purely intellectual exchanges between characterless and socially unmarked speakers. (At any rate, that is true of a large number of Plato's interlocutors. However, it must be added that in some of his works the speakers display little or no character. See, for example, Sophist and Statesman — dialogues in which a visitor from the town of Elea in Southern Italy leads the discussion; and Laws , a discussion between an unnamed Athenian and two named fictional characters, one from Crete and the other from Sparta.) In many of his dialogues (though not all), Plato is not only attempting to draw his readers into a discussion, but is also commenting on the social milieu that he is depicting, and criticizing the character and ways of life of his interlocutors. Some of the dialogues that most evidently fall into this category are Protagoras , Gorgias , Hippias Major , Euthydemus , and Symposium .

There is one interlocutor who speaks in nearly all of Plato's dialogues, being completely absent only in Laws , which ancient testimony tells us was one of his latest works: that figure is Socrates. Like nearly everyone else who appears in Plato's works, he is not an invention of Plato: there really was a Socrates. Plato was not the only author whose personal experience of Socrates led to the depiction of him as a character in one or more dramatic works. Socrates is one of the principal characters of Aristophanes' comedy, Clouds ; and Xenophon, a historian and military leader, wrote, like Plato, both an Apology of Socrates (an account of Socrates' trial) and other works in which Socrates appears as a principal speaker. Furthermore, we have some fragmentary remains of dialogues written by other contemporaries of Socrates (Aeschines, Antisthenes, Eucleides, Phaedo), and these purport to describe conversations he conducted with others. So, when Plato wrote dialogues that feature Socrates as a principal speaker, he was both contributing to a genre that was inspired by the life of Socrates and participating in a lively literary debate about the kind of person Socrates was and the value of the intellectual conversations in which he was involved. Aristophanes' comic portrayal of Socrates is at the same time a bitter critique of him and other leading intellectual figures of the day (the 420s B.C.), but from Plato, Xenophon, and the other composers (in the 390's and later) of “Socratic discourses” (as Aristotle calls this body of writings) we receive a far more favorable impression.

Evidently, the historical Socrates was the sort of person who provoked in those who knew him, or knew of him, a profound response, and he inspired many of those who came under his influence to write about him. But the portraits composed by Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato are the ones that have survived intact, and they are therefore the ones that must play the greatest role in shaping our conception of what Socrates was like. Of these, Clouds has the least value as an indication of what was distinctive of Socrates' mode of philosophizing: after all, it is not intended as a philosophical work, and although it may contain a few lines that are characterizations of features unique to Socrates, for the most part it is an attack on a philosophical type — the long-haired, unwashed, amoral investigator into abstruse empirical phenomena — rather than a depiction of Socrates himself. Xenophon's depiction of Socrates, whatever its value as historical testimony (which may be considerable), is generally thought to lack the philosophical subtlety and depth of Plato's. At any rate, no one (certainly not Xenophon himself) takes Xenophon to be a major philosopher in his own right; when we read his Socratic works, we are not encountering a great philosophical mind. But that is what we experience when we read Plato. We may read Plato's Socratic dialogues because we are (as Plato evidently wanted us to be) interested in who Socrates was and what he stood for, but even if we have little or no desire to learn about the historical Socrates, we will want to read Plato because in doing so we are encountering an author of the greatest philosophical significance. No doubt he in some way borrowed in important ways from Socrates, though it is not easy to say where to draw the line between him and his teacher (more about this below in section 12). But it is widely agreed among scholars that Plato is not a mere transcriber of the words of Socrates (any more than Xenophon or the other authors of Socratic discourses). His use of a figure called “Socrates” in so many of his dialogues should not be taken to mean that Plato is merely preserving for a reading public the lessons he learned from his teacher.

Socrates, it should be kept in mind, does not appear in all of Plato's works. He makes no appearance in Laws , and there are several dialogues ( Sophist , Statesman , Timaeus ) in which his role is small and peripheral, while some other figure dominates the conversation or even, as in the Timaeus and Critias , presents a long and elaborate, continuous discourse of their own. Plato's dialogues are not a static literary form; not only do his topics vary, not only do his speakers vary, but the role played by questions and answers is never the same from one dialogue to another. ( Symposium , for example, is a series of speeches, and there are also lengthy speeches in Apology , Menexenus , Protagoras , Crito , Phaedrus , Timaeus , and Critias ; in fact, one might reasonably question whether these works are properly called dialogues). But even though Plato constantly adapted “the dialogue form” (a commonly used term, and convenient enough, so long as we do not think of it as an unvarying unity) to suit his purposes, it is striking that throughout his career as a writer he never engaged in a form of composition that was widely used in his time and was soon to become the standard mode of philosophical address: Plato never became a writer of philosophical treatises, even though the writing of treatises (for example, on rhetoric, medicine, and geometry) was a common practice among his predecessors and contemporaries. (The closest we come to an exception to this generalization is the seventh letter, which contains a brief section in which Plato commits himself to several philosophical points — while insisting, at the same time, that no philosopher will write about the deepest matters. But, as noted above, the authenticity of Plato's letters is a matter of great controversy; and in any case, the author of the seventh letter declares his opposition to the writing of philosophical books. Whether Plato wrote it or not, it cannot be regarded as a philosophical treatise, and its author did not wish it to be so regarded.) In all of his writings — except in the letters, if any of them are genuine — Plato never speaks to his audience directly and in his own voice. Strictly speaking, he does not himself affirm anything in his dialogues; rather, it is the interlocutors in his dialogues who are made by Plato to do all of the affirming, doubting, questioning, arguing, and so on. Whatever he wishes to communicate to us is conveyed indirectly.

