Plato

(427 – 347 BC)

Athenian Greek philosopher of the Classical period. He was a pupil of Socrates and is largely responsible for writing down his teacher’s philosophy in dialogues. Because of his authorship, it is difficult to distinguish between his philosophy and that of his teacher (see the Socratic problem).

He founded the first university – the Academy – where students read and discussed the Socratic dialogues he had written.

His most famous and important work is the Republic (c.380-370). It is written as a Socratic dialogue, where Plato has his teacher talk with various people in Athens about justice, truth, nature of reality, immortality of the soul, arts, and much more.

Allegory of the Cave is of the most important and famous ideas of Plato’s philosophy presented in the Republic. In the allegory, Plato presents the following vision:

Imagine prisoners in a cave, chained in such a way that they face the cave walls, while a fireburns behind them. Between the prisoners and the fire, people are walking past with objects, and these objects cast shadows on the wall. The prisoners don’t see each other, only the shadows of objects. Because this is all they ever see in their lives, they think the shadows are real – but they are not accurate representations of the world, only a fragment of reality (what we usually see/perceive with our senses).
Plato imagines that one prisoner manages to break free and escape from the cave to the outside, real world, where he sees real objects such as trees, mountains and flowers for the first time and finally, sees the sun (allegory of enlightenment and truth). The objects he sees under the sun represent the true form of objects that can only be perceived through reason.
Plato says that the prisoner who escaped, is like a philosopher, who wants to understand and perceive higher levels of reality. He suggests that if the prisoner were to return to the cave and tell the others about the real world, and that what they think is real is only an illusion, they wouldn’t believe him and they would even get angry and try to kill him for disrupting their illusion (an allusion to the death of Socrates).

The allegory of the cave describes Plato’s Theory of Forms, which is another important aspect of his philosophy. According to Plato, the physical world is not as real or true as timeless and absolute ideas – these are called the Forms and they are the eternal truths that are the source of all reality (ie. reality = world of ideas —> cf. Aristotle).

for example, there exists an eternal idea of a ‘chair’, and every chair that exists in reality is merely a reflection of its eternal Form (like the shadow of a chair that the prisoners in the cave would see). The Form is basically the essence of the object that makes it what it is – there are millions of all kinds of different chairs in the world; some have four legs, some two and some only one, some have back-support, some don’t, some have rollers and can move around, other are fixed in one spot, etc. – yet we intuitively know that they are all a ‘chair’.
Same goes for bigger concepts, such as Beauty – there is no one definition of what is beautiful, but we immediately know when we see or experience something beautiful. In Plato’s hierarchy, there is (1) the eternal Form of Beauty, (2) the concept of Beauty we each individually have in our mind and (3) objects and entities in the world that are beautiful.

The Republic also discussed Plato’s political philosophy. He raises many objections to democracy and instead proposes a kind of aristocracy, ruled by philosopher kings. They are the most wise, virtuous and selfless, and possess both political skill and philosophical knowledge.

The Republic is probably the most influential work of philosophy and political theory ever written. Plato’s ideas deeply influenced the philosophers who came after him, even those that disagreed with him. It is even said that the entirety of Western philosophy is just a series of footnotes to the Republic.