Athens, into a moderately well-to-do aristocratic
family. His father was named Ariston and his mother
Perictione. An ancestor, Glaucon, was one of the best-known
members of the Athenian nobility. Plato's own real name was
"Aristocles". The nickname Plato originates from wrestling
circles, that much is agreed on. Since Plato means "broad,"
it probably refers either to his physical appearance or
possibly wrestling stance or style.
He founded the
Academy, one of the earliest known organized schools in
Western civilization, named after the spot it was founded
on, holy to the hero
Academus. Aristotle was a student there for many years.
It operated until it was closed by
Justinian I of Byzantium in
529 A.D.
Plato became a pupil of Socrates in his youth,
and--according to his own account, anyhow--attended his
master's trial, though not his execution. Unlike Socrates,
Plato wrote down his philosophical views and left a
considerable number of manuscripts (see below). He was
deeply affected by the city's treatment of Socrates: much of
his early work enshrines his memories of his teacher, and
much of his ethical writing suggests a desire to found a
society where similar injustices could not occur.
Plato was also deeply influenced by the
Pythagoreans, whose notions of numerical harmony have
clear echoes in Plato's notion of
the Forms (sometimes thus capitalized; see below); by
Anaxagoras, who taught Socrates and who held that the mind
or reason pervades everything; and by Parmenides, who argued
the unity of all things.
In Plato's writings one finds the
heliocentric theory of the universe long before it was
advanced by
Aristarchus (and revived still later and given a
scientific footing by
Copernicus,
Galileo, and
Kepler). One finds debates concerning aristocratic and
democratic forms of government. One finds debates concerning
the role of heredity and environment in human intelligence
and personality long before the modern "nature
versus nurture" debate began in the time of
Hobbes and
Locke, with its modern continuation in such
controversial works as
The Mismeasure of Man and
The Bell Curve. One finds arguments for the
subjectivity--and the objectivity--of human knowledge which
foreshadow modern debates between Hume and Kant, or between
the postmodernists and their opponents. Even the myth of the
lost city or continent of
Atlantis originates as an illustrative story told by
Plato in his Timaeus and Critias.
Work
Plato wrote his philosophy down mainly in the form of
dialogues in which several characters discuss a topic by
asking questions of one another. The early ones, where
Socrates figures prominently and his own teaching style is
used, are called the Socratic Dialogues. But the philosophy
expressed in his dialogues changed a great deal over the
course of Plato's life, and this makes it difficult to
determine whether an opinion expressed in one of these
dialogues is an idea of Socrates', or Plato's. (Plato
himself appears only very briefly in two of the dialogues,
and says nothing.) It is generally agreed that Plato's
earlier works are more closely based on Socrates' thought,
whereas his later writing increasingly breaks away with the
views of his former teacher. In the middle dialogues,
Socrates becomes a mouthpiece for Plato's own philosophy,
and the question-and-answer style is more pro forma.
The later dialogues are closer to being simply treatises,
and Socrates is often absent or quiet.
Plato's Metaphysics: Platonism, or realism
One of Plato's legacies, and perhaps his greatest, was his
dualistic metaphysics, often called (in metaphysics) simply
"realism" or "Platonism." Whatever it is called, Plato's
metaphysics divides the world into two distinct aspects: the
intelligible world of "forms" and the perceptual world we
see around us. He saw the perceptual world, and the things
in it, as imperfect copies of the intelligible forms
or ideas. These forms are unchangable and perfect,
and are only comprehensible by the use of the intellect or
understanding (i.e., a capacity of the mind that does not
include sense-perception or imagination).