This feature of Plato's works raises important questions about how they are to be read, and has led to considerable controversy among those who study his writings. Since he does not himself affirm anything in any of his dialogues, can we ever be on secure ground in attributing a philosophical doctrine to him (as opposed to one of his characters)? Did he himself have philosophical convictions, and can we discover what they were? Are we justified in speaking of “the philosophy of Plato”? Or, if we attribute some view to Plato himself, are we violating the spirit in which he intended the dialogues to be read? Is his whole point, in refraining from addressing his readers as an author of treatises, to discourage them from asking what their author believes and to encourage them instead simply to consider the plausibility or implausibility of what his characters are saying? Is that why Plato wrote dialogues? If not for this reason, then what was his purpose in refraining from addressing his audience in a more direct way? There are other important questions about the particular shape his dialogues take: for example, why does Socrates play such a prominent role in so many of them, and why, in some of these works, does Socrates play a smaller role, or none at all?

Once these questions are raised and their difficulty acknowledged, it is tempting, in reading Plato's works and reflecting upon them, to adopt a strategy of extreme caution. Rather than commit oneself to any hypothesis about what he is trying to communicate to his readers, one might adopt a stance of neutrality about his intentions, and confine oneself to talking only about what is said by his dramatis personae . One cannot be faulted, for example, if one notes that, in Plato's Republic , Socrates argues that justice in the soul consists in each part of the soul doing its own. It is equally correct to point out that other principal speakers in that work, Glaucon and Adeimantus, accept the arguments that Socrates gives for that definition of justice. Perhaps there is no need for us to say more — to say, for example, that Plato himself agrees that this is how justice should be defined, or that Plato himself accepts the arguments that Socrates gives in support of this definition. And we might adopt this same “minimalist” approach to all of Plato's works. After all, is it of any importance to discover what went on inside his head as he wrote — to find out whether he himself endorsed the ideas he put in the mouths of his characters, whether they constitute “the philosophy of Plato”? Should we not read his works for their intrinsic philosophical value, and not as tools to be used for entering into the mind of their author? We know what Plato's characters say — and isn't that all that we need, for the purpose of engaging with his works philosophically?

But the fact that we know what Plato's characters say does not show that by refusing to entertain any hypotheses about what the author of these works is trying to communicate to his readers we can understand what those characters mean by what they say. We should not lose sight of this obvious fact: it is Plato, not any of his dramatis personae , who is reaching out to a readership and trying to influence their beliefs and actions by means of his literary actions. When we ask whether an argument put forward by a character in Plato's works should be read as an effort to persuade us of its conclusion, or is better read as a revelation of how foolish that speaker is, we are asking about what Plato (not that character) is trying to lead us to believe, through the writing that he is presenting to our attention. We need to interpret the work itself to find out what it, or Plato the author, is saying. Similarly, when we ask how a word that has several different senses is best understood, we are asking what Plato means to communicate to us through the speaker who uses that word. We should not suppose that we can derive much philosophical value from Plato's writings if we refuse to entertain any thoughts about what use he intends us to make of the things his speakers say. Penetrating the mind of Plato and comprehending what his interlocutors mean by what they say are not two separate tasks but one, and if we do not ask what his interlocutors mean by what they say, and what the dialogue itself indicates we should think about what they mean, we will not profit from reading his dialogues.

Furthermore, the dialogues have certain characteristics that are most easily explained by supposing that Plato is using them as vehicles for inducing his readers to become convinced (or more convinced than they already are) of certain propositions — for example, that there are forms, that the soul is not corporeal, that knowledge can be acquired only by means of a study of the forms, and so on. Why, after all, did Plato write so many works (for example: Phaedo , Symposium , Republic , Phaedrus , Theaetetus , Sophist , Statesman , Timaeus , Philebus , Laws ) in which one character dominates the conversation (often, but not always, Socrates) and convinces the other speakers (at times, after encountering initial resistance) that they should accept or reject certain conclusions, on the basis of the arguments presented? The only plausible way of answering that question is to say that these dialogues were intended by Plato to be devices by which he might induce the audience for which they are intended to reflect on and accept the arguments and conclusions offered by his principal interlocutor. (It is noteworthy that in Laws , the principal speaker — an unnamed visitor from Athens — proposes that laws should be accompanied by “preludes” in which their philosophical basis is given as full an explanation as possible. The educative value of written texts is thus explicitly acknowledged by Plato's dominant speaker. If preludes can educate a whole citizenry that is prepared to learn from them, then surely Plato thinks that other sorts of written texts — for example, his own dialogues — can also serve an educative function.)

