Plato

Plato (c.428/7–c.348/7 bc), the great Greek philosopher. Born in Athens, he was a friend and admirer of Socrates, after whose death he went into exile; he returned to Athens in the 380s and set up a school which was then or at a later stage known as the Academy. The majority of his works are in dialogue form. The principal speaker is nearly always Socrates, but it is impossible to say how close Plato's ‘Socrates’ stands to the real man either in character or in his teaching. The dialogues fall roughly into three groups. About a dozen demonstrate what has been called the Socratic Method. Socrates plies his interlocutors with a chain of questions, and their replies trap them into self-contradiction; the best-known of these are the Ion, Euthyphro, Protagoras, and Gorgias. The second group includes the Crito, Apology, Phaedo, Symposium; these do not employ the Socratic Method. The third group comprises the profound and technically subtle dialogues such as the Theaetetus, Parmenides, Timaeus, Sophistes, Philebus. There are also two monumental treatises, The Republic and The Laws.

Plato's ideas have had a lasting appeal for philosophers. Notable among these were: (1) the Theory of Forms which is best illustrated by an example. The concept ‘cat’ is derived from our knowledge of particular cats. Plato held that concepts of this nature have a real existence outside the world of sense, and this belief served to reinforce men's hope that there existed an eternal order. (2) The project of establishing philosopher-kings which produced a multitude of schemes for the education of princes. (3) Platonic Love, a devotion inspired by the best qualities of the beloved and aiming at their further development, was formulated originally by Plato in the context of a homosexual relationship, but by the 16th cent. it was applied to a heterosexual love that could rise above sexual desire. Plato has played a markedly vitalizing role in the history of European thought. Through Augustine he came to exercise a formative influence on Christianity. Through the Florentine Platonists of the 15th cent. he made a manifold impact on art and ideas in the major countries of Europe. Platonic themes appear in Spenser, Chapman, Donne, Marvell, and later Wordsworth, and Bridges, as well as in the work of his attested students such as the Cambridge Platonists, Milton, Gray, Shelley, E. B. Browning, M. Arnold, and Pater.