Plato Questions and Answers
Plato
What is Plato's view on "poetry" and the poet? Do you agree with his view? Give reasons for your answers.
Like the other answer, in some ways Plato was opposed to poetry. In particular, he did not like the mimetic aspect of poety - namely that poetry imitated life. This aspect of poetry was seen as...
Plato
What is Plato's definition of the human person?
Plato's definition of "Man" is subject to interpretation, but one famous anecdote gives an explicit (if satirical) Platonic definition. Based on the Dialogues, animals were classified into...
Plato
How did the teaching methods of Plato and Aristotle differ?
Plato, one of Socrates's students, taught by writing dialogues in which teachers asked questions. In this so-called dialectic method, a teacher asks questions that help students define terms. By...
Plato
How does Socrates use ethos, pathos, and logos in Plato’s Apology of Socrates?
Ethos, pathos, and logos are all examples of rhetoric, which is the art of persuasion. All three are ably deployed by Plato in his reconstruction of Socrates's defense speech in Apology. First,...
Plato
What was Plato's ideal government?
Plato's ideal government is often referred to as the kallipolis in secondary literature: this name comes from the Greek "kallos" (beautiful, noble, fine) + "polis" (city-state). His kallipolis...
Plato
What does Plato mean by saying that literature is twice removed from reality? Explain
This is a great question. Plato has written a lot on the topic literature and so many thing can be stated. So, I will have to be selective. Here are two points. First, Plato believed that...
Plato
How might Plato's ideas be relevant today? Do any contemporary issues come to mind?
Plato's allegory of the cave continues to be relevant. Many people today are voicing their opinions regarding society's need to leave the metaphorical darkness, or cave, of ignorance in order to...
Plato
According to Plato, are the ideas of Beauty and Courage objectively real, or are they notions that we invent in our...
For Plato, ideas like Beauty, Courage, Love, Justice, and all other metaphysical concepts only have any real basis in capital "T" Truth whenever they are contemplated outside of the senses. As he...
Plato
Explain whether you agree with Plato and his theories of education. Do you agree with Plato and his theories of...
While I find many of Plato's points in his educational dialogue fascinating, I think that his construction of educational philosophy is not able to translate very well into the modern setting. The...
Plato
How did Plato distinguish between knowledge and opinion?
Plato draws a series of oppositions between knowledge and opinion. The central opposition is ontological. Knowledge, because it is unchanging and certain, must be of things which are rather than...
Plato
Describe the metaphor Socrates uses to explain to Ion why “the gift he possesses of speaking excellently about Homer...
I suppose you could call it a metaphor when Socrates claims that Ion’s gift of speaking about Homer is not an art but an inspiration. He goes on to compare this idea of inspiration to a “divinity...
Plato
What is the symbolic meaning of Plato's "allegory of the cave"?
This is a very good question and one that is important as it hits on a central point in Plato's philosophy. Here is some background information. The allegory of the cave is found in Plato's...
Plato
How was Plato significant in Western Civilization? How did his writings influence ethics and politics? Reference The...
Western thought is indebted to Plato in many ways. It is known for certain that early Christian thinkers, like Augustine or Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite, read and commented on Plato. Augustine...
Plato
What was Plato's key contribution to metaphysics?
PLato's main contributions to metaphysics were mind-body dualism, the theory of forms, and the notion of a hierarchy of being. In his early dialogues, the characters search for the essences...
Plato
Explain the nature and importance of Plato’s theory of forms to a friend or a family member who is unfamiliar with...
Plato's theory of forms says that everything on earth is an imperfect imitation of an ideal object. That ideal objects that we imitate exist outside of time and space in a perfect realm. Perhaps...
Plato
What is a summary of Crito by Plato.
In the Crito, one of Socrates' friends visit him in prison and beg him to escape since he has been sentenced to die. The dramatic setting of the Crito is a short while after the events of Plato's...
Plato
Comment on Plato's ideas of poetry and unreality.
