Lecture

8
Greek Thought: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle
The political and social upheaval caused by the Persian Wars as well as continued strife between
Athens and Sparta (see Lecture 7) had at least one unintended consequence . In the 5th century, a
flood of new ideas poured into Athens. In general, these new ideas came as a result of an influx of
Ionian thinkers into the Attic peninsula. Athens had become the intellectual and artistic center of the
Greek world. Furthermore, by the mid-5th century, it had become more common for advanced
thinkers to reject traditional explanations of the world of nature. As a result of the experience of a
century of war, religious beliefs declined. Gods and goddesses were no longer held in the same
regard as they had been a century earlier. I suppose we could generalize and say that the Persian and
Peloponnesian Wars taught that the actions of men and women determine their own destiny, and not
"Moira." Meanwhile, more traditional notions of right and wrong were called into question, and all
of this was expressed in Hellenic tragedy and comedy.

The Greeks used their creative energies to explain experience by recourse to history, tragedy,
comedy, art and architecture. But their creative energies were also used to "invent" philosophy,
defined as "the love of wisdom." In general, philosophy came into existence when the Greeks
discovered their dissatisfaction with supernatural and mythical explanations of reality. Over time,
Greek thinkers began to suspect that there was a rational or logical order to the universe.

The Pre-Socratic Philosophers

The PRE-SOCRATIC philosophers came from the city of Miletus in
the region of Ionia. Miletus was a prominent trading depot and its
people had direct contact with the ideas of the Near East. Around 600
B.C., Milesian thinkers "discovered" speculation after asking a
simple but profound question: "what exists?" It was the Ionian natural
philosopher, Thales of Miletus (c.624-548 B.C.), who answered that
everything in the universe was made of water and resolves itself into
water. What was so revolutionary about Thales was that he omitted
the gods from his account of the origins of nature. It is also necessary
to point out that Thales committed none of his views to writing.
Anaximander of Miletus (c.611-c.547 B.C.), another Milesian
thinker, rejected Thales, and argued instead that an indefinite
substance -- the Boundless -- was the source of all things. According
to Anaximander, the cold and wet condensed to form the earth while the hot and dry formed the
moon, sun and stars. The heat from the fire in the skies dried the earth and shrank the seas. It's a
rather fantastic scheme, but at least Anaximander sought natural explanations for the origin of the
natural world.

Thales and Anaximander were "matter" philosophers -- they believed that everything had its origin
in a material substance. Pythagoras of Samos (c.580-507 B.C.) did not find that nature of things in
material substances but in mathematical relationships. The Pythagoreans, who lived in Greek cities
in southern Italy, discovered that the intervals in the musical scale could be expressed
mathematically and that this principle could be extended to the universe. In other words, the universe
contained an inherent mathematical order. What we witness in the Pythagoreans is the emphasis on
form rather than matter, and here we move from sense perception to the logic of mathematics.
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Parmenides of Elea (c.515-450 B.C.), also challenged the fundamental views of the Ionian
philosophers that all things emerged from one substance. What Parmenides did was to apply logic to
the arguments of the Pythagoreans, thus setting the groundwork of formal logic. He argued that
reality is one, eternal and unchanging. We "know" reality not by the senses, which are capable of
deception, but through the human mind, not through experience, but through reason. As we shall see,
this concept shall become central to the philosophic thought of Plato.

Perhaps the most important of all the Pre-Socratic philosophers was Heraclitus of Ephesus (fl. 500
B.C.). Known as "the weeping philosopher" because of his pessimistic view of human nature and
"the dark one" because of the mystical obscurity of his thought, Heraclitus wrote On Nature,
fragments of which we still possess. Whereas the Pythagoreans had emphasized harmony, Heraclitus
suggested that life was maintained by a tension of opposites, fighting a continuous battle in which
neither side could win a final victory. Movement and the flux of change were unceasing for
individuals, but the structure of the cosmos constant. This law of individual flux within a permanent
universal framework was guaranteed by the Logos, an intelligent governing principle materially
embodied as fire, and identified with soul or life.

Fire is the primordial element out of which all else has arisen -- change (becoming) is the first
principle of the universe. Cratylus, a follower of Heraclitus, once made the remark that "You cannot
step twice into the same river." The water will be different water the second time, and if we call the
river the same, it is because we see its reality in its form. The logical conclusion of this is the
opposite of flux, that is, a belief in an absolute, unchanging reality of which the world of change and
movement is only a quasi-existing phantom, phenomenal, not real.

Democritus of Abdera (c.460-370 B.C.) argued that knowledge was derived through sense
perception -- the senses illustrate to us that change does occur in nature. However, Democritus also
retained Parmenides' confidence in human reason. His universe consisted of empty space and an
infinite number of atoms (a-tomos, the "uncuttable"). Eternal and indivisible, these atoms moved in
the void of space. An atomic theory to the core, Democritus saw all matter constructed of atoms
which accounted for all change in the natural world.

What the Pre-Socratic thinkers from Thales to Democritus had done was nothing less than amazing
-- they had given to nature a rational and non-mythical foundation. This new approach allowed a
critical analysis of theories, whereas mythical explanations relied on blind faith alone. Such a spirit
even found its way into medicine, where the Greek physician Hippocrates of Cos (c.460-c.377 B.C.)
was able to distinguish between magic and medicine. Physicians observed ill patients, classified
symptoms and then made predictions about the course of a disease. For instance, of epilepsy, he
wrote: "It is not, in my opinion, any more divine or more scared than other diseases, but has a natural
cause, and its supposed divine origin is due to men's inexperience, and to their wonder at its peculiar
character."

The Sophists
Into such an atmosphere of change came the traveling teachers, the Sophists. The Sophists were a
motley bunch – some hailed from the Athenian polis or other city-states, but the majority came from
Ionia, in Asia Minor. The Sophists were men whose responsibility it was to train and educate the
sons of Athenian citizens. There were no formal school as we know them today. Instead, these were
peripatetic schools, meaning that the instructor would walk with students and talk with them – for a
fee, of course. The Sophists taught the skills (sophia) of rhetoric and oratory. Both of these arts were
essential for the education of the Athenian citizenry. After all, it was the sons of the citizens who
would eventually find themselves debating important issues in the Assembly and the Council of Five
Hundred. Rhetoric can be described as the art of composition, while oratory was the art of public
speaking.

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The Sophists abandoned science, philosophy, mathematics and ethics. What they taught was the
subtle art of persuasion. A Sophist was a person who could argue eloquently – and could prove a
position whether that position was correct or incorrect. In other words, what mattered was persuasion
and not truth. The Sophists were also relativists. They believed that there was no such thing as a
universal or absolute truth, valid at all times. According to Protagoras (c.485-c.411 B.C.), "Man is
the measure of all things." Everything is relative and there are no values because man, individual
man, is the measure of all things. Nothing is good or bad since everything depends on the individual.
Gorgias of Leontini (c.485-c.380 B.C.), who visited Athens in 427, was a well-paid teacher of
rhetoric and famous for his saying that a man could not know anything. And if he could, he could
not describe it and if he could describe it, no one would understand him.

The Sophistic movement of the fifth century B.C. has been the subject of much discussion and there
is no single view about their significance. Plato's treatment of the Sophists in his late dialogue, the
Sophist, is hardly flattering. He does not treat them as real seekers after truth but as men whose only
concern was making money and teaching their students success in argument by whatever means.
Aristotle said that a Sophist was "one who made money by sham wisdom."

At their very best, the Sophists challenged the accepted values of the fifth century.
They wanted the freedom to sweep away old conventions as a way of finding a
better understanding of the universe, the gods and man. The Sophists have been
compared with the philosophes of the 18th century Enlightenment who also used
criticism and reason to wipe out anything they deemed was contrary to human
reason. Regardless of what we think of the Sophists as a group or individually, they
certainly did have the cumulative effect of further degrading a mythical
understanding of the universe and of man.

Socrates
From the ranks of the Sophists came SOCRATES (c.469-399 B.C.), perhaps the
most noble and wisest Athenian to have ever lived. He was born sometime in 469,
we don't know for sure. What we do know is that his father was Sophroniscus, a
stone cutter, and his mother, Phaenarete, was a midwife. Sophroniscus was a close friend of the son
of Aristides the Just (c.550-468 B.C.), and the young Socrates was familiar with members of the
circle of Pericles. In his youth he fought as a hoplite at Potidaea (432-429), Delium (424) and
Amphipolis (422) during the Peloponnesian Wars. To be sure, his later absorption in philosophy
made him neglect his private affairs and he eventually fell to a level of comparative poverty. He was
perhaps more in love with the study of philosophy than with his family -- that his wife Xanthippe
was shrew is a later tale. In Plato's dialogue, the Crito, we meet a Socrates concerned with the future
of his three sons. Just the same, his entire life was subordinated to "the supreme art of philosophy."
He was a good citizen but held political office only once – he was elected to the Council of Five
Hundred in 406 B.C. In Plato's Apology, Socrates remarks that:

The true champion if justice, if he intends to survive even for a short time, must necessarily confine
himself to private life and leave politics alone.

What we can be sure about Socrates was that he was remarkable for living the life he preached.
Taking no fees, Socrates started and dominated an argument wherever the young and intelligent
would listen, and people asked his advice on matters of practical conduct and educational problems.

Socrates was not an attractive man -- he was snub-nosed, prematurely bald, and overweight. But, he
was strong in body and the intellectual master of every one with whom he came into contact. The
Athenian youth flocked to his side as he walked the paths of the agora. They clung to his every word
and gesture. He was not a Sophist himself, but a philosopher, a lover of wisdom.

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In 399 B.C., Socrates was charged with impiety by a jury of five hundred of his fellow citizens. His
most famous student, Plato, tells us, that he was charged "as an evil-doer and curious person,
searching into things under the earth and above the heavens; and making the worse appear the better
cause, and teaching all this to others." He was convicted to death by a margin of six votes. Oddly
enough, the jury offered Socrates the chance to pay a small fine for his impiety. He rejected it. He
also rejected the pleas of Plato and other students who had a boat waiting for him at
Piraeus that would take him to freedom. But Socrates refused to break the law. What
kind of citizen would he be if he refused to accept the judgment of the jury? No
citizen at all. He spent his last days with his friends before he drank the fatal dose of
hemlock.

The charge made against Socrates -- disbelief in the state's gods -- implied un-
Athenian activities which would corrupt the young and the state if preached publicly.
Meletus, the citizen who brought the indictment, sought precedents in the impiety
trials of Pericles' friends. Although Socrates was neither a heretic nor an agnostic,
there was prejudice against him. He also managed to provoke hostility. For instance,
the Delphic oracle is said to have told Chaerephon that no man was wiser than
Socrates. During his trial Socrates had the audacity to use this as a justification of his examination of
the conduct of all Athenians, claiming that in exposing their falsehoods, he had proved the god right
-- he at least knew that he knew nothing. Although this episode smacks of Socrates' well-known
irony, he clearly did believe that his mission was divinely inspired.

Socrates has been described as a gadfly -- a first-class pain. The reason why this charge is somewhat
justified is that he challenged his students to think for themselves – to use their minds to answer
questions. He did not reveal answers. He did not reveal truth. Many of his questions were, on the
surface, quite simple: what is courage? what is virtue? what is duty? But what Socrates discovered,
and what he taught his students to discover, was that most people could not answer these
fundamental questions to his satisfaction, yet all of them claimed to be courageous, virtuous and
dutiful. So, what Socrates knew, was that he knew nothing, upon this sole fact lay the source of his
wisdom. Socrates was not necessarily an intelligent man – but he was a wise man. And there is a
difference between the two.

Plato
Socrates wrote nothing himself. What we know of him comes from the writings of two of his closest
friends, Xenophon and Plato. Although Xenophon (c.430-c.354 B.C.) did write four short portraits
of Socrates, it is almost to Plato alone that we know anything of Socrates. PLATO (c.427-347 B.C.)
came from a family of aristoi, served in the Peloponnesian War, and was perhaps Socrates' most
famous student. He was twenty-eight years old when Socrates was put to death. At the age of forty,
Plato established a school at Athens for the education of Athenian youth. The Academy, as it was
called, remained in existence from 387 B.C. to A.D. 529, when it was closed by Justinian, the
Byzantine emperor.

Our knowledge of Socrates comes to us from numerous dialogues which Plato wrote after 399. In
nearly every dialogue – and there are more than thirty that we know about – Socrates is the main
speaker. The style of the Plato's dialogue is important – it is the Socratic style that he employs
throughout. A Socratic dialogue takes the form of question-answer, question-answer, question-
answer. It is a dialectical style as well. Socrates would argue both sides of a question in order to
arrive at a conclusion. Then that conclusion is argued against another assumption and so on. Perhaps
it is not that difficult to understand why Socrates was considered a gadfly!

There is a reason why Socrates employed this style, as well as why Plato recorded his experience
with Socrates in the form of a dialogue. Socrates taught Plato a great many things, but one of the
things Plato more or less discovered on his own was that mankind is born with knowledge. That is,

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knowledge is present in the human mind at birth. It is not so much that we "learn" things in our daily
experience, but that we "recollect" them. In other words, this knowledge is already there. This may
explain why Socrates did not give his students answers, but only questions. His job was not to teach
truth but to show his students how they could "pull" truth out of their own minds (it is for this reason
that Socrates often considered himself a midwife in the labor of knowledge). And this is the point of
the dialogues. For only in conversation, only in dialogue, can truth and wisdom come to the surface.

