Philosophy

Plato

c. 428/427 or 424/423–348/347 BC · Athenian (Greek)

Classical Greek philosophy; Platonism

Plato, pupil of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle, founded the Academy in Athens and wrote philosophical dialogues, most featuring Socrates as the main speaker. His theory of Forms, his accounts of knowledge and the soul, and his vision in the Republic of a just city ruled by philosopher-kings set the agenda for much of Western philosophy.

How to spot them

▸Theory of Forms; the Allegory of the Cave; philosopher-kings
▸Dialogues such as Republic, Symposium, Phaedo, Timaeus and Meno; Stephanus numbers such as 514a
▸The Academy; Atlantis (Timaeus and Critias); the Ring of Gyges
▸Whitehead's remark that European philosophy is 'a series of footnotes to Plato'

Key works

Republic (Politeia) (c. 375 BC)

What is justice? The ideal city ruled by philosopher-kings, the tripartite soul, and the Sun, Divided Line and Cave

Symposium (c. 385–370 BC)

Speeches on love at a drinking party, including Aristophanes' myth of halved humans and Diotima's ladder of love

Phaedo (c. 380s BC)

Arguments for the immortality of the soul on the day of Socrates' death

Meno (c. 385 BC)

Can virtue be taught? A slave boy's geometry lesson illustrates knowledge as recollection

Timaeus (c. 360 BC)

Cosmology in which a divine craftsman (the Demiurge) shapes the world; introduces the story of Atlantis

Laws (c. 350s BC (his last work))

His longest dialogue, legislating in detail for a new Cretan colony, Magnesia

Key ideas

Theory of Forms: beyond the changing world of the senses lie eternal, unchanging Forms (Ideas), such as Beauty itself and Justice itself, which are the true objects of knowledge
Allegory of the Cave (Republic Book VII): prisoners mistake shadows for reality; the philosopher escapes into the light and sees the sun, representing the Form of the Good
Tripartite soul: reason, spirit (thumos) and appetite; justice is each part doing its own job under reason's rule, mirrored by the three classes of the ideal city
Philosopher-kings: cities will have no rest from evils until philosophers rule or rulers truly philosophise
Anamnesis: learning is the recollection of what the immortal soul knew before birth (Meno, Phaedo)
Platonic love (Symposium): love of a beautiful body can ascend step by step to love of Beauty itself

Quick-fire facts

•Founded the Academy in Athens c. 387 BC, near a grove sacred to the hero Akademos; Aristotle studied there for about 20 years
•Diogenes Laërtius reports that his real name was Aristocles and 'Plato' (from 'broad') was a nickname, a story many scholars doubt
•He visited Syracuse to advise the tyrants Dionysius I and Dionysius II, without success
•The Ring of Gyges, which makes its wearer invisible, appears in Republic Book II
•The 'noble lie' (myth of the metals) and the exclusion of most poets from the ideal city both appear in the Republic
•A. N. Whitehead wrote that the European philosophical tradition 'consists of a series of footnotes to Plato' (Process and Reality, 1929)
•The inscription 'Let no one ignorant of geometry enter' over the Academy is a later tradition, not reliably attested for Plato's time
•References use Stephanus pagination from Henri Estienne's 1578 edition, e.g. Republic 514a for the Cave

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Sources

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Plato
Anthony Kenny — A New History of Western Philosophy