In education, Plato put more importance on math and philosophy (and abstract ideas - Forms) than on art, poetry, and music. He believed that math and ideas were much closer to the truth while the...
Plato
Describe the practice of philosophy as defined by Socrates.
Socrates was Plato's teacher and became the central philosophical figure in many of Plato's writings. Socrates wrote nothing himself, so most of what we know of him comes from Plato's writing....
Plato
What does "Remembered the soul's history" mean?
In many religious and philosophical traditions, the soul is considered to have some form of existence independent of the body. While in some religious systems (Christianity and Islam, for example),...
Plato
Why should we agree with view of Plato's on poetry and poet ?
I am not so sure that we should agree with Plato. As you probably know Plato is pretty harsh when it comes to poets. Let me give you Plato's rationale and then answer why we should agree or...
Plato
How does Plato in Gorgias argue against Callicles' position that 'justice is the right of the stronger'/ 'might makes...
In response to the argument of Callicles that any notion of justice is man-made and therefore false as it is an artificial law and not a natural one, Socrates, the voice of Plato in this text,...
Plato
What is the meaning of Aristophanes's speech from Plato's Symposium?
Aristophanes was the most famous comic poet of ancient Greece and author of The Clouds, a play about Socrates that is actually mentioned in Plato's Apology as having been brought forward as...
Plato
What is the relation between poetry and unreality by Plato? literary criticism
Plato's fundamental belief is that all endeavors must strive to reveal the essence of "the form" or ideal of truth. To that end, poetry's construction of illusion or a version of truth that does...
Plato
What is Plato's view on mimesis?
Plato's view of mimesis is essentially that it is seductive yet meretricious and dangerous. In Ion, Socrates (whose views appear to be identical to those of the author) discusses poetry with the...
Plato
What are the main arguments Socrates makes in Plato's Phaedo concerning fear of death?
Plato's Phaedo protrays the actual death of Socrates. It is a conversation Socrates has with his followers. At the beginning of the dialogue, Socrates drinks the poison hemlock. During the course...
Plato
Who was Plato?
One of the most respected philosophers in history, and a noteworthy figure of his time in ancient Greece, Plato's writings continue to be studied thousands of years after his death. His...
Plato
Plato & Aristotle . How did they differ? please some one answer.
Jung suggests that Plato was an introvert and Aristotle an extravert, although both were thinkers. Plato was more interested in his own subjective ideas and thought he could derive truths from...
Plato
Summarize the reasons Crito gives for thinking that Socrates should escape In Plato's dialogue of the same name. Do...
Crito gives four main reasons for his desire to help Socrates to escape. First, Crito states that it would reflect badly on Socrates' friends, as if they did nothing to help him. Second, Crito says...
Plato
Why is literature trivial, false, and useless according to Plato?
Plato doesn't think that all literature is trivial, false, and useless. He has no objection to morally uplifting poems that teach the citizens of his ideal republic how to behave themselves. And...
Plato
Explain Plato's conception of philosophy by isolating and weaving together passages that explicitly and implicitly...
Plato's concept of philosophy centers on questioning and interrogation. One of the main tenets of his philosophy is its ability to withstand withering scrutiny. As Socrates says in Apologia, "I...
Plato
A biologist discovered a new organism and classified it as a mollusk after studying its characteristics. As a...
In his dialogue entitled Philebus, Plato discusses the merits of a life devoted to study and contemplation versus a life devoted to seeking physical pleasure, or "hedonism." In contrasting the two,...
Plato
What are Plato's views and statements on mankind?
Plato makes some pretty profound statements about man. In one of his late Dialogues named Statesman, he uses the voice of the Stranger to make an astonishing claim: that man is essentially a...
Plato
Did Socrates imagine philosopher-kings to be rhetoricians or very eloquent?
The first thing to consider is that we do not know what Socrates as an historical figure thought about the issue, only what the Socrates character in various Platonic dialogues said as he took part...