Plato's greatest and most enduring work was his lengthy dialogue, The Republic. This dialogue has
often been regarded as Plato's blueprint for a future society of perfection. I do not accept this
opinion. Instead, I would like to suggest that The Republic is not a blueprint for a future society, but
rather, is a dialogue which discusses the education necessary to produce such a society. It is an
education of a strange sort – he called it paideia. Nearly impossible to translate into modern idiom,
paideia refers to the process whereby the physical, mental and spiritual development of the
individual is of paramount importance. It is the education of the total individual.

The Republic discusses a number of topics including the nature of justice, statesmanship, ethics and
the nature of politics. It is in The Republic that Plato suggests that democracy was little more than a
"charming form of government." And this he is writing less than one hundred years after the brilliant
age of Periclean democracy. So much for democracy. After all, it was Athenian democracy that
convicted Socrates. For Plato, the citizens are the least desirable participants in government. Instead,
a philosopher-king or guardian should hold the reigns of power. An aristocracy if you will – an
aristocracy of the very best – the best of the aristoi.

Plato's Republic also embodies one of the clearest expressions of his theory of knowledge. In The
Republic, Plato asks what is knowledge? what is illusion? what is reality? how do we know? what
makes a thing, a thing? what can we know? These are epistemological questions – that is, they are
questions about knowledge itself. He distinguishes between the reality presented to us by our senses
– sight, touch, taste, sound and smell – and the essence or Form of that reality. In other words, reality
is always changing – knowledge of reality is individual, it is particular, it is knowledge only to the
individual knower, it is not universal.

Building upon the wisdom of Socrates and Parmenides, Plato argued that reality is known only
through the mind. There is a higher world, independent of the world we may experience through our
senses. Because the senses may deceive us, it is necessary that this higher world exist, a world of
Ideas or Forms -- of what is unchanging, absolute and universal. In other words, although there may
be something from the phenomenal world which we consider beautiful or good or just, Plato
postulates that there is a higher unchanging reality of the beautiful, goodness or justice. To live in
accordance with these universal standards is the good life -- to grasp the Forms is to grasp ultimate
truth.

The unphilosophical man – that is, all of us – is at the mercy of sense impressions and unfortunately,
our sense impressions oftentimes fail us. Our senses deceive us. But because we trust our senses, we
are like prisoners in a cave – we mistake shadows on a wall for reality. This is the central argument
of Plato's ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE which appears in Book VII of The Republic.

Plato realized that the Athenian state, and along with it, Athenian direct democracy, had failed to
realize its lofty ideals. Instead, the citizens sent Socrates to his death and direct democracy had
failed. The purpose of The Republic was something of a warning to all Athenians that without
respect for law, leadership and a sound education for the young, their city would continue to decay.
Plato wanted to rescue Athens from degeneration by reviving that sense of community that had at
one time made the polis great. The only way to do this, Plato argued, was to give control over to the
Philosopher-Kings, men who had philosophical knowledge, and to give little more than "noble lies"
to everyone else. The problem as Plato saw it was that power and wisdom had traveled divergent
paths -- his solution was to unite them in the guise of the Philosopher-King.
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 Aristotle
Plato's most famous student was ARISTOTLE (384-322 B.C.). His father was the
personal physician to Philip of Macedon and Aristotle was, for a time at least, the
personal tutor of Alexander the Great. Aristotle styled himself a biologist – he is said to
have spent his honeymoon collecting specimens at the seashore. He too was charged
with impiety, but fled rather than face the charges – I suppose that tells you something
about Aristotle.

At the age of eighteen, Aristotle became the student at the Academy of Plato (who was then sixty
years of age). Aristotle also started his own school, the Lyceum in 335 B.C. It too was closed by
Justinian in A.D. 529. Aristotle was a "polymath" – he knew a great deal about nearly everything.
Very little of Aristotle's writings remain extant. But his students recorded nearly everything he
discussed at the Lyceum. In fact, the books to which Aristotle's name is attributed are really little
more than student notebooks. This may account for the fact that Aristotle's philosophy is one of the
more difficult to digest. Regardless, Aristotle lectured on astronomy, physics, logic, aesthetics,
music, drama, tragedy, poetry, zoology, ethics and politics. The one field in which he did not excel
was mathematics. Plato, on the other hand, was a master of geometry.

As a scientist, Aristotle's epistemology is perhaps closer to our own. For Aristotle did not agree with
Plato that there is an essence or Form or Absolute behind every object in the phenomenal world. I
suppose you could argue that Aristotle came from the Jack Webb school of epistemology – "nothing
but the facts, Mam." Or, as one historian has put it: "The point is, that an elephant, when present, is
noticed." In other words, whereas Plato suggested that man was born with knowledge, Aristotle
argued that knowledge comes from experience. And there, in the space of just a few decades, we
have the essence of those two philosophical traditions which have occupied the western intellectual
tradition for the past 2500 years. Rationalism – knowledge is a priori (comes before experience) and
Empiricism – knowledge is a posteriori (comes after experience).

It is almost fitting that one of Plato's greatest students ought to have also been his greatest critics.
Like Democritus, Aristotle had confidence in sense perception. As a result, he had little patience
with Plato's higher world of the Forms. However, Aristotle argued that there were universal
principles but that they are derived from experience. He could not accept, as had Plato, that there
was a world of Forms beyond space and time. Aristotle argued that that there were Forms and
Absolutes, but that they resided in the thing itself. From our experience with horses, for instance, we
can deduce the essence of "horseness." This universal, as it had been for Plato, was the true object of
human knowledge.

It perhaps goes without saying that the western intellectual tradition, as well as the history of western
philosophy, must begin with an investigation of ancient Greek thought. From Thales and the matter
philosophers to the empiricism of Aristotle, the Greeks passed on to the west a spirit of rational
inquiry that is very much our own intellectual property. And while we may never think of Plato or
Aristotle as we carry on in our daily lives, it was their inquiry into knowledge that has served as the
foundation for all subsequent inquiries. Indeed, many have argued with W. H. Auden that "had
Greek civilization never existed we would never have become fully conscious, which is to say that
we would never have become, for better or worse, fully human."

Aristotle Michael Fowler, U. Va. Physics, 9/3/2008

Beginnings of Science and Philosophy in Athens

Let us first recap briefly the emergence of philosophy and science in Athens after around 450 B.C. It
all began with Socrates, who was born in 470 B.C. Socrates was a true philosopher, a lover of
wisdom, who tried to elicit the truth by what has become known as the Socratic method, in which by
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a series of probing questions he forced successive further clarification of thought. Of course, such
clarity often reveals that the other person’s ideas don’t in fact make much sense, so that although
Socrates made a lot of things much clearer, he wasn’t a favorite of many establishment politicians.
For example, he could argue very convincingly that traditional morality had no logical basis. He
mostly lectured to the sons of well-to-do aristocrats, one of whom was Plato, born in 428 B.C. Plato
was a young man when Athens was humiliated by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, and Plato
probably attributed the loss to Athens’ being a democracy, as opposed to the kind of fascist war-
based state Sparta was. Plato founded an Academy. The name came (at least in legend) from one
Academus, a landowner on whose estate Plato and other philosophers met regularly. The important
point is that this was the first university. All the people involved were probably aristocrats, and they
discussed everything: politics, economics, morality, philosophy, mathematics and science. One of
their main concerns was to find what constituted an ideal city-state. Democracy didn’t seem to have
worked very well in their recent past. Plato’s ideas are set out in the Republic.

Plato’s Idea of a Good Education

What is interesting about the Republic from our point of view is the
emphasis on a good education for the elite group in charge of Plato’s ideal
society. In particular, Plato considered education in mathematics and
astronomy to be excellent ways of sharpening the mind. He believed that
intense mental exercise of this kind had the same effect on the mind that a
rigorous physical regimen did on the body. Students at the Academy
covered a vast range of subjects, but there was a sign over the door stating
that some knowledge of mathematics was needed to enter—nothing else
was mentioned! Plato in particular loved geometry, and felt that the beauty
of the five regular solids he was the first to categorize meant they must be
fundamental to nature, they must somehow be the shapes of the atoms.
Notice that this approach to physics is not heavily dependent on
observation and experiment.

Aristotle and Alexander

We turn now to the third member of this trio, Aristotle, born in 384 B.C.
in Stagira, in Thrace, at the northern end of the Aegean, near Macedonia.
Aristotle’s father was the family physician of King Philip of Macedonia. At the age of eighteen,
Aristotle came to Athens to study at Plato’s Academy, and stayed there twenty years until Plato’s
death in 348 B.C. (Statue is a Roman copy of a Greek original, in the Louvre, photographer Eric
Gaba (User:Sting), July 2005.)

Five years after Plato’s death, Aristotle took a position as tutor to King Philip of Macedonia’s
thirteen year old son Alexander. He stayed for three years. It is not clear what impact, if any,
Aristotle’s lessons had, but Alexander, like his father, was a great admirer of Greek civilization,
even though the Athenians considered Macedonia the boondocks. In fact, when his father Philip died
in 336 B.C., Alexander did his best to spread Greek civilization as far as he could. Macedonia had an
excellent army, and over the next thirteen years Alexander organized Greece as a federation of city
states, conquered Persia, the Middle East, Egypt, southern Afghanistan, some of Central Asia and
the Punjab in India.

The picture below is a fortress built by Alexander’s army in Herat, Afghanistan, and still standing.
(Picture from http://flickr.com/photos/koldo/67606119/ , author koldo / Koldo Hormaza .)

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 He founded Greek cities in many places, the greatest being Alexandria in
Egypt, which in fact became the most important center of Greek science
later on, and without which all of Greek learning might have been lost.
The Greek cities became restless, predictably but rather ungratefully,
when he demanded to be treated as a god. He died of a fever at age 33.

Aristotle Founds the Lyceum

Aristotle came back to Athens in 335 B.C., and spent the next twelve years running his own version
of an academy, which was called the Lyceum, named after the place in Athens where it was located,
an old temple of Apollo. (French high schools are named lycee after Aristotle’s establishment.)
Aristotle’s preferred mode of operation was to spend a lot of time walking around talking with his
colleagues, then write down his arguments. The Aristotelians are often called the Peripatetics: people
who walk around.

Aristotle wrote extensively on all subjects: politics, metaphysics, ethics, logic and science. He didn’t
care for Plato’s rather communal Utopia, in which the women were shared by the men, and the
children raised by everybody, because for one thing he feared the children would be raised by
nobody. His ideal society was one run by cultured gentlemen. He saw nothing wrong with slavery,
provided the slave was naturally inferior to the master, so slaves should not be Greeks. This all
sounds uncomfortably similar to Jefferson’s Virginia, perhaps not too surprising since Greek was a
central part of a gentleman’s education in Jefferson’s day.

Aristotle’s Science
Aristotle’s approach to science differed from Plato’s. He agreed that the highest human faculty was
reason, and its supreme activity was contemplation. However, in addition to studying what he called
“first philosophy” - metaphysics and mathematics, the things Plato had worked on, Aristotle thought
it also very important to study “second philosophy”: the world around us, from physics and
mechanics to biology. Perhaps being raised in the house of a physician had given him an interest in
living things.

What he achieved in those years in Athens was to begin a school of organized scientific inquiry on a
scale far exceeding anything that had gone before. He first clearly defined what was scientific
knowledge, and why it should be sought. In other words, he single-handedly invented science as the
collective, organized enterprise it is today. Plato’s Academy had the equivalent of a university
mathematics department, Aristotle had the first science department, truly excellent in biology, but, as
we shall see, a little weak in physics. After Aristotle, there was no comparable professional science
enterprise for over 2,000 years, and his work was of such quality that it was accepted by all, and had
long been a part of the official orthodoxy of the Christian Church 2,000 years later. This was
unfortunate, because when Galileo questioned some of the assertions concerning simple physics, he
quickly found himself in serious trouble with the Church.

Aristotle’s Method
Aristotle’s method of investigation varied from one natural science to another, depending on the
problems encountered, but it usually included:

1. defining the subject matter

2. considering the difficulties involved by reviewing the generally accepted views on the
subject, and suggestions of earlier writers
3. presenting his own arguments and solutions.
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Again, this is the pattern modern research papers follow, Aristotle was laying down the standard
professional approach to scientific research. The arguments he used were of two types: dialectical,
that is, based on logical deduction; and empirical, based on practical considerations.

Aristotle often refuted an opposing argument by showing that it led to an absurd conclusion, this is
called reductio ad absurdum (reducing something to absurdity). As we shall see later, Galileo used
exactly this kind of argument against Aristotle himself, to the great annoyance of Aristotelians 2,000
years after Aristotle.

Another possibility was that an argument led to a dilemma: an apparent contradiction. However,
dilemmas could sometimes be resolved by realizing that there was some ambiguity in a definition,
say, so precision of definitions and usage of terms is essential to productive discussion in any
discipline.

“Causes”
In contrast to Plato, who felt the only worthwhile science to be the contemplation of abstract forms,
Aristotle practiced detailed observation and dissection of plants and animals, to try to understand
how each fitted into the grand scheme of nature, and the importance of the different organs of
animals. His motivation is made clear by the following quote from him (in Lloyd, p105):

For even in those kinds [of animals] that are not attractive to the senses, yet to the intellect the
craftsmanship of nature provides extraordinary pleasures for those who can recognize the causes in
things and who are naturally inclined to philosophy.

