Plato
Name: Plato
Achievements: Pupil of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle.
Born: c. 427 BC; Athens, or Aegina, Athenian Empire, Greece
Died: 348/347 BC; Athens, Greece
Field & Discipline: Philosophy
Language: Greek
Father: Ariston
Mother: Perictione
Siblings: 2 brothers: Adeimantus; Glaucon. 1 sister: Potone (mother of Speusippus, who later headed the Academy). 1 half-brother: Antiphon
Spouse: None
Children: None
Education: Unknown.
Major Work: “The Republic”
Life & Times:
Plato was born a year after the death of the great statesman, Pericles. His father died when he was young and his mother, who was related to the Greek lawmaker, Solon, married her uncle Pyrilampes. His mother’s cousin and her brother, Critias and Charmides, were members of a group that seized power in Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC. Through these two, Plato met Socrates, who taught him his principle beliefs.
In 399 BC, after the restoration of democracy, Socrates was sentenced to death for his refusal to believe in the gods and for “corrupting the young.” Plato made his mind up that he would devote his life to the development of Socrates’ ideas and wrote “Apology,” the defence at the trial, “Crito,” Socrates’ reasons for not escaping after the sentence was passed and “Phaedo,” Socrates’ last hours spent arguing for the immortality of the soul. After Socrates’ execution, Plato took refuge at Megara with the philosopher Euclides, before travelling to Europe where he met a kindred spirit, Dion, the brother-in-law of Dionysius I, the ruler of Syracuse. He went back to Athens somewhere around 387 BC and set up the Academy, a centre for philosophical, mathematical and scientific teaching and research, dedicated to the hero Academus.
In 367 BC, Dionysius died and was succeeded by his son Dionysius II. Dion wanted Plato to train his nephew to be the philosopher-king of the Republic and, after some persuasion by Dion and Archytas of Tarentum, a philosopher-statesman, he began teaching him science and philosophy. Fairly soon, Dionysius lost interest and Dion lost favour and was exiled, so Plato returned to Athens to join Dion at the Academy. In 361-360 BC, Plato accepted an invitation from Dionysius to return to Syracuse. When he arrived, Dionysius demonstrated a cruel attitude towards Dion and Plato had to escape. Dion captured Syracuse in 358 BC, but he was assassinated four years later by Callippus, a fellow-member of Plato's circle. From then on, Plato stayed away from politics and concentrated on philosophy and wrote many philosophical dialogues, broken down into early, middle and late.
At the centre of almost all the dialogues is the charismatic figure of Socrates, predominant among a succession of lesser speakers after whom the different dialogues are usually named. Generally, the earlier dialogues argued that “goodness of the soul” should be the main aim of life, to be achieved by a rational insight into the nature of goodness, truth and beauty. They claim that morality should be respected in political life and that the rational moral personality is created by the “recollection” of these values. Since the soul naturally aims at what is believed to be good, wrongdoing is the pursuit of a wrongly conceived good.
The “middle period” dialogues expressed more systematic views on a range of topics including metaphysics, epistemology, psychology and the new method of inquiry, borrowed from mathematics: hypothesis. This group included the most literary of the dialogues, including the “Symposium,” “Meno,” “Phaedo” and “Republic” and presents Plato’s ideas on the theory of knowledge as recollection, and the immortality of the soul. Most important, the group describes his theories on the hypothetical “Forms” or ideas, comparing the material world with the unchanging world of forms, which he considered to be the true goal of the philosopher’s search for wisdom.
Plato’s greatest work, “Republic,” argued that philosophy and politics can only succeed if they are practised together. He suggested that the only practical possibility to produce harmony in society would be if philosophers were to gain political power or, conversely, rulers were trained in philosophy. He felt that, in order to acquire the knowledge and virtue needed to achieve a right and fair society, a philosopher-ruler needed to be educated for abstract thought about forms by a comprehensive study of mathematics and hypothesis. Plato argued that the understanding of forms and, above all, the goodness of soul, were essential in the fair application of political power.
The “late period” dialogues were a series of sophisticated criticisms of the assumptions of his “middle period” doctrines. The “Parmenides” challenged the logical coherence of the theory of Forms, “Theaetetus” was an exploration of the study of knowledge, and “Sophist” concerned itself with philosophical logic.
Although “Republic” is now considered his major work, for many centuries he was best known for “Timaeus.” This work described how the Demiurge, who is identical with God, brings the world into being, how he makes it an image of an eternal archetype, and how he enables it to share in his perfection by putting into it mind or soul. His final works, the twelve books of “Laws,” were probably unfinished at his death. In Book X, Plato made the earliest known proposition of natural theology, in the form of a cosmological argument, based on the belief that all motions ultimately require "perfectly good soul" at their head. Nevertheless, it has never been clear how Plato related the highest of the forms, the form of the good, to God as the supreme soul.
Extra Connections:
His work related to (among many others!!) that of [work related to] Maimonides*, [work related to] Herder*, [work related to] Abelard*, [work related to] Anselm of Bec*, [work related to] Plethon*, [work related to] Bernard of Chartres*, [work related to] Bessarion*, [work related to] Cosimo de’ Medici the Elder* and [work related to] Emerson*.
Assessment: Plato's philosophy has had a huge influence on almost every period and tradition, rivalled only by that of his greatest pupil [pupil was] Aristotle*.
Oneliner: Plato, major Greek philosopher
Bibliography:
- Hare, R.M., Plato, Oxford & New York, OUP, 1985.
- Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.