Plato Learning, Inc. Business Information, Profile, and History

Related information about Plato

Greek philosopher, probably born in Athens, Greece of an aristocratic family. Little is known of his early life, but he was a devoted disciple of Socrates. He travelled widely, then in about 367 BC founded his Academy at Athens, where Aristotle was his most famous pupil. He remained there for the rest of his life, apart from visits to Syracuse, where he was involved in political experiments. His 30 or more dialogues are conventionally divided into three periods.

The early dialogues have Socrates as the principal character engaged in ironic and inconclusive interrogations about the definition of different moral virtues (piety in the Euthyphro, courage in the Laches, and so on). In the middle, highly literary dialogues, such as the Symposium, Gorgias, Phaedo, and Republic, he increasingly develops his own positive doctrines, such as the theory of knowledge as recollection, the immortality of the soul, the tripartite division of the soul, and above all the theory of forms (or ‘ideas’) which contrasts the transient, material world of ‘particulars’ (objects merely of perception, opinion, and belief) with the timeless, unchanging world of universals or forms (the true objects of knowledge). The Republic also describes Plato's celebrated political utopia, ruled by philosopher-kings who have mastered the discipline of ‘dialectic’. The third group of later dialogues (including the Parmenides, Theaetetus, and Sophist) represents a series of highly sophisticated criticisms of the metaphysical and logical assumptions of his middle period, and contain some of his most demanding and original work.

Taken as a whole, his philosophy has been so enormously influential that the whole subsequent Western tradition was described by Whitehead as a series of ‘footnotes to Plato’.

Plato (Greek: ??????, Plát?n, "wide, broad-shouldered") (c. 347 BC), whose real name is believed to have been Aristocles, was an immensely influential ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens where Aristotle studied.

Plato lectured extensively at the Academy, and wrote on many philosophical issues, dealing especially in politics, ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology. The most important writings of Plato are his dialogues, although some letters have come down to us under his name. However, some dialogues ascribed to Plato by the Greeks are now considered by the consensus of scholars to be either suspect (e.g., First Alcibiades, Clitophon) or probably spurious (such as Demodocus, or the Second Alcibiades). The letters are all considered to probably be spurious, with the possible exception of the Seventh Letter.

Socrates is often a character in Plato's dialogues.

Biography

Plato was born in Athens in May or December in 428 or 427 BC. His father was named Ariston, and his mother Perictione. According to a late Hellenistic account by Diogenes Laertius, Plato's given name was Aristocles, whereas his wrestling coach, Ariston of Argos, dubbed him "Platon", meaning "broad" on account of his robust figure. According to Dicaearchus, Plato wrestled at the Isthmian games. It is suggested that much of his ethical writing is in pursuit of a society where similar injustices could not occur. During the twelve years following the death of Socrates, he traveled extensively in Italy, Sicily, Egypt, and Cyrene in a quest for knowledge.

After his return to Athens at the age of forty, Plato founded one of the earliest known organized schools in Western civilization on a plot of land in the Grove of Academe. The Academy was "a large enclosure of ground which was once the property of a citizen at Athens named Academus... Graec. I i 16), and it operated until 529 AD, when it was closed by Justinian I of Byzantium, who saw it as a threat to the propagation of Christianity. Many intellectuals were schooled in the Academy, the most prominent one being Aristotle.

Plato was also deeply influenced by a number of prior philosophers, including: the Pythagoreans, whose notions of numerical harmony have clear echoes in Plato's notion of the Forms; Anaxagoras, who taught Socrates and who held that the mind, or reason, pervades everything; and Parmenides, who argued for the unity of all things and may have influenced Plato's concept of the soul.

Work

Themes

Unlike Socrates, Plato wrote down philosophical thoughts, leaving behind a considerable number of manuscripts.

In Plato's writings are debates concerning the best possible form of government, featuring adherents of aristocracy, democracy, monarchy, as well as other issues. A central theme is the conflict between nature and convention, concerning the role of heredity and the environment on human intelligence and personality long before the modern "nature versus nurture" debate began in the time of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, with its modern continuation in such controversial works as The Mismeasure of Man and The Bell Curve.

