Plato

Plato (427–347 BCE) Greek philosopher. Plato was born of an aristocratic family. He became a follower of Socrates, who is the principal figure in his ethical and philosophical dialogues. After Socrates’ death in 399 BCE, Plato founded his Academy in order to train the new Athenian ruling class, which might be considered the first ‘university’.

Plato taught that the material world consists of imperfect copies of abstract and eternal ‘ideas’. His political philosophy, as expounded in The Republic (1955), is an attempt to describe the ‘ideal state’ in terms of a theory of justice. Plato’s just state was decidedly authoritarian and was based upon a strict division of labour that supposedly reflected different character-types and human attributes. He argued that government should be exercised exclusively by a small collection of philosopher-kings, supported by the auxiliaries (collectively termed the ‘Guardians’), whose education and communistic way of life would ensure that they ruled on the basis of wisdom. In his view, knowledge and virtue are one. In The Laws, he advocated a system of mixed government, but continued to emphasize the subordination of the individual to the state and law. Plato’s work has exerted wide influence upon Christianity and upon European culture in general.