Plato was a famous Greek philosopher born
in Athens in the year 427 B.C., and was raised
in an aristocratic family. Plato abandoned
his initial interest in politics, and developed
his passion towards literary works about philosophy
because of Socrates. Plato was Socrates' disciple
for 20 years, and openly faced the sophists.
After Socrates was sentenced to death, Plato
fled Athens and withdrew himself from public
life. However, topics regarding politics were
always at the center of his thoughts, and
he even conceived his model of what an ideal
state would be like.
He traveled through the east and south of
Italy, where he met Pythagoras' disciples.
After a negative experience in Syracuse, where
he worked as an advisor for King Dionysius
I, the Elder, he spent some time as a prisoner
of a group of pirates until he was rescued,
and could go back to Athens.
Once there, in the year 387 B.C., he founded
a philosophy school located in the outskirts
of the city, next to a garden dedicated to
the hero Acádemus, which is where the words
"academia" and "academy" come from.
Plato's Academy, a sort of sect for scholars,
organized by Plato's rules, had student dormitories,
a library, classrooms and specialized workshops.
This place established the précedent and
model for modern universities and other modern
institutions of higher education.
In Plato's Academy all sort of subjects were
the matter of study and research. This is
because back then, philosophy encompassed
all fields of knowledge.
Little by little, specialized disciplines
started to appear which would give rise to
different branches of knowledge, such as logic,
ethics and physics. The academy functioned
for more than 900 years, until Justinian ordered
to close it in 529 A.D. Important historical
figures were educated in this place, such
as Plato's disciple Aristotle.
Unlike Socrates, who did not leave any written
works behind, Plato's written works have been
conserved almost entirely. Most of them are
written as dialogues; he was the first author
that used dialogues to present philosophical
thoughts, which by itself gave rise to a brand
new cultural element.
One characteristic of the platonic style of
writing is using myths to make philosophical
thoughts more evident. Without a doubt, the
most well known of Plato's myths is the Allegory
of the Cave, used in his book The Republic.
Plato spent his final years teaching at his
academy, and died in the year 347 B.C. at
the age of 81. Plato's ideas influenced the
entire history of the western world. His dualist
conception of the world and human beings,
the superiority of rational knowledge over
sensible knowledge, and the division of society
in three functional orders: These were the
most recurrent ideas in European thought for
centuries.
Once Christianity was established as a religion,
it found in Plato many common points to support
its religious conceptions. In the 15th and
16th centuries the admiration towards ancient
philosophy, which is something that characterized
the European Renaissance, led to a comeback
of Plato's ideas.
Along with Socrates and Plato's disciple Aristotle,
Plato is the central figure of the three great
thinkers from Ancient Times!