Another theme in Plato's writing is the distinction between knowledge and true belief. Unlike most modern writers, Plato argued that the main difference between knowledge and true belief was the nature of their objects: knowledge was of eternal truths (later, the Forms), while true belief was of ephemeral, contingent truths.


Plato also had a position on the art of writing as opposed to oral communication. This is evidenced in his dialogue PhaedrusPlato, Phaedrus, "the living word of knowledge which has a soul, and of which the written word is properly no more than an image" and his Seventh Epistle.Plato, Seventh Epistle, "Therefore every man of worth, when dealing with matters of worth, will be far from exposing them to ill feeling and misunderstanding among men by committing them to writing." He said that oral communication is superior to the written word, especially in the accuracy of the oral word over the written word and in his Seventh Epistle that nothing of importance should be written down but transmitted orally. these are called the Socratic Dialogues.

Some scholars believe that the nature of the dialogues changed a great deal over the course of Plato's life. The question of which, if any, of the dialogues are truly Socratic is known as the Socratic problem.

The ostensible mise en scène of a dialogue distances both Plato and a given reader from the philosophy being discussed; one can choose between at least two options of perception: either to participate in the dialogues, in the ideas being discussed, or choose to see the content as expressive of the personalities contained within the work.

The dialogue format allows Plato to put unpopular opinions in the mouth of unsympathetic characters, such as Thrasymachus in The Republic.

Metaphysics

Platonism has traditionally been interpreted as a form of metaphysical dualismfact, sometimes referred to as Platonic realism, and is regarded as one of the earlier representatives of metaphysical objective idealism.www.philosophos.com/knowledge_base/archives_12/philosophy_questions_12.html According to this reading, Plato's metaphysics divides the world into two distinct aspects: the intelligible world of "forms", and the perceptual world we see around us. These forms are unchangeable and perfect, and are only comprehensible by the use of the intellect or understanding, that is, a capacity of the mind that does not include sense-perception or imagination. while Zoroaster lived well before Plato, few of the earliest writings of Zoroastrianism survive unaltered.



In the Republic Books VI and VII, Plato uses a number of metaphors to explain his metaphysical views: the metaphor of the sun, the well-known allegory of the cave, and most explicitly, the divided line.

Taken together, these metaphors convey a complex, and, in places,difficult theory: there is something called The Form of the Good (often interpreted as Plato's god), which is the ultimate object of knowledge and which, as it were, sheds light on all the other forms (i.e., universals: abstract kinds and attributes), and from which all other forms "emanate". it is as if we are seeing shadows of cut-out shapes on the walls of a cave, which are mere representations of the reality outside the cave, illuminated by the sun.

We can imagine everything in the universe represented on a line of increasing reality; (See the divided line of Plato)

Plato's metaphysics, and particularly its dualism between the intelligible and the perceptual, would inspire later Neoplatonist thinkers, such as Plotinus and Gnostics, and many other metaphysical realists. One reason being the Gnostic vilification of nature and Plato's demiurge from Timaeus. For more on Platonic realism in general, see Platonic realism and the Forms.

Although this interpretation of Plato's writings (particularly the Republic) has enjoyed immense popularity throughout the long history of Western philosophy, it is also possible to interpret his suggestions more conservatively, favoring a more epistemological than metaphysical reading of such famous metaphors as the Cave and the Divided Line.

Epistemology

Plato also had some influential opinions on the nature of knowledge and learning which he propounded in the Meno, which began with the question of whether virtue can be taught, and proceeded to expound the concepts of recollection, learning as the discovery of pre-existing knowledge, and right opinion, opinions which are correct but have no clear justification.

Plato stated that knowledge is essentially justified true belief, an influential belief which informed future developments in epistemology. In the Many years later, Edmund Gettier famously demonstrated the problems of the justified true belief account of knowledge.In the Sophist and the Statesman Plato associates knowledge with the knowledge of the kinds and the Forms as well as of their ability of blending, which he calls expertise in Dialectic.

