Plato (c. 428–348 BC) was the Greek philosopher who founded the Academy in Athens and wrote some thirty dialogues, from the Apology and the Symposium to the Republic. A disciple of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle, he set out most of the great questions of Western philosophy, about justice, love, the soul and knowledge.
A follower of Socrates
Plato was born in Athens around 428 BC into an aristocratic family connected with leading politicians of the city. As a young man he considered a political career and, according to ancient tradition, wrote tragedies, before falling under the spell of Socrates, who spent his days questioning his fellow citizens about courage, justice and virtue.
In 399 BC Socrates was accused of impiety and of corrupting the young, condemned to death and made to drink hemlock. His death turned Plato away from Athenian politics, and Socrates became the main speaker in almost all his dialogues.
The Academy
After Socrates's death Plato travelled, perhaps to Egypt, and certainly to southern Italy, where he met followers of Pythagoras. He went several times to Syracuse in Sicily, hoping to turn its rulers into philosopher-kings, with disappointing results; an ancient story claims that he was even sold into slavery and ransomed by a friend.
Around 387 BC he founded a school in a grove sacred to the hero Academus, outside Athens. The Academy taught mathematics, astronomy and philosophy, and Aristotle studied there for twenty years. In one form or another it lasted for centuries.
The dialogues
Plato wrote dialogues rather than treatises. In the early ones, such as the Apology, Crito and Laches, Socrates shows his partners that they do not know what they think they know. In the dialogues of his maturity, the Phaedo, Symposium and Republic, he develops the theory of Forms, the eternal realities of which the visible world is only a copy.
The Republic contains the allegory of the cave, in which prisoners chained in a cave take shadows on a wall for reality. Plato died around 348 BC. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once wrote that the European philosophical tradition consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
Anecdotes
Broad shoulders
According to an ancient tradition, Plato's real name was Aristocles, after his grandfather, and Plato, which suggests breadth in Greek, was a nickname given to him for his broad shoulders, or perhaps for the breadth of his style.
The legend of Atlantis
The story of Atlantis, a powerful island that sank beneath the sea in a single day and night, first appears in two of Plato's dialogues, the Timaeus and the Critias. Plato presents it as a tale handed down from Egyptian priests; most historians regard it as a philosophical fable.
Frequently asked questions
What are Plato's most famous dialogues?
The Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Phaedrus, Gorgias and the Republic.
What is the allegory of the cave?
A story in the Republic in which prisoners see only shadows on the wall of a cave; one of them is freed and discovers the sunlight. It illustrates the soul's journey from ignorance to knowledge.
Which translation of Plato is quoted on Guesseo?
The translation by Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol College, Oxford, first published in 1871.