PLATO

Plato (424/423 BC – 348/347 BC) was a philosopher in Classical Greece. He was also a mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Beside with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science. In the languages of A. N. Whitehead:

The safest common characterization of the European philosophical custom is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of common thoughts scattered through them.

Plato's sophistication as a writer is apparent in his Socratic dialogues; thirty-six dialogues and thirteen letters have been ascribed to him. Plato's writings have been published in many fashions; this has led to many conventions concerning the naming and referencing of Plato's texts. Plato's dialogues have been used to teach a range of subjects, including philosophy, logic, ethics, rhetoric, and mathematics. Plato is one of the mainly significant founding figures in Western philosophy.

BIOGRAPHY

Early Life : Birth and Family

The exact lay and time of Plato's birth are not recognized, but it is sure that he belonged to an aristocratic and influential family. Based on ancient sources, mainly contemporary scholars consider that he was born in Athens or Aegina flanked by 429 and 423 BC. His father was Ariston. Just as to a disputed custom, reported through Diogenes Laertius, Ariston traced his descent from the king of Athens, Codrus, and the king of Messenia, Melanthus. Plato's mother was Perictione, whose family boasted of a connection with the well-known Athenian lawmaker and lyric poet Solon. 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). 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). Just as to the Republic, Adeimantus and Glaucon were older than Plato. Nevertheless, in his Memorabilia, Xenophon presents Glaucon as younger than Plato.

The traditional date of Plato's birth (428/427) is based on a dubious interpretation of Diogenes Laertius, who says, "When [Socrates] was gone, [Plato] joined Cratylus the Heracleitean and Hermogenes, who philosophized in the manner of Parmenides. Then, at twenty-eight, Hermodorus says, [Plato] went to Euclides in Megara." As Debra Nails argues, "The text itself provides no cause to infer that Plato left immediately for Megara and implies the extremely opposite." In his Seventh Letter, Plato notes that his coming of age coincided with the taking of power through the Thirty, remarking, "But a youth under the age of twenty made him a laughingstock if he attempted to enter the political arena." Therefore, Nails dates Plato's birth to 424/423.

Just as to some accounts, Ariston tried to force his attentions on Perictione, but failed in his purpose; then the god Apollo appeared to him in a vision, and as a result, Ariston left Perictione unmolested. Another legend related that, when Plato was an infant, bees settled on his lips while he was sleeping: an augury of the sweetness of approach in which he would discourse philosophy.

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

In contrast to his reticence in relation to himself, Plato often introduced his distinguished relatives into his dialogues, or referred to them with some precision: Charmides has a dialogue named after him; Critias speaks in both Charmides and Protagoras; and Adeimantus and Glaucon take prominent parts in the Republic. These and other references suggest a considerable amount of family pride and enable us to reconstruct Plato's family tree. Just as 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."

Name

Just as to Diogenes Laërtius, the philosopher was named Aristocles after his grandfather, but his wrestling coach, Ariston of Argos, dubbed him Platon, meaning "broad," on explanation of his robust figure. Just as to the sources mentioned through Diogenes (all dating from the Alexandrian era), Plato derived his name from the breadth of his eloquence, or else because he was extremely wide crossways the forehead. Recent scholars have argued that the legend in relation to the name being Aristocles originated in the Hellenistic age. Plato was a general name, of which 31 instances are recognized at Athens alone.

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 revise". Plato necessity has been instructed in grammar, music, and gymnastics through the mainly distinguished teachers of his time. Dicaearchus went as distant as to say that Plato wrestled at the Isthmian games. Plato had also attended courses of philosophy; before meeting Socrates, he first became acquainted with Cratylus and the Heraclitean doctrines. W. A. Borody argues that an Athenian openness towards a wider range of sexuality may have contributed to the Athenian philosophers‘ openness towards a wider range of thought, a cultural situation Borody describes as ―polymorphously discursive.

