Philosopher of the month: Plato

The OUP Philosophy team have selected Plato (c. 429 BC–c. 347 BC) as their February Philosopher of the Month. The best known and most widely studied of all the ancient Greek philosophers, Plato laid the groundwork for Western philosophy and Christian theology.

Plato was most likely born in Athens, to Ariston and Perictione, a noble, politically active family. Coming of age during the Peloponnesian War, Plato was educated by the ancient world’s most renowned thinkers, including Cratylus, Pythagoras, and Socrates. From c.407 BC he was a disciple of Socrates, from whom he may have derived many of his ideas about ethics. When Socrates was sentenced to death in 399 BC—as depicted in Plato’s Phaedo—Plato grew discouraged with political life and traveled to Italy, Sicily, and possibly Egypt, before returning to Athens around 387 BC where he remained for most of the rest of his life.

Shortly after his return, Plato founded the Academy of Athens—an open-air educational center generally considered the Western world’s first institution of higher learning. Admission to the Academy was granted exclusively to a small cultural elite. In Plato’s time, teaching at the Academy is thought to have consisted primarily of lectures and seminars, focusing on dialectics and mathematics. Among Plato’s many influential students at the Academy was fellow philosopher Aristotle.

Plato’s philosophical investigations took the form of dialogues, spoken mainly by Socrates, in which characters continually ask questions of one another. This form allows for the expression of various, evolving philosophic points of view. His dialogues address a broad range of subjects, including the nature of knowledge, the soul, perception, society, beauty, art, governance, and more. Plato’s dialogues are divided into early, middle, and late periods; among them are included Apology and Laws.

All of Plato‘s 36 works survive. His most famous dialogues include Gorgias (on rhetoric as an art of flattery), Phaedo (on death and the immortality of the soul) and the Symposium (a discussion on the nature of love). Plato‘s greatest work was the Republic, an extended dialogue on justice, in which he outlined his view of the ideal state.

After his death in 347 BC, educators at the Academy continued teaching Plato’s works into the Roman era. Today he is perhaps the most widely studied philosopher of all time.

Plato’s influence on Western thought is inescapable, reaching across entire fields of study—from philosophy, to linguistics, to Christian theology.

Featured image credit: Plato’s Symposium, depiction by Anselm Feuerbach. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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