His study of nature was a search for “causes.” What, exactly are these “causes”? He gave some
examples (we follow Lloyd’s discussion here). He stated that any object (animal, plant, inanimate,
whatever) had four attributes:

• matter

• form

• moving cause

• final cause

For a table, the matter is wood, the form is the shape, the moving cause is the carpenter and the final
cause is the reason the table was made in the first place, for a family to eat at, for example. For man,
he thought the matter was provided by the mother, the form was a rational two-legged animal, the
moving cause was the father and the final cause was to become a fully grown human being. He did
not believe nature to be conscious, he believed this final cause to be somehow innate in a human
being, and similarly in other organisms. Of course, fulfilling this final cause is not inevitable, some
accident may intervene, but apart from such exceptional circumstances, nature is regular and orderly.

To give another example of this central concept, he thought the “final cause” of an acorn was to be
an oak tree. This has also been translated by Bertrand Russell (History of Western Philosophy) as the
“nature” of an acorn is to become an oak tree. It is certainly very natural on viewing the living
world, especially the maturing of complex organisms, to view them as having innately the express
purpose of developing into their final form.

It is interesting to note that this whole approach to studying nature fits very well with Christianity.
The idea that every organism is beautifully crafted for a particular function - its “final cause” - in the
9
grand scheme of nature certainly leads naturally to the thought that all this has been designed by
somebody.

Biology Aristotle’s really great contribution to natural science was in biology.

Living creatures and their parts provide far richer evidence of form, and of “final cause” in the
sense of design for a particular purpose, than do inanimate objects. He wrote in detail about
five hundred different animals in his works, including a hundred and twenty kinds of fish and
sixty kinds of insect. He was the first to use dissection extensively. In one famous example, he
gave a precise description of a kind of dog-fish that was not seen again by scientists until the
nineteenth century, and in fact his work on this point was disbelieved for centuries.

Thus both Aristotle and Plato saw in the living creatures around them overwhelming evidence for
“final causes”, that is to say, evidence for design in nature, a different design for each species to fit it
for its place in the grand scheme of things. Empedocles, on the other hand, suggested that maybe
creatures of different types could come together and produce mixed offspring, and those well
adapted to their surroundings would survive. This would seem like an early hint of Darwinism, but it
was not accepted, because as Aristotle pointed out, men begat men and oxen begat oxen, and there
was no evidence of the mixed creatures Empedocles suggested.

Although this idea of the “nature” of things accords well with growth of animals and plants, it leads
us astray when applied to the motion of inanimate objects, as we shall see.

Elements Aristotle’s theory of the basic constituents of matter looks to a modern

scientist perhaps something of a backward step from the work of the atomists and Plato.
Aristotle assumed all substances to be compounds of four elements: earth, water, air and fire,
and each of these to be a combination of two of four opposites, hot and cold, and wet and dry.
(Actually, the words he used for wet and dry also have the connotation of softness and
hardness).

Aristotle’s whole approach is more in touch with the way things present themselves to the senses,
the way things really seem to be, as opposed to abstract geometric considerations. Hot and cold, wet
and dry are qualities immediately apparent to anyone, this seems a very natural way to describe
phenomena. He probably thought that the Platonic approach in terms of abstract concepts, which do
not seem to relate to our physical senses but to our reason, was a completely wrongheaded way to go
about the problem. It has turned out, centuries later, that the atomic and mathematical approach was
on the right track after all, but at the time, and in fact until relatively recently, Aristotle seemed a lot
closer to reality. He discussed the properties of real substances in terms of their “elemental”
composition at great length, how they reacted to fire or water, how, for example, water evaporates on
heating because it goes from cold and wet to hot and wet, becoming air, in his view. Innumerable
analyses along these lines of commonly observed phenomena must have made this seem a coherent
approach to understanding the natural world.

Dynamics: Motion, And Why Things Move

It is first essential to realize that the world Aristotle saw around him in everyday life was very
different indeed from that we see today. Every modern child has since birth seen cars and planes
moving around, and soon finds out that these things are not alive, like people and animals. In
contrast, most of the motion seen in fourth century Greece was people, animals and birds, all very
much alive. This motion all had a purpose, the animal was moving to someplace it would rather be,
for some reason, so the motion was directed by the animal’s will. For Aristotle, this motion was
therefore fulfilling the “nature” of the animal, just as its natural growth fulfilled the nature of the
animal.
10
To account for motion of things obviously not alive, such as a stone dropped from the hand, he
extended the concept of the “nature” of something to inanimate matter. He suggested that the motion
of such inanimate objects could be understood by postulating that elements tend to seek their natural
place in the order of things, so earth moves downwards most strongly, water flows downwards too,
but not so strongly, since a stone will fall through water. In contrast, air moves up (bubbles in water)
and fire goes upwards most strongly of all, since it shoots upward through air. This general theory of
how elements move has to be elaborated, of course, when applied to real materials, which are
mixtures of elements. He would conclude that wood, say, has both earth and air in it, since it does
not sink in water.

Natural Motion and Violent Motion

Of course, things also sometimes move because they are pushed. A stone’s natural tendency, if left
alone and unsupported, is to fall, but we can lift it, or even throw it through the air. Aristotle termed
such forced motion “violent” motion as opposed to natural motion. The term “violent” here connotes
that some external force is applied to the body to cause the motion. (Of course, from the modern
point of view, gravity is an external force that causes a stone to fall, but even Galileo did not realize
that. Before Newton, the falling of a stone was considered natural motion that did not require any
outside help.)

(Question: I am walking steadily upstairs carrying a large stone when I stumble and both I and the
stone go clattering down the stairs. Is the motion of the stone before the stumble natural or violent?
What about the motion of the stone (and myself) after the stumble?)

Aristotle’s Laws of Motion

Aristotle was the first to think quantitatively about the speeds involved in these movements. He
made two quantitative assertions about how things fall (natural motion):

1. Heavier things fall faster, the speed being proportional to the weight.
2. The speed of fall of a given object depends inversely on the density of the medium it is
falling through, so, for example, the same body will fall twice as fast through a medium of
half the density.

Notice that these rules have a certain elegance, an appealing quantitative simplicity. And, if you drop
a stone and a piece of paper, it’s clear that the heavier thing does fall faster, and a stone falling
through water is definitely slowed down by the water, so the rules at first appear plausible. The
surprising thing is, in view of Aristotle’s painstaking observations of so many things, he didn’t check
out these rules in any serious way. It would not have taken long to find out if half a brick fell at half
the speed of a whole brick, for example. Obviously, this was not something he considered important.

From the second assertion above, he concluded that a vacuum cannot exist, because if it did, since it
has zero density, all bodies would fall through it at infinite speed which is clearly nonsense.

For violent motion, Aristotle stated that the speed of the moving object was in direct proportion to
the applied force.

This means first that if you stop pushing, the object stops moving. This certainly sounds like a
reasonable rule for, say, pushing a box of books across a carpet, or a Grecian ox dragging a plough
through a field. (This intuitively appealing picture, however, fails to take account of the large
frictional force between the box and the carpet. If you put the box on a sled and pushed it across ice,
it wouldn’t stop when you stop pushing. Galileo realized the importance of friction in these
situations.)
11
Planetary Dynamics
The idea that motion (of inanimate objects) can be accounted for in terms of them seeking their
natural place clearly cannot be applied to the planets, whose motion is apparently composed of
circles. Aristotle therefore postulated that the heavenly bodies were not made up of the four elements
earth, water, air and fire, but of a fifth, different, element called aither, whose natural motion was
circular. This was not very satisfying for various reasons. Somewhere between here and the moon a
change must take place, but where? Recall that Aristotle did not believe that there was a void
anywhere. If the sun has no heat component, why does sunlight seem so warm? He thought it
somehow generated heat by friction from the sun’s motion, but this wasn’t very convincing, either.

Aristotle’s Achievements
To summarize: Aristotle’s philosophy laid out an approach to the investigation of all natural
phenomena, to determine form by detailed, systematic work, and thus arrive at final causes. His
logical method of argument gave a framework for putting knowledge together, and deducing new
results. He created what amounted to a fully-fledged professional scientific enterprise, on a scale
comparable to a modern university science department. It must be admitted that some of his work -
unfortunately, some of the physics - was not up to his usual high standards. He evidently found
falling stones a lot less interesting than living creatures. Yet the sheer scale of his enterprise,
unmatched in antiquity and for centuries to come, gave an authority to all his writings.

It is perhaps worth reiterating the difference between Plato and Aristotle, who agreed with each other
that the world is the product of rational design, that the philosopher investigates the form and the
universal, and that the only true knowledge is that which is irrefutable. The essential difference
between them was that Plato felt mathematical reasoning could arrive at the truth with little outside
help, but Aristotle believed detailed empirical investigations of nature were essential if progress was
to be made in understanding the natural world.

Books I used to prepare this lecture:

Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle, G. E. R. Lloyd, Norton, N.Y., 1970. An excellent
inexpensive paperback giving a more detailed presentation of many of the subjects we have
discussed. My sections on Method and Causes, in particular, follow Lloyd’s treatment.

History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell. An opinionated but very entertaining book, mainly
on philosophy but with a fair amount of science and social analysis.

previous index next PDF

http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/lectures/aristot2.html

12
Plato
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Plato (disambiguation) and Platon (disambiguation).
Plato (Πλάτων)

Full name Plato (Πλάτων)

Born c. 428–427 BC[1] Athens
Died c. 348–347 BC (age approx 80) Athens
Era Ancient philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School Platonism
Main interests
Rhetoric, Art, Literature, Epistemology, Justice, Virtue, Politics, Education, Family, Militarism
Notable ideas Platonic realism

Plato
Early life · Works Platonism · Epistemology Idealism / Realism Theory of Forms Form of the Good
Third man argument Euthyphro dilemma Five regimes Philosopher king

Allegories and metaphors

Ring of Gyges · The cave The divided line · The sun Ship of state · Myth of Er The chariot

Related articles

The Academy in Athens Socratic problem Commentaries on Plato Middle Platonism Neoplatonism
Neoplatonism and Christianity v•d•e

Plato (English pronunciation: /ˈpleɪtoʊ/; Greek: Πλάτων, Plátōn, "broad"[2]; 428/427 BC[a] – 348/347
BC), was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and
founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world.
Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of
Western philosophy and science.[3] Plato was originally a student of Socrates, and was as much
influenced by his thinking as by his apparently unjust execution.

Plato's sophistication as a writer is evident in his Socratic dialogues; thirty-six dialogues and thirteen
letters have been ascribed to him. Plato's writings have been published in several fashions; this has
led to several conventions regarding the naming and referencing of Plato's texts.

Plato's dialogues have been used to teach a range of subjects, including philosophy, logic, rhetoric
and mathematics.
13
Contents
• 1 Biography
o 1.1 Early life
 1.1.1 Birth and family
 1.1.2 Name
 1.1.3 Education
o 1.2 Later life
o 1.3 Plato and Socrates
• 2 Philosophy
o 2.1 Recurrent themes
o 2.2 Metaphysics
o 2.3 Theory of Forms
o 2.4 Epistemology
o 2.5 The State
o 2.6 Unwritten Doctrine
• 3 Works
o 3.1 Composition of the dialogues
o 3.2 Narration of the dialogues
o 3.3 Trial of Socrates
o 3.4 Unity and Diversity of the Dialogues
o 3.5 Platonic Scholarship
o 3.6 Text history
• 4 Criticism
• 5 See also
• 6 Notes
• 7 Footnotes
• 8 References
o 8.1 Primary sources (Greek and Roman)
o 8.2 Secondary sources
• 9 Further reading
• 10 External links

Biography
Early life Main article: Early life of Plato

Birth and family

The definite place and time of Plato's birth are not known, but what is certain is that he belonged to
an aristocratic and influential family. Based on ancient sources, most modern scholars believe that he
was born in Athens or Aegina[b] between 429 and 423 BC.[a] His father was Ariston. According to a
disputed tradition, reported by Diogenes Laertius, Ariston traced his descent from the king of
Athens, Codrus, and the king of Messenia, Melanthus.[4] Plato's mother was Perictione, whose family
boasted of a relationship with the famous Athenian lawmaker and lyric poet Solon.[5] Perictione was
sister of Charmides and niece of Critias, both prominent figures of the Thirty Tyrants, the brief
oligarchic regime, which followed on the collapse of Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War
(404-403 BC).[6] Besides Plato himself, Ariston and Perictione had three other children; these were
two sons, Adeimantus and Glaucon, and a daughter Potone, the mother of Speusippus (the nephew
and successor of Plato as head of his philosophical Academy).[6] According to the Republic,
Adeimantus and Glaucon were older than Plato.[7] Nevertheless, in his Memorabilia, Xenophon
presents Glaucon as younger than Plato.[8]
14
Ariston tried to force his attentions on Perictione, but failed of his purpose; then the ancient Greek
god Apollo appeared to him in a vision, and, as a result of it, Ariston left Perictione unmolested.[9]
Another legend related that, while he was sleeping as an infant, bees had settled on the lips of Plato;
an augury of the sweetness of style in which he would discourse philosophy.[10]

Ariston appears to have died in Plato's childhood, although the precise dating of his death is difficult.
[11]
Perictione then married Pyrilampes, her mother's brother,[12] who had served many times as an
ambassador to the Persian court and was a friend of Pericles, the leader of the democratic faction in
Athens.[13] Pyrilampes had a son from a previous marriage, Demus, who was famous for his beauty.
[14]
Perictione gave birth to Pyrilampes' second son, Antiphon, the half-brother of Plato, who appears
in Parmenides.[15]