Plato and Socrates

The precise connection flanked by Plato and Socrates remnants a region of contention in the middle of scholars. Plato creates it clear in his Apology of Socrates, that he was a devoted young follower of Socrates. In that dialogue, Socrates is presented as mentioning Plato through name as one of those youths secure enough to him to have been corrupted, if he were in information 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 beside with Crito, Critobolus, and Apollodorus as offering to pay a fine of 30 minas on Socrates' behalf, in lieu of the death penalty proposed through 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 through saying, "Plato was ill."

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 appears to call into question the dialogues' historical fidelity. In any case, Xenophon and Aristophanes appear to present a somewhat dissimilar portrait of Socrates from the one Plato paints. Some have described attention to the problem of taking Plato's Socrates to be his mouthpiece, given Socrates' reputation for irony and the dramatic nature of the dialogue form.

Aristotle attributes a dissimilar doctrine with respect to the thoughts to Plato and Socrates. Putting it in a nutshell, Aristotle merely suggests that Socrates' thought of shapes can be exposed through investigation of the natural world, unlike Plato's Shapes that exist beyond and outside the ordinary range of human understanding.

Later Life

Plato may have traveled in Italy, Sicily, Egypt, and Cyrene. Said to have returned to Athens at the age of forty, Plato founded one of the earliest recognized organized schools in Western Culture on a plot of land in the Grove of Hecademus or Academus. The Academy was "a big enclosure of ground that was once the property of a citizen at Athens named Academus. The Academy operated until it was destroyed through Lucius Cornelius Sulla in 84 BC. Neoplatonists revived the Academy in the early 5th century, and it operated until AD 529, when it was closed through Justinian I of Byzantium, who saw it as a threat to the propagation of Christianity. Several intellectuals were schooled in the Academy, the mainly prominent one being Aristotle.

Throughout his later life, Plato became entangled with the politics of the municipality of Syracuse. Just as to Diogenes Laertius, Plato initially visited Syracuse while it was under the rule of Dionysius. Throughout this first trip Dionysius'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 approximately faced death in Cyrene, a municipality at war with Athens, before an admirer bought Plato's freedom and sent him house. After Dionysius's death, just as to Plato's Seventh Letter, Dion requested Plato return to Syracuse to tutor Dionysius 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. Dionysius expelled Dion and kept Plato against his will. Eventually Plato left Syracuse. Dion would return to overthrow Dionysius and ruled Syracuse for a short time before being usurped through Calippus, a fellow disciple of Plato.

Death

A diversity of sources has given accounts of Plato's death. One story, based on a mutilated manuscript, suggests Plato died in his bed, whilst a young Thracian girl played the flute to him. Another custom suggests Plato died at a wedding feast. The explanation is based on Diogenes Laertius's reference to an explanation through Hermippus, a third century Alexandrian. Just as to Tertullian, Plato basically died in his sleep.

PHILOSOPHY

Recurrent Themes

Plato often discusses the father-son connection 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 situated through his family identity, and Plato often refers to his characters in conditions 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 thought 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 establishing recruiting as a disciple a young man whose inheritance has been squandered. Socrates twice compares the connection of the older man and his boy lover to the father-son connection 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.

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

Many dialogues tackle questions in relation to the art: Socrates says that poetry is inspired through the muses, and is not rational. He speaks approvingly of this, and other shapes of divine madness in the Phaedrus and yet in the Republic wants to outlaw Homer's great poetry, and laughter as well. In Ion, Socrates provides 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 contemporary Christian world: as divinely inspired literature that can give moral guidance, if only it can be properly interpreted.

Socrates and his company of disputants had something to say on several subjects, including 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.

Metaphysics

"Platonism" is a term coined through scholars to refer to the intellectual consequences of denying, as Socrates often does, the reality of the material world. In many dialogues, mainly notably the Republic, Socrates inverts the general man's intuition in relation to the knowable and what is real. While mainly 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". In other languages, such people live without the divine inspiration that provides him, and people like him, access to higher insights in relation to the reality.

