History Creator / Plato

After his return from his third journey to Sicily, Plato devoted himself unremittingly to writing and teaching until his eightieth year, when, as UsefulNotes/{{Cicero}} writes, he died in the midst of his intellectual labors.

Platōn (Πλάτων, Plátōn, circa 428/427 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution of higher learning on the European continent.

Plato was born in Athens to a wealthy and aristocratic family; his father was Ariston, descended from Codrus, and his mother, Perictione, from Solon. He profited by the educational facilities afforded young men of his class in Athens. He met Socrates as a young man and studied under him, and Socrates' influence on Plato was a decisive mark in Plato's own philosophical career. Even before meeting him, Plato developed an interest in the earlier philosophers and in schemes for the betterment of political conditions in Athens. He even devoted himself to poetry at an early age, but all these interests, under the guidance of Socrates, were subsumed into the pursuit of wisdom, to which Plato firmly devoted himself.

In the early fourth century BC, Plato established the Academy in Athens, the first institution devoted to philosophical research and teaching, and the prototype of all Western universities. Creator/{{Aristotle}} was one of Plato's most notable students, but he disagreed with him on a lot of ideas, like his theory of forms and how these forms can be "separated" from material things. He also traveled extensively, notably to Sicily as a political adviser to Dionysius II, the ruler of Syracuse.

After his return from his third journey to Sicily, Plato devoted himself unremittingly to writing and teaching until his eightieth year, when, as Cicero writes, he died in the midst of his intellectual labors.

* AuthorTract: Plato's later Socratic dialogues became this over time. Early dialogues like ''Meno'' give what kind of conversations Socrates might have actually had with his interlocutors and tend to [[LeftHanging end without reaching a definitive answer]] so that those who are reading these dialogues could judge the proposed answers for themselves and come to their own conclusions. Starting with the ''Republic'' onwards, Socrates becomes a mouthpiece for Plato's philosophical musings and investigations before eventually fading into the background and disappearing.

* ''Critias'': An incomplete dialogue [[Mythopoeia about]] {{Atlantis}}.

* ''Critias'': An incomplete dialogue about {{Atlantis}}.

* ''Critias'': An incomplete dialogue about Atlantis.