Plato

Athenian philosopher (c. 428–348 BC), born into an aristocratic family of the city, a disciple of Socrates for a decade until his execution in 399 BC — an event that permanently marked his work and his distrust of the Athenian democracy that condemned his teacher — and the founder of the Academy, the first institution of higher learning in the West, active for nearly nine centuries. His nearly complete surviving work almost always takes the form of the philosophical dialogue, often featuring a literary Socrates whose relationship to the historical Socrates is a matter of ongoing scholarly debate: in the early dialogues (Apology, Crito, Euthyphro), the inquisitive, ironic spirit of the real teacher predominates; in the mature ones (The Republic, The Symposium, Phaedo, Phaedrus), the core of Plato's own philosophical system unfolds. His most enduring contribution is the theory of Forms or Ideas: beyond the changing, imperfect sensible world we perceive, there exists a world of eternal, unchanging, perfect entities — the Forms — of which sensible things are but imperfect copies or participations, and true knowledge (episteme) consists in ascending through reason from the shadows of appearances to the contemplation of these Forms, culminating in the Form of the Good, illustrated in the allegory of the cave. In The Republic he developed his political philosophy: an ideal city governed by philosopher-kings, the only ones who, through knowledge of the Forms, can discern the true common good, structured into three classes corresponding to the three parts of the soul (rational, spirited, appetitive). Plato's influence on all subsequent Western philosophy is so overwhelming that Alfred North Whitehead famously remarked, in an exaggeration containing a profound truth, that 'the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato'.

27 works

• Apology
• Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates
• Charmides
• Cratylus
• Critias
• Euthydemus
• Euthyphro
• Gorgias
• Ion
• Laches
• Laws
• Lesser Hippias
• Lysis
• Menexenus
• Meno
• Parmenides
• Phaedo
• Phaedrus
• Philebus
• Protagoras
• Sophist
• Statesman
• Symposium
• The Republic
• The works of Plato (Vol. 1 of 6) A new and literal version chiefly from the text
• Theaetetus
• Timaeus