Socrates's thought that reality is unavailable to those who use their senses is what puts him at odds with the general man, and with general sense. Socrates says that he who sees with his eyes is blind, and this thought is mainly famously captured in his allegory of the cave, and more explicitly in his account of the divided row. The allegory of the cave is a paradoxical analogy wherein Socrates argues that the invisible world is the mainly intelligible and that the visible world is the least knowable, and the mainly obscure.

Socrates says in the Republic that people who take the sun-lit world of the senses to be good and real are livelihood 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 thrash about to attain the heights, but when they go back down for a visit or to help other people up, they discover themselves objects of scorn and ridicule.

Just as to Socrates, physical objects and physical events are "shadows" of their ideal or perfect shapes, and exist only to the extent that they instantiate the perfect versions of themselves. Presently as shadows are temporary, inconsequential epiphenomena produced through physical objects, physical objects are themselves fleeting phenomena caused through more substantial causes, the ideals of which they are mere instances. For instance, Socrates thinks that perfect justice exists and his own trial would be a cheap copy of it.

The allegory of the cave is intimately linked to his political ideology 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 necessity be forced from their divine contemplations and be compelled to run the municipality just as to their lofty insights. Therefore is born the thought of the "philosopher-king", the wise person who accepts the power thrust upon him through the people who are wise enough to choose a good master. This is the main thesis of Socrates in the Republic, that the mainly wisdom the masses can muster is the wise choice of a ruler.

The word metaphysics derives from the information that Aristotle's musings in relation to the divine reality came after his lecture notes on his treatise on nature. The term is in information 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 power in the history of Western philosophy and religion.

Theory of Shapes

The Theory of Shapes typically refers to the belief expressed through Socrates in some of Plato's dialogues, that the material world as it appears to us is not the real world, but only an image or copy of the real world. Socrates spoke of shapes in formulating a solution to the problem of universals. The shapes, just as to Socrates, are roughly speaking archetypes or abstract symbols of the several kinds of things, and properties we feel and see approximately us that can only be perceived through cause. In other languages, Socrates sometimes appears to recognize two worlds: the apparent world, which constantly changes, and an unchanging and unseen world of shapes, which may be a cause of what is apparent.

Epistemology

Several have interpreted Plato as stating—even having been the first to write—that knowledge is justified true belief, an influential view that informed future growths in epistemology. This interpretation is partly based on a reading of the Theaetetus wherein Plato argues that knowledge is distinguished from mere true belief through the knower having an "explanation" of the substance of her or his true belief. And this theory may again be seen in the Meno, where it is suggested that true belief can be raised to the stage of knowledge if it is bound with an explanation as to the question of "why" the substance of the true belief is so. Several years later, Edmund Gettier famously demonstrated the troubles of the justified true belief explanation of knowledge.

Later in the Meno, Socrates uses a geometrical instance to expound Plato's view that knowledge in this latter sense is acquired through recollection. Socrates elicits information concerning a geometrical construction from a slave boy, who could not have otherwise recognized the information. The knowledge necessity be present, Socrates concludes, in an eternal, non-experiential form.

In other dialogues, the Sophist, Statesman, Republic, and the Parmenides, Plato himself associates knowledge with the apprehension of unchanging Shapes and their relationships to one another, including through the procedure of More explicitly, Plato himself argues in the Timaeus that knowledge is always proportionate to the realm from which it is gained. In other languages, if one derives one's explanation of something experientially, because the world of sense is in flux, the views therein attained will be mere opinions. And opinions are characterized through a lack of necessity and stability. On the other hand, if one derives one's explanation of something through method of the non-sensible shapes, because these shapes are unchanging, so too is the explanation derived from them. That apprehension of Shapes is required for knowledge may be taken to cohere with Plato's theory in the Theaetetus and Meno. Indeed, the apprehension of Shapes may be at the base of the "explanation" required for justification, in that it offers foundational knowledge which itself needs no explanation, thereby avoiding an infinite regress.