In contrast to his reticence about himself, Plato used to introduce his distinguished relatives into his
dialogues, or to mention them with some precision: Charmides has one named after him; Critias
speaks in both Charmides and Protagoras; Adeimantus and Glaucon take prominent parts in the
Republic.[16] From these and other references one can reconstruct his family tree, and this suggests a
considerable amount of family pride. According to Burnet, "the opening scene of the Charmides is a
glorification of the whole [family] connection ... Plato's dialogues are not only a memorial to
Socrates, but also the happier days of his own family".[17]

Name According to Diogenes Laërtius, the philosopher was named Aristocles after his
grandfather, but his wrestling coach, Ariston of Argos, dubbed him "Platon", meaning
"broad," on account of his robust figure.[18] According to the sources mentioned by
Diogenes (all dating from the Alexandrian period), Plato derived his name from the breadth
(platytês) of his eloquence, or else because he was very wide (platýs) across the forehead.
[19] In the 21st century some scholars disputed Diogenes, and argued that the legend about
his name being Aristocles originated in the Hellenistic age.[c]

Education Apuleius informs us that Speusippus praised Plato's quickness of mind and
modesty as a boy, and the "first fruits of his youth infused with hard work and love of
study".[20] Plato must have been instructed in grammar, music, and gymnastics by the most
distinguished teachers of his time.[21] Dicaearchus went so far as to say that Plato wrestled
at the Isthmian games.[22] Plato had also attended courses of philosophy; before meeting
Socrates, he first became acquainted with Cratylus (a disciple of Heraclitus, a prominent
pre-Socratic Greek philosopher) and the Heraclitean doctrines.[23]

Later life Plato may have traveled in Italy, Sicily, Egypt and Cyrene.[24] Said to have
returned to Athens at the age of forty, Plato founded one of the earliest known organized
schools in Western Civilization on a plot of land in the Grove of Hecademus or Academus.
[25] The Academy was "a large enclosure of ground that was once the property of a citizen at
Athens named Academus... some, however, say that it received its name from an ancient
hero",[26] and it operated until AD 529, when it was closed by Justinian I of Byzantium, who
saw it as a threat to the propagation of Christianity. Many intellectuals were schooled in the
Academy, the most prominent one being Aristotle.[27]

Throughout his later life, Plato became entangled with the politics of Syracuse. According to
Diogenes Laertius, Plato initially visited Syracuse while it was under the rule of Dionysus. During
this first trip Dionysus's brother-in-law, Dion of Syracuse, became one of Plato's disciples, but the
tyrant himself turned against Plato. Plato was sold into slavery and almost faced death in Cyrene, a
city at war with Athens, before an admirer bought Plato's freedom and sent him home. After
Dionysius's death, according to Plato's Seventh Letter, Dion requested Plato return to Syracuse to
tutor Dionysus II and guide him to become a philosopher king. Dionysius II seemed to accept Plato's
teachings, but he became suspicious of Dion, his uncle. Dionysus expelled Dion and kept Plato

15
against his will. Eventually Plato left Syracuse. Dion would return to overthrow Dionysus and ruled
Syracuse for a short time before being usurped by Calippus, a fellow disciple of Plato.

Plato and Socrates

Plato and Socrates in a medieval depiction

The precise relationship between Plato and Socrates remains an area of contention among scholars.
Plato makes it clear, especially in his Apology of Socrates, that he was Socrates' most devoted young
follower. In that dialogue, Socrates is presented as mentioning Plato by name as one of those youths
close enough to him to have been corrupted, if he were in fact guilty of corrupting the youth, and
questioning why their fathers and brothers did not step forward to testify against him if he was
indeed guilty of such a crime (33d-34a). Later, Plato is mentioned along with Crito, Critobolus, and
Apollodorus as offering to pay a fine of 30 minas on Socrates' behalf, in lieu of the death penalty
proposed by Meletus (38b). In the Phaedo, the title character lists those who were in attendance at
the prison on Socrates' last day, explaining Plato's absence by saying, "Plato was ill" (Phaedo 59b).

Plato never speaks in his own voice in his dialogues. In the Second Letter, it says, "no writing of
Plato exists or ever will exist, but those now said to be his are those of a Socrates become beautiful
and new" (341c); if the Letter is Plato's, the final qualification seems to call into question the
dialogues' historical fidelity. In any case, Xenophon and Aristophanes seem to present a somewhat
different portrait of Socrates than Plato paints. Some have called attention to the problem of taking
Plato's Socrates to be his mouthpiece, given Socrates' reputation for irony.[28]

Aristotle attributes a different doctrine with respect to the ideas to Plato and Socrates (Metaphysics
987b1–11). Putting it in a nutshell, Aristotle merely suggests that his idea of forms can be discovered
through investigation of the natural world, unlike Plato's Forms that exist beyond and outside the
ordinary range of human understanding.

Philosophy
Recurrent themes

Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael. Aristotle
gestures to the earth, representing his belief in knowledge through empirical observation and
experience, while holding a copy of his Nicomachean Ethics in his hand. Plato holds his Timaeus
and gestures to the heavens, representing his belief in The Forms

Plato often discusses the father-son relationship and the "question" of whether a father's interest in
his sons has much to do with how well his sons turn out. A boy in ancient Athens was socially
located by his family identity, and Plato often refers to his characters in terms of their paternal and
fraternal relationships. Socrates was not a family man, and saw himself as the son of his mother, who
was apparently a midwife. A divine fatalist, Socrates mocks men who spent exorbitant fees on tutors
and trainers for their sons, and repeatedly ventures the idea that good character is a gift from the
gods. Crito reminds Socrates that orphans are at the mercy of chance, but Socrates is unconcerned.
In the Theaetetus, he is found recruiting as a disciple a young man whose inheritance has been
squandered. Socrates twice compares the relationship of the older man and his boy lover to the
father-son relationship (Lysis 213a, Republic 3.403b), and in the Phaedo, Socrates' disciples, towards
whom he displays more concern than his biological sons, say they will feel "fatherless" when he is
gone.

16
In several dialogues, Socrates floats the idea that Knowledge is a matter of recollection, and not of
learning, observation, or study.[29] He maintains this view somewhat at his own expense, because in
many dialogues, Socrates complains of his forgetfulness. Socrates is often found arguing that
knowledge is not empirical, and that it comes from divine insight. In many middle period dialogues,
such as the Phaedo, Republic and Phaedrus Plato advocates a belief in the immortality of the soul,
and several dialogues end with long speeches imagining the afterlife. More than one dialogue
contrasts knowledge and opinion, perception and reality, nature and custom, and body and soul.

Several dialogues tackle questions about art: Socrates says that poetry is inspired by the muses, and
is not rational. He speaks approvingly of this, and other forms of divine madness (drunkenness,
eroticism, and dreaming) in the Phaedrus (265a–c), and yet in the Republic wants to outlaw Homer's
great poetry, and laughter as well. In Ion, Socrates gives no hint of the disapproval of Homer that he
expresses in the Republic. The dialogue Ion suggests that Homer's Iliad functioned in the ancient
Greek world as the Bible does today in the modern Christian world: as divinely inspired literature
that can provide moral guidance, if only it can be properly interpreted.

On politics and art, religion and science, justice and medicine, virtue and vice, crime and
punishment, pleasure and pain, rhetoric and rhapsody, human nature and sexuality, love and wisdom,
Socrates and his company of disputants had something to say.

Metaphysics
Main article: Platonic realism

"Platonism" is a term coined by scholars to refer to the intellectual consequences of denying, as

Socrates often does, the reality of the material world. In several dialogues, most notably the
Republic, Socrates inverts the common man's intuition about what is knowable and what is real.
While most people take the objects of their senses to be real if anything is, Socrates is contemptuous
of people who think that something has to be graspable in the hands to be real. In the Theaetetus, he
says such people are "eu a-mousoi", an expression that means literally, "happily without the muses"
(Theaetetus 156a). In other words, such people live without the divine inspiration that gives him, and
people like him, access to higher insights about reality.

Socrates's idea that reality is unavailable to those who use their senses is what puts him at odds with
the common man, and with common sense. Socrates says that he who sees with his eyes is blind, and
this idea is most famously captured in his allegory of the cave, and more explicitly in his description
of the divided line. The allegory of the cave (begins Republic 7.514a) is a paradoxical analogy
wherein Socrates argues that the invisible world is the most intelligible ("noeton") and that the
visible world ("(h)oraton") is the least knowable, and the most obscure.

Socrates says in the Republic that people who take the sun-lit world of the senses to be good and real
are living pitifully in a den of evil and ignorance. Socrates admits that few climb out of the den, or
cave of ignorance, and those who do, not only have a terrible struggle to attain the heights, but when
they go back down for a visit or to help other people up, they find themselves objects of scorn and
ridicule.

According to Socrates, physical objects and physical events are "shadows" of their ideal or perfect
forms, and exist only to the extent that they instantiate the perfect versions of themselves. Just as
shadows are temporary, inconsequential epiphenomena produced by physical objects, physical
objects are themselves fleeting phenomena caused by more substantial causes, the ideals of which
they are mere instances. For example, Socrates thinks that perfect justice exists (although it is not
clear where) and his own trial would be a cheap copy of it.

17
The allegory of the cave (often said by scholars to represent Plato's own epistemology and
metaphysics) is intimately connected to his political ideology (often said to also be Plato's own), that
only people who have climbed out of the cave and cast their eyes on a vision of goodness are fit to
rule. Socrates claims that the enlightened men of society must be forced from their divine
contemplations and compelled to run the city according to their lofty insights. Thus is born the idea
of the "philosopher-king", the wise person who accepts the power thrust upon him by the people
who are wise enough to choose a good master. This is the main thesis of Socrates in the Republic,
that the most wisdom the masses can muster is the wise choice of a ruler.

The word metaphysics derives from the fact that Aristotle's musings about divine reality came after
("meta") his lecture notes on his treatise on nature ("physics"). The term is in fact applied to
Aristotle's own teacher, and Plato's "metaphysics" is understood as Socrates' division of reality into
the warring and irreconcilable domains of the material and the spiritual. The theory has been of
incalculable influence in the history of Western philosophy and religion.

Theory of Forms
Main article: Theory of Forms

The Theory of Forms (Greek: ιδέες) typically refers to the belief expressed by Socrates in some of
Plato's dialogues, that the material world as it seems to us is not the real world, but only an image or
copy of the real world. Socrates spoke of forms in formulating a solution to the problem of
universals. The forms, according to Socrates, are roughly speaking archetypes or abstract
representations of the many types of things, and properties we feel and see around us, that can only
be perceived by reason (Greek: λογική); (that is, they are universals). In other words, Socrates
sometimes seems to recognise two worlds: the apparent world which is constantly changing, and an
unchanging and unseen world of forms, which may perhaps be a cause of what is apparent.

Epistemology
Main article: Platonic epistemology

Many have interpreted Plato as stating that knowledge is justified true belief, an influential view that
informed future developments in modern analytic epistemology. This interpretation is based on a
reading of the Theaetetus wherein Plato argues that belief is to be distinguished from knowledge on
account of justification. Many years later, Edmund Gettier famously demonstrated the problems of
the justified true belief account of knowledge. This interpretation, however, imports modern analytic
and empiricist categories onto Plato himself and is better read on its own terms than as Plato's view.

Really, in the Sophist, Statesman, Republic, and the Parmenides Plato himself associates knowledge
with the apprehension of unchanging Forms and their relationships to one another (which he calls
"expertise" in Dialectic). More explicitly, Plato himself argues in the Timaeus that knowledge is
always proportionate to the realm from which it is gained. In other words, if one derives one's
account of something experientially, because the world of sense is in flux, the views therein attained
will be mere opinions. And opinions are characterized by a lack of necessity and stability. On the
other hand, if one derives one's account of something by way of the non-sensible forms, because
these forms are unchanging, so too is the account derived from them. It is only in this sense that
Plato uses the term "knowledge".

In the Meno, Socrates uses a geometrical example to expound Plato's view that knowledge in this
latter sense is acquired by recollection. Socrates elicits a fact concerning a geometrical construction
from a slave boy, who could not have otherwise known the fact (due to the slave boy's lack of
education). The knowledge must be present, Socrates concludes, in an eternal, non-experiential
form.

18
The State

Papirus Oxyrhynchus, with fragment of Plato's Republic

Plato's philosophical views had many societal implications, especially on the idea of an ideal state or
government. There is some discrepancy between his early and later views. Some of the most famous
doctrines are contained in the Republic during his middle period, as well as in the Laws and the
Statesman. However, because Plato wrote dialogues, it is assumed that Socrates is often speaking for
Plato. This assumption may not be true in all cases.

Plato, through the words of Socrates, asserts that societies have a tripartite class structure
corresponding to the appetite/spirit/reason structure of the individual soul. The appetite/spirit/reason
stand for different parts of the body. The body parts symbolize the castes of society.[30]

• Productive, which represents the abdomen. (Workers) — the labourers, carpenters, plumbers,
masons, merchants, farmers, ranchers, etc. These correspond to the "appetite" part of the
soul.
• Protective, which represents the chest. (Warriors or Guardians) — those who are
adventurous, strong and brave; in the armed forces. These correspond to the "spirit" part of
the soul.
• Governing, which represents the head. (Rulers or Philosopher Kings) — those who are
intelligent, rational, self-controlled, in love with wisdom, well suited to make decisions for
the community. These correspond to the "reason" part of the soul and are very few.

