Plato was born around 427 b.c. into
one of the most prominent families in Athens. As a youth, he found
himself drawn to the enigmatic figure of Socrates, an ugly man of
no particular wealth or prominence who wandered about the open places
of Athens, engaging his fellow citizens in debate. Plato was enraptured
by this peculiar man’s ability to reduce the most pompous and self-confident
aristocrats to a state of bewilderment, and he became Socrates’
student.
Plato’s family and friends expected him to pursue a political career,
but a combination of events turned him decisively away from politics
and into philosophy. He came of age during the Peloponnesian War
between Athens and Sparta, the two superpowers of the ancient Greek
world. The war ended in total defeat for Athens in 404. Sparta imposed
a dictatorship of thirty tyrants, some of whom were Plato’s relatives
and Socrates’ fellow students. The tyrants proved to be a corrupt
lot and were soon removed, and Athenian democracy was restored.
The new democratic government of Athens tried Socrates on charges
of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens, and they executed
him in 399. Prompted by the failure of his own relatives to properly
govern Athens, as well as by the failure of Athenian democracy as
evidenced by its persecution of Socrates, the young Plato turned
his back on the public life that awaited him.
Inspired by Socrates’ example, Plato turned to philosophy.
In honor of his beloved teacher, Plato wrote dialogues, recording
the kinds of conversations Socrates had in public with his fellow
Athenians. Around 388, Plato traveled to Syracuse in Sicily, where
he studied Pythagorean philosophy. Soon after his return to Athens,
he founded the Academy, where he and like-minded thinkers discussed philosophy
and mathematics. Aristotle was among the young students who came
to learn from Plato. The Academy lasted in one form or another until a.d. 527 and
has served as the prototype of the Western university system.
Plato spent the rest of his life at the Academy, except
for two more visits to Syracuse in a failed attempt to mold that
city’s young tyrant into an ideal philosopher-king. The dialogues
he wrote as a mature philosopher still mostly feature Socrates as
the protagonist, but it may well be the case that many of the views
discussed in these dialogues belong to Plato and not to the historical
Socrates. Plato died in Athens at the age of eighty, duly recognized
as one of the world’s great philosophers.
Plato was born at the tail end of one of the brightest
periods of any civilization in world history. Athens became the
most prominent of the Greek city-states after leading the defense
of Greece against the mighty armies of the Persian Empire in the
first half of the fifth century b.c., and
its large navy made Athens a prosperous trading port. The Athenians
used their wealth to build a city of architectural marvels and celebrated
their shared humanity in dramatic festivals featuring plays that
are still performed today. Though the city relied on slave labor
and treated women as second-class citizens, it was remarkably democratic.
Every male citizen had an equal say in the government of the city,
and they met regularly in a large assembly to debate policy.
The golden age of Athens came to a tragic end in the Peloponnesian
War, but Plato’s Athens of the fourth century b.c. held
on to many of its proud traditions. Throughout Plato’s life, Athens
was the cultural and intellectual center of the Greek world. People would
travel from great distances to seek fame and fortune in Athens or
to study at the feet of one wise teacher or another.
Plato lived in a transitional period, both for Athens
and for Greek civilization generally. As literacy became widespread
among the educated classes, a new kind of thinking evolved. The
Greeks started recording their history and philosophy, which allowed
them to think critically about their past and their inherited wisdom.
Religious rituals and myths about gods and titans seemed less convincing
in this new worldview, and so a whole set of traditional values fell
into doubt. Itinerant sophists traveled from city to city, preaching
that morals are relative and offering to instruct young statesmen in
the art of rhetoric and debate for a fee. Meanwhile, philosophers, no
longer satisfied by the traditional explanations offered by myths, began
searching for rational explanations of the world and our place in
it. This search gave birth to the Western study of mathematics,
science, psychology, and ethics, among other subjects.
Socrates was Plato’s greatest philosophical influence.
He taught Plato the intellectual humility of recognizing that our
supposed wisdom amounts to nothing when carefully scrutinized. To
that end, Socrates also inspired Plato by exhibiting an unprecedented
level of scrutiny to the assumptions and prejudices of his age.
Socrates’ penetrating mind always aimed at the heart of a given
matter, insisting that the people he debated with give precise definitions
of the terms they used.
The sophists used a similar question-and-answer method
that reduced their opponents to perplexity, but they did so to score
rhetorical points rather than to seek the truth. Many of these sophists, most
notably Protagoras, were respected philosophers in their own right.
Protagoras is most famous for his Measure Doctrine that “man is
the measure of all things.” He believed that truth is relative and
that whatever seems so to a person is so for that person. Plato’s investigations
of virtue aim precisely at replacing this dangerous relativism with
a solid basis for moral values.
Plato’s studies in philosophy put him in contact with
the ideas of previous generations, particularly those of Pythagoras.
Pythagoras is a semimythical figure, credited with being the first
mathematician. He had a secretive, cultlike following that worshipped
numbers and identified mathematical harmony as the basis of reality.
Plato was impressed with the power of mathematics and reportedly
once disappointed a large crowd that had come to hear him lecture
on the Good by speaking only about mathematics. Plato also inherited
the Pythagorean belief in reincarnation.
Plato tried to reconcile the opposing views of Heraclitus
and Parmenides over the question of whether everything is in flux
or whether all change is an illusion. Heraclitus advocated the former
of these two views and was famous for his claim that one could never step
into the same river twice. Parmenides and his follower Zeno believed
reality was a single, unified, unchanging being and that any appearance
of change is an illusion. Zeno formulated a perplexing series of
paradoxes to challenge anyone who believes that motion is possible.
Plato’s Theory of Forms can be understood as a synthesis of the
views of Heraclitus and Parmenides. He explains that the physical
world is inconstant and always changing, as Heraclitus supposed,
but that above the physical world is a world of Forms that is constant
and unchanging, as Parmenides supposed.
Plato’s influence would be difficult to overestimate.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that Plato is primarily responsible
for inventing what people in the West think of as “thought.” Plato
succeeded in formulating his ideas into a general approach to thought that
emphasizes dialogue, critical thinking, and an appreciation of the
power and distinctiveness of abstract ideas. The only other philosopher
who has had an influence to rival Plato’s is Aristotle, and Aristotle
cut his philosophical teeth at Plato’s Academy.