The State

Plato's philosophical views had several societal implications, especially on the thought of an ideal state or government. There is some discrepancy flanked by his early and later views. Some of the mainly well-known doctrines are contained in the Republic throughout his middle era, as well as in the Laws and the Statesman. Though, 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 languages of Socrates, asserts that societies have a tripartite class structure corresponding to the appetite/spirit/cause structure of the individual soul. The body parts symbolize the castes of society.

Productive, which symbolizes the abdomen. (Workers) — the laborers, carpenters, plumbers, masons, merchants, farmers, ranchers, etc. These correspond to the "appetite" part of the soul.

Protective, which symbolizes 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 symbolizes the head? (Rulers or Philosopher Kings)

— those who are intelligent, rational, self-controlled, in love with wisdom, well suited to create decisions for the society. These correspond to the "cause" part of the soul and are extremely few.

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

"Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now described kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophize, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide, while the several natures who at present pursue either one exclusively are forcibly prevented from doing so, municipalities will have no rest from evils,... nor, I think, will the human race."

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

Though, it necessity be taken into explanation that the ideal municipality outlined in the Republic is qualified through Socrates as the ideal luxurious municipality, examined to determine how it is that injustice and justice grow in a municipality. Just as to Socrates, the "true" and "healthy" municipality 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 municipality is used as an image to illuminate the state of one's soul, or the will, cause, and desires combined in the human body. Socrates is attempting to create an image of a rightly ordered human, and then later goes on to describe the dissimilar types of humans that can be observed, from tyrants to lovers of money in several types of municipalities. The ideal municipality is not promoted, but only used to magnify the dissimilar types of individual humans and the state of their soul. Though, the philosopher king image was used through several after Plato to justify their personal political beliefs. The philosophic soul just as to Socrates has cause, will, and desires united in virtuous harmony. A philosopher has the moderate love for wisdom and the courage to act just as to wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge in relation to the Good or the right dealings flanked by all that exists.

Wherein it concerns states and rulers, Plato has made motivating arguments. For instance he asks which is better—a bad democracy or a country reigned through a tyrant. He argues that it is better to be ruled through a bad tyrant, than be a bad democracy. This is emphasized within the Republic as Plato describes the event of mutiny on board a ship. Plato suggests the ships crew to be in row with the democratic rule of several and the captain, although inhibited through ailments, the tyrant. Plato's account of this event is parallel to that of democracy within the state and the inherent troubles that arise.

Just as to Plato, a state made up of dissimilar types of souls will, overall, decline from an aristocracy (rule through the best) to a democracy (rule through the honorable), then to an oligarchy (rule through the few), then to a democracy (rule through the people), and finally to tyranny (rule through one person, rule through a tyrant). Aristocracy is the form of government (politeia) advocated in Plato's Republic. This regime is ruled through a philosopher king, and therefore is grounded on wisdom and cause. The aristocratic state, and the man whose nature corresponds to it, are the objects of Plato's analyses throughout much of the Republic, as opposed to the other four kinds of states/men, who are discussed later in his work. In Book VIII, Plato states in order the other four imperfect societies with an account of the state's structure and individual character. In democracy the ruling class is made up primarily of those with a warrior-like character. In his account, Plato has Sparta in mind. Oligarchy is made up of a society in which wealth is the criterion of merit and the wealthy are in manage. In democracy, the state bears resemblance to ancient Athens with traits such as equality of political opportunity and freedom for the individual to do as he likes. Democracy then degenerates into tyranny from the disagreement of rich and poor. It is characterized through an undisciplined society existing in chaos, where the tyrant rises as popular champion leading to the formation of his private army and the growth of oppression.

Unwritten Doctrines

For an extensive time, Plato's unwritten doctrine had been controversial. Several contemporary books on Plato appear to diminish its importance; nevertheless, the first significant witness who mentions its subsistence is Aristotle, who in his Physics (209 b) writes: "It is true, indeed, that the explanation he provides there [i.e. in Timaeus] of the participant is dissimilar from what he says in his so-described unwritten teachings." The term literally means unwritten doctrines and it stands for the mainly fundamental metaphysical teaching of Plato, which he disclosed only orally, and some say only to his mainly trusted fellows, and which he may have kept secret from the public. The importance of the unwritten doctrines does not appear to have been seriously questioned before the 19th century.

