Greek Figures

Achilles
Alexander the Great
Archimedes
Aristotle
Demokritos
Hippokrates
Homer
Leonidas
Pericles
Thales
Pheidias
Plato
Praxiteles
Pythagoras
Socrates

Plato

Plato (c. 427 BC - c. 347 BC) was an immensely influential classical Greek philosopher, student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle. His most famous work is The Republic (Greek Politeia, 'city') in which he outlines his vision of "an ideal" state. He also wrote the Laws and many dialogues in which Socrates is the main participant.

"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." --Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, 1929Plato was born in Athens, into a moderately well-to-do aristocratic family. His father was named Ariston and his mother Perictione. An ancestor, Glaucon, was one of the best-known members of the Athenian nobility. Plato's own real name was "Aristocles". The nickname Plato originates from wrestling circles, that much is agreed on. Since Plato means "broad," it probably refers either to his physical appearance or possibly wrestling stance or style.

He founded the Academy, one of the earliest known organized schools in Western civilization, named after the spot it was founded on, holy to the hero Academus. Aristotle was a student there for many years. It operated until it was closed by Justinian I of Byzantium in 529 A.D.

Plato became a pupil of Socrates in his youth, and--according to his own account, anyhow--attended his master's trial, though not his execution. Unlike Socrates, Plato wrote down his philosophical views and left a considerable number of manuscripts (see below). He was deeply affected by the city's treatment of Socrates: much of his early work enshrines his memories of his teacher, and much of his ethical writing suggests a desire to found a society where similar injustices could not occur.

Plato was also deeply influenced by the Pythagoreans, whose notions of numerical harmony have clear echoes in Plato's notion of the Forms (sometimes thus capitalized; see below); by Anaxagoras, who taught Socrates and who held that the mind or reason pervades everything; and by Parmenides, who argued the unity of all things.

In Plato's writings one finds the heliocentric theory of the universe long before it was advanced by Aristarchus (and revived still later and given a scientific footing by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler). One finds debates concerning aristocratic and democratic forms of government. One finds debates concerning the role of heredity and environment in human intelligence and personality long before the modern "nature versus nurture" debate began in the time of Hobbes and Locke, with its modern continuation in such controversial works as The Mismeasure of Man and The Bell Curve. One finds arguments for the subjectivity--and the objectivity--of human knowledge which foreshadow modern debates between Hume and Kant, or between the postmodernists and their opponents. Even the myth of the lost city or continent of Atlantis originates as an illustrative story told by Plato in his Timaeus and Critias.