According to this model, the principles of Athenian democracy (as it existed in his day) are rejected
as only a few are fit to rule. Instead of rhetoric and persuasion, Plato says reason and wisdom should
govern. As Plato puts it:

"Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men
genuinely and adequately philosophise, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely
coincide, while the many natures who at present pursue either one exclusively are forcibly
prevented from doing so, cities will have no rest from evils,... nor, I think, will the human
race." (Republic 473c-d)

Plato in his academy, drawing after a painting by Swedish painter Carl Johan Wahlbom

Plato describes these "philosopher kings" as "those who love the sight of truth" (Republic 475c) and
supports the idea with the analogy of a captain and his ship or a doctor and his medicine. According
to him, sailing and health are not things that everyone is qualified to practice by nature. A large part
of the Republic then addresses how the educational system should be set up to produce these
philosopher kings.

However, it must be taken into account that the ideal city outlined in the Republic is qualified by
Socrates as the ideal luxurious city, examined to determine how it is that injustice and justice grow
in a city (Republic 372e). According to Socrates, the "true" and "healthy" city is instead the one first
outlined in book II of the Republic, 369c–372d, containing farmers, craftsmen, merchants, and wage-
earners, but lacking the guardian class of philosopher-kings as well as delicacies such as "perfumed
oils, incense, prostitutes, and pastries", in addition to paintings, gold, ivory, couches, a multitude of
occupations such as poets and hunters, and war.

In addition, the ideal city is used as an image to illuminate the state of one's soul, or the will, reason,
and desires combined in the human body. Socrates is attempting to make an image of a rightly

19
ordered human, and then later goes on to describe the different kinds of humans that can be
observed, from tyrants to lovers of money in various kinds of cities. The ideal city is not promoted,
but only used to magnify the different kinds of individual humans and the state of their soul.
However, the philosopher king image was used by many after Plato to justify their personal political
beliefs. The philosophic soul according to Socrates has reason, will, and desires united in virtuous
harmony. A philosopher has the moderate love for wisdom and the courage to act according to
wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge about the Good or the right relations between all that exists.

Wherein it concerns states and rulers, Plato has made interesting arguments. For instance he asks
which is better—a bad democracy or a country reigned by a tyrant. He argues that it is better to be
ruled by a bad tyrant, than be a bad democracy (since here all the people are now responsible for
such actions, rather than one individual committing many bad deeds.) This is emphasised within the
Republic as Plato describes the event of mutiny onboard a ship.[31] Plato suggests the ships crew to be
in line with the democratic rule of many and the captain, although inhibited through ailments, the
tyrant. Plato's description of this event is parallel to that of democracy within the state and the
inherent problems that arise.

According to Plato, a state made up of different kinds of souls will, overall, decline from an
aristocracy (rule by the best) to a timocracy (rule by the honorable), then to an oligarchy (rule by the
few), then to a democracy (rule by the people), and finally to tyranny (rule by one person, rule by a
tyrant)[citation needed].

Unwritten Doctrine

For a long time Plato's unwritten doctrine[32][33][34] had been considered unworthy of attention. Most of
the books on Plato seem to diminish its importance. Nevertheless the first important witness who
mentions its existence is Aristotle, who in his Physics (209 b) writes: "It is true, indeed, that the
account he gives there [i.e. in Timaeus] of the participant is different from what he says in his so-
called unwritten teaching (ἄγραφα δόγματα)." The term ἄγραφα δόγματα literally means unwritten
doctrine and it stands for the most fundamental metaphysical teaching of Plato, which he disclosed
only to his most trusted fellows and kept secret from the public.

The reason for not revealing it to everyone is partially discussed in Phaedrus (276 c) where Plato
criticizes the written transmission of knowledge as faulty, favoring instead the spoken logos: "he
who has knowledge of the just and the good and beautiful ... will not, when in earnest, write them in
ink, sowing them through a pen with words, which cannot defend themselves by argument and
cannot teach the truth effectually." The same argument is repeated in Plato's Seventh Letter (344 c):
"every serious man in dealing with really serious subjects carefully avoids writing." In the same
letter he writes (341 c): "I can certainly declare concerning all these writers who claim to know the
subjects that I seriously study ... there does not exist, nor will there ever exist, any treatise of mine
dealing therewith." Such secrecy is necessary in order not "to expose them to unseemly and
degrading treatment" (344 d).

It is however said that Plato once disclosed this knowledge to the public in his lecture On the Good
(Περὶ τἀγαθοῦ), in which the Good (τὸ ἀγαθόν) is identified with the One (the Unity, τὸ ἕν), the
fundamental ontological principle. The content of this lecture has been transmitted by several
witnesses, among others Aristoxenus who describes the event in the following words: "Each came
expecting to learn something about the things that are generally considered good for men, such as
wealth, good health, physical strength, and altogether a kind of wonderful happiness. But when the
mathematical demonstrations came, including numbers, geometrical figures and astronomy, and
finally the statement Good is One seemed to them, I imagine, utterly unexpected and strange; hence
some belittled the matter, while others rejected it." Simplicius quotes Alexander of Aphrodisias who
states that "according to Plato, the first principles of everything, including the Forms themselves are
One and Indefinite Duality (ἡ ἀόριστος δυάς), which he called Large and Small (τὸ μέγα καὶ τὸ
20
μικρόν) ... one might also learn this from Speusippus and Xenocrates and the others who were
present at Plato's lecture on the Good"

Their account is in full agreement with Aristotle's description of Plato's metaphysical doctrine. In
Metaphysics he writes: "Now since the Forms are the causes of everything else, he [i.e. Plato]
supposed that their elements are the elements of all things. Accordingly the material principle is the
Great and Small [i.e. the Dyad], and the essence is the One (τὸ ἕν), since the numbers are derived
from the Great and Small by participation in the One" (987 b). "From this account it is clear that he
only employed two causes: that of the essence, and the material cause; for the Forms are the cause of
the essence in everything else, and the One is the cause of it in the Forms. He also tells us what the
material substrate is of which the Forms are predicated in the case of sensible things, and the One in
that of the Forms - that it is this the duality (the Dyad, ἡ δυάς), the Great and Small (τὸ μέγα καὶ τὸ
μικρόν). Further, he assigned to these two elements respectively the causation of good and of evil"
(988 a).

The most important aspect of this interpretation of Plato's metaphysics is the continuity between his
teaching and the neoplatonic interpretation of Plotinus[35] or Ficino[36] which has been considered
erroneous by many but may in fact have been directly influenced by oral transmission of Plato's
doctrine. A modern scholar who recognized the importance of the unwritten doctrine of Plato was
Heinrich Gomperz who described it in his speech during the 7th International Congress of
Philosophy in 1930.[37] All the sources related to the ἄγραφα δόγματα have been collected by Konrad
Gaiser and published as Testimonia Platonica.[38] These sources have subsequently been interpreted
by scholars from the German Tübingen School such as Hans Joachim Krämer or Thomas A. Szlezák.
[39]

Works - The Dialogues of Plato

Early dialogues:

Apology – Charmides – Crito Euthyphro – First Alcibiades Hippias Major – Hippias Minor

Ion – Laches – Lysis

Transitional & middle dialogues:

Cratylus – Euthydemus – Gorgias Menexenus – Meno – Phaedo Protagoras – Symposium

Later middle dialogues:

Republic – Phaedrus Parmenides – Theaetetus

Late dialogues:
Clitophon – Timaeus – Critias Sophist – Statesman Philebus – Laws

Of Doubtful Authenticity:
Axiochus – Demodocus Epinomis – Epistles – Eryxias Halcyon – Hipparchus – Minos

Rival Lovers – Second Alcibiades Sisyphus – Theages

21
Thirty-six dialogues and thirteen letters have traditionally been ascribed to Plato, though modern
scholarship doubts the authenticity of at least some of these. Plato's writings have been published in
several fashions; this has led to several conventions regarding the naming and referencing of Plato's
texts.

The usual system for making unique references to sections of the text by Plato derives from a 16th
century edition of Plato's works by Henricus Stephanus. An overview of Plato's writings according
to this system can be found in the Stephanus pagination article.

One tradition regarding the arrangement of Plato's texts is according to tetralogies. This scheme is
ascribed by Diogenes Laertius to an ancient scholar and court astrologer to Tiberius named
Thrasyllus.

In the list below, works by Plato are marked (1) if there is no consensus among scholars as to
whether Plato is the author, and (2) if most scholars agree that Plato is not the author of the work.
Unmarked works are assumed to have been written by Plato.[40]

• I. Euthyphro, (The) Apology (of Socrates), Crito, Phaedo

• II. Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman
• III. Parmenides, Philebus, (The) Symposium, Phaedrus
• IV. First Alcibiades (1), Second Alcibiades (2), Hipparchus (2), (The) (Rival) Lovers (2)
• V. Theages (2), Charmides, Laches, Lysis
• VI. Euthydemus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno
• VII. (Greater) Hippias (major) (1), (Lesser) Hippias (minor), Ion, Menexenus
• VIII. Clitophon (1), (The) Republic, Timaeus, Critias
• IX. Minos (2), (The) Laws, Epinomis (2), Epistles (1).

The remaining works were transmitted under Plato's name, most of them already considered
spurious in antiquity, and so were not included by Thrasyllus in his tetralogical arrangement. These
works are labelled as Notheuomenoi ("spurious") or Apocrypha.

• Axiochus (2), Definitions (2), Demodocus (2), Epigrams (2), Eryxias (2), Halcyon (2), On
Justice (2), On Virtue (2), Sisyphus (2).

Composition of the dialogues

No one knows the exact order Plato's dialogues were written in, nor the extent to which some might
have been later revised and rewritten.

Lewis Campbell was the first[41] to make exhaustive use of stylometry to prove objectively that the
Critias, Timaeus, Laws, Philebus, Sophist, and Statesman were all clustered together as a group,
while the Parmenides, Phaedrus, Republic, and Theaetetus belong to a separate group, which must
be earlier (given Aristotle's statement in his Politics[42] that the Laws was written after the Republic;
cf. Diogenes Laertius Lives 3.37). What is remarkable about Campbell's conclusions is that, in spite
of all the stylometric studies that have been conducted since his time, perhaps the only chronological
fact about Plato's works that can now be said to be proven by stylometry is the fact that Critias,
Timaeus, Laws, Philebus, Sophist, and Statesman are the latest of Plato's dialogues, the others
earlier.[43]

Increasingly in the most recent Plato scholarship, writers are skeptical of the notion that the order of
Plato's writings can be established with any precision,[44] though Plato's works are still often
characterized as falling at least roughly into three groups.[45] The following represents one relatively
common such division.[46] It should, however, be kept in mind that many of the positions in the

22
ordering are still highly disputed, and also that the very notion that Plato's dialogues can or should be
"ordered" is by no means universally accepted.

Among those who classify the dialogues into periods of composition, Socrates figures in all of the
"early dialogues" and they are considered the most faithful representations of the historical Socrates.
[citation needed]
They include The Apology of Socrates, Charmides, Crito, Euthyphro, Ion, Laches, Less
Hippias, Lysis, Menexenus, and Protagoras (often considered one of the last of the "early
dialogues"). Three dialogues are often considered "transitional" or "pre-middle": Euthydemus,
Gorgias, and Meno.[citation needed]

Whereas those classified as "early dialogues" often conclude in aporia, the so-called "middle
dialogues" provide more clearly stated positive teachings that are often ascribed to Plato such as the
theory of forms.[citation needed] These dialogues include Cratylus, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Republic,
Symposium, Parmenides, and Theaetetus.[citation needed] Proponents of dividing the dialogues into
periods often consider the Parmenides and Theaetetus to come late in this period and be transitional
to the next, as they seem to treat the theory of forms critically (Parmenides) or not at all
(Theaetetus).[citation needed]

The remaining dialogues are classified as "late" and are generally agreed to be difficult and
challenging pieces of philosophy.[citation needed] This grouping is the only one proven by stylometic
analysis.[43] While looked to for Plato's "mature" answers to the questions posed by his earlier works,
those answers are difficult to discern. Some scholars[who?] say that the theory of forms is absent from
the late dialogues, its having been refuted in the Parmenides, but there isn't total consensus that the
Parmenides actually refutes the theory of forms.[47] The so-called "late dialogues" include Critias,
Laws, Philebus, Sophist, Statesman, and Timaeus.[citation needed]

Narration of the dialogues

Plato never presents himself as a participant in any of the dialogues, and with the exception of the
Apology, there is no suggestion that he heard any of the dialogues firsthand. Some dialogues have no
narrator but have a pure "dramatic" form (examples: Meno, Gorgias, Phaedrus, Crito, Euthyphro),
some dialogues are narrated by Socrates, wherein he speaks in first person (examples: Lysis,
Charmides, Republic). One dialogue, Protagoras, begins in dramatic form but quickly proceeds to
Socrates' narration of a conversation he had previously with the sophist for whom the dialogue is
named; this narration continues uninterrupted till the dialogue's end.

Plato's Symposium (Anselm Feuerbach, 1873)

Two dialogues Phaedo and Symposium also begin in dramatic form but then proceed to virtually
uninterrupted narration by followers of Socrates. Phaedo, an account of Socrates' final conversation
and hemlock drinking, is narrated by Phaedo to Echecrates in a foreign city not long after the
execution took place.[48] The Symposium is narrated by Apollodorus, a Socratic disciple, apparently
to Glaucon. Apollodorus assures his listener that he is recounting the story, which took place when
he himself was an infant, not from his own memory, but as remembered by Aristodemus, who told
him the story years ago.