A cause 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 presently and the good and beautiful... will not, when in earnest, write them in ink, sowing them through a pen with languages, which cannot defend themselves through argument and cannot teach the truth effectually." The similar argument is repeated in Plato's Seventh Letter (344 c): "every serious man in dealing with really serious subjects cautiously avoids writing." In the similar letter he writes (341 c): "I can certainly declare concerning all these writers who claim to know the subjects that I seriously revise... 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".

It is, though, said that Plato once disclosed this knowledge to the public in his lecture On the Good, in which the Good is recognized with the One, the fundamental ontological principle. The content of this lecture has been transmitted through many witnesses - in the middle of others, Aristoxenus, who describes the event in the following languages: "Each came expecting to learn something in relation to the things that are usually measured good for men, such as wealth, good health, physical strength, and altogether a type 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 "just as to Plato, the first principles of everything, including the Shapes themselves are One and Indefinite Duality, which he described Big and Small... one might also learn this from Speusippus and Xenocrates and the others who were present at Plato's lecture on the Good".

Their explanation is in full agreement with Aristotle's account of Plato's metaphysical doctrine. In Metaphysics he writes: "Now since the Shapes 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, since the numbers are derived from the Great and Small through participation in the One" (987 b). "From this explanation it is clear that he only employed two causes: that of the essence, and the material cause; for the Shapes are the cause of the essence in everything else, and the One is the cause of it in the Shapes. He also tells us what the material substrate is of which the Shapes are predicated in the case of sensible things, and the One in that of the Shapes - that it is this the duality, the Great and Small. Further, he assigned to these two elements respectively the causation of good and of evil".

The mainly significant aspect of this interpretation of Plato's metaphysics is the stability flanked by his teaching and the neoplatonic interpretation of Plotinus or Ficino which has been measured erroneous through several but may in information have been directly influenced through oral transmission of Plato's doctrine. A contemporary scholar who recognized the importance of the unwritten doctrine of Plato was Heinrich Gomperz who described it in his speech throughout the 7th International Congress of Philosophy in 1930. All the sources related to the composed through Konrad Gaiser and published as Testimonia Platonica. These sources have subsequently been interpreted through scholars from the German Tübingen School such as Hans Joachim Krämer or Thomas A. Szlezák.

Dialectic

The role of dialectic in Plato's thought is contested but there are two main interpretations; a kind of reasoning and a method of intuition. Simon Blackburn adopts the first, saying that Plato's dialectic is "the procedure of eliciting the truth through means of questions aimed at opening out what is already implicitly recognized, or at exposing the contradictions and muddles of an opponent's location." A similar interpretation has been put forth through Louis Hartz, who suggests that elements of the dialectic are borrowed from Hegel. Just as to this view, opposing arguments improve upon each other, and prevailing opinion is shaped through the synthesis of several conflicting thoughts in excess of time. Each new thought exposes a flaw in the accepted model, and the epistemological substance of the debate continually approaches the truth. Hartz's is a teleological interpretation at the core, in which philosophers will ultimately exhaust the accessible body of knowledge and therefore reach "the end of history." Karl Popper, on the other hand, claims that dialectic is the art of intuition for "visualizing the divine originals, the Shapes or Thoughts, of unveiling the Great Mystery behind the general man's everyday world of appearances."

THE DIALOGUES

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

The usual system for creation unique references to sections of the text through Plato derives from a 16th century edition of Plato's works through Henricus Stephanus. An overview of Plato's writings just as to this system can be established in the Stephanus pagination article.

One custom concerning the arrangement of Plato's texts is just as to tetralogies. This scheme is ascribed through Diogenes Laertius to an ancient scholar and court astrologer to Tiberius named Thrasyllus.

