Plato (Greek: ???t?? Pláton) (c. 427 BC – c. 347 BC) 
was an immensely influential classical Greek philosopher, student 
of Socrates, teacher of Aristotle, writer, and founder of the 
Academy in Athens.

Plato, a philodorian, lectured extensively at the Academy but he 
also wrote on many philosophical issues. His presence survives 
through his written philosophical/dramatic compositions which 
are preserved in manuscripts recovered and edited in many 
different editions and translations since the birth of the 
Humanist movement. The written corpus of Plato consists almost 
entirely of dialogues, epigrams and letters. All the known 
dialogues of Plato survive, however modern-day standard editions 
of his oeuvre generally contain dialogues considered by the 
consensus of scholars to be either suspect (e.g., Alcibiades, 
Clitophon) or probably spurious (such as Demodocus, or the 
Second Alcibiades).

The personage of Socrates often makes an appearance in the 
dialogues of Plato though it is unclear how much of the content 
and argument of any given dialogue is Socrates' point of view, 
and how much of it Plato's.

There is a prominent crater on the Moon named the Plato crater, 
in his honor.

Biography

Plato was born in Athens, into a moderately well-to-do aristocratic 
family. His father was named Ariston and his mother Perictione. 
One of Plato's ancestors, Glaucon, was one of the best-known 
members of the Athenian nobility. Plato's own real name was 
"Aristocles" however his nickname, Plato, originated from 
wrestling circles. Since Plato means "broad," it probably refers 
either to his physical appearance or to his wrestling stance 
or style.

Plato became a pupil of Socrates in his youth, and — at least 
according to his personal account — he 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 and much of his early work records his 
memories of his teacher. It is suggested that much of his 
ethical writing is in pursuit of 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 and was perhaps influential 
in Plato's conception of the Soul.

Plato founded one of the earliest known organized schools 
in Western civilization when he was 40 years old on a plot 
of land in the Grove of Academe. The Academy was "a large 
enclosure of ground which was once the property of a 
citizen at Athens named Academus... some however say that 
it received its name from an ancient hero." (Robinson, 
Arch. Graec. I i 16) and it operated until it was closed 
by Justinian I of Byzantium in AD 529. Many intellectuals 
were schooled here, the most prominent being Aristotle.

In Plato's writings 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 
objectivity — of human knowledge which foreshadow modern 
debates between Hume and Kant, or between the postmodernists 
and their opponents. Even the story of the lost city or 
continent of Atlantis came to us as an illustrative story 
told by Plato in his Timaeus and Critias.


Work

Plato wrote mainly in the form of dialogues. In the early ones 
several characters discuss a topic by asking questions of one 
another. Socrates figures prominently and a lively, more 
disorganized form of elenchos/dialectic is perceived; these 
are called the Socratic Dialogues.

But the qualities of the dialogues changed a great deal over 
the course of Plato's life. It is generally agreed that 
Plato's earlier works are more closely based on Socrates' 
thoughts, whereas his later writing increasingly breaks away 
from the views of his former teacher. In the middle dialogues, 
Socrates becomes a mouthpiece for Plato's own philosophy, and 
the question-and-answer style is more pro forma: the main 
figure represents Plato and the minor characters have little 
to say except "yes"; "of course" and "very true". The later 
dialogues read more like treatises, and Socrates is often 
absent or quiet. It is assumed that the later dialogues were 
written entirely by Plato, while some of the early dialogues 
could be transcripts of Socrates' own dialogues. The question 
which, if any, of the dialogues are truly socratic is called 
the Socratic problem.

The ostensible mise-en-scene of a dialogue distances both 
Plato and a given reader from the philosophy being discussed; 
one can choose between at least two options of perception: 
either to participate in the dialogues, in the ideas being 
discussed, or choose to see the content as expressive of 
the personalities contained within the work.

The dialogue format also allows Plato to put unpopular 
opinions in the mouth of unsympathetic characters, e.g. 
Thrasymachus in The Republic.