The Theaetetus is a peculiar case: a dialogue in dramatic form imbedded within another dialogue in
dramatic form. In the beginning of the Theaetetus (142c-143b), Euclides says that he compiled the
conversation from notes he took based on what Socrates told him of his conversation with the title
character. The rest of the Theaetetus is presented as a "book" written in dramatic form and read by
one of Euclides' slaves (143c). Some scholars take this as an indication that Plato had by this date

23
wearied of the narrated form.[49] With the exception of the Theaetetus, Plato gives no explicit
indication as to how these orally transmitted conversations came to be written down.

Trial of Socrates
Main article: Trial of Socrates

The trial of Socrates is the central, unifying event of the great Platonic dialogues. Because of this,
Plato's Apology is perhaps the most often read of the dialogues. In the Apology, Socrates tries to
dismiss rumors that he is a sophist and defends himself against charges of disbelief in the gods and
corruption of the young. Socrates insists that long-standing slander will be the real cause of his
demise, and says the legal charges are essentially false. Socrates famously denies being wise, and
explains how his life as a philosopher was launched by the Oracle at Delphi. He says that his quest to
resolve the riddle of the oracle put him at odds with his fellow man, and that this is the reason he has
been mistaken for a menace to the city-state of Athens.

If Plato's important dialogues do not refer to Socrates' execution explicitly, they allude to it, or use
characters or themes that play a part in it. Five dialogues foreshadow the trial: In the Theaetetus
(210d) and the Euthyphro (2a–b) Socrates tells people that he is about to face corruption charges. In
the Meno (94e–95a), one of the men who brings legal charges against Socrates, Anytus, warns him
about the trouble he may get into if he does not stop criticizing important people. In the Gorgias,
Socrates says that his trial will be like a doctor prosecuted by a cook who asks a jury of children to
choose between the doctor's bitter medicine and the cook's tasty treats (521e–522a). In the Republic
(7.517e), Socrates explains why an enlightened man (presumably himself) will stumble in a
courtroom situation. The Apology is Socrates' defense speech, and the Crito and Phaedo take place
in prison after the conviction. In the Protagoras, Socrates is a guest at the home of Callias, son of
Hipponicus, a man whom Socrates disparages in the Apology as having wasted a great amount of
money on sophists' fees.

Unity and Diversity of the Dialogues

Two other important dialogues, the Symposium and the Phaedrus, are linked to the main storyline by
characters. In the Apology (19b, c), Socrates says Aristophanes slandered him in a comic play, and
blames him for causing his bad reputation, and ultimately, his death. In the Symposium, the two of
them are drinking together with other friends. The character Phaedrus is linked to the main story line
by character (Phaedrus is also a participant in the Symposium and the Protagoras) and by theme (the
philosopher as divine emissary, etc.) The Protagoras is also strongly linked to the Symposium by
characters: all of the formal speakers at the Symposium (with the exception of Aristophanes) are
present at the home of Callias in that dialogue. Charmides and his guardian Critias are present for the
discussion in the Protagoras. Examples of characters crossing between dialogues can be further
multiplied. The Protagoras contains the largest gathering of Socratic associates.

In the dialogues Plato is most celebrated and admired for, Socrates is concerned with human and
political virtue, has a distinctive personality, and friends and enemies who "travel" with him from
dialogue to dialogue. This is not to say that Socrates is consistent: a man who is his friend in one
dialogue may be an adversary or subject of his mockery in another. For example, Socrates praises
the wisdom of Euthyphro many times in the Cratylus, but makes him look like a fool in the
Euthyphro. He disparages sophists generally, and Prodicus specifically in the Apology, whom he also
slyly jabs in the Cratylus for charging the hefty fee of fifty drachmas for a course on language and
grammar. However, Socrates tells Theaetetus in his namesake dialogue that he admires Prodicus and
has directed many pupils to him. Socrates' ideas are also not consistent within or between or among
dialogues.

24
Platonic Scholarship

"The safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a
series of footnotes to Plato." (Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, 1929).

Plato's thought is often compared with that of his 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". However, in the Byzantine Empire, the study
of Plato continued.

The Medieval scholastic philosophers did not have access to the works of Plato, nor the knowledge
of Greek needed to read them. Plato's original writings were essentially lost to Western civilization
until they were brought from Constantinople in the century of its fall, by George Gemistos Plethon.
It is believed that Plethon passed a copy of the Dialogues to Cosimo de' Medici when in 1438 the
Council of Ferrara, called to unify the Greek and Latin Churches, was adjourned to Florence, where
Plethon then lectured on the relation and differences of Plato and Aristotle, and fired Cosimo with
his enthusiasm.[citation needed] Medieval scholars knew of Plato only through translations into Latin from
the translations into Arabic by Persian and Arab scholars. These scholars not only translated the 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).

Only in the Renaissance, with the general resurgence of interest in classical civilization, did
knowledge of Plato's philosophy become 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 draw upon Plato's work since that time. Plato's
influence has been especially strong in mathematics and the sciences. He helped to distinguish
between pure and applied mathematics by widening the gap between "arithmetic", now called
Number Theory and "logistic", now called arithmetic. He regarded logistic as appropriate for
business men and men of war who "must learn the art of numbers or he will not know how to array
his troops," while arithmetic was appropriate for philosophers "because he has to arise out of the sea
of change and lay hold of true being."[50] Plato's resurgence further inspired some of the greatest
advances in logic since Aristotle, primarily through Gottlob Frege and his followers Kurt Gödel,
Alonzo Church, and Alfred Tarski; the last of these summarised his approach by reversing the
customary paraphrase of Aristotle's famous declaration of sedition from the Academy (Nicomachean
Ethics 1096a15), from Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas ("Plato is a friend, but truth is a greater
friend") to Inimicus Plato sed magis inimica falsitas ("Plato is an enemy, but falsehood is a greater
enemy"). Albert Einstein drew on Plato's understanding of an immutable reality that underlies the
flux of appearances for his objections to the probabilistic picture of the physical universe
propounded by Niels Bohr in his interpretation of quantum mechanics.[citation needed] Conversely,
thinkers that diverged from ontological models and moral ideals in their own philosophy, have
tended to disparage Platonism from more or less informed perspectives. Thus Friedrich Nietzsche
attacked Plato's moral and political theories, Martin Heidegger argued against Plato's alleged
obfuscation of Being, and Karl Popper argued in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) that
Plato's alleged proposal for a government system in the Republic was prototypically totalitarian. Leo
Strauss is considered by some as the prime thinker involved in the recovery of Platonic thought in its
more political, and less metaphysical, form. Deeply influenced by Nietzsche and Heidegger, Strauss
nonetheless rejects their condemnation of Plato and looks to the dialogues for a solution to what all
three thinkers acknowledge as 'the crisis of the West.'

25
Text history

The oldest surviving manuscript for about half of Plato's dialogues is the Clarke Plato (MS. E. D.
Clarke 39), which was written in Constantinople in 895 and acquired by Oxford University in 1809.
[51]

Criticism
Friedrich Nietzsche set himself in direct opposition to Socrates and Plato, regarding Plato especially
as the fundamental source of nihilism in the West.[citation needed]

See also
• Cambridge Platonists
• List of speakers in Plato's dialogues
• Plato's tripartite theory of soul
• Platonic love
• Platonic realism
• Seventh Letter (Plato)
• Proclus (The Platonic successor)

Notes
a. ^ The grammarian Apollodorus argues in his Chronicles that Plato was born in the first year of the
eighty-eighth Olympiad (427 BC), on the seventh day of the month Thargelion; according to this
tradition the god Apollo was born this day.[52] According to another biographer of him, Neanthes,
Plato was eighty-four years of age at his death.[52] If we accept Neanthes' version, Plato was younger
than Isocrates by six years, and therefore he was born in the second year of the 87th Olympiad, the
year Pericles died (429 BC).[53] According to the Suda, Plato was born in Aegina in the 88th
Olympiad amid the preliminaries of the Peloponnesian war, and he lived 82 years.[54] Sir Thomas
Browne also believes that Plato was born in the 88th Olympiad.[55] Renaissance Platonists celebrated
Plato's birth on November 7.[56] Wilamowitz-Moellendorff estimates that Plato was born when
Diotimos was archon eponymous, namely between July 29 428 BC and July 24 427 BC.[57] Greek
philologist Ioannis Kalitsounakis believes that the philosopher was born on May 26 or 27 427 BC,
while Jonathan Barnes regards 428 BC as year of Plato's birth.[58] For her part, Debra Nails asserts
that the philosopher was born in 424/423 BC.[56]

b. ^ Diogenes Laertius mentions that Plato "was born, according to some writers, in Aegina in the
house of Phidiades the son of Thales". Diogenes mentions as one of his sources the Universal
History of Favorinus. According to Favorinus, Ariston, Plato's family, and his family were sent by
Athens to settle as cleruchs (colonists retaining their Athenian citizenship), on the island of Aegina,
from which they were expelled by the Spartans after Plato's birth there.[59] Nails points out, however,
that there is no record of any Spartan expulsion of Athenians from Aegina between 431-411 BC.[60]
On the other hand, at the Peace of Nicias, Aegina was silently left under Athens' control, and it was
not until the summer of 411 that the Spartans overran the island.[61] Therefore, Nails concludes that
"perhaps Ariston was a cleruch, perhaps he went to Aegina in 431, and perhaps Plato was born on
Aegina, but none of this enables a precise dating of Ariston's death (or Plato's birth).[60] Aegina is
regarded as Plato's place of birth by Suda as well.[54]

c. ^ Plato was a common name, of which 31 instances are known at Athens alone.[62]

26
 Plato vs. Aristotle
Written by: devil dog

Numerous experts in modern time regard Plato as the first genuine political philosopher and
Aristotle as the first political scientist. They were both great thinkers in regards to, in part with
Socrates, being the foundation of the great western philosophers. Plato and Aristotle each had ideas
in how to proceed with improving the society in which they were part of during their existence. It is
necessary therefore to analyze their different theoretical approaches regarding their philosophical
perspectives, such as ethics and psychology. This paper however will mainly concentrate on
Aristotle’s views on friendship and how it impacts today’s society.

The main objective in Plato’s philosophy is a creation of a perfect society. He constructs a

foundation for a utopian society in his book “The Republic”. The purpose of his thought process was
to cleanse his society of the woes he felt plagued it and construct a new one.

Plato lived during the Peloponnesian War, which consequently lead to the end of the Athenian
democracy. He had eyewitness account of his mentor’s (Socrates) trial and execution. Bitter and
angered by the political corruption that gripped the Athenian democratic government, he disengaged
from participating in politics. He strongly felt that neither a moral individual nor a state that is
rational could be established in a democratic environment. Plato felt that the common man wasn’t
intelligent or capable of dealing with concepts that influence the state such as economics, policy of
foreign affairs and other relative matters. He viewed political incumbents in Athens government as
being elected for matters that were irrelevant to main factors that affected the state. Another danger
was that excessive liberty for the people of the democratic society could potentially lead to anarchy.
In Plato’s perfect society, he forged ahead to eliminate the disease (pluralism of friendship) that
plagued the human character and society (Class Notes). Essentially, Plato wanted to establish the
perfect form of society, linked by one single entity.

Aristotle, unlike Plato, was not focused or concerned about the idea of a perfect society, instead he
wanted to improve upon the one that he was part of during his existence. Rather than develop a
framework for a society that is perfect, he suggested that society should, in it self, strive to utilize the
best system it can attain. He felt that utopia was abstract and superficial. It wouldn’t allow for
realistic problem solving solutions. He felt that Plato’s view of a strict overhaul of society in general
wasn’t necessary. He believed that society was at its optimum and you can only improve upon the
existing one.

Plato’s perfect society would consist of three basic groups, which are Guardians (Gold), Auxiliaries
(Silver), and the Artisan (Bronze). The highest of these classes are the gold people, which consist of
rulers and non-rulers. Those that are rulers are society’s decision & policy makers and non-rulers
occupy levels of civil servants. The fundamental prerequisite to becoming a genuine philosopher is
to have knowledge of forms, thus enabling you to know the truth. Plato’s theory of the forms is
partly logical and part metaphysical. Armed with the truth, he believed that philosophical ruler will
always make the right decision, and rule with total wisdom, justice and virtue. The rulers, he felt,
wouldn’t posses any money or property, they would be free of desires, excesses, and vices. The
Auxiliaries (Silver) are people of strength, courage, and military capacity; they occupy a small sector
of society. All auxiliaries would be subjected to a series of tests, which will check their powers of
resistance to self-interest, pleasure and other temptations. The last level, Artisan (Bronze), are the
workers which might be composed of farmers and artist, essentially non-skilled workers. They
would produce all the consumable and non-consumable goods deemed necessary for consumption
and the continued economic viability of the society. Plato whole-heartedly felt that if ever the bronze
or iron people rule the state would collapse (Class Notes). He sought to establish the concept of the

27
gold class having wisdom, thus they should be wise and good rulers. It was imperative that those
who rule be philosophers and skilled in areas that pertained to the interest of the state.

