PLATO

PLATO

BIOGRAPHY ♥ Name- Plato

(Classical Greek philosopher)♥ Birth- 424–423 BC, Athens♥ Death- 348–347 BC, Athens♥ School/tradition- Platonism♥ Main interests-

Rhetoric, Art, Literature, Epistemology, Justice, Virtue, Politics, Education, Family, Militarism

NAME

• was named Aristocles after his grandfather

• but his wrestling coach, Ariston of Argos, called him "Platon", meaning "broad" on account of his robust figure.

• Plato derived his name from the breadth (platutês) of his fluency, or else because he was very wide (platus) across the forehead.

Family Father’s name Ariston

Mother’s name Perictione

Siblings two brothers, Adeimantus and

Glaucon, and a sister Potone

Teacher Socrates

Student Aristotle

Hard working

Quick to learn modesty

Love to study

Characteristics

Education

• Plato have been instructed in grammar, music, and gymnastics by the most distinguished teachers of his time.

• wrestled at the Isthmian games.

• attended courses of philosophy

– Socrates

Later life • have traveled in Italy, Sicily, Egypt and Cyrene .• returned to Athens at the age of 40.• founded one of the earliest schools in Western

Civilization on a plot of land in the Grove of Hecademus or Academus.

• The Academy was "a large enclosure of ground which was once the property of a citizen at Athens named Academus.

• Many intellectuals were schooled in the Academy,– Aristotle.

The Academy

Plato's Academy

CONTRIBUTIONS

• he wrote dialogues between Socrates and others that would explore philosophical issues.– used in his school as starting points for

discussion.

• Later, began to develop his own philosophy.

• The fundamental aspect of Plato's thought is the theory of "ideas" or "forms

• The most famous of Plato's dialogues is an immense dialogue called The Republic. -most influential works in Western philosophy

• Next, Socrates's trial, The Apology. • There are several central aspects to the dialogue

that sum up Platonic thought extremely well:

a) what the nature of justice is

b) the nature of an ideal republic

c) the allegory of the cave and the divided line, both of which explain Plato's theory of forms

Plato's The Republic, Latin edition cover, 1713

Late dialogues

Nature of Justice

• The question which opens this immense dialogue is: what is justice?

• Young Sophist, Thrasymachus; He defines justice as whatever the strongest decide it is, and that the strong decide that whatever is in their best interest is just .

• Socrates dismisses this argument by proving that the strong rarely figure out what is in their best interest, and this can't be just since justice is a good thing.

Ideal Republic

• Plato embarks on a long exposition about how a state might embody the four great virtues: courage, wisdom, temperance, and justice.

• The remainder of the dialogue is a long exposition of what justice in a state is; this section is considered one of the first major, systematic expositions of abstract political theory.

• This type of thinking, that is, speculating about an ideal state or republic, is called "utopian" thinking (utopia is a Greek word which means "no-place").

 The Allegory of the Cave and the Divided Line

•Discussion of the prisoners of the cave and his abstract presentation of the divided line .•Human beings live in a world of visible and intelligible things .•The visible world is what surrounds us: what we see, what we hear, what we experience; this visible world is a world of change and uncertainty. •The intelligible world is made up of the unchanging products of human reason: anything arising from reason alone, such as abstract definitions or mathematics, makes up this intelligible world, which is the world of reality.

• Plato carved out a subject matter for philosophy by formulating and discussing a wide range of metaphysical and ethical questions.

• To explain the similarities and resemblances among objects of the physical world, he developed a metaphysics of Forms.

• His views about ethical questions could be grounded in his metaphysics of Forms via the contemplation of the Form of The Good.

• Plato therefore found an inherent connection between metaphysics and ethics.

• His greatest work, The Republic, developed an insightful analogy between harmony in the state and harmony in the individual, and it is often considered one of the greatest works ever written.

• Plato wrote dialogues that considered the nature of virtue itself, as well as the nature of particular virtues.

• He also considered epistemological questions, such as whether knowledge is justified true belief.

Plato's Symposium

Papirus Oxyrhynchus, with fragment of Plato's Republic