Plato's Metaphysics: Platonism, or realism

One of Plato's legacies, and perhaps his greatest, was his 
dualistic metaphysics, often called (in metaphysics) 
Platonism or (Exaggerated) Realism. Plato's metaphysics 
divides the world into two distinct aspects: the intelligible 
world of "forms" and the perceptual world we see around us. 
He saw the perceptual world, and the things in it, as 
imperfect copies of the intelligible forms or ideas. These 
forms are unchangeable and perfect, and are only 
comprehensible by the use of the intellect or understanding 
(i.e., a capacity of the mind that does not include 
sense-perception or imagination).This division can be found 
before Plato in Zoroaster (6th BC) philosophy which is 
called Minu (intelligence) and Giti (perceptual) worlds, as 
well as the concept of an ideal state which is Zoroaster 
called it Shahrivar (an ideal city).

In the Republic Books VI and VII, Plato used a number of 
metaphors to explain his metaphysical views: the metaphor 
of the sun, the well-known allegory of the cave, and most 
explicitly, the divided line. Taken together, these metaphors 
convey a complex and, in places, difficult theory: there is 
something called The Form of the Good (often interpreted as 
Plato's God), which is the ultimate object of knowledge and 
which as it were sheds light on all the other forms (i.e., 
universals: abstract kinds and attributes) and from which 
all other forms "emanate." The Form of the Good does this 
in somewhat the same way as the sun sheds light on or makes 
visible and "generates" things in the perceptual world. 
(See Plato's metaphor of the sun.) In the perceptual world 
the particular objects we see around us bear only a dim 
resemblance to the more ultimately real forms of Plato's 
intelligible world: it is as if we are seeing shadows of 
cut-out shapes on the walls of a cave, which are mere 
representations of the reality outside the cave, illuminated 
by the sun. (See Plato's allegory of the cave.) We can 
imagine everything in the universe represented on a line of 
increasing reality; it is divided once in the middle, and 
then once again in each of the resulting parts. The first 
division represents that between the intelligible and the 
perceptual worlds. Then there is a corresponding division 
in each of these worlds: the segment representing the 
perceptual world is divided into segments representing 
"real things" on the one hand, and shadows, reflections, 
and representations on the other. Similarly, the segment 
representing the intelligible world is divided into segments 
representing first principles and most general forms, on 
the one hand, and more derivative, "reflected" forms, on 
the other. (See the divided line of Plato.) The form of 
government derived from this philosophy turns out to be 
one of a rigidly fixed hierarchy of hereditary classes, in 
which the arts are mostly suppressed for the good of the 
state, the size of the city and its social classes is 
determined by mathematical formula, and eugenic measures are 
applied secretly by rigging the lotteries in which the right 
to reproduce is allocated. The tightness of connection of 
such government to the lofty and original philosophy in the 
book has been debated.

Plato's metaphysics, and particularly the dualism between 
the intelligible and the perceptual, would inspire later 
Neoplatonic thinkers (see Plotinus and Gnosticism) and other 
metaphysical realists. For more on Platonic realism in 
general, see Platonic realism and the Forms.

Plato also had some influential opinions on the nature of 
knowledge and learning which he propounded in the Meno, 
which began with the question of whether virtue can be 
taught, and proceeded to expound the concepts of recollection, 
learning as the discovery of pre-existing knowledge, and 
right opinion, opinions which are correct but have no 
clear justification (see Platonic epistemology).


A short history of Plato scholarship

Plato's thought is often compared with that of his best and 
most famous student, Aristotle, whose reputation during the 
western Middle Ages so completely eclipsed that of Plato 
that the Scholastic philosophers referred to Aristotle as 
"the Philosopher." Contrarily, in the Byzantine Empire the 
study of Plato continued.

One of the characteristics of the Middle Ages was reliance 
on authority and on scholastic commentaries on writings of 
Plato and other historically important philosophers, rather 
than accessing their original works. In fact, Plato's 
original writings were essentially lost to western 
civilization until their reintroduction in the twelfth 
century through the Persian and Arab scholars. These 
scholars not only maintained the original Greek texts of 
the ancients, but expanded them by writing extensive 
commentaries and interpretations on Plato's and Aristotle's 
works (see Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes). These were 
eventually translated into Latin and later into the local 
vernacular.