Aristotle’s disagreed with Plato in regards to allowing one particular class to govern the state
politically for indefinite period of time. He felt that to not allow interaction among the various
classes would inhibit those who posses the ability to engage in political life, an injustice. He feels
Plato’s structure of classes is politically incorrect for the state. He quotes “It is a further objection
that he deprives his Guardians even of happiness, maintaining that happiness of the whole state
which should be the object of legislation”, ultimately he is stating that those who rule (Guardians),
sacrifice their happiness for control and absolute power. Those who are of the gold class, lead such a
rigid life, that it will become necessary to impose the same strict way of life on those being
governed. He places the idea of moderation on a high pedestal. Many individuals come to favor the
concept of moderation because it is flexible, part liberal and part conservative. Plato’s ideal society
is so difficult to conceive that Aristotle believes that no human being can achieve its rudimentary
requirements. He decided to express in the “Republic” how men should conduct it self in a perfect
society and what attitude they should posses. In retrospect, Aristotle felt by using real world
experience along with real people, he can see first hand how and what way can he improve society.

Plato and Aristotle both agreed on justice and viewed it objectively; that is it controls the belief a life
of good nature would be provided for all people no matter their ranking in society. Aristotle’s states
“ In democracies, for example, justice is considered to mean equality, no oligarchies, again
inequality in the distribution of office to considered just”. Plato views the idea of law and justice as
what sets the standard for society’s behavior in a state.

Aristotle puts emphasis on the institution of the polis or civilized community. The polis was
structured to allow the average individual in society to participate in political matters. This
institutional forum is not the city-state or the community, but merely the larger of the two entities. It
is rather a partnership between households, clans, and villages for the sake of a fully developed and
self-sufficient life. The polis enables those individuals who naturally posses moral intellect and
wisdom an opportunity to rise to higher positions (Class Notes). Justice is the political good within
the polis, and it must promote the common interest of the people of the state. What is seen as good
must be distributed and regulated through out the state. The law is also the regulating factor that
arises from equal and free people in civil institution. The well being of a society is solely based upon
the connection between the effort in which the citizens of the state adhere to the law of the land. A
good citizen of the state will posses prudence, moderation, and justice, and above all to rule and be
ruled.

His belief contradicts Plato theory of one controlling class, governing the political matters and
decisions that effect the state. The Theory of Democracy that Aristotle states is that democracy is a
“perversion” form of government of “polity” (Class Notes). He clearly states “The people at large
should be sovereign rather than the few best”. Plato on the other hand, wouldn’t permit citizens to
engage in public participation concerning governmental issues, as Aristotle would have enjoyed.
Plato also felt that public judgments of disapproval and approval were based on emotional belief,
instead of factual knowledge. He believes that if a revolution occurred it would happened within the
corridors of the palace, hence palace revolution. This type of revolution happens when there is a
transmission of power from one holder of power to another. Aristotle perceives such an event
occurring between the wealthy and less fortunate in society. He feels to prevent such actions, one
must participate in them. Plato thinks that in a utopia a disgruntled group of Guardians will emerge
and disengage themselves from the ruling law of the state. He feels that an oligarchy two things may
initiate a possible revolution: the first one is the ruler and their offspring would grow to be weak,
sympathetic, and second is that the number of poor individuals will grow larger and there for be
taken advantage of by the ruling class. Aristotle states that to know the factors that caused the
revolution, which destroys the constitution, is to also know the principal of effect, which in turn
ensure its preservation.
28
Aristotle and Plato also have contrasting views on ethics, psychology and metaphysics. In regards to
ethics, Aristotle believes that virtue is necessary for happiness, while Plato says virtue is enough for
happiness. The psychological difference between the two is that Plato feels the body is a prison for
the soul; body and soul are two different entities, capable of maintaining independence from one
another. As for Aristotle, he claims that the body and soul are two different things, one consisting of
matter the other form. He sees everything in the universe being composed of matter and form, so its
not surprising that he perceives human being are too. To him form is simply the way matter is
arranged. For example, a cat is composed in a feline way; that’s what makes a cat. Human being for
that matter, have a unique method of structure, too; that’s their form. In fact, Aristotle strongly feels
that nothing in existence can be without form and matter. If you eliminate its structure and form you
have nothing left. So for Aristotle, the concept of soul without body or body without soul is
incoherent. In regards to form, Plato expressed how things should be through utilizing vague
language and poetry.

In respect to friendship, I firmly believe that Aristotle’s views on friendship holds value in today’s
society. First we will touch on the various points that Aristotle makes regarding friendship, then
expand on his main principle in connection to modern time, if possible. Aristotle distinguishes
between three types of friendship: friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure and friendships of
virtue.

The idea behind friendship of utility is that it is founded on the idea of usefulness. The interaction
among friends is only valued if there is usefulness between the two individuals. An example of this
would be any automobile dealer and car buyer. Factoring in that they know each other, both need
what the other can provide. The bond that unites the two people is based on usefulness. As long as
they each can provide what the other needs, it satisfies the friendship.

The second concept would be friendship of pleasure, which is basically the amount of pleasure
generated between the participants. An example of this would be two people engaging in a social
event, such as an outdoor festival. Each of the participant’s enjoys the others company. They are
friends because of the pleasure they bring to themselves.

The last kind of friendship is the friendship of virtue. This friendship is special and unique, such that
it can only be between two people. Rather than utility and pleasure, where it can establish a group of
people, this type of friendship is connected solely between two people. This type of friendship is also
unique based on the fact that it can only hold any true value if both individuals are of the same
virtue.

People in general might regard these definitions of friend objective. Some believe that doing
something for someone is solely based on the act of self –fulfillment. Aristotle, I believe is not
incorrect in stating that the idea in friendship in utility and pleasure is for our own sake, and the
concept behind friendship of virtue is for the sake of the friend. These three categories are arranged
in a certain format that there are influenced by the next level. These bonds of friendship can arise
from various forms of potential fraternal groupings.

Present day possibilities can include: various college organizations, union members, national
communities and any other form of group’s that people find a common denominator. For Aristotle

Aristotle is more philosophically inclined than Plato; he tends to get rid of ideas that are irrelevant,
and he believes that the concept of forms existing separate from matter is somewhat superfluous. He
dives right into the heart of the matter. You can see Aristotle as someone who believes the world in
which he occupies very satisfying just the way it is. His main focus is always connected with things
that are consistent with ideal experience, without introducing unnecessary notions of concepts that
can’t be proven. Plato’s vague, poetic language in metaphysics and physics didn’t stimulate
inspiration; it made him uncomfortable.
29
Both Plato and Aristotle were two men who envisioned methods on ways to improve their existing
society. Plato, the political philosopher, was basically in pursuit of philosophical truth. Aristotle was
more concerned with citizenship and institutional politics. They both had developed ideas and
concepts to improve society as a whole. Aristotle and Plato have had a tremendous impact on
political scientists of today. In Aristotle case, he was responsible for developing various democratic
ideas. Even in modern democracies like our own Aristotle’s ideas hold true. When we vote in the
election of the ruler of our country we, theoretically, are voting for the single most “excellent”
citizen of our nation. That is we are voting for that citizen who can do the best job of working
toward our common interest. The citizen of a state who has the greatest ability to work towards the
salvation of the constitution has a great gift that can benefit all citizens. It only makes sense to allow
that particular individual to lead the rest of the citizens in working towards the common interests of
the state.

In conclusion, these men were great thinkers. Their opinions on society and its function were quite
different, but they both had the same concern, to build a better way of life for their societies they in
lived in and for the societies that would come to be in the future.

http://www.planetpapers.com/Assets/4803.php

Footnotes
1. ^ St-Andrews.ac.uk, St. Andrews University
2. ^ Diogenes Laertius 3.4; p. 21, David Sedley, Plato's Cratylus, Cambridge University Press
2003
3. ^ "Plato". Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2002.
4. ^ Diogenes Laertius, Life of Plato, III
* D. Nails, "Ariston", 53
* U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Plato, 46
5. ^ Diogenes Laertius, Life of Plato, I
6. ^ a b W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy', IV, 10
* A.E. Taylor, Plato, xiv
* U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Plato, 47
7. ^ Plato, Republic, 2.368a
* U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Plato, 47
8. ^ Xenophon, Memorabilia, 3.6.1
9. ^ Apuleius, De Dogmate Platonis, 1
* Diogenes Laertius, Life of Plato, I
"Plato". Suda.
10. ^ Cicero, De Divinatione, I, 36
11. ^ D. Nails, "Ariston", 53
* A.E. Taylor, Plato, xiv
12. ^ Plato, Charmides, 158a
* D. Nails, "Perictione", 53
13. ^ Plato, Charmides, 158a
* Plutarch, Pericles, IV
14. ^ Plato, Gorgias, 481d and 513b
* Aristophanes, Wasps, 97
15. ^ Plato, Parmenides, 126c
16. ^ W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, IV, 11
17. ^ C.H. Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, 186
18. ^ Diogenes Laertius, Life of Plato, IV
30
19. ^ Diogenes Laertius, Life of Plato, IV
* A. Notopoulos, The Name of Plato, 135
20. ^ Apuleius, De Dogmate Platonis, 2
21. ^ Diogenes Laertius, Life of Plato, IV
* W. Smith, Plato, 393
22. ^ Diogenes Laertius, Life of Plato, V
23. ^ Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1.987a
24. ^ McEvoy, James (1984). "Plato and The Wisdom of Egypt". Irish Philosophical Journal
(Belfast: Dept. of Scholastic Philosophy, Queen's University of Belfast) 1 (2). ISSN 0266-
9080. http://poiesis.nlx.com/display.cfm?
clientId=0&advquery=toc.sect.ipj.1.2&infobase=postoc.nfo&softpage=GetClient42&view=b
rowse. Retrieved 2007-12-03.
25. ^ Huntington Cairns, Introduction to Plato: The Collected Dialogues, p. xiii.
26. ^ Robinson, Arch. Graec. I i 16.
27. ^ "Biography of Aristotle". ClassicNote. GradeSaver LLC.
http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/authors/about_aristotle.html. Retrieved 2007-12-03.
28. ^ Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 50–1.
29. ^ Baird, Forrest E.; Walter Kaufmann (2008). From Plato to Derrida. Upper Saddle River,
New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-158591-6.
30. ^ Gaarder, Jostein (1996). Sophie's World. New York City: Berkley. pp. 91.
31. ^ The Republic; p282
32. ^ Rodriguez- Grandjean, Pablo. Philosophy and Dialogue: Plato's Unwritten Doctrines from
a Hermeneutical Point of View, Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, in Boston,
Massachusetts from August 10–15, 1998.
33. ^ Reale, Giovanni, and Catan, John R., A History of Ancient Philosophy, SUNY Press, 1990.
ISBN 0-7914-0516-8. Cf. p.14 and onwards.
34. ^ Krämer, Hans Joachim, and Catan, John R., Plato and the Foundations of Metaphysics: A
Work on the Theory of the Principles and Unwritten Doctrines of Plato with a Collection of
the Fundamental Documents, (Translated by John R. Catan), SUNY Press, 1990. ISBN 0-
7914-0433-1, Cf. pp.38-47
35. ^ Plotinus describes this in the last part of his final Ennead (VI, 9) entitled On the Good, or
the One (Περὶ τἀγαθοῦ ἢ τοῦ ἑνός). Jens Halfwassen states in Der Aufstieg zum Einen
(2006) that "Plotinus' ontology—which should be called Plotinus' henology - is a rather
accurate philosophical renewal and continuation of Plato's unwritten doctrine, i.e. the
doctrine rediscovered by Krämer and Gaiser."
36. ^ In one of his letters (Epistolae 1612) Ficino writes: "The main goal of the divine Plato ... is
to show one principle of things, which he called the One (τὸ ἕν)", cf. Marsilio Ficino, Briefe
des Mediceerkreises, Berlin, 1926, p. 147.
37. ^ H. Gomperz, Plato's System of Philosophy, in: G. Ryle (ed.), Proceedings of the Seventh
International Congress of Philosophy, London 1931, pp. 426-431. Reprinted in: H. Gomperz,
Philosophical Studies, Boston, 1953, pp. 119-24.
38. ^ K. Gaiser, Testimonia Platonica. Le antiche testimonianze sulle dottrine non scritte di
Platone, Milan, 1998. First published as Testimonia Platonica. Quellentexte zur Schule und
mündlichen Lehre Platons as an appendix to Gaiser's Platons Ungeschriebene Lehre,
Stuttgart, 1963.
39. ^ For a bried description of the problem see for example K. Gaiser, Plato's enigmatic lecture
"On the Good", Phronesis 25 (1980), pp. 5-37. A detailed analysis is given by Krämer in his
Plato and the Foundations of Metaphysics: A Work on the Theory of the Principles and
Unwritten Doctrines of Plato With a Collection of the Fundamental Documents, Albany:
SUNY Press, 1990. Another good description is by Giovanni Reale: Toward a New
Interpretation of Plato, Washington, D.C.: CUA Press, 1997. Reale summarizes the results of
his research in A History of Ancient Philosophy: Plato and Aristotle, Albany: SUNY Press,
1990. However the most complete analysis of the consequences of such an approach is given
by Thomas A. Szlezak in his fundamental Reading Plato, New York: Routledge, 1999.
31
 Another supporter of this interpretation is the german philosopher Karl Albert, cf.
Griechische Religion und platonische Philosophie, Hamburg, 1980 or Einführung in die
philosophische Mystik, Darmstadt, 1996. Hans-Georg Gadamer is also sympathetic towards
it, cf. J. Grondin, Gadamer and the Tübingen School and Gadamer's 1968 article Plato's
Unwritten Dialectic reprinted in his Dialogue and Dialectic. Gadamer's final position on the
subject is stated in his introduction to La nuova interpretazione di Platone. Un dialogo tra
Hans-Georg Gadamer e la scuola di Tubinga, Milano 1998.
40. ^ The extent to which scholars consider a dialogue to be authentic is noted in John M.
Cooper, ed., Complete Works, by Plato (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), v–vi.
41. ^ p. 9, John Burnet, Platonism, University of California Press 1928.
42. ^ 1264b24-27
43. ^ a b p. xiv, J. Cooper (ed.), Plato: Complete Works, Hackett 1997.
44. ^ Richard Kraut, "Plato", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed 24 June 2008;
Malcolm Schofield (1998, 2002), "Plato", in E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, Routledge.com, accessed 24 June 2008; Christopher Rowe, "Interpreting Plato",
in H. Benson (ed.), A Companion to Plato, Blackwell 2006.
45. ^ T. Brickhouse & N. Smith, "Plato", The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed 24
June 2008.
46. ^ See W. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 4, Cambridge University Press 1975;
G. Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher, Cambridge University Press 1991; T.
Penner, "Socrates and the Early Dialogues", in R. Kraut (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to
Plato, Cambridge University Press 1992; C. Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue,
Cambridge University Press 1996; G. Fine, Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul,
Oxford University Press 1999.
47. ^ Constance Chu Meinwald, Plato's Parmenides (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
48. ^ "The time is not long after the death of Socrates; for the Pythagoreans [Echecrates & co.]
have not heard any details yet" (J. Burnet, Plato's Phaedo, Oxford 1911, p. 1.
49. ^ sect. 177, J. Burnet, Greek Philosophy, MacMillan 1950.
50. ^ Boyer, Carl B. (1991). "The age of Plato and Aristotle". A History of Mathematics (Second
ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. pp. 86. ISBN 0471543977. "Plato is important in the history
of mathematics largely for his role as inspirer and director of others, and perhaps to him is
due the sharp distinction in ancient Greece between arithmetic (in the sense of the theory of
numbers) and logistic (the technique of computation). Plato regarded logistic as appropriate
for the businessman and for the man of war, who "must learn the art of numbers or he will
not know how to array his troops." The philosopher, on the other hand, must be an
arithmetician "because he has to arise out of the sea of change and lay hold of true being.""
51. ^ Manuscripts - Philosophy Faculty Library
52. ^ a b Diogenes Laertius, Life of Plato, II
53. ^ F.W. Nietzsche, Werke, 32
54. ^ a b "Plato". Suda.
55. ^ T. Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, XII
56. ^ a b D. Nails, The Life of Plato of Athens, 1
57. ^ U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Plato, 46
58. ^ "Plato". Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2002. | birth_place = *"Plato". Encyclopaedic
Dictionary The Helios Volume V (in Greek). 1952.
59. ^ Diogenes Laertius, Life of Plato, III
60. ^ a b D. Nails, "Ariston", 54
61. ^ Thucydides, 5.18 | birth_place = * Thucydides, 8.92
62. ^ W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, IV, 10
* L. Tarán, Plato's Alleged Epitaph, 61

