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Plato: The Metaphysic Philosopher
10-06-2013 18:17Plato was one of the most influential philosophers in world history. He founded the Western world’s first important institution of higher learning, the Platonic Academy, which helped shape the course of thinking for the next millennia. He was the pupil of Socrates and the tutor of Aristotle.
Plato was born around 427 B.C. of Athenian aristocrats with strong political links, son of Ariston and Perictione. Ariston traced descent to Codrus, presumably the last king of Athens while his mother’s family claimed descent from the lawgiver Solon.
Plato grew up during the epic Peloponnesian War 431–404 B.C. Like other wealthy Athenian youths, Plato probably did military service around 409–404 B.C. The young Plato joined the circle of the dynamic Athenian philosopher Socrates whose ethical-political inquiries proved to be the greatest influence on Plato’s thought along with the earlier Greek philosopher Parmenides.
In 399 B.C., under the restored Athenian Democracy, Socrates was brought to trial, condemned, and executed under charges of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens. After his mentor’s death, Plato decided that until philosophers became kings, or kings became philosophers, there was no practical value to be gained if an honest man entered political life choosing instead a life of travel and reflection.
During these years Plato traveled to Megara and visited Euclides and then to southern Italy, where he met followers of the early philosopher Pythagoras. In Syracuse of Sicily, Plato met the ruthless dictator Dionysius who, tired of Plato’s criticism, arranged for the philosopher to be sold into slavery. Plato’s friends bought back his freedom and he soon returned to Athens.
In about 386 B.C. he bought land in a park sacred to the mythical hero Academus, about a mile outside Athens and established his philosophical school named Plato’s Academy, what is considered to be the first university in history. Plato devoted his life to supervising the Academy and to writing.
For his philosophical writings, Plato chose a style of prose dialogue. This method of question and answer disputation was called dialectic. Of the dialogues, Plato’s masterpiece is the Republic (Politeia) written circa 385–370 B.C. setting forth his ideas of the ideal state, one founded on conceptions of law and justice. His work Phaedo is an introduction of his theory that true reality is not to be found in the visible, physical world but in an ideal world of eternal Forms. In Symposium, he explains on the nature of sexual love developing the modern, popular notion of nonsexual, “Platonic” love in which the partners channeled their passion into a spiritual, not just a sexual, union.
Among the young men who became his pupils was Aristotle, a brilliant “graduate student” whom some considered to be Plato’s likely successor as head of the school. Plato died at age 80 and was succeeded as head of the Academy by his nephew Speusippus and Aristotle founded his own philosophical school in Athens, Lyceum.
To later generations, Plato’s concept of a supreme Form of the Good seemed to anticipate Christian monotheism and his teachings enjoyed great prestige around 100–400 C.E. with a reviving movement called Neoplatonism, contributing in preserving every major work written by him.
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