Plato (428 BC-347 BC) was a Greek philosopher, considered one of the main thinkers of his time.
A disciple of Socrates, he sought to convey a deep faith in reason and truth , adopting Socrates’ motto “the wise is the virtuous”.
He wrote several philosophical dialogues, including ” A República “, a work divided into ten volumes.
Plato’s Biography
Plato was born in Athens, probably in 428 BC From a noble family, he studied reading, writing, music, painting, poetry and gymnastics.
Excellent athlete, he participated in the Olympic Games as a fighter. He wanted to pursue a political career, but very early on he became a disciple of Socrates , with whom he learned to discuss the problems of knowledge of the world and human virtues.
When Socrates died, he became disillusioned with politics and devoted himself to philosophy. He decided to eternalize the teachings of the master, who had not written any books, wrote several dialogues where the main figure is Socrates .
Plato opposed Athenian democracy and abandoned his land. He traveled to Megara, where he studied geometry, went to Egypt, where he devoted himself to astronomy, in Cyrene (North Africa) he devoted himself to mathematics, in Crotona (southern Italy) he met with Pythagoras’ disciples.
These studies gave him the intellectual training necessary to formulate his own theories, deepening Socrates’ teachings and Greek philosophy .
When he returned to Athens, around 387 BC, he founded his philosophical school “Academia”, where he gathered his disciples to study Philosophy, Sciences, Mathematics and Geometry.
Such was the influence of Plato, that his Academy remained, even after his death. In 529, the Roman emperor Justinian ordered the Academy closed, but the Platonic doctrine had already been widely spread. Platonism designates Plato’s set of ideas.
Plato’s Works
Of Plato’s works, about thirty have reached our day. The most famous were written in the form of dialogue:
- Republic (ten volumes)
- Protagoras
- Apology
- Phaedrus
- Timon
- Banquet
He was engaged in a great treaty – “The Laws”, when he died, in 347 BC
The Ideal Society and Plato’s Republic
Applying his philosophy, Plato envisioned the “Republic” as an ideal society divided into three classes, taking into account the intellectual capacity of each individual.
The first layer, more attached to the needs of the body, would be in charge of the production and distribution of genres for the entire community: farmers, craftsmen and traders.
The second, more entrepreneurial class was dedicated to defense: soldiers. The upper class, capable of using reason, would be that of intellectuals, with political power, so kings would have to be chosen from among philosophers.
Plato and the Cave Myth
Plato wrote in dialogue form, in book VII of the “Republic”, the story ” myth of the cave “, where he recounts the lives of some men who, since childhood, are trapped in a cave, with a small opening through which light penetrates. .
Men spend their time looking at a back wall. Outside, on the backs of the captives, a fire glows over a hill and between it and the prisoners, men pass by carrying small statues. The shadows of these passersby are projected at the bottom of the cave.
The voices heard are attributed to the shadows themselves, for them the only reality. When one of the captives manages to escape, he realizes that he had lived in an unreal world.
Plato uses all these images to say that the world we perceive with our senses, is an illusory and confused world, it is the world of shadows.
But this sensitive reality is not the whole universe. There is a higher, spiritual, eternal realm, where what really exists is the world of ideas , which only reason can know, and which only philosophers can perceive.