This does not mean that Plato thinks that his readers can become wise simply by reading and studying his works. On the contrary, it is highly likely that he wanted all of his writings to be supplementary aids to philosophical conversation: in one of his works, he has Socrates warn his readers against relying solely on books, or taking them to be authoritative. They are, Socrates says, best used as devices that stimulate the readers' memory of discussions they have had ( Phaedrus 274e-276d). In those face-to-face conversations with a knowledgeable leader, positions are taken, arguments are given, and conclusions are drawn. Plato's writings, he implies in this passage from Phaedrus , will work best when conversational seeds have already been sown for the arguments they contain.

If we take Plato to be trying to persuade us, in many of his works, to accept the conclusions arrived at by his principal interlocutors (or to persuade us of the refutations of their opponents), we can easily explain why he so often chooses Socrates as the dominant speaker in his dialogues. Presumably the contemporary audience for whom Plato was writing included many of Socrates' admirers. They would be predisposed to think that a character called “Socrates” would have all of the intellectual brilliance and moral passion of the historical person after whom he is named (especially since Plato often makes special efforts to give his “Socrates” a life-like reality, and has him refer to his trial or to the characteristics by which he was best known); and the aura surrounding the character called “Socrates” would give the words he speaks in the dialogue considerable persuasive power. Furthermore, if Plato felt strongly indebted to Socrates for many of his philosophical techniques and ideas, that would give him further reason for assigning a dominant role to him in many of his works. (More about this in section 12.)

Of course, there are other more speculative possible ways of explaining why Plato so often makes Socrates his principal speaker. For example, we could say that Plato was trying to undermine the reputation of the historical Socrates by writing a series of works in which a figure called “Socrates” manages to persuade a group of naïve and sycophantic interlocutors to accept absurd conclusions on the basis of sophistries. But anyone who has read some of Plato's works will quickly recognize the utter implausibility of that alternative way of reading them. Plato could have written into his works clear signals to the reader that the arguments of Socrates do not work, and that his interlocutors are foolish to accept them. But there are many signs in such works as Meno , Phaedo , Republic , and Phaedrus that point in the opposite direction. (And the great admiration Plato feels for Socrates is also evident from his Apology .) The reader is given every encouragement to believe that the reason why Socrates is successful in persuading his interlocutors (on those occasions when he does succeed) is that his arguments are powerful ones. The reader, in other words, is being encouraged by the author to accept those arguments, if not as definitive then at least as highly arresting and deserving of careful and full positive consideration. When we interpret the dialogues in this way, we cannot escape the fact that we are entering into the mind of Plato, and attributing to him, their author, a positive evaluation of the arguments that his speakers present to each other.

There is a further reason for entertaining hypotheses about what Plato intended and believed, and not merely confining ourselves to observations about what sorts of people his characters are and what they say to each other. When we undertake a serious study of Plato, and go beyond reading just one of his works, we are inevitably confronted with the question of how we are to link the work we are currently reading with the many others that Plato composed. Admittedly, many of his dialogues make a fresh start in their setting and their interlocutors: typically, Socrates encounters a group of people many of whom do not appear in any other work of Plato, and so, as an author, he needs to give his readers some indication of their character and social circumstances. But often Plato's characters make statements that would be difficult for readers to understand unless they had already read one or more of his other works. For example, in Phaedo (73a-b), Socrates says that one argument for the immortality of the soul derives from the fact that when people are asked certain kinds of questions, and are aided with diagrams, they answer in a way that shows that they are not learning afresh from the diagrams or from information provided in the questions, but are drawing their knowledge of the answers from within themselves. That remark would be of little worth for an audience that had not already read Meno . Several pages later, Socrates tells his interlocutors that his argument about our prior knowledge of equality itself (the form of equality) applies no less to other forms — to the beautiful, good, just, pious and to all the other things that are involved in their asking and answering of questions (75d). This reference to asking and answering questions would not be well understood by a reader who had not yet encountered a series of dialogues in which Socrates asks his interlocutors questions of the form, “What is X?” ( Euthyphro : what is piety? Laches : what is courage? Charmides : What is moderation? Hippias Major : what is beauty?). Evidently, Plato is assuming that readers of Phaedo have already read several of his other works, and will bring to bear on the current argument all of the lessons that they have learned from them. In some of his writings, Plato's characters refer ahead to the continuation of their conversations on another day, or refer back to conversations they had recently: thus Plato signals to us that we should read Theaetetus , Sophist , and Statesman sequentially; and similarly, since the opening of Timaeus refers us back to Republic , Plato is indicating to his readers that they must seek some connection between these two works.

These features of the dialogues show Plato's awareness that he cannot entirely start from scratch in every work that he writes. He will introduce new ideas and raise fresh difficulties, but he will also expect his readers to have already familiarized themselves with the conversations held by the interlocutors of other dialogues — even when there is some alteration among those interlocutors. (Meno does not re-appear in Phaedo ; Timaeus was not among the interlocutors of Republic .) Why does Plato have his dominant characters (Socrates, the Eleatic visitor) reaffirm some of the same points from one dialogue to another, and build on ideas that were made in earlier works? If the dialogues were merely meant as provocations to thought — mere exercises for the mind — there would be no need for Plato to identify his leading characters with a consistent and ever-developing doctrine. For example, Socrates continues to maintain, over a large number of dialogues, that there are such things as forms— and there is no better explanation for this continuity than to suppose that Plato is recommending that doctrine to his readers. Furthermore, when Socrates is replaced as the principal investigator by the visitor from Elea (in Sophist and Statesman ), the existence of forms continues to be taken for granted, and the visitor criticizes any conception of reality that excludes such incorporeal objects as souls and forms. The Eleatic visitor, in other words, upholds a metaphysics that is, in many respects, like the one that Socrates is made to defend. Again, the best explanation for this continuity is that Plato is using both characters — Socrates and the Eleatic visitor — as devices for the presentation and defense of a doctrine that he embraces and wants his readers to embrace as well.

