Essay/Term paper: Plato

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Miscellaneous

Plato.

By Michael McDaniel



Plato was the best known of all the great Greek philosophers. Plato"s

original name was Aristocles, but in his school days he was nicknamed Platon

(meaning "broad") because of his broad shoulders. Born in Athens circa B.C.

427, Plato saught out political status. But during the Athenian democracy, he did

not activly embrace it. Plato devoted his life to Socrates, and became his

disciple in B.C. 409. Plato was outraged when Socarates was executed by the

Athenian democrats in B.C. 399. He later left Athens convinced democracy

wouldn"t make it.



Years after Plato romed the Greek cities in Africa and Italy absorbing

philosphical knowledge and then returning to Athens in B.C. 387. There he later

created the first University on the ground of famous Greek Academus, which was

later called the Academy. He remained at the Academy for the remainder of his

life omitting 2 brief periods. He visited Syracuse and Greek Sicily to serve as a

tutor for the new king, Dionysis II. Which ended out very badly when the King

acted like a king, instead of a philospher. Perhaps Plato"s worse student.



He later returned to Athens and died in his early 80"s, circa B.C. 347.

Plato"s work is argueably the most popular and influential of it"s kind ever

published. His most popular work are transcripts, or dialogues between the great

Socrates and himself. These dialogues are the basis of our general knowlege

between Socrates" views and Plato"s views.



Plato was much like Socrates, in that he was mostly interested in moral

philosophy and overlooked science [natural philosophy]. He considered the

natural science as an inferior knowledge, not worthy of his time.



Plato loved mathematics mainly because, back then, it idealized

abstractions and seperated from the material world. Plato thought mathematics

was the purest form of thoughts, and had nothing to do with everyday life. That

doesn"t nessacarily apply to the matters of today. Plato belived in mathematics

so much that he sketched a quote above the doorway of the Academy that

stated, "Let no one ignorant of mathematics enter here."



Plato believed that mathematics, in ideal form, could be applied to the

heavens. He expresses this in his dialogue of Timaeus, his scheme of the

universe.



In his dialogue Timaeus Plato creates a fictioinal tale of Atlantis to put a

moralistic spin in the dialogue. Atlantis, as we all know, is the fictional city of

which everyone and everything was moraly perfect. Needless to say, people

today still think that the city of Atlantis exsisted, even though the theory isn"t

moot.

Today, Plato"s work still influences us. The Academy stood teaching until

A.D. 529, when the Roman Emperor, Justinian ordered the close of it. Even

though he was paganist, Christians [like yourself] were influenced and

entertained by the wonderful dialogues of Socrates and Plato.