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Hall of Greek Philosophers
Plato
Founder of the Academy; theory of Forms
- c. 428 – 348 BCE
- Greek Philosophers · 2 of 10
Hall of Greek Philosophers
Founder of the Academy; theory of Forms
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Plato ( PLAY-toh; Ancient Greek: Πλάτων, Plátōn; c. 428–347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of Classical Athens who is most commonly considered the foundational thinker of the Western philosophical tradition. An innovator of the literary dialogue and dialectic forms, Plato influenced all the major areas of theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy, and was the founder of the Academy, a philosophical school in Athens where Plato taught the collection of philosophical theories that would later become known as Platonism.
Plato's most famous contribution is his Theory of Forms (or Ideas), which aims to solve what is now known as the problem of universals. He was influenced by the pre-Socratic thinkers Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, although much of what is known about them is derived from Plato himself.
Along with his teacher Socrates, and his student Aristotle, Plato is a central figure in the history of Western philosophy. 2,400 years later, Plato's complete works are believed to have survived—unlike those of nearly all of his contemporaries. Although their popularity has fluctuated, they have consistently been read and studied through the ages. Through Platonism's outgrowth Neoplatonism, he also influenced Christian, Jewish and Islamic philosophy. In modern times, Alfred North Whitehead said: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."
Plato was born between 428 and 423 BC into an aristocratic and influential Athenian family; through his mother, Perictione, he was a descendant of Solon, a statesman credited with laying the foundations of Athenian democracy. Diogenes Laertius asserts that Plato is a nickname that alludes to his robust figure, and that his birth name was Aristocles (Ἀριστοκλῆς), meaning 'best reputation', but this is widely regarded as false by modern scholarship. Plato had two brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, both of whom appear in the Republic, and also a sister, Potone, and a half brother, Antiphon.
During Plato's childhood, Athens was involved in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta. His older brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, distinguished themselves at the battle of Megara in 409 BC. Despite the war, Plato and his brothers, like all male citizens of Athens, received a traditional education in gymnastics and music. According to the ancient writers, there was a tradition that Plato's favorite employment in his youthful years was poetry: he wrote poems, dithyrambs at first, and afterwards lyric poems and tragedies (a tetralogy), but abandoned his early passion and burnt his poems when he met Socrates and turned to philosophy. There are also some epigrams attributed to Plato, but these are now thought by some scholars to be spurious.
In his youth, Plato first encountered Socrates, who would become his teacher and greatest source of inspiration, initially in the company of other Athenian boys in the Palaestra, such as is depicted with Lysis and Menexenus, who discuss philosophy with Socrates in the Lysis, but he soon would become a member of Socrates' inner circle, meeting with Socrates and his other followers. Socrates, along with the sophists of his day, challenged the prevailing focus of Early Greek philosophy on Natural philosophy, and investigated questions of ethics and politics, examining the ideas of his interlocutors with a series of questioning called the Socratic method.
Socrates' immense influence on Plato is clearly borne out in Plato's dialogues: Plato never speaks in his own voice in his dialogues; every dialogue except the Laws features Socrates, although many dialogues, including the Timaeus and Statesman, feature him speaking only rarely. Leo Strauss notes that Socrates' reputation for irony casts doubt on whether Plato's Socrates is expressing sincere beliefs. Xenophon's Memorabilia and Aristophanes's The Clouds seem to present a somewhat different portrait of Socrates from the one Plato paints. Aristotle attributes a different doctrine with respect to Forms to Plato and Socrates. Aristotle suggests that Socrates' idea of forms can be discovered through investigation of the natural world, unlike Plato's Forms that exist beyond and outside the ordinary range of human understanding. The Socratic problem concerns how to reconcile these various accounts. The precise relationship between Plato and Socrates remains an area of contention among scholars.
According to the Seventh Letter, whose authenticity has been disputed, as Plato came of age, he imagined for himself a life in public affairs. In 404, Sparta defeated Athens at the conclusion of the Peloponnesian war, leading to the election of the Thirty Tyrants, which included two of Plato's relatives, Critias and Charmides. Plato himself was invited to join the administration, but declined, and quickly became disillusioned by the atrocities committed by the Thirty, especially when they tried to implicate Socrates in their seizure of the democratic general Leon of Salamis for summary execution.
In 403 BC, the democracy was restored after the regrouping of the democrats in exile, who entered the city through the Piraeus and met the forces of the Thirty at the Battle of Munychia, where both Critias and Charmides were killed. In 401 BC, the restored democrats raided Eleusis and killed the remaining oligarchic supporters, suspecting them of hiring mercenaries.
As depicted in the many dialogues that are set between 401 and 399 BC, life largely returned to normal in Athens. However, the prosecution of Socrates by Anytus put an end to Plato's plans for a political career.
After the death of Socrates, Plato remained in Athens for roughly three years.
In Athens, Plato studied with Cratylus, a philosopher who followed the early Greek philosopher Heraclitus, and also Hermogenes, an Eleatic philosopher in the tradition of Parmenides. Heraclitus viewed all things as continuously changing, that one cannot "step into the same river twice" due to the ever-changing waters flowing through it, and all things exist as a contraposition of opposites, while Parmenides adopted an altogether contrary vision, arguing for the idea of a changeless, eternal universe and the view that change is an illusion. Heraclitus's views are expounded by Cratylus himself in Plato's dialogue Cratylus and deconstructed in the Theaetetus by Socrates. Plato would go on to depict both Parmenides and Parmenides' student Zeno in the Parmenides, and an "Eleatic Stranger" also appears in the Sophist and Statesman.
