What was philosopher plato famous for

It entertains many points of view, including the idea that people were originally doubled -- some with the same gender and others with the opposite, and that, once cut, they spend their lives looking for their other part. This idea "explains" sexual preferences.

The mythical place known as Atlantis appears as part of a parable in a fragment of Plato's late dialogue Timaeus and also in Critias. In the Middle Ages, Plato was known mostly through Latin translations of Arabic translations and commentaries. In the Renaissance, when Greek became more familiar, far more scholars studied Plato. Since then, he has had an impact on math and science, morals, and political theory. Instead of following a political path, Plato thought it more important to educate would-be statesmen.

For this reason, he set up a school for future leaders. His school was called the Academy, named for the park in which it was located. Plato's Republic contains a treatise on education.

Plato is considered by many to be the most important philosopher who ever lived. He is known as the father of idealism in philosophy. His ideas were elitist, with the philosopher king the ideal ruler.

Plato is perhaps best known to college students for his parable of a cave , which appears in Plato's Republic. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Let us illustrate Plato's theory of Forms with one of his mathematical examples.

Plato considers mathematical objects as perfect forms. For example a line is an object having length but no breadth. No matter how thin we make a line in the world of our senses, it will not be this perfect mathematical form, for it will always have breadth. In the Phaedo Plato talks of objects in the real world trying to be like their perfect forms. By this he is thinking of thinner and thinner lines which are tending in the limit to the mathematical concept of a line but, of course, never reaching it.

Another example from the Phaedo is given in [ 6 ] :- The instance taken there is the mathemtical relation of equality, and the contrast is drawn between the absolute equality we think of in mathematics and the rough, approximate equality which is what we have to be content with in dealing with objects with our senses.

Again in the Republic Plato talks of geometrical diagrams as imperfect imitations of the perfect mathematical objects which they represent. Plato's contributions to the theories of education are shown by the way that he ran the Academy and his idea of what constitutes an educated person. He also contributed to logic and legal philosophy, including rhetoric. Although Plato made no important mathematical discoveries himself, his belief that mathematics provides the finest training for the mind was extremely important in the development of the subject.

Over the door of the Academy was written:- Let no one unversed in geometry enter here. Plato concentrated on the idea of 'proof' and insisted on accurate definitions and clear hypotheses.

This laid the foundations for Euclid 's systematic approach to mathematics. In [ 2 ] his contributions to mathematics through his students are summarised:- All of the most important mathematical work of the 4 th century was done by friends or pupils of Plato. The first students of conic sections , and possibly Theaetetus , the creator of solid geometry, were members of the Academy.

Eudoxus of Cnidus - author of the doctrine of proportion expounded in Euclid 's "Elements", inventor of the method of finding the areas and volumes of curvilinear figures by exhaustion , and propounder of the astronomical scheme of concentric spheres adopted and altered by Aristotle - removed his school from Cyzicus to Athens for the purpose of cooperating with Plato; and during one of Plato's absences he seems to have acted as the head of the Academy.

Archytas , the inventor of mechanical science, was a friend and correspondent of Plato. In mathematics Plato's name is attached to the Platonic solids. In the Timaeus there is a mathematical construction of the elements earth, fire, air, and water , in which the cube, tetrahedron, octahedron , and icosahedron are given as the shapes of the atoms of earth, fire, air, and water. The fifth Platonic solid, the dodecahedron , is Plato's model for the whole universe.

Plato's beliefs as regards the universe were that the stars, planets, Sun and Moon move round the Earth in crystalline spheres. The sphere of the Moon was closest to the Earth, then the sphere of the Sun, then Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and furthest away was the sphere of the stars. He believed that the Moon shines by reflected sunlight.

Perhaps the best overview of Plato's views can be gained from examining what he thought that a proper course of education should consist. Here is his course of study [ 2 ] Five years would then be given to the still severer study of ' dialectic '. Dialectic is the art of conversation, of question and answer; and according to Plato, dialectical skill is the ability to pose and answer questions about the essences of things. The dialectician replaces hypotheses with secure knowledge, and his aim is to ground all science, all knowledge, on some 'unhypothetical first principle'.

Plato's Academy flourished until AD when it was closed down by the Christian Emperor Justinian who claimed it was a pagan establishment. Having survived for years it is the longest surviving university known.