Only in the Renaissance, with the general resurgence of 
interest in classical civilization, did knowledge of 
Plato's philosophy become more widespread again in the 
West. Many of the greatest early modern scientists and 
artists who broke with Scholasticism and fostered the 
flowering of the Renaissance, with the support of the 
Plato-inspired Lorenzo de Medici, saw Plato's philosophy 
as the basis for progress in the arts and sciences. By 
the 19th century Plato's reputation was restored and at 
least on par with Aristotle's.

Notable Western philosophers have continued to examine 
Plato's work since that time, diverging from traditional 
academic approaches with their own philosophy as a basis. 
Nietzsche attacked Plato's moral and political theories, 
Heidegger expounded on Plato's obfuscation of Being, and 
Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), 
argued that Plato's proposal for a government system in 
the dialogue The Republic was prototypically totalitarian. 
While many critics reject such readings on a variety of 
grounds, they remain widely discussed.


Bibliography

Below is a list of works by Plato, marked (1) if scholars 
don't generally agree that Plato is the author, and (2) if 
scholars generally agree that Plato is not the author of 
the work. Most of the works are widely available in 
paperback, either individually or in collections and 
anthologies. The works are traditionally arranged according 
to tetralogies ascribed to an ancient scholar and court 
astrologer to Tiberius named Thrasyllus by Diogenes Laertius.

    * I. Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo
    * II. Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman
    * III. Parmenides, Philebus, Symposium, Phaedrus
    * IV. First Alcibiades (1), Second Alcibiades (2), 
    Hipparchus (2), Rival Lovers (2)
    * V. Theages (2), Charmides, Laches, Lysis
    * VI. Euthydemus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno
    * VII. Greater Hippias (1), Lesser Hippias, Ion, Menexenus
    * VIII. Clitophon (1), Republic, Timaeus, Critias
    * IX. Minos (2), Laws, Epinomis (2), Letters ((1) for some)

The remaining works were transmitted under Plato's name, but 
were considered spurious in antiquity:

    * Axiochus (2), Definitions (2), Demodocus (2), Epigrams 
    (Plato), Eryxias (2), Halcyon (2), On Justice (2), On 
    Virtue (2), Sisyphus (2)

The most complete translations of Plato's extant works into 
English, still in print, are

    * The Collected Dialogues of Plato (Bollingen Series 
    LXXI), edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, 
    1961
    * Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper and 
    D. S. Hutchinson, 1997

Oxford University Press publishes scholarly editions of 
Plato's Greek texts in the Oxford Classical Texts series, 
and some translations in the Clarendon Plato Series. The 
hardbound series Loeb Classical Library, published by Harvard 
University Press, publishes Plato's extant works in Greek, 
with English translations on facing pages. Their volumes 
are listed below:

    * Volume I. Euthyphro. Apology. Crito. Phaedo. Phaedrus 
    ISBN 0-674-99040-4
    * Volume II. Laches. Protagoras. Meno. Euthydemus 
    ISBN 0-674-99183-4
    * Volume III. Lysis. Symposium. Gorgias 
    ISBN 0-674-99184-2
    * Volume IV. Cratylus. Parmenides. Greater Hippias. 
    Lesser Hippias ISBN 0-674-99185-0
    * Volume V. The Republic, Books 1-5 ISBN 0-674-99262-8
    * Volume VI. The Republic, Books 6-10 ISBN 0-674-99304-7
    * Volume VII. Theaetetus. Sophist ISBN 0-674-99137-0
    * Volume VIII. Statesman. Philebus. Ion ISBN 0-674-99182-6
    * Volume IX. Timaeus. Critias. Cleitophon. Menexenus. 
    Epistles ISBN 0-674-99257-1
    * Volume X. Laws, Books 1-6 ISBN 0-674-99206-7
    * Volume XI. Laws, Books 7-12 ISBN 0-674-99211-3
    * Volume XII. Charmides. Alcibiades 1 & 2. Hipparchus. 
    The Lovers. Theages. Minos. Epinomis ISBN 0-674-99221-0