References

32
Primary sources (Greek and Roman)

• Apuleius, De Dogmate Platonis, I. See original text in Latin Library.

• Aristophanes, The Wasps. See original text in Perseus program.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics. See original text in Perseus program.
• Cicero, De Divinatione, I. See original text in Latin library.
• Diogenes Laërtius, Life of Plato, translated by Robert Drew Hicks (1925).
• Plato: Charmides on Wikisource. See original text in Perseus program.
• Plato: Gorgias on Wikisource. See original text in Perseus program.
• Plato, Parmenides. See original text in Perseus program.
• Plato: The Republic on Wikisource. See original text in Perseus program.
• Plutarch, Pericles. See original text in Perseus program.
• Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War on Wikisource, V, VIII. See original text in
Perseus program.
• Xenophon, Memorabilia. See original text in Perseus program.

Secondary sources

• Browne, Sir Thomas (1646-1672). Pseudodoxia Epidemica.

• Guthrie, W.K.C. (1986). A History of Greek Philosophy: Volume 4, Plato: The Man and His
Dialogues: Earlier Period. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-31101-2.
• Kahn, Charles H. (2004). "The Framework". Plato and the socratic dialogue: The
Philosophical Use of a Literary Form. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-64830-0.
• Nails, Debra (2006). "The Life of Plato of Athens". A Companion to Plato edited by Hugh H.
Benson. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 1-405-11521-1.
• Nails, Debra (2002). "Ariston/Perictione". The People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato
and Other Socratics. Hackett Publishing. ISBN 0-872-20564-9.
• Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (1967). "Vorlesungsaufzeichnungen". Werke: Kritische
Gesamtausgabe (in German). Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3-110-13912-X.
• Notopoulos, A. (April 1939). "The Name of Plato". Classical Philology (The University of
Chicago Press) 34 (2): 135–145. doi:10.1086/362227.
• "Plato". Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2002.
• "Plato". Encyclopaedic Dictionary The Helios Volume XVI (in Greek). 1952.
• "Plato". Suda. 10th century.
• Smith, William (1870). "Plato". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.
http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/2725.html.
• Tarán, Leonardo (2001). Collected Papers 1962-1999. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 9-
004-12304-0..
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ISBN 0-486-41605-4.
• Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von (2005 (first edition 1917)). Plato: his Life and Work
(translated in Greek by Xenophon Armyros. Kaktos. ISBN 960-382-664-2.

Further reading
• Allen, R.E. (2006). Studies in Plato's Metaphysics II. Parmenides Publishing. ISBN 978-1-
930972-18-6
• Ambuel, David (2006). Image and Paradigm in Plato's Sophist. Parmenides Publishing.
ISBN 978-1-930972-004-9
• Bakalis, Nikolaos (2005). Handbook of Greek Philosophy: From Thales to the Stoics
Analysis and Fragments, Trafford Publishing ISBN 1-4120-4843-5
• Barrow, Robin (2007). Plato: Continuum Library of Educational Thought. Continuum.
ISBN 0-8264-8408-5.
33
• Cadame, Claude (1999). Indigenous and Modern Perspectives on Tribal Initiation Rites:
Education According to Plato, pp. 278–312, in Padilla, Mark William (editor), "Rites of
Passage in Ancient Greece: Literature, Religion, Society", Bucknell University Press, 1999.
ISBN 0-8387-5418-X
• Cooper, John M. & Hutchinson, D. S. (Eds.) (1997). Plato: Complete Works. Hackett
Publishing Company, Inc. ISBN 0-87220-349-2.
• Corlett, J. Angelo (2005). Interpreting Plato's Dialogues. Parmenides Publishing. ISBN 978-
1-930972-02-5
• Durant, Will (1926). The Story of Philosophy. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-69500-2.
• Derrida, Jacques (1972). La dissémination, Paris: Seuil. (esp. cap.: La Pharmacie de Platon,
69-199) ISBN 2-02-001958-2
• Field, G.C. (Guy Cromwell) (1969). The Philosophy of Plato (2nd ed. with an appendix by
R. C. Cross. ed.). London: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198880405.
• Fine, Gail (2000). Plato 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology Oxford University Press, USA,
ISBN 0-19-875206-7
• Garvey, James (2006,). Twenty Greatest Philosophy Books. Continuum. ISBN 0826490530.
• Guthrie, W. K. C. (1986). A History of Greek Philosophy (Plato - The Man & His Dialogues
- Earlier Period), Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-31101-2
• Guthrie, W. K. C. (1986). A History of Greek Philosophy (Later Plato & the Academy)
Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-31102-0
• Havelock, Eric (2005). Preface to Plato (History of the Greek Mind), Belknap Press, ISBN 0-
674-69906-8
• Hamilton, Edith & Cairns, Huntington (Eds.) (1961). The Collected Dialogues of Plato,
Including the Letters. Princeton Univ. Press. ISBN 0-691-09718-6.
• Irwin, Terence (1995). Plato's Ethics, Oxford University Press, USA, ISBN 0-19-508645-7
• Jackson, Roy (2001). Plato: A Beginner's Guide. London: Hoder & Stroughton. ISBN 0-340-
80385-1.
• Kochin, Michael S. (2002). Gender and Rhetoric in Plato’s Political Thought. Cambridge
Univ. Press. ISBN 0-521-80852-9.
• Kraut, Richard (Ed.) (1993). The Cambridge Companion to Plato. Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 0-521-43610-9.
• Krämer, Hans Joachim (1990). Plato and the Foundations of Metaphysics. SUNY Press.
ISBN 0-791-40433-1.
• Lilar, Suzanne (1954), Journal de l'analogiste, Paris, Éditions Julliard; Reedited 1979, Paris,
Grasset. Foreword by Julien Gracq
• Lilar, Suzanne (1963), Le couple, Paris, Grasset. Translated as Aspects of Love in Western
Society in 1965, with a foreword by Jonathan Griffin London, Thames and Hudson.
• Lilar, Suzanne (1967) A propos de Sartre et de l'amour , Paris, Grasset.
• Lundberg, Phillip (2005). Tallyho - The Hunt for Virtue: Beauty,Truth and Goodness Nine
Dialogues by Plato: Pheadrus, Lysis, Protagoras, Charmides, Parmenides, Gorgias,
Theaetetus, Meno & Sophist. Authorhouse. ISBN 1-4184-4977-6.
• Melchert, Norman (2002). The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy.
McGraw Hill. ISBN 0-19-517510-7.
• Meinwald, Constance Chu (1991). Plato's Parmenides. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-
506445-3.
• Miller, Mitchell (2004). The Philosopher in Plato's Statesman. Parmenides Publishing. ISBN
978-1-930972-16-2
• Mohr, Richard D. (2006). God and Forms in Plato - and other Essays in Plato's
Metaphysics. Parmenides Publishing. ISBN 978-1-930972-01-8
• Moore, Edward (2007). Plato. Philosophy Insights Series. Tirril, Humanities-Ebooks. ISBN
978-1-84760-047-9
• Nightingale, Andrea Wilson. (1995). "Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of
Philosophy", Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-48264-X

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 • Reale, Giovanni (1990). A History of Ancient Philosophy: Plato and Aristotle. SUNY Press.
ISBN 0-791-40516-8.
• Reale, Giovanni (1997). Toward a New Interpretation of Plato. CUA Press. ISBN 0-813-
20847-5.
• Sallis, John (1996). Being and Logos: Reading the Platonic Dialogues. Indiana University
Press. ISBN 0-253-21071-2.
• Sallis, John (1999). Chorology: On Beginning in Plato's "Timaeus". Indiana University
Press. ISBN 0-253-21308-8.
• Sayre, Kenneth M. (2006). Plato's Late Ontology: A Riddle Resolved. Parmenides
Publishing. ISBN 978-1-930972-09-4
• Seung, T. K. (1996). Plato Rediscovered: Human Value and Social Order. Rowman and
Littlefield. ISBN 0-8476-8112-2
• Szlezak, Thomas A. (1999). Reading Plato. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-18984-5.
• Taylor, A. E. (2001). Plato: The Man and His Work, Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-
41605-4
• Vlastos, Gregory (1981). Platonic Studies, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-10021-7
• Vlastos, Gregory (2006). Plato's Universe - with a new Introducution by Luc Brisson,
Parmenides Publishing. ISBN 978-1-930972-13-1
• Zuckert, Catherine (2009). Plato's Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues, The
University of Chicago Press, ISBN 978-0-226-99335-5
• Oxford University Press publishes scholarly editions of Plato's Greek texts in the Oxford
Classical Texts series, and some translations in the Clarendon Plato Series.
• Harvard University Press publishes the hardbound series Loeb Classical Library, containing
Plato's works in Greek, with English translations on facing pages.
• Thomas Taylor has translated Plato's complete works.
• Smith, William. (1867 — original). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and
Mythology. University of Michigan/Online version.
• Aspects of antiquity: Discoveries and Controversies by M.I. Finley, issued 1969 by The
Viking Press, Inc.
• Interpreting Plato: The Dialogues as Drama by James A. Arieti, Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, Inc. ISBN 0-8476-7662-5

External links

English Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Plato

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Platon

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Plato

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• Works available on-line:

o Works by Plato at Perseus Project - Greek & English hyperlinked text
o Works of Plato (Jowett, 1892)
o Works by Plato at Project Gutenberg
 Spurious and doubtful works at Project Gutenberg
35
 o Plato complete works, annotated and searchable, at ELPENOR
o Euthyphro LibriVox recording
o Ion LibriVox recording
o The Apology of Socrates (Greek), LibriVox recording
o Quick Links to Plato's Dialogues (English, Greek, French, Spanish)
o THE DIALOGUES OF PLATO-5 vols (mp3) tr. by B. JOWETT at archive.org

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

o Plato
o Plato's Ethics
o Friendship and Eros
o Middle Period Metaphysics and Epistemology
o Plato on Utopia
o Rhetoric and Poetry

• Other Articles:
o Excerpt from W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. IV, Plato: the man
and his dialogues, earlier period, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 8-38
o Website on Plato and his works: Plato and his dialogues by Bernard Suzanne
o Reflections on Reality and its Reflection: comparison of Plato and Bergson; do forms
exist?
o "Plato and Totalitarianism: A Documentary Study"
o "Plato and Platonism". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton
Company. 1913.
• Online library "Vox Philosophiae"

• Comprehensive Research Materials:

o Approaching Plato: A Guide to the Early and Middle Dialogues
o Works by or about Plato in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

• Other sources:
• Interview with Mario Vegetti on Plato's political thought. The interview, available in full on
video, both in Italian and English, is included in the series Multi-Media Encyclopaedia of the
Philosophical Sciences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato

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