This way of reading Plato's dialogues does not presuppose that he never changes his mind about anything — that whatever any of his main interlocutors uphold in one dialogue will continue to be presupposed or affirmed elsewhere without alteration. It is, in fact, a difficult and delicate matter to determine, on the basis of our reading of the dialogues, whether Plato means to modify or reject in one dialogue what he has his main interlocutor affirm in some other. One of the most intriguing and controversial questions about his treatment of the forms, for example, is whether he concedes that his conception of those abstract entities is vulnerable to criticism; and, if so, whether he revises some of the assumptions he had been making about them, or develops a more elaborate picture of them that allows him to respond to that criticism. In Parmenides , the principal interlocutor (not Socrates — he is here portrayed as a promising, young philosopher in need of further training — but rather the pre-Socratic from Elea who gives the dialogue its name: Parmenides) subjects the forms to withering criticism, and then consents to conduct an inquiry into the nature of oneness that has no overt connection to his critique of the forms. Does the discussion of oneness (a baffling series of contradictions — or at any rate, propositions that seem, on the surface, to be contradictions) in some way help address the problems raised about forms? That is one way of reading the dialogue. And if we do read it in this way, does that show that Plato has changed his mind about some of the ideas about forms he inserted into earlier dialogues? Can we find dialogues in which we encounter a “new theory of forms” — that is, a way of thinking of forms that carefully steers clear of the assumptions about forms that led to Parmenides' critique? It is not easy to say. But we cannot even raise this as an issue worth pondering unless we presuppose that behind the dialogues there stands a single mind that is using these writings as a way of hitting upon the truth, and of bringing that truth to the attention of others. If we find Timaeus (the principal interlocutor of the dialogue named after him) and the Eleatic visitor of the Sophist and Statesman talking about forms in a way that is entirely consistent with the way Socrates talks about forms in Phaedo and Republic , then there is only one reasonable explanation for that consistency: Plato believes that their way of talking about forms is correct, or is at least strongly supported by powerful considerations. If, on the other hand, we find that Timaeus or the Eleatic visitor talks about forms in a way that does not harmonize with the way Socrates conceives of those abstract objects, in the dialogues that assign him a central role as director of the conversation, then the most plausible explanation for these discrepancies is that Plato has changed his mind about the nature of these entities. It would be implausible to suppose that Plato himself had no convictions about forms, and merely wants to give his readers mental exercise by composing dialogues in which different leading characters talk about these objects in discordant ways.

The same point — that we must view the dialogues as the product of a single mind, a single philosopher, though perhaps one that changes his mind — can be made in connection with the politics of Plato's works.

It is noteworthy, to begin with, that Plato is, among other things, a political philosopher. For he gives expression, in several of his writings (particular Phaedo ), to a yearning to escape from the tawdriness of ordinary human relations. (Similarly, he evinces a sense of the ugliness of the sensible world, whose beauty pales in comparison with that of the forms.) Because of this, it would have been all too easy for Plato to turn his back entirely on practical reality, and to confine his speculations to theoretical questions. Some of his works — Parmenides is a stellar example — do confine themselves to exploring questions that seem to have no bearing whatsoever on practical life. But it is remarkable how few of his works fall into this category. Even the highly abstract questions raised in Sophist about the nature of being and not-being are, after all, embedded in a search for the definition of sophistry; and thus they call to mind the question whether Socrates should be classified as a sophist — whether, in other words, sophists are to be despised and avoided. In any case, despite the great sympathy Plato expresses for the desire to shed one's body and live in an incorporeal world, he devotes an enormous amount of energy to the task of understanding the world we live in, appreciating its limited beauty, and improving it.

His tribute to the mixed beauty of the sensible world, in Timaeus , consists in his depiction of it as the outcome of divine efforts to mold reality in the image of the forms, using simple geometrical patterns and harmonious arithmetic relations as building blocks. The desire to transform human relations is given expression in a far larger number of works. Socrates presents himself, in Plato's Apology , as a man who does not have his head in the clouds (that is part of Aristophanes' charge against him in Clouds ). He does not want to escape from the everyday world but to make it better. He presents himself, in Gorgias , as the only Athenian who has tried his hand at the true art of politics.