In the Republic Books VI and VII, Plato used a
number of metaphors to explain his metaphysical views: the
metaphor of
the sun, the well-known
allegory of the cave, and most explicitly,
the divided line. Taken together, these metaphors convey
a complex and, in places, difficult theory: there is
something called
The Form of the Good (often interpreted as Plato's God),
which is the ultimate object of knowledge and which as it
were sheds light on all the other forms (i.e., universals:
abstract kinds and attributes) and from which all other
forms "emanate." The Form of the Good does this in somewhat
the same way as the sun sheds light on, or makes visible and
"generates," things in the perceptual world. (See
Plato's metaphor of the sun.) But indeed, in the
perceptual world, the particular objects we see around us
bear only a dim resemblance to the more ultimately real
forms of Plato's intelligible world: it is as if we are
seeing shadows of cut-out shapes on the walls of a cave,
which are mere representations of the reality outside the
cave, illuminated by the sun. (See
Plato's allegory of the cave.) We can imagine everything
in the universe represented on a line of increasing reality;
it is divided once in the middle, and then once again in
each of the resulting parts. The first division represents
that between the intelligible and the perceptual worlds.
Then there is a corresponding division in each of
these worlds: the segment representing the perceptual world
is divided into segments representing "real things" on the
one hand, and shadows, reflections, and representations on
the other. Similarly, the segment representing the
intelligible world is divided into segments representing
first principles and most general forms, on the one hand,
and more derivative, "reflected" forms, on the other. (See
the divided line of Plato.) The form of government
derived from this philosophy turns out to be one of a
rigidly fixed hierarchy of hereditary classes, in which the
arts are mostly suppressed for the good of the state, the
size of the city and its social classes is determined by
mathematical formula, and eugenic measures are applied
secretly by rigging the lotteries in which the right to
reproduce is allocated. The tightness of connection of such
government to the lofty and original philosophy in the book
has been debated.
Plato's metaphysics, and particularly the dualism between
the intelligible and the perceptual, would inspire later
Neoplatonic thinkers (see
Plotinus) and
Gnosticism) and other metaphysical realists. For more on
Platonic realism in general, see
Platonic realism and
the Forms.
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.
A short history of Plato scholarship
Plato's thought is often compared with that of his best
and most famous student,
Aristotle, whose reputation during the
Middle Ages so completely eclipsed that of Plato that
the Scholastic philosophers referred to Aristotle as "the
Philosopher."
One of the characteristics of the Middle Ages was
reliance on authority and on scholastic commentaries on
writings of Plato and other historically important
philosophers, rather than accessing their original works. In
fact, Plato's original writings were essentially lost to
western civilization until their reintroduction in the
twelfth century through the agency of Arab scholars who had
maintained the original Greek texts of the ancients. These
were eventually translated into Latin and later, into the
local vernacular.
Only in the Renaissance, with the general resurgence of
interest in classical civilization, did knowledge of Plato's
philosophy become more widespread. Many of the greatest
early modern scientists (e.g., Galileo) and artists (with
the support of the Plato-inspired Lorenzo de Medici) who
broke with Scholasticism and fostered the flowering of the
Renaissance saw Plato's philosophy as the basis for progress
in the arts and sciences.
Today, Plato's reputation is as easily on a par with
Aristotle's. Many college students have read Plato but not
Aristotle, in large part because the former's greater
accessibility.
Works by Plato
A work is marked (1) if it is not generally agreed by
scholars that Plato is the author of the work. A work is
marked (2) if it is generally agreed by scholars that Plato
is not the author of the work.
-
Alcibiades (1)
-
Apology
- Axiochus (2)
-
Charmides
- Clitophon (1)
- Cratylus
-
Critias
- Crito
- Definitions (2)
-
Demodocus (2)
- Epigrams
- Epinomis (2)
- Eryxias (2)
-
Euthydemus
-
Euthyphro
-
Gorgias
- Greater Hippias (1)
-
Halcyon (2)
-
Hipparchus (2)
-
Ion
-
Laches
-
Laws
- Lesser Hippias
- Letters
-
Lysis
- Menexenus
-
Meno
-
Minos (2)
- On Justice (2)
- On Virtue (2)
-
Parmenides
- Phaedo
-
Phaedrus
- Philebus
-
Protagoras
- Rival Lovers (2)
-
Republic
- Second Alcibiades (2)
-
Sisyphus (2)
- Sophist
- Statesman
-
Symposium
-
Theaetetus
- Theages (2)
-
Timaeus