In roughly 396 BC, Plato left Athens and studied in Megara with Euclid of Megara, founder of the Megarian school of philosophy, and other Socratics.
Around 394 BC or earlier, he returned to Athens, where, as an Athenian male of military age he would have needed to be available to serve in the Corinthian war, which Athens participated in from 395 to 386 BC. Other than potential military service, Plato spent his time studying mathematics with Archytas of Tarentum, Theaetetus, Leodamas of Thasos, and Neocleides in the grove of Hecademus, named after an Attic hero in Greek mythology, northwest of the city of Athens, where he would later found his Academy. During this time, Plato likely began work on some of his earliest works; including the Apology, possibly early drafts of the Gorgias and Republic Book I, and an early form of the Republic books II-IV, in the form of a speech rather than a dialogue, which was ridiculed by Aristophanes in the Ecclesiazusae in 391 BC. Speusippus, the son of Plato's sister Potone, who took over the academy after Plato's death, joined the group in about 390 BC, and Eudoxus of Cnidus, another early mathematician, arrived around 385 BC.
After the conclusion of the Corinthian War, Plato travelled to southern Italy to study with Archytas and other Pythagoreans. The influence of these Pythagoreans appears to have been significant. According to R. M. Hare, this influence consists of three points:
Pythagoras held that all things are number, and the cosmos comes from numerical principles. He introduced the concept of form as distinct from matter, and that the physical world is an imitation of an eternal mathematical world.
When Plato was about 40 years old, he visited Syracuse. Many ancient sources, including the collection of Letters attributed to Plato, tell how he became entangled with the politics of the city of Syracuse. Plato initially visited Syracuse while it was under the rule of Dionysius, in roughly 385 BC. During this first trip Dionysius's brother-in-law, Dion of Syracuse, became one of Plato's disciples, but the tyrant himself turned against Plato.
After his return from Syracuse, Plato founded his philosophical school, the Academy, near the sacred olive grove of Hecademus, in roughly 383 BC. At first, the property consisted of only a house with a garden, and during his lifetime, the work of the Academy itself likely took part in an open area for study of philosophy and mathematics. From 383 BC until about 366 BC, Plato primarily spent his time at the Academy, writing the majority of the dialogues during this time. Much like Socrates and his students had been parodied in Aristophanes' plays The Clouds and The Birds, the students at the Academy seem to have been the target of their contemporaries in Middle Comedy. A fragment from a lost play of Epicrates depicts two students of the Academy engaged in a fierce debate over the genus of a pumpkin, in a parody of the Platonic conception of diairesis. Aristotle of Stagira, who would go on to become a philosopher as famous as Plato in his own right, arrived in 367 BC, shortly before Plato departed again for Syracuse.
After Dionysius I's death in 367 BC, Plato returned to Syracuse, likely early in 366 BC, at the request of Dion, in order to tutor Dionysius II and guide him to become a philosopher king. Dionysius II seemed to accept Plato's teachings, but he became suspicious of Dion, his uncle. Dionysius expelled Dion, and Plato, after trying repeatedly to reconcile the two, gave up and returned to Athens.
Plato returned to Syracuse a third time in 361 BC, likely staying over the winter until 360 BC. Dionysius kept Plato against his will, forcing Plato to appeal to his friend Archytas to intercede, at which point he returned to Athens. Dion would return to overthrow Dionysius and ruled Syracuse for a short time from 357 BC up until 354 BC, when he was usurped by Calippus, an Athenian who Plato insists, in the Seventh Letter, had no connection with the Academy.
However, according to a 2024 announcement of the decipherment of a scroll from Herculaneum by the Greek philosopher Philodemus, History of the Academy, Plato was sold into slavery on the island of Aegina, possibly as early as 404 BC when the Spartans conquered the island, or alternatively in 399 BC, shortly after Socrates’ passing.
After 360 BC, Plato returned to Athens, where he spent the remainder of his life. At this point, he wrote or revised some of his final works, possibly including the Timaeus, Critias, Sophist, Statesman, Philebus, and his longest work, the Laws, all of which exhibit similarity of language, philosophical themes, and style that indicate they were intentionally published together to present a unified viewpoint. At the time of his death, however, the Laws was still unfinished; this work was edited by a student at the Academy, Philip of Opus, who is also generally believed to have written the Epinomis, an appendix to the Laws.
In 348/347 BC, Plato died and was buried in his garden in the Academy in Athens. According to the Herculaneum scroll, he spent his last evening, while feverish, listening to a Thracian slave girl playing the flute and complained of her lack of rhythm. At the time of his death, Plato seems to have been self-sufficient, but not wealthy. A will preserved by one of the ancient biographers of Plato, which discusses his estate, does not mention the Academy, which suggests that he left a separate provision for it or possibly established an endowment. He was succeeded as the head of the Academy by Speusippus, his nephew.
In Plato's dialogues, Socrates and his company of disputants had something to say on many subjects, including several aspects of metaphysics. These include religion and science, human nature, love, and sexuality. More than one dialogue contrasts perception and reality, nature and custom, and body and soul. Francis Cornford identified the "twin pillars of Platonism" as the theory of Forms, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the doctrine of immortality of the soul.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Plato”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.