Similarly, the Socrates of Republic devotes a considerable part of his discussion to the critique of ordinary social institutions — the family, private property, and rule by the many. The motivation that lies behind the writing of this dialogue is the desire to transform (or, at any rate, to improve) political life, not to escape from it (although it is acknowledged that the desire to escape is an honorable one: the best sort of rulers greatly prefer the contemplation of divine reality to the governance of the city). And if we have any further doubts that Plato does take an interest in the practical realm, we need only turn to Laws . A work of such great detail and length about voting procedures, punishments, education, legislation, and the oversight of public officials can only have been produced by someone who wants to contribute something to the improvement of the lives we lead in this sensible and imperfect realm. Further evidence of Plato's interest in practical matters can be drawn from his letters, if they are genuine. In most of them, he presents himself as having a deep interest in educating (with the help of his friend, Dion) the ruler of Syracuse, Dionysius II, and thus reforming that city's politics.

Just as any attempt to understand Plato's views about forms must confront the question whether his thoughts about them developed or altered over time, so too our reading of him as a political philosopher must be shaped by a willingness to consider the possibility that he changed his mind. For example, on any plausible reading of Republic , Plato evinces a deep antipathy to rule by the many. Socrates tells his interlocutors that the only politics that should engage them are those of the anti-democratic regime he depicts as the paradigm of a good constitution. And yet in Laws , the Athenian visitor proposes a detailed legislative framework for a city in which non-philosophers (people who have never heard of the forms, and have not been trained to understand them) are given considerable powers as rulers. Plato would not have invested so much time in the creation of this comprehensive and lengthy work, had he not believed that the creation of a political community ruled by those who are philosophically unenlightened is a project that deserves the support of his readers. Has Plato changed his mind, then? Has he re-evaluated the highly negative opinion he once held of those who are innocent of philosophy? Did he at first think that the reform of existing Greek cities, with all of their imperfections, is a waste of time — but then decide that it is an endeavor of great value? (And if so, what led him to change his mind?) Answers to these questions can be justified only by careful attention to what he has his interlocutors say. But it would be utterly implausible to suppose that these developmental questions need not be raised, on the grounds that Republic and Laws each has its own cast of characters, and that the two works therefore cannot come into contradiction with each other. According to this hypothesis (one that must be rejected), because it is Socrates (not Plato) who is critical of democracy in Republic , and because it is the Athenian visitor (not Plato) who recognizes the merits of rule by the many in Laws , there is no possibility that the two dialogues are in tension with each other. Against this hypothesis, we should say: Since both Republic and Laws are works in which Plato is trying to move his readers towards certain conclusions, by having them reflect on certain arguments — these dialogues are not barred from having this feature by their use of interlocutors — it would be an evasion of our responsibility as readers and students of Plato not to ask whether what one of them advocates is compatible with what the other advocates. If we answer that question negatively, we have some explaining to do: what led to this change? Alternatively, if we conclude that the two works are compatible, we must say why the appearance of conflict is illusory.

Many contemporary scholars find it plausible that when Plato embarked on his career as a philosophical writer, he composed, in addition to his Apology of Socrates, a number of short ethical dialogues that contain little or nothing in the way of positive philosophical doctrine, but are mainly devoted to portraying the way in which Socrates punctured the pretensions of his interlocutors and forced them to realize that they are unable to offer satisfactory definitions of the ethical terms they used, or satisfactory arguments for their moral beliefs. According to this way of placing the dialogues into a rough chronological order — associated especially with Gregory Vlastos's name (see especially his Socrates Ironist and Moral Philosopher , chapters 2 and 3) — Plato, at this point of his career, was content to use his writings primarily for the purpose of preserving the memory of Socrates and making plain the superiority of his hero, in intellectual skill and moral seriousness, to all of his contemporaries — particularly those among them who claimed to be experts on religious, political, or moral matters. Into this category of early dialogues (they are also sometimes called “Socratic” dialogues) are placed: Charmides , Crito , Euthydemus , Euthyphro , Gorgias , Hippias Major , Hippias Minor , Ion , Laches , Lysis , and Protagoras , (Some scholars hold that we can tell which of these come later during Plato's early period. For example, it is sometimes said that Protagoras and Gorgias are later, because of their greater length and philosophical complexity. Other dialogues — for example, Charmides and Lysis — are thought not to be among Plato's earliest within this early group, because in them Socrates appears to be playing a more active role in shaping the progress of the dialogue: that is, he has more ideas of his own.) In comparison with many of Plato's other dialogues, these “Socratic” works contain little in the way of metaphysical, epistemological, or methodological speculation, and they therefore fit well with the way Socrates characterizes himself in Plato's Apology : as a man who leaves investigations of high falutin’ matters (which are “in the sky and below the earth”) to wiser heads, and confines all of his investigations to the question how one should live one's life. Aristotle describes Socrates as someone whose interests were restricted to only one branch of philosophy — the realm of the ethical; and he also says that he was in the habit of asking definitional questions to which he himself lacked answers ( Metaphysics 987b1, Sophistical Refutations 183b7). That testimony gives added weight to the widely accepted hypothesis that there is a group of dialogues — the ones mentioned above as his early works — in which Plato used the dialogue form as a way of portraying the philosophical activities of the historical Socrates (although, of course, he might also have used them in other ways as well — for example to suggest and begin to explore philosophical difficulties raised by them).