In the list below, works through Plato are marked:

If there is no consensus in the middle of scholars as to whether Plato is the author, and

If mainly scholars agree that Plato is not the author of the work.

Unmarked works are assumed to have been written through Plato.

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

II. Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman 

III. Parmenides, Philebus, Symposium, Phaedrus

IV. First Alcibiades (1), Second Alcibiades (2), Hipparchus (2), (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), Republic, Timaeus, Critias

IX. Minos (2), Laws, Epinomis (2), Epistles (1).

The remaining works were transmitted under Plato's name, mainly of them already measured spurious in antiquity, and so were not incorporated through Thrasyllus in his tetra logical arrangement. These works are labeled as Notheuomenoi or Apocrypha.

Composition of the Dialogues

No one knows the exact order Plato's dialogues were written in, or the extent to which some might have been later revised and rewritten.

Lewis Campbell was the first to create exhaustive use of telemetry to prove objectively that the Critias, Timaeus, Laws, Philebus, Sophist, and Statesman were all clustered jointly as a group, while the Parmenides, Phaedrus, Republic, and Theaetetus belong to a separate group, which necessity be earlier. What is extra ordinary in relation to the Campbell's conclusions is that, in spite of all the telemetric studies that have been mannered since his time, perhaps the only chronological information in relation to the Plato's works that can now be said to be proven through telemetry is the information that Critias, Timaeus, Laws, Philebus, Sophist, and Statesman are the latest of Plato's dialogues, the others earlier.

Increasingly in the mainly recent Plato scholarship, writers are skeptical of the notion that the order of Plato's writings can be recognized with any precision, though Plato's works are still often characterized as falling at least roughly into three groups. The following symbolizes one relatively general such division. It should, though, be kept in mind that several of the positions in the ordering are still highly disputed, and also that the extremely notion that Plato's dialogues can or should be "ordered" is through no means universally accepted.

In the middle of those who classify the dialogues into eras of composition, Socrates figures in all of the "early dialogues" and they are measured the mainly faithful symbols of the historical Socrates. They contain The Apology of Socrates, Charmides, Crito, Euthyphro, Ion, Laches, Less Hippias, Lysis, Menexenus, and Protagoras. Three dialogues are often measured "middle" or "pre-middle": Euthydemus, Gorgias, and Meno.

Whereas those classified as "early dialogues" often conclude in aporia, the so-described "middle dialogues" give more clearly stated positive teachings that are often ascribed to Plato such as the theory of shapes. These dialogues contain Cratylus, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Republic, Symposium, Parmenides, and Theaetetus. Proponents of dividing the dialogues into eras often consider the Parmenides and Theaetetus to come late in this era and be middle to the after that, as they appear to treat the theory of shapes critically or not at all.

The remaining dialogues are classified as "late" and are usually agreed to be hard and demanding pieces of philosophy. This grouping is the only one proven through telemetric analysis. While looked to for Plato's "mature" answers to the questions posed through his earlier works, those answers are hard to discern. Some scholars say that the theory of shapes is absent from the late dialogues, it‘s having been refuted in the Parmenides, but there isn't total consensus that the Parmenides actually refutes the theory of shapes. The so-described "late dialogues" contain Critias, Laws, Philebus, Sophist, Statesman, and Timaeus.

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, some dialogues are narrated through Socrates, wherein he speaks in first person. 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.

Two dialogues Phaedo and Symposium also begin in dramatic form but then proceed to virtually uninterrupted narration through followers of Socrates. Phaedo, an explanation of Socrates' final conversation and hemlock drinking, is narrated through Phaedo to Echecrates in a foreign municipality not extensive after the execution took lay. The Symposium is narrated through Apollodorus, a Socratic disciple, apparently to Glaucon. Apollodorus assures his listener that he is recounting the story, which took lay when he himself was an infant, not from his own memory, but as remembered through 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 through one of Euclides' slaves (143c). Some scholars take this as an indication that Plato had through this date wearied of the narrated form. With the exception of the Theaetetus, Plato provides no explicit indication as to how these orally transmitted conversations came to be written down.