Plato
Ethics and epistemology. How do either or both of these relate to the Allegory of the Cave?
First, we should briefly mention what the allegory of the cave is. The allegory of the cave is found in Plato's Republic 514-520. In this illustration, Plato is saying that the default mode of...
Plato
What were Plato's worries?
Plato certainly worried about governments censoring intellectuals. This he discusses in The Apology (or just Apology) in which he defends Socrates who had been charged with corrupting the youth of...
Plato
How do I create my own socratic dialogue between myself and Socrates? I have to type a 2 page paper having a socratic...
A dialogue between Socrates and anyone involved Socrates asking lots of questions as he forced his partner in conversation to clarify his/her thinking, explain exactly what he thought, and explore...
Plato
Give an analysis of the teaching methods that Plato proposed.
In his dialog Meno, Plato puts forward—through Socrates, as always—the notion of anamnesis, or recollection. Plato believes that when we are born we already possess knowledge. This is because true...
Plato
What did Plato think about government?
Plato's views on government can be found in the Republic as well as the Laws; however, it is only in the Republic that he considers a range of different regimes. In book IV, he tells us that the...
Plato
Discuss the theory of knowledge by Plato.
According to Plato, knowledge isn't learned, it is simply recalled. Because Plato believes in reincarnation, he does not believe that souls must gain knowledge after their birth, but rather that...
Plato
What is a philosopher and why is the philosopher the best ruler?
A part of Plato's Republic deals with the question of who would make the ideal ruler. In the Republic, the philosopher is the person who can see past the appearance of things and get at their...
Plato
What did Plato believe in?
Well...this is a very general question. But I think one way to answer this question is that he was a rationalist. This means that he believed that ideas were very real, more real that objects...
Plato
What is the thematic content from Plato's "Allegory of the Cave"?
The theme of this famous allegory is that our perception of reality is limited by our point of view, in fact that any perception is a limited one. Socially, it can be extended thematically to...
Plato
Do you find persuasive Crito's argument that Socrates should escape from prison in Plato's dialogue of the same name?
In short, Crito appeals to Socrates based on friendship, philosophy, and family to consider escaping from prison. Crito fails. In my opinion, Crito was very unpersuasive for two reasons. First,...
Plato
What does Plato mean when he says literature is false, trivial, and useless?
To be sure, Plato isn't against literature per se. After all, he himself was a great literary stylist who, in his numerous written dialogues, made philosophy come to life in a way that few others...
Plato
Critically comment on 'poetry and unreality' by Plato.
Plato believed that teaching people virtue was most important. All of the Greek philosophers believed that poetry "imitate the order and harmony of nature." They also thought that the aims of...
Plato
In Plato's Gorgias, what is the evidence of how Plato proves his position against Callicles or why does he not prove...
Callicles in this text argued for a complete lack of morality and for self-serving interest, a world in which the powerful could do what they want because justice was just a sham to be seen through...
Plato
Please provide an extended and detailed summary of the first chapter "Mimesis: Plato and the Poet" in Pelagia...
As the subtitle suggests, Pelagia Goulimari’s first chapter centers on Plato. If you’re wondering why Goulimari starts her book on literary theory with a detailed review of Plato, it’s probably...
Plato
Discuss the ideas of poetry and unreality in Plato's writings.
Plato favored a doctrine relating to the immortality of the "soul" and he developed an idea called "the theory of Forms." Taking the form of written dialogues, he presented accounts relating to...
Plato
What is the notion of justice for Plato?
Plato discusses justice at great length in several dialogues including Apology, Laws, Republic, and Gorgias. His views of justice are generally concerned with what is called eudaimonia, or "living...
Plato
What is the most authoritative art and why? Would Plato agree? What are the highest forms of beauty, and why is...
The art you think most authoritative will not necessarily be the one you like best, and you will need to justify your answer. Arthur Schopenhauer and Walter Pater both called music the highest of...
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