But at a certain point — so says this hypothesis about the chronology of the dialogues — Plato began to use his works to advance ideas that were his own creations rather than those of Socrates, although he continued to use the name “Socrates” for the interlocutor who presented and argued for these new ideas. The speaker called “Socrates” now begins to move beyond and depart from the historical Socrates: he has views about the methodology that should be used by philosophers (a methodology borrowed from mathematics), and he argues for the immortality of the soul and the existence and importance of the forms of beauty, justice, goodness, and the like. (By contrast, in Apology Socrates says that no one knows what becomes of us after we die.) Phaedo is often said to be the dialogue in which Plato first comes into his own as a philosopher who is moving far beyond the ideas of his teacher (though it is also commonly said that we see a new methodological sophistication and a greater interest in mathematical knowledge in Meno ). Having completed all of the dialogues that, according to this hypothesis, we characterize as early, Plato widened the range of topics to be explored in his writings (no longer confining himself to ethics), and placed the theory of forms (and related ideas about language, knowledge, and love) at the center of his thinking. In these works of his “middle” period — for example, in Phaedo , Cratylus , Symposium , Republic , and Phaedrus — there is both a change of emphasis and of doctrine. The focus is no longer on ridding ourselves of false ideas and self-deceit; rather, we are asked to accept (however tentatively) a radical new conception of ourselves (now divided into three parts), our world — or rather, our two worlds — and our need to negotiate between them. Definitions of the most important virtue terms are finally proposed in Republic (the search for them in some of the early dialogues having been unsuccessful): Book I of this dialogue is a portrait of how the historical Socrates might have handled the search for a definition of justice, and the rest of the dialogue shows how the new ideas and tools discovered by Plato can complete the project that his teacher was unable to finish. Plato continues to use a figure called “Socrates” as his principal interlocutor, and in this way he creates a sense of continuity between the methods, insights, and ideals of the historical Socrates and the new Socrates who has now become a vehicle for the articulation of his own philosophical outlook. In doing so, he acknowledges his intellectual debt to his teacher and appropriates for his own purposes the extraordinary prestige of the man who was the wisest of his time.

This hypothesis about the chronology of Plato's writings has a third component: it does not place his works into either of only two categories — the early or “Socratic” dialogues, and all the rest — but works instead with a threefold division of early, middle, and late. That is because, following ancient testimony, it has become a widely accepted assumption that Laws is one of Plato's last works, and further that this dialogue shares a great many stylistic affinities with a small group of others: Sophist , Statesman , Timaeus , Critias , and Philebus . These five dialogues together with Laws are generally agreed to be his late works, because they have much more in common with each other, when one counts certain stylistic features apparent only to readers of Plato's Greek, than with any of Plato's other works. (Computer counts have aided these stylometric studies, but the isolation of a group of six dialogues by means of their stylistic commonalities was recognized in the nineteenth century.)

It is not at all clear whether there are one or more philosophical affinities among this group of six dialogues — that is, whether the philosophy they contain is sharply different from that of all of the other dialogues. Plato does nothing to encourage the reader to view these works as a distinctive and separate component of his thinking. On the contrary, he links Sophist with Theaetetus (the conversations they present have a largely overlapping cast of characters, and take place on successive days) no less than Sophist and Statesman . Sophist contains, in its opening pages, a reference to the conversation of Parmenides — and perhaps Plato is thus signaling to his readers that they should bring to bear on Sophist the lessons that are to be drawn from Parmenides . Similarly, Timaeus opens with a reminder of some of the principal doctrines of Republic . It could be argued, of course, that when one looks beyond these stage-setting devices, one finds significant philosophical changes in the six late dialogues, setting this group off from all that preceded them. But there is no consensus that they should be read in this way. Resolving this issue requires intensive study of the content of Plato's works. So, although it is widely accepted that the six dialogues mentioned above belong to Plato's latest period, there is, as yet, no agreement among students of Plato that these six form a distinctive stage in his philosophical development.

In fact, it remains a matter of dispute whether the division of Plato's works into three periods — early, middle, late — is a useful tool for the understanding of his thought. Of course, it would be wildly implausible to suppose that Plato's writing career began with such complex works as Laws , Parmenides , Phaedrus , or Republic . In light of widely accepted assumptions about how most philosophical minds develop, it is likely that when Plato started writing philosophical works some of the shorter and simpler dialogues were the ones he composed: Laches , or Crito , or Ion (for example). (Similarly, Apology does not advance a complex philosophical agenda or presuppose an earlier body of work; so that too is likely to have been composed near the beginning of Plato's writing career.) Even so, there is no good reason to eliminate the hypothesis that throughout much of his life Plato devoted himself to writing two sorts of dialogues at the same time, moving back and forth between them as he aged: on the one hand, introductory works whose primary purpose is to show readers the difficulty of apparently simple philosophical problems, and thereby to rid them of their pretensions and false beliefs; and on the other hand, works filled with more substantive philosophical theories supported by elaborate argumentation. Moreover, one could point to features of many of the “Socratic” dialogues that would justify counting them in the latter category, even though the argumentation does not concern metaphysics or methodology or invoke mathematics — Gorgias , Protagoras , Lysis , Euthydemus , Hippias Major among them.