According to this model, the principles of Athenian democracy (as it existed in his day) are rejected as only a few are fit to rule. This does not equate to tyranny, despotism, or oligarchy, however. According to Socrates, the "true" and "healthy" city is instead the one first outlined in book II of the Republic, 369c-372d, containing farmers, craftsmen, merchants, and wage-earners, but lacking the guardian class of philosopher-kings as well as delicacies such as "perfumed oils, incense, prostitutes, and pastries", in addition to paintings, gold, ivory, couches, a multitude of occupations such as poets and hunters, and war.

In addition, the ideal city is used as an image to illuminate the state of one's soul, or the will, reason, and desires combined in the human body. A philosopher has the moderate love for wisdom and the courage to act according to wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge about the Good or the right relations between all that exists.

Wherein it concerns states and rulers, Plato has made interesting arguments. He argues that it is better to be ruled by a bad tyrant (since then there is only one person comitting bad deeds) than be a bad democracy (since here all the people are now responsible for such actions.)

According to Socrates a state, which is made up of different kinds of souls, will overall decline from an aristocracy to a timocracy, then to an oligarchy, then to a democracy, and finally to tyranny. Perhaps Plato is trying to warn us of the various kinds of immoderate souls that can rule over a state, and what kind of wise souls are best to advise and give counsel to the rulers that are often lovers of power, money, fame, and popularity.

Platonic scholarship

Plato's thought is often compared with that of his most famous student, Aristotle, whose reputation during the Western Middle Ages so completely eclipsed that of Plato that the Scholastic philosophers referred to Aristotle as "the Philosopher". However, in the Byzantine Empire, the study of Plato continued.

The Medieval scholastic philosophers did not have access to the works of Plato, nor the knowledge of Greek needed to read them. Plato's original writings were essentially lost to Western civilization until they were brought from Constantinople in the century before its fall, by George Gemistos Plethon. Medieval scholars knew of Plato only through translations into Latin from the translations into Arabic by Persian and Arab scholars. These scholars not only translated the texts of the ancients, but expanded them by writing extensive commentaries and interpretations on Plato's and Aristotle's works (see Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes).

Only in the Renaissance, with the general resurgence of interest in classical civilization, did knowledge of Plato's philosophy become widespread again in the West. Many of the greatest early modern scientists and artists who broke with Scholasticism and fostered the flowering of the Renaissance, with the support of the Plato-inspired Lorenzo de Medici, saw Plato's philosophy as the basis for progress in the arts and sciences. By the 19th century, Plato's reputation was restored, and at least on par with Aristotle's.

Notable Western philosophers have continued to draw upon Plato's work since that time. It inspired the greatest advances in logic since Aristotle, due to Gottlob Frege and his followers Kurt Gödel, Alonzo Church, and Alfred Tarski, the last of whom summarised his approach by reversing Aristotle's famous declaration of sedition from the Nicomachean Ethics (1096a15: Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas): Inimicus Plato sed magis amica veritas ("Plato is a friend, but truth is yet a greater friend"). Albert Einstein drew on Plato's understanding of an immutable reality that underlies the flux of appearances for his objections to the probabilistic picture of the physical universe propounded by Niels Bohr in his interpretation of quantum mechanics. Conversely, thinkers that diverged from ontological models and moral ideals in their own philosophy, have tended to disparage Platonism from more or less informed perspectives. Thus Friedrich Nietzsche attacked Plato's moral and political theories, Martin Heidegger argued against Plato's alleged obfuscation of Being, and Karl Popper argued in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) that Plato's alleged proposal for a government system in the Republic was prototypically totalitarian. this has led to several conventions regarding the naming and referencing of Plato's texts.

Those works ascribed to Plato that have a separate Wikipedia article can be found in Dialogues of Plato

By tetralogy

One tradition regarding the arrangement of Plato's texts is according to tetralogies. This scheme is ascribed by Diogenes Laertius to an ancient scholar and court astrologer to Tiberius named Thrasyllus.

