- For the computing technology, see PLATO System.
- For the Moon crater named after the philosopher, see: Plato crater.
Plato (Greek: Πλάτων
Plátōn) (c. 427 BC – c. 347
BC) was an immensely influential classical Greek
philosopher, student of Socrates, teacher of Aristotle, writer, and founder of the
Academy in Athens.
Plato, a philodorian, lectured extensively at the Academy but he also
wrote on many philosophical issues. His presence survives through his written philosophical/dramatic compositions which are
preserved in manuscripts recovered and edited in many different editions and translations since the birth of the Humanist movement. The written corpus of Plato consists almost entirely of dialogues, epigrams and letters. All the known dialogues of Plato survive, however modern-day standard editions of his oeuvre
generally contain dialogues 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 personage of Socrates often makes an appearance in the dialogues of Plato though it is unclear how much of the content and
argument of any given dialogue is Socrates' point of view, and how much of it Plato's.
Biography
Plato was born in Athens, into a moderately well-to-do aristocratic family. His father was named Ariston and his mother
Perictione. One of Plato's ancestors, Glaucon, was one of the best-known members of the Athenian nobility. Plato's own real name
was "Aristocles" however his nickname, Plato, originated from wrestling circles.
Since Plato means "broad," it probably refers either to his physical appearance or to his wrestling stance or style.
Plato became a pupil of Socrates in his youth, and — at least according to his personal account — he 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 and much of his early work records
his memories of his teacher. It is suggested that much of his ethical writing is in pursuit of 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 and was perhaps influential in Plato's conception of the Soul.
Plato founded one of the earliest known organized schools in Western civilization when he was 40 years old 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... some however say that it received its name from an ancient hero."
(Robinson, Arch. Graec. I i 16) and it operated until it was closed by Justinian
I of Byzantium in AD 529. Many intellectuals were schooled here, the most prominent being
Aristotle.
Work
Themes
In Plato's writings 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 objectivity — of human knowledge which foreshadow modern debates between
Hume and Kant, or
between the postmodernists and their opponents. Even the story of the lost city or continent of Atlantis came to us as an illustrative story told by Plato in his Timaeus and Critias.
Form
Plato wrote mainly in the form of dialogues. In the early ones several characters discuss a topic by asking questions of one
another. Socrates figures prominently and a lively, more disorganized form of elenchos/dialectic is perceived; these are called
the Socratic Dialogues.
But the qualities of the dialogues changed a great deal over the course of Plato's life. It is generally agreed that Plato's
earlier works are more closely based on Socrates' thoughts, whereas his later writing increasingly breaks away from 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 main figure represents Plato and the minor characters have little to say
except "yes"; "of course" and "very true". The later dialogues read more like treatises, and Socrates is often absent or quiet.
It is assumed that the later dialogues were written entirely by Plato, while some of the early dialogues could be transcripts of
Socrates' own dialogues. The question which, if any, of the dialogues are truly socratic is called the Socratic problem.
The ostensible mise-en-scene 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 also allows Plato to put unpopular opinions in the mouth of unsympathetic characters, e.g. Thrasymachus in
The Republic.
Plato's Metaphysics: Platonism, or realism
One of Plato's legacies, and perhaps his greatest, was his dualistic metaphysics, often called (in metaphysics) Platonism or (Exaggerated) Realism. 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
unchangeable 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).This division can be found before Plato in Zoroastrian philosophy (6th century BC), which is
called Minu (intelligence) and Giti (perceptual) worlds, as well as the concept of an ideal state which Zoroaster called
Shahrivar (an ideal city).
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." 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.) 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 (see Platonic
epistemology).
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 western Middle Ages so
completely eclipsed that of Plato that the Scholastic philosophers referred to Aristotle as "the Philosopher." Contrarily, in the
Byzantine Empire the study of Plato continued.
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 Persian and Arab
scholars. These scholars not only maintained the original Greek 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). 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 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 examine Plato's work since that time, diverging from traditional academic
approaches with their own philosophy as a basis. Nietzsche attacked Plato's moral
and political theories, Heidegger expounded on Plato's obfuscation of
Being, and Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies
(1945), argued that Plato's proposal for a government system in the dialogue The Republic was prototypically totalitarian. While many critics reject such readings on a variety of
grounds, they remain widely discussed.
Bibliography
List of works by Plato
Below is a list of works by Plato, marked (1) if scholars don't generally agree that Plato is the author, and (2) if scholars
generally agree that Plato is not the author of the work.
Those works ascribed to Plato that have a separate wikipedia article, can be found in Category:Dialogues of Plato
Note: the naming conventions regarding Wikipedia articles on Plato's texts are currently under revision
See: Category Talk:Dialogues of Plato
Tetralogies
The works are traditionally arranged according to tetralogies ascribed to an
ancient scholar and court astrologer to Tiberius named Thrasyllus by Diogenes Laertius:
- I. Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, Crito, Phaedo
- II. Cratylus, Theaetetus,
Sophist,
Statesman
- III. Parmenides, Philebus, Symposium, Phaedrus
- IV. First Alcibiades (1),
Second Alcibiades (2),
Hipparchus (2), Rival Lovers (2)
- V. Theages (2), Charmides, Laches, Lysis
- VI. Euthydemus, Protagoras,
Gorgias, Meno
- VII. Greater Hippias (1), Lesser
Hippias, Ion,
Menexenus
- VIII. Clitophon (1), Republic,
Timaeus, Critias
- IX. Minos
(2), Laws, Epinomis (2),
Letters ((1) for
some)
Other
The remaining works were transmitted under Plato's name, but were considered spurious in antiquity:
- Axiochus (2), Definitions (2), Demodocus (2), Epigrams, Eryxias (2),
Halcyon
(2), On Justice (2),
On Virtue (2), Sisyphus (2)
On-line resources
English translations
Greek & English
Printed editions
Most of the works are widely available in paperback, either individually or in collections and anthologies.
English translations of complete works
The most complete translations of Plato's extant works into English, still in print in the early 21st century, are:
- The Collected Dialogues of Plato (Bollingen Series LXXI), edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, 1961
- Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson, 1997
Texts in Greek (& English)
References
Jackson, Roy (2001). Plato: A Beginner's Guide. London:Hoder & Stroughton. ISBN 0-340-80385-1.
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