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 mainly 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 extensive-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 through 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 cause he has been mistaken for a menace to the municipality-state of Athens.

If Plato's significant 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 in relation to the face corruption charges. In the Meno (94e–95a), one of the men who brings legal charges against Socrates, Anytus, warns him in relation to the trouble he may get into if he does not stop criticizing significant people. In the Gorgias, Socrates says that his trial will be like a doctor prosecuted through a cook who asks a jury of children to choose flanked by 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' protection speech, and the Crito and Phaedo take lay in prison after the conviction. In the Protagoras, Socrates is a guest at the house 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 significant dialogues, the Symposium and the Phaedrus, are connected to the main storyline through 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 jointly with other friends. The character Phaedrus is connected to the main story row through character (Phaedrus is also a participant in the Symposium and the Protagoras) and through theme (the philosopher as divine emissary, etc.) The Protagoras is also strongly connected to the Symposium through characters: all of the formal speakers at the Symposium (with the exception of Aristophanes) are present at the house of Callias in that dialogue. Charmides and his guardian Critias are present for the discussion in the Protagoras. Examples of characters crossing flanked by dialogues can be further multiplied. The Protagoras contains the main gathering of Socratic associates.

In the dialogues Plato is mainly 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 constant: a man who is his friend in one dialogue may be an adversary or subject of his mockery in another. For instance, Socrates praises the wisdom of Euthyphro several times in the Cratylus, but creates him seem like a fool in the Euthyphro. He disparages sophists usually, 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. Though, Socrates tells Theaetetus in his namesake dialogue that he admires Prodicus and has directed several pupils to him. Socrates' thoughts are also not constant within or flanked by or in the middle of dialogues.

Platonic Scholarship

Although their popularity has fluctuated in excess of the years, the works of Plato have never been without readers since the time they were written. Plato's thought is often compared with that of his mainly well-known student, Aristotle, whose reputation throughout the Western Middle Ages so totally eclipsed that of Plato that the Scholastic philosophers referred to Aristotle as "the Philosopher". Though, in the Byzantine Empire, the revise of Plato sustained.

The Medieval scholastic philosophers did not have access too mainly of the works of Plato, nor the knowledge of Greek needed to read them. Plato's original writings were essentially lost to Western culture until they were brought from Constantinople in the century of its fall, through George Gemistos Plethon. It is whispered that Plethon passed a copy of the Dialogues to Cosimo de' Medici when in 1438 the Council of Ferrara, described 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. Throughout the early Islamic era, Persian and Arab scholars translated much of Plato into Arabic and wrote commentaries and interpretations on Plato's, Aristotle's and other Platonist philosophers' works. Several of these comments on Plato were translated from Arabic into Latin and as such influenced Medieval scholastic philosophers.

Only in the Renaissance, with the common resurgence of interest in classical culture, did knowledge of Plato's philosophy become widespread again in the West. Several of the greatest early contemporary 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 foundation for progress in the arts and sciences. Through the 19th century, Plato's reputation was restored, and at least on par with Aristotle's.

Notable Western philosophers have sustained to draw upon Plato's work since that time. Plato's power has been especially strong in mathematics and the sciences. He helped to distinguish flanked by pure and applied mathematics through widening the gap flanked by "arithmetic", now described number theory and "logistic", now described arithmetic. He regarded logistic as appropriate for business men and men of war who "necessity 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." 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 summarized his approach through reversing the customary paraphrase of Aristotle's well-known declaration of sedition from the Academy 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 suggested that the scientist that takes philosophy seriously would have to avoid systematization and take on several dissimilar roles, but perhaps appearing as a Platonist or Pythagorean, in that such a one has "the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensable and effective tool of his research." 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. Therefore 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 measured through some as the prime thinker involved in the recovery of Platonic thought in its more political, and less metaphysical, form. Deeply influenced through 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.'