References show. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica. F Lasserre, The birth of mathematics in the age of Plato London, J Moravcsik, Plato and Platonism : Plato's conception of appearance and reality in ontology, epistemology, and ethics, and its modern echoes Oxford, K Reidemeister, Das exakte Denken der Griechen.

Works whose authenticity was also doubted in antiquity include the Second Alcibiades or Alcibiades II , Epinomis, Hipparchus, and Rival Lovers also known as either Rivals or Lovers , and these are sometimes defended as authentic today.

If any are of these are authentic, the Epinomis would be in the late group, and the others would go with the early or early transitional groups.

Seventeen or eighteen epigrams poems appropriate to funerary monuments or other dedications are also attributed to Plato by various ancient authors. Most of these are almost certainly not by Plato, but some few may be authentic. None appear to provide anything of great philosophical interest. The dubia include the First Alcibiades or Alcibiades I , Minos, and Theages, all of which, if authentic, would probably go with the early or early transitional groups, the Cleitophon, which might be early, early transitional, or middle, and the letters, of which the Seventh seems the best candidate for authenticity.

Some scholars have also suggested the possibility that the Third may also be genuine. If any are authentic, the letters would appear to be works of the late period, with the possible exception of the Thirteenth Letter, which could be from the middle period. Nearly all of the dialogues now accepted as genuine have been challenged as inauthentic by some scholar or another. In the 19th Century in particular, scholars often considered arguments for and against the authenticity of dialogues whose authenticity is now only rarely doubted.

Of those we listed as authentic, above in the early group , only the Hippias Major continues occasionally to be listed as inauthentic. The strongest evidence against the authenticity of the Hippias Major is the fact that it is never mentioned in any of the ancient sources.

However, relative to how much was actually written in antiquity, so little now remains that our lack of ancient references to this dialogue does not seem to be an adequate reason to doubt its authenticity. In style and content, it seems to most contemporary scholars to fit well with the other Platonic dialogues.

Although no one thinks that Plato simply recorded the actual words or speeches of Socrates verbatim, the argument has been made that there is nothing in the speeches Socrates makes in the Apology that he could have not uttered at the historical trial.

But as we have said, most scholars treat these as representing more or less accurately the philosophy and behavior of the historical Socrates—even if they do not provide literal historical records of actual Socratic conversations.

Some of the early dialogues include anachronisms that prove their historical inaccuracy. Contemporary scholars generally endorse one of the following four views about the dialogues and their representation of Socrates:. There is just too little and too little that is at all interesting to be found that could reliably be attributed to Socrates from any other ancient authors. As a result of his attempt to discern the true meaning of this oracle, Socrates gained a divinely ordained mission in Athens to expose the false conceit of wisdom.

Platonic dialogues continue to be included among the required readings in introductory and advanced philosophy classes, not only for their ready accessibility, but also because they raise many of the most basic problems of philosophy. Unlike most other philosophical works, moreover, Plato frames the discussions he represents in dramatic settings that make the content of these discussions especially compelling.

In these dialogues, we also find Socrates represented as holding certain religious beliefs, such as:. Scholarly attempts to provide relative chronological orderings of the early transitional and middle dialogues are problematical because all agree that the main dialogue of the middle period, the Republic, has several features that make dating it precisely especially difficult. As we have already said, many scholars count the first book of the Republic as among the early group of dialogues.

But those who read the entire Republic will also see that the first book also provides a natural and effective introduction to the remaining books of the work.

If this central work of the period is difficult to place into a specific context, there can be no great assurance in positioning any other works relative to this one. Nonetheless, it does not take especially careful study of the transitional and middle period dialogues to notice clear differences in style and philosophical content from the early dialogues.

In the early dialogues, moreover, Socrates discusses mainly ethical subjects with his interlocutors—with some related religious, methodological, and epistemological views scattered within the primarily ethical discussions.

The philosophical positions Socrates advances in these dialogues are vastly more systematical, including broad theoretical inquiries into the connections between language and reality in the Cratylus , knowledge and explanation in the Phaedo and Republic, Books V-VII. This theory of Forms, introduced and explained in various contexts in each of the middle period dialogues, is perhaps the single best-known and most definitive aspect of what has come to be known as Platonism.

