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Plato
In The Republic, Plato outlines his views of what makes good governance. Plato saw problems that could arise with monarchies, oligarchies, and democracies. Out of the three, Plato was the most...
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Plato
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...
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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...
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Plato
Plato is one of the most important figures in western civilization. There are so many ways this can be seen. Let me give you one important way. Early Christianity was greatly influenced by...
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Plato
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...
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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...
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Plato
Plato divides the soul into the appetites, the spirited part, and the mind. The appetites represent our desires, physical needs, and comforts, while the spirited parts represent the pieces of us...
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Plato
In the dialogue Parmenides, Plato critiques his own theory of forms in the following manner. Suppose we have a form such as largeness (the instance suggested by Parmenides in the dialogue) or...
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Plato
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...
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Plato
Plato was concerned with poetry as a moral influence on the public good. He did not favor encouraging ordinary people to imagine other realities. Instead, he promoted the recording of factual...
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Plato
One of Plato's ideas that I find of particular relevance today is the role of the father and son. He seemed to insinuate that the son's life success is dependent on the father's influence,...
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Plato
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,...
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Plato
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...
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Plato
Metaphysics means "above" physics. Although Plato was preceded by other metaphysical philosophers, most directly by Paramenides, I consider him to be THE classical/ancient metaphysical philosopher,...
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Plato
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,...
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Plato
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...
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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...
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Plato
Plato was not a democrat. He did not believe that all people are equal or that the people are able to know best how to govern themselves. Instead, his ideal form of government was one in which...
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Plato
The Crito is one of Plato's shorter dialogues, which deals with the days before Socrates's execution. Crito, one of Socrates's disciples comes to persuade him to escape from prison in view of his...
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Plato
Aristotle was a student in the Platonic Academy in Athens for over 20 years before moving on to found his own school after Plato's death. Artistotle's teaching career, in fact, started when he...
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Plato
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...
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Plato
Very interesting question and the answer is rather long and complex, but here are a few ideas to get you started. Plato saw Philosophy to be opposed to Poetry and Rhetoric. In fact, he alludes to...
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Plato
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...
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Plato
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...
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Plato
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,...
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Plato
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...
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Plato
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...
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Plato
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...
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Plato
Plato was one of the greatest minds of our world. He was a Greek philosopher, mathematician, political theorist, and the founder of the Academy in Athens - arguably the first institution of higher...
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Plato
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...
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Plato
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...
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Plato
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...
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Plato
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...
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Plato
If we look at Plato's dialogues, it is clear that Socrates desired to make a political impact among the Athenians. For example, Socrates states that his mission was to be a gadfly to cause the...
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Plato
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....
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Plato
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...
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Plato
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...
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Plato
A discussion of the theories of society of Plato and Aristotle actually has two components, analysis of how they thought real societies actually operated and how they thought an ideal society...
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Plato
Plato notes that the soul has three functions: it is used for desire (of material things perceived by the senses), emotion (used for social interaction), and reason (which is aimed at seeking...
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Plato
What is the question here? Are you asking about whether one perceives a truth in poetry that is much more than a literal fact and so approximates to Plato's explanation of the ideal form? I can try...
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Plato
According to Plato, we ought to live a life in accordance with virtue or excellence. This, for him, is the life of complete happiness (eudaimonia). The cardinal virtues as identified by him were...
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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...
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Plato
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...
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Plato
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...
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Plato
Plato believed in justice as the ultimate foundation of life, particularly for government. It was through the pursuit of justice that he believed all of the many and different groups present in his...
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Plato
A neuron is a nerve cell that transmits impulses. Exactly how many neurons are in the human brain is a bit variable depending on the source. I have seen some sources stating that the human brain...
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Plato
I would argue that Aristotle improves some of Plato's philosophy but that he also causes some problems with his theories about science. First, Aristotle certainly makes Plato's ideas more...
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Plato
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...
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Plato
Plato explicitly states in the Republic that the ideal city described should not be interpreted as a model for an actual city, but rather as a way of discussing the soul by examining it through a...
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Plato
The Platonic dialogues are the writings in which Plato lays out his philosophy. They are called dialogues because they are written as a series of conversations as opposed to simple treatises on...