Plato makes it clear that both of these processes, one preceding the other, must be part of one's philosophical education. One of his deepest methodological convictions (affirmed in Meno , Theaetetus , and Sophist ) is that in order to make intellectual progress we must recognize that knowledge cannot be acquired by passively receiving it from others: rather, we must work our way through problems and assess the merits of competing theories with an independent mind. Accordingly, some of his dialogues are primarily devices for breaking down the reader's complacency, and that is why it is essential that they come to no positive conclusions; others are contributions to theory-construction, and are therefore best absorbed by those who have already passed through the first stage of philosophical development. We should not assume that Plato could have written the preparatory dialogues only at the earliest stage of his career. Although he may well have begun his writing career by taking up that sort of project, he may have continued writing these “negative” works at later stages, at the same time that he was composing his theory-constructing dialogues. For example although both Euthydemus and Charmides are widely assumed to be early dialogues, they might have been written around the same time as Symposium and Republic , which are generally assumed to be compositions of his middle period — or even later.

No doubt, some of the works widely considered to be early really are such. But it is an open question which and how many of them are. At any rate, it is clear that Plato continued to write in a “Socratic” and “negative” vein even after he was well beyond the earliest stages of his career: Theaetetus features a Socrates who is even more insistent upon his ignorance than are the dramatic representations of Socrates in briefer and philosophically less complex works that are reasonably assumed to be early; and like many of those early works, Theaetetus seeks but does not find the answer to the “what is it?” question that it relentlessly pursues — “What is knowledge?” Similarly, Parmenides , though certainly not an early dialogue, is a work whose principal aim is to puzzle the reader by the presentation of arguments for apparently contradictory conclusions; since it does not tell us how it is possible to accept all of those conclusions, its principal effect on the reader is similar to that of dialogues (many of them no doubt early) that reach only negative conclusions. Plato uses this educational device — provoking the reader through the presentation of opposed arguments, and leaving the contradiction unresolved — in Protagoras (often considered an early dialogue) as well. So it is clear that even after he was well beyond the earliest stages of his thinking, he continued to assign himself the project of writing works whose principal aim is the presentation of unresolved difficulties. (And, just as we should recognize that puzzling the reader continues to be his aim even in later works, so too we should not overlook the fact that there is some substantive theory-construction in the ethical works that are simple enough to have been early compositions: Ion , for example, affirms a theory of poetic inspiration; and Crito sets out the conditions under which a citizen acquires an obligation to obey civic commands. Neither ends in failure.)

If we are justified in taking Socrates' speech in Plato's Apology to constitute reliable evidence about what the historical Socrates was like, then whatever we find in Plato's other works that is of a piece with that speech can also be safely attributed to Socrates. So understood, Socrates was a moralist but (unlike Plato) not a metaphysician or epistemologist or cosmologist. That fits with Aristotle's testimony, and Plato's way of choosing the dominant speaker of his dialogues gives further support to this way of distinguishing between him and Socrates. The number of dialogues that are dominated by a Socrates who is spinning out elaborate philosophical doctrines is remarkably small: Phaedo , Republic , Phaedrus , and Philebus . All of them are dominated by ethical issues: whether to fear death, whether to be just, whom to love, the place of pleasure. Evidently, Plato thinks that it is appropriate to make Socrates the major speaker in a dialogue that is filled with positive content only when the topics explored in that work primarily have to do with the ethical life of the individual. (The political aspects of Republic are explicitly said to serve the larger question whether any individual, no matter what his circumstances, should be just.) When the doctrines he wishes to present systematically become primarily metaphysical, he turns to a visitor from Elea ( Sophist , Statesman ); when they become cosmological, he turns to Timaeus; when they become constitutional, he turns, in Laws , to a visitor from Athens (and he then eliminates Socrates entirely). In effect, Plato is showing us: although he owes a great deal to the ethical insights of Socrates, as well as to his method of puncturing the intellectual pretensions of his interlocutors by leading them into contradiction, he thinks he should not put into the mouth of his teacher too elaborate an exploration of ontological, or cosmological, or political themes, because Socrates refrained from entering these domains. This may be part of the explanation why he has Socrates put into the mouth of the personified Laws of Athens the theory advanced in Crito , which reaches the conclusion that it would be unjust for him to escape from prison. Perhaps Plato is indicating, at the point where these speakers enter the dialogue, that none of what is said here is in any way derived from or inspired by the conversation of Socrates.