Plato sometimes characterizes this participation in the Form as a kind of imaging, or approximation of the Form. The same may be said of the many things that are greater or smaller and the Forms of Great and Small Phaedo 75c-d , or the many tall things and the Form of Tall Phaedo e , or the many beautiful things and the Form of Beauty Phaedo 75c-d, Symposium e, Republic V. If so, Plato believes that The Form of Beauty is perfect beauty, the Form of Justice is perfect justice, and so forth.

Conceiving of Forms in this way was important to Plato because it enabled the philosopher who grasps the entities to be best able to judge to what extent sensible instances of the Forms are good examples of the Forms they approximate.

In the Republic, he writes as if there may be a great multiplicity of Forms—for example, in Book X of that work, we find him writing about the Form of Bed see Republic X. He may have come to believe that for any set of things that shares some property, there is a Form that gives unity to the set of things and univocity to the term by which we refer to members of that set of things.

Knowledge involves the recognition of the Forms Republic V. In the early transitional dialogue, the Meno, Plato has Socrates introduce the Orphic and Pythagorean idea that souls are immortal and existed before our births. All knowledge, he explains, is actually recollected from this prior existence.

It is an interest, however, that shows up plainly in the middle period dialogues, especially in the middle books of the Republic. Stylometry has tended to count the Phaedo among the early dialogues, whereas analysis of philosophical content has tended to place it at the beginning of the middle period.

Similar accounts of the transmigration of souls may be found, with somewhat different details, in Book X of the Republic and in the Phaedrus, as well as in several dialogues of the late period, including the Timaeus and the Laws. No traces of the doctrine of recollection, or the theory of reincarnation or transmigration of souls, are to be found in the dialogues we listed above as those of the early period.

The moral psychology of the middle period dialogues also seems to be quite different from what we find in the early period. Hence, all wrongdoing reflects some cognitive error. But in the middle period, Plato conceives of the soul as having at least three parts:.

Republic IV. Republic X. In both of these dialogues, Plato clearly regards actual physical or sexual contact between lovers as degraded and wasteful forms of erotic expression. For this reason, Plato thinks that most people sadly squander the real power of love by limiting themselves to the mere pleasures of physical beauty.

One of the novelties of the dialogues after those of the middle period is the introduction of a new philosophical method. This method was introduced probably either late in the middle period or in the transition to the late period, but was increasingly important in the late period. Although the middle period dialogues continue to show Socrates asking questions, the questioning in these dialogues becomes much more overtly leading and didactic.

In this method, the philosopher collects all of the instances of some generic category that seem to have common characteristics, and then divides them into specific kinds until they cannot be further subdivided. This method is explicitly and extensively on display in the Sophist, Statesman, and Philebus.

One of the most puzzling features of the late dialogues is the strong suggestion in them that Plato has reconsidered his theory of Forms in some way. Although there seems still in the late dialogues to be a theory of Forms although the theory is, quite strikingly, wholly unmentioned in the Theaetetus, a later dialogue on the nature of knowledge , where it does appear in the later dialogues, it seems in several ways to have been modified from its conception in the middle period works.

But then, if Man 2 is male, then what it has in common with the other male things is participation in some further Form, Man 3, and so on. If the Form of Man is itself a perfect male, then the Form shares a property in common with the males that participate in it. But since the Theory requires that for any group of entities with a common property, there is a Form to explain the commonality, it appears that the theory does indeed give rise to the vicious regress. Of relevance to this discussion is the relative dating of the Timaeus and the Parmenides, since the Theory of Forms very much as it appears in the middle period works plays a prominent role in the Timaeus.

Thus, the assignment of a later date to the Timaeus shows that Plato did not regard the objection to the Theory of Forms raised in the Parmenides as in any way decisive. Whatever value Plato believed that knowledge of abstract entities has for the proper conduct of philosophy, he no longer seems to have believed that such knowledge is necessary for the proper running of a political community.

In several of the late dialogues, Socrates is even further marginalized. He is either represented as a mostly mute bystander in the Sophist and Statesman , or else absent altogether from the cast of characters in the Laws and Critias. In the Theaetetus and Philebus, however, we find Socrates in the familiar leading role.

The myth of Atlantis is continued in the unfinished dialogue intended to be the sequel to the Timaeus, the Critias. The Timaeus is also famous for its account of the creation of the universe by the Demiurge. Plato takes the four elements, fire, air, water, and earth which Plato proclaims to be composed of various aggregates of triangles , making various compounds of these into what he calls the Body of the Universe.