what do u know about plato?

Question

I am doing a school project on him...do u guys have any good info i can use?

Answer 1

He was Mickey Mouse's dog.

Answer 2

His name sounds like play-doh. And also rhymes with tomato.

I actually know quite a bit about Plato, but I think it would be wise if you did your own research on him. Afterall, this IS the point of the assignment, right?

Hint: wikipedia....

Answer 3

He was greatly influenced by Socrates, who many believe was also his teacher.

Answer 4

he was a philosopher

Answer 5

Πλάτων, Plátōn, "wide, broad-shouldered") (c. 428/427 BC[a]–c. 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher, the second of the great trio of ancient Greeks–Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle–who between them laid the philosophical foundations of Western culture.[1] Plato was also a mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world.[verification needed] Plato is widely believed to have been a student of Socrates and to have been deeply influenced by his teacher's execution.

Plato's brilliance as a writer and thinker can be witnessed by reading his Socratic dialogues. Some of the works that are ascribed to him, including some dialogues, letters, and law-books are considered spurious.[verification needed] Plato is thought to have lectured at the Academy, although the pedagogical function of his dialogues, if any, is not known.

BIrth and family

The exact birthdate of Plato is unknown. Based on ancient sources, most modern scholars estimate that he was born in Athens or Aegina[b] between 428 and 427 BC.[a] His father was Ariston, the son of Aristocles, of the deme of Colytus. According to a disputed tradition, reported by Diogenes Laertius, Ariston traced his descent from the king of Athens, Codrus, and the king of Messenia, Melanthus.[3] Plato's mother was Perictione, whose family boasted of a relationship with the famous Athenian lawmaker and lyric poet Solon.[4] Perictione was sister of Charmides and Critias, both prominent figures of the Thirty Tyrants, the brief oligarchic regime, which followed on the collapse of Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian war (404-403 BC).[5] Besides Plato himself, Ariston and Perictione had three other children; these were two sons, Adeimantus and Glaucon, and a daughter, Potone, the mother of Speusippus (the nephew and successor of Plato as head of his philosophical Academy).[5] According to the Republic, Adeimantus and Glaucon were older than Plato.[6] Nevertheless, in his Memorabilia, Xenophon presents Glaucon as younger than Plato.[7]

According to certain fabulous reports of ancient writers, Plato' s mother became pregnant through a virginal conception: Ariston tried to force his attentions on Perictione, but failed of his purpose; then the ancient Greek god Apollo appeared to him in a vision, and, as a result of it, Ariston left Perictione unmolested.[8] Another legend related that, while he was sleeping as an infant, bees had settled on the lips of Plato; an augury of the sweetness of style in which he would discourse philosophy.[9]

Ariston appears to have died in Plato's childhood, although the precise dating of his death is difficult.[10] Perictione then married Pyrilampes, her mother's brother,[11] who had served many times as an ambassador to the Persian court and was a friend of Pericles, the leader of the democratic faction in Athens.[12] Pyrilampes had a son from a previous marriage, Demus, who was famous for his beauty.[13] Perictione gave birth to Pyrilampes' second son, Antiphon, the half-brother of Plato, who appears in Parmenides.[14]

In contrast to his reticence about himself, Plato used to introduce his distinguished relatives into his dialogues, or to mention them with some precision: Charmides has one named after him; Critias speaks in both Charmides and Protagoras; Adeimantus and Glaucon take prominent parts in the Republic.[15] From these and other references one can reconstruct his family tree, and this suggests a considerable amount of family pride. According to Burnet, "the opening scene of the Charmides is a glorification of the whole [family] connection ... Plato's dialogues are not only a memorial to Socrates, but also the happier days of his own family".[16]

[edit] Name

According to Diogenes, the philosopher was named after his grandfather Aristocles, but his wrestling coach, Ariston of Argos, dubbed him "Platon", meaning "broad" on account of his robust figure.[17] According to the sources mentioned by Diogenes (all dating from the Alexandrian period), Plato derived his name from the breadth (platutês) of his eloquence, or else because he was very wide (platus) across the forehead.[18] In the 21th century some scholars disputed Diogenes, and argued that the legend about his name being Aristocles originated in the Hellenistic age.[c]

[edit] Education

Apuleius informs us that Speusippus praised Plato's quickness of mind and modesty as a boy, and the "firstfruits of his youth infused with hard work and love of study".[19] Plato must have been instructed in grammar, music, and gymnastics by the most distinguished teachers of his time.[20] Dicaearchus went so far as to say that Plato wrestled at the Isthmian games.[21] Plato had also attended courses of philosopy; before meeting Socrates, he first became acquainted with Cratylus (a disciple of Heraclitus, a prominent pre-Socratic Greek philosopher) and the Heraclitean doctrines.[22]

[edit] Later life

Plato 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 which was once the property of a citizen at Athens named Academus... some, however, say that it received its name from an ancient hero" (Robinson, Arch. Graec. I i 16), and it operated until 529 AD, when it was closed 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.

[edit] Plato's Dialogues

Plato's dialogues are written in the form of a conversation between Socrates and one or several characters. Plato sets a great variety of characters, young and old, obscure and well-known, foreign and Athenian, up against Socrates. The dialogues often employ actual historical figures from the late fifth and early fourth centuries BC as characters. Well known sophists, political and military figures, businessmen and soothsayers, as well as writers and thinkers of every type— orators, poets, playwrights, speechwriters, and philosophers — participate directly or indirectly as characters in the dialogues. Along with Homer's epic poems, Plato's dialogues are perhaps the single more important Greek contribution to the Western classics.

Plato often depicts Socrates in intellectual combat with self-important men who over-sell their talents. For example, the sophists Protagoras, Gorgias, and Hippias, are depicted as know-it-alls in their namesake dialogues, Meno is a self-appointed moralist who owns a drove of slaves, as much in love with himself as with Homer, and Euthyphro a soothsayer who thinks that his own behavior to be almost divine.

In many dialogues, Socrates is found defending outrageous claims that he readily admits no one will accept. He argues that evil should never be resisted (Crito), that voluntary lies are better than "involuntary" lies (Lesser Hippias), that evil doers should go unpunished (Gorgias), that male-female love is lewd and that man-boy love is pure and that a woman told him this (Symposium), that the best poetry has the worst effects upon the soul (Republic), that death is better than life and nothing to fear and that the psyche is immortal (Apology, Phaedo), that piety has nothing to do with the gods (Euthyphro), that writing is a bad invention (Phaedrus), that the best way to capture a love object is to destroy his self-confidence (Lysis), that knowledge is recollection (Meno, Theaetetus, Phaedo), that good character has nothing to do with good parenting (Protagoras, Meno). The opinions Socrates promotes range from unpopular and unintuitive to immoral and absurd, but they are rarely dull.

Socrates is believed to have been an actual living personage, but how much of any given dialogue is historically accurate is heavily disputed. Socrates himself did not write anything, and no objective (non-literary) record of his life and/or philosophy exists. Besides Plato's dialogues, only two other sources of information about Socrates are still in existence, and these raise more questions than they resolve. The celebrated comic playwright Aristophanes refers disparagingly to Socrates in several dialogues, and in one play, The Clouds, he is a lead character, a bamboozler-sophist who is head of an ancient think tank that teaches immoral logic. The third source is the works of Xenophon, whose Socratic dialogues are not thought to provide insight into the Socratic problem: who was Socrates?, what exactly did he teach and to whom?, and what was his relation to Plato?