Just as we should reject the idea that Plato must have made a decision, at a fairly early point in his career, no longer to write one kind of dialogue (negative, destructive, preparatory) and to write only works of elaborate theory-construction; so we should also question whether he went through an early stage during which he refrained from introducing into his works any of his own ideas (if he had any), but was content to play the role of a faithful portraitist, representing to his readers the life and thought of Socrates. It is unrealistic to suppose that someone as original and creative as Plato, who probably began to write dialogues somewhere in his thirties (he was around 28 when Socrates was killed), would have started his compositions with no ideas of his own, or, having such ideas, would have decided to suppress them, for some period of time, allowing himself to think for himself only later. (What would have led to such a decision?) We should instead treat the moves made in the dialogues, even those that are likely to be early, as Platonic inventions — derived, no doubt, by Plato's reflections on and transformations of the key themes of Socrates that he attributes to Socrates in Apology . That speech indicates, for example, that the kind of religiosity exhibited by Socrates was unorthodox and likely to give offense or lead to misunderstanding. It would be implausible to suppose that Plato simply concocted the idea that Socrates followed a divine sign. But what of the various philosophical moves rehearsed in Euthyphro — the dialogue in which Socrates searches, unsuccessfully, for an understanding of what piety is? We have no good reason to think that in writing this work Plato adopted the role of a mere recording device, or something close to it (changing a word here and there, but for the most part simply recalling what he heard Socrates say, as he made his way to court). It is more likely that Plato, having been inspired by the unorthodoxy of Socrates' conception of piety, developed, on his own, a series of questions and answers designed to show his readers how difficult it is to reach an understanding of the central concept that Socrates' fellow citizens relied upon when they condemned him to death. The idea that it is important to search for definitions may have been Socratic in origin. (After all, Aristotle attributes this much to Socrates.) But the twists and turns of the arguments in Euthyphro and other dialogues that search for definitions are more likely to be the products of Plato's mind than the content of a conversation that really took place.

It is equally unrealistic to suppose that when Plato embarked on his career as a writer, he made a conscious decision to put all of the compositions that he would henceforth compose for a general reading public (with the exception of Apology ) in the form of a dialogue. If the question, “why did Plato write dialogues?”, which many of his readers are tempted to ask, pre-supposes that there must have been some such once-and-for-all decision, then it is poorly posed. It makes better sense to break that question apart into many little ones: better to ask, “Why did Plato write this particular work (for example: Protagoras , or Republic , or Symposium , or Laws ) in the form of a dialogue — and that one ( Timaeus , say) mostly in the form of a long and rhetorically elaborate single speech?” than to ask why he decided to adopt the dialogue form.

The best way to form a reasonable conjecture about why Plato wrote any given work in the form of a dialogue is to ask: what would be lost, were one to attempt to re-write this work in a way that eliminated the give-and-take of interchange, stripped the characters of their personality and social markers, and transformed the result into something that comes straight from the mouth of its author? This is often a question that will be easy to answer, but the answer might vary greatly from one dialogue to another. In pursuing this strategy, we must not rule out the possibility that some of Plato's reasons for writing this or that work in the form of a dialogue will also be his reason for doing so in other cases — perhaps some of his reasons, so far as we can guess at them, will be present in all other cases. For example, the use of character and conversation allows an author to enliven his work, to awaken the interest of his readership, and therefore to reach a wider audience. The enormous appeal of Plato's writings is in part a result of their dramatic composition. Even treatise-like compositions — Timaeus and Laws , for example — improve in readability because of their conversational frame. Furthermore, the dialogue form allows Plato's evident interest in pedagogical questions (how is it possible to learn? what is the best way to learn? from what sort of person can we learn? what sort of person is in a position to learn?) to be pursued not only in the content of his compositions but also in their form. Even in Laws such questions are not far from Plato's mind, as he demonstrates, through the dialogue form, how it is possible for the citizens of Athens, Sparta, and Crete to learn from each other by adapting and improving upon each other's social and political institutions.

In some of his works, it is evident that one of Plato's goals is to create a sense of puzzlement among his readers, and that the dialogue form is being used for this purpose. The Parmenides is perhaps the clearest example of such a work, because here Plato relentlessly rubs his readers' faces in a baffling series of unresolved puzzles and apparent contradictions. But several of his other works also have this character, though to a smaller degree: for example, Protagoras (can virtue be taught?), Hippias Minor (is voluntary wrongdoing better than involuntary wrongdoing?), and portions of Meno (are some people virtuous because of divine inspiration?). Just as someone who encounters Socrates in conversation should sometimes be puzzled about whether he means what he says (or whether he is instead speaking ironically), so Plato sometimes uses the dialogue form to create in his readers a similar sense of discomfort about what he means and what we ought to infer from the arguments that have been presented to us. But Socrates does not always speak ironically, and similarly Plato's dialogues do not always aim at creating a sense of bafflement about what we are to think about the subject under discussion. There is no mechanical rule for discovering how best to read a dialogue, no interpretive strategy that applies equally well to all of his works. We will best understand Plato's works and profit most from our reading of them if we recognize their great diversity of styles and adapt our reading habits accordingly. Rather than impose on our reading of Plato a uniform expectation of what he must be doing (because he has done such a thing elsewhere), we should bring to each dialogue a receptivity to what is unique in each of them. That would be the most fitting reaction to the artistry in his philosophy.

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History >> Ancient Greece >> Biography

• Occupation: Philosopher and Mathematician
• Born: 427 BC in Athens, Greece
• Died: 347 BC in Athens, Greece
• Best known for: Greek philosopher who helped form the foundation of Western philosophy and founded the Academy in Athens.
• Plato's real name may have been Aristocles after his father. Plato might have been a nickname that meant "broad" or "wide."
• He was related to the famous lawmaker and poet Solon through his mother.
• After Athens lost the Peloponnesian War to Sparta, Plato was offered to be one of the "Thirty Tyrants" that ruled over Athens, but he declined.
• Plato was also heavily influenced by the mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras.
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