Textual Sources and History

The texts of Plato as received today apparently symbolize the complete written philosophical work of Plato and are usually good through the standards of textual criticism. No contemporary edition of Plato in the original Greek symbolizes a single source, but rather it is reconstructed from multiple sources which are compared with each other. These sources are medieval manuscripts written on vellum (mainly from 9th-13th century AD Byzantium), papyri (mainly from late antiquity in Egypt), and from the self-governing testimonia of other authors who quote several segments of the works (which come from a diversity of sources). The text as presented is usually not much dissimilar than what appears in the Byzantine manuscripts, and papyri and testimonia presently confirm the manuscript custom.

In the first century AD, Thrasyllus of Mendes had compiled and published the works of Plato in the original Greek, both genuine and spurious. While it has not survived to the present day, all the extant medieval Greek manuscripts are based on his edition.

The oldest surviving complete manuscript for several of the dialogues is the Clarke Plato, which was written in Constantinople in 895 and acquired through Oxford University in 1809. The Clarke is given the siglum B in contemporary editions. B contains the first six tetralogies and is described internally as being written through "John the Calligrapher" on behalf of Arethas of Caesarea. It appears to have undergone corrections through Arethas himself. For the last two tetralogies and the apocrypha, the oldest surviving complete manuscript is Codex Parisinus graecus 1807, designated A, which was written almost contemporaneously to B, circa 900 AD. A almost certainly had an initial volume containing the first 7 tetralogies which is now lost, but of which a copy was made, Codex Venetus append, which has the siglum T. The oldest manuscript for the seventh tetra logy is Codex Vindobonensis 54. suppl. phil. Gr. 7, with siglum W, with a supposed date in the twelfth century. In total there are fifty-one such Byzantine manuscripts recognized, while others may yet be establish.

To help set up the text, the older proof of papyri and the self-governing proof of the testimony of commentators and other authors are also used. Several papyri which contain fragments of Plato's texts are in the middle of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. The 2003 Oxford Classical Texts edition through Slings even cites the Coptic translation of a fragment of the Republic in the Nag Hammadi library as proof . Significant authors for testimony contain Olympiodorus the Younger, Plutarch, Proclus, Iamblichus, Eusebius, and Stobaeus.

Throughout the early Renaissance, the Greek language and, beside with it, Plato's texts were reintroduced to Western Europe through Byzantine scholars. In 1483 there was published a Latin edition of Plato's complete works translated through Marsilio Ficino at the behest of Cosimo de' Medici. Cosimo had been influenced toward learning Plato through the several Byzantine Platonists in Florence throughout his day, including George Gemistus Plethon. Henri Estienne's edition, including parallel Greek and Latin, was published in 1578. It was this edition which recognized Stephanus pagination, still in use today.

Contemporary Editions

The Oxford Classical Texts offers the current standard complete Greek text of Plato's complete works. In five volumes edited through John Burnet, its first edition was published 1900-1907, and it is still accessible from the publisher, having last been printed in 1993. The second edition is still in progress with only the first volume, printed in 1995, and the Republic, printed in 2003, accessible. The Cambridge Greek and Latin Texts and Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries series comprises Greek editions of the Protagoras, Symposium, Phaedrus, Alcibiades, and Clitophon, with English philological, literary, and, to an extent, philosophical commentary. One distinguished edition of the Greek text is E. R. Dodds' of the Gorgias, which comprises extensive English commentary.

The contemporary standard complete English edition is the 1997 Hackett Plato, Complete Works, edited through John M. Cooper. For several of these translations Hackett offers separate volumes which contain more through method of commentary, notes, and introductory material. There is also the Clarendon Plato Series through Oxford University Press which offers English translations and thorough philosophical commentary through leading scholars on a few of Plato's works, including John McDowell's version of the Theaetetus. Cornell University Press has also begun the Agora series of English translations of classical and medieval philosophical texts, including a few of Plato's.