In the list below, works by Plato are marked (1) if there is no consensus among scholars as to whether Plato is the author, and (2) if scholars generally agree that Plato is not the author of the work. Euthyphro, (The) Apology (of Socrates), Crito, Phaedo

• II. Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman
  
• III. Parmenides, Philebus, (The) Symposium, Phaedrus
  
• IV. First Alcibiades (1), Second Alcibiades (2), Hipparchus (2), (The) (Rival) Lovers (2)
  
• V. Theages (2), Charmides, Laches, Lysis
  
• VI. Euthydemus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno
  
• VII. (Greater) Hippias (major) (1), (Lesser) Hippias (minor), Ion, Menexenus
  
• VIII. Clitophon (1), (The) Republic, Timaeus, Critias
  
• IX. Minos (2), (The) Laws, Epinomis (2), Seventh Letter (1).
  

Works not in Thrasyllus' tetralogies

The remaining works were transmitted under Plato's name, most of them already considered spurious in antiquity, and so were not included by Thrasyllus in his tetralogical arrangement. These works are labelled as Notheuomenoi ("spurious") or Apocrypha.

• Axiochus (2), Definitions (2), Demodocus (2), Epigrams, Eryxias (2), Halcyon (2), On Justice (2), On Virtue (2), Sisyphus (2).
  

Stephanus pagination

The usual system for making unique references to sections of the text by Plato derives from a 16th century edition of Plato's works by Henricus Stephanus. Friedrich Schleiermacher, whose translation of Plato into German still stands uncontested in Germany, is very likely the first to have divided Plato's dialogues into three distinct periods. Schleiermacher divides the dialogues thus:

1. Foundation: Phaedrus, Lysis, Protagoras, Laches, Charmides, Euthyphro, Parmenides;
   
2. Transition: Gorgias, Theaetetus, Meno, Euthydemus, Cratylus, Sophist, Statesman, Symposium, Phaedo, Philebus
   
3. Culmination: The Republic, (Critias, Timaeus, The Laws)
   

The final three dialogues above, in parentheses, were not translated by Schleiermacher, though ten other dialogues (including Ion, etc.) were translated and deemed spurious. Finally, Schleiermacher maintained that the Apology and probably the Crito were Plato's memory of Socrates' actual words.

Lewis Campbell was the first to make exhaustive use of stylometry to prove objectively that the Critias, Timaeus, Laws, Philebus, Sophist, and Statesman were all clustered together as a group, while the Parmenides, Phaedrus, Republic, and Theaetetus belong to a separate group, which must be earlier (given Aristotle's statement in his Politics 1264b24-27 that the Laws was written after the Republic; This period also includes several pieces surrounding the trial and execution of Socrates.

• Apology
  
• Crito
  
• Charmides
  
• Laches
  
• Lysis
  
• Euthyphro
  
• Menexenus
  
• Lesser Hippias
  
• Ion
  

The following are variously considered transitional or middle period dialogues:

• Gorgias
  
• Protagoras
  
• Meno
  

Middle dialogues

Late in the early dialogues Plato's Socrates actually begins supplying answers to some of the questions he asks, or putting forth positive doctrines. The Symposium and the Republic are considered the centrepieces of Plato's middle period.

• Euthydemus
  
• Cratylus
  
• Phaedo
  
• Phaedrus
  
• Symposium
  
• Republic
  
• Theaetetus
  
• Parmenides
  

Late dialogues

The Parmenides presents a series of criticisms of the theory of Forms which are widely taken to indicate Plato's abandonment of the doctrine. An apparently new method for doing dialectic known as "collection and division" is also featured, most notably in the Sophist and Statesman, explicitly for the first time in the Phaedrus, and possibly in the Philebus.
-->

• Sophist
  
• Statesman
  
• Philebus
  
• Timaeus
  
• Critias
  
• Laws
  

Loeb Classical Library

James Loeb provided a very popular edition of Plato's works, still in print in the 21st century: see Loeb Classical Library#Plato for how Plato's works were named in Loeb's publications.

See also

• Greek texts
  
• Important publications in Western philosophy
  
• Mitchell Miller
  
• Alexander Nehamas
  
• Platonic love
  

Footnotes

References

• Bakalis Nikolaos. 1981, Platonic Studies, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-10021-7
  
• Oxford University Press publishes scholarly editions of Plato's Greek texts in the Oxford Classical Texts series, and some translations in the Clarendon Plato Series.
  
• Harvard University Press publishes the hardbound series Loeb Classical Library, containing Plato's works in Greek, with English translations on facing pages.
  
•