Plato
The exact place and time of Plato's birth are not known, but it is certain that he belonged to an aristocratic and influential family. Bad on ancient sources, most modern scholars believe that he was born in Athens or Aegina between 429 and 423 BC. His father was Ariston. Plato's mother was Perictione, who family boasted of a relationship with the famous Athenian lawmaker and lyric poet Solon. Besides Plato himlf, Ariston and Perictione had three other children; the were two sons, Adeimantus and Glaucon, and a daughter Potone. The traditional date of Plato's birth is 428/427. Plato's father appears to have died in Plato's childhood, although the preci dating of his death is difficult. Perictione then married Pyrilampes, her mother's brother, who had rved many times as an ambassador to the Persian court and was a friend of Pericles, the leader of the democratic faction in Athens.
Apuleius informs us that Speusippus praid Plato's quickness of mind and modesty as a boy, and the "first fruits of his youth infud with hard work and love of study". Plato must h
ave been instructed in grammar, music, and gymnastics by the most distinguished teachers of his time. Dicaearchus went so far as to say that Plato wrestled at the Isthmian games. Plato had also attended cours of philosophy; before meeting Socrates, he first became acquainted with Cratylus (a disciple of Heraclitus, a prominent pre-Socratic Greek philosopher) and the Heraclitean doctrines.
In Plato’s later life, he may have traveled in Italy, Sicily, Egypt and Cyrene. Said to have returned to Athens at the age of forty, Plato founded one of the earliest known organized schools in Western Civilization on a plot of land in the Grove of Hecademus or Academus. The Academy was "a large enclosure of ground that was once the property of a citizen at Athens named Academus. The Academy operated until it was destroyed by Lucius Cornelius Sulla in 84 BC. Neoplatonists revived the Academy in the early 5th century, and it operated until AD 529, when it was clod by Justinian I of Byzantium, who saw it as a threat to the propagation of Christianity. Many intellectuals were schooled in the Academy, the most prominent one being Aristotle.
Throughout his later life, Plato became entangled with the politics of the city of Syracu. According to Diogenes Laertius, Plato initially visited Syracu while it was under the rule of Dionysus. During this first trip Dionysus's brother-in-law, Dion of Syracu, became one of Plato's disciples, but the tyrant himlf turned against Plato. Plato was sold into slavery and almost faced death in Cyrene, a city at war with Athens, before an admirer bought Plato's freedom and nt him home. After Dionysius's death, according to Plato's Seventh Letter, Dion requested Plato return to Syracu to tutor Dionysus II and guide him to become a philosopher king. Dionysius II emed to accept Plato's teachings, but he became suspicious of Dion, his uncle. Dionysus expelled Dion and kept Plato against his will. Eventually Plato left Syracu. Dion would return to overthrow Dionysus and ruled Syracu for a short time before being usurped by Calippus, a fellow disciple of Plato.
A variety of sources have given accounts of Plato's death. One story, bad on a mutilated manuscript, suggests Plato died in his bed, whilst a young Thracian girl played the flute to him. Another tradition suggests Plato died at a wedding feast. The account is
bad on Diogenes Laertius's reference to an account by Hermippus, a third century Alexandrian. According to Tertullian, Plato simply died in his sleep.
Unlike his beloved mentor Socrates, who wrote nothing, Plato was a prolific writer. He produced more than two dozen dialogues that cover nearly every topic. Their impact upon Western thought has been so great that the twentieth-century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called the entire history of Western philosophy “a ries of footnotes to Plato.”
Nowadays, more and more people admire Plato. Plato is Classical Greek philosopher. The most important matters in Plato's philosophy are: first, his Utopia, which was the earliest of a long ries; cond, his theory of ideas, which was a pioneer attempt to deal with the still unsolved problem of universals; third, his arguments in favor of immortality; fourth, his cosmogony; fifth, his conception of knowledge as reminiscence rather than perception.
Let us first describe Plato's Utopia in its broad outlines. The main problem, as Plato perce
ives, is to insure that the guardians (Plato begins by deciding that the citizens are to be divided into three class: the common people, the soldiers, and the guardians.) shall carry out the intentions of the legislator. For this purpo he has various proposals, educational, economic, biological, and religious. The first thing to consider is education. This is divided into two parts, music and gymnastics. As for economics: Plato propos a thoroughgoing communism for the guardians. Plato thought both wealth and poverty are harmful. I come last to the theological aspect of the system. Plato is fight in thinking that belief in this myth could be generated in two generations. In general, Plato's "Utopia" involved in all aspects of ideology, philosophy, ethics, education, literature and art, politics and so on. Ideal is to discuss the country's problems. He said that the state is larger than the individual, the individual is to reduce the country. Have three qualities: wisdom, courage and restraint.
