Plato...More Than Just Fun in a Can.

Alfred North Whitehead once described the Western philosophical tradition as "a footnote to Plato."  Plato distinguished himself as one of the most important voices of his time in two ways:  (1) as the only spokesman for Socrates, and (2) as the author of a series of dialogues that ordered and preserved the philosophical knowledge of the day.   Despite his importance, there is little direct evidence of his life story; therefore much of the bibliographic information is the best guesses of historians from what little was recorded of Plato's life.  Some scholars argue that a Plato constructed a sort of biography in a work known as the VIIth Letter; other scholars doubt that the work was really written by Plato.

Plato is believed to have existed from 428 to 347 B.C.  As a child, "He presumably received the normal education of a Greek boy, learning to read and write and study the poets.  More important, he grew up in a city at war.  The Peloponnesian war, which began just before his birth, lasted until he was twenty-three and ended in defeat and humiliation for Athens."(Desmond Lee, trans.  Plato:   The Republic.  London:  Penguin, 1967.  11)

He came from an aristocratic and wealthy family, several members of which had been politically prominent on the anti-democratic side.  The victory of the democratic cause left Plato and his surviving relatives without political influence or prospects. Plato's attitude toward the leaders of the democracy -- that is the demagogues -- is what could be expected.  The account in Letter VII of the frustration of the frustration of Plato's political ideals and ambitions is likely to be true in substance.  Plato certainly saw military service in the war against Sparta.  It is probable that he belonged to the cavalry.  He was a close associate of Socrates, anyhow during the last few years of Socrates' life, which ended when Plato was about 31.  The story is quite likely true that after the execution of Socrates Plato and others of Socrates' circle found it politically expedient to take refuge in Meagra, where Euclides [Euclid]seems to have had some sort of school (Paul Edwards, Ed.  The Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  (v. 5 & 6)  NY:  Macmillan, 1967.   513.) 

Socrates trained Plato as a philosopher yet they shared as many differences as similarities:

In mental temperament [sic] Plato was of an altogether different type from Socrates.   He was a most artistic and delicate writer, and Socrates could write nothing consecutive.  He cared for beautiful things, and Socrates despised them.  He was supremely concerned with the ordering of  public affairs and the scheming of   happier human relationships, while Socrates, heedless of heat and cold and the opinion of his fellow-creatures, concentrated  his mind upon a severe disillusionment.  Life, said Socrates, was deception; only the soul lived.   Plato had a very great affection for this rugged old teacher, he found his method of  the utmost value in disentangling and clearing up  opinions, and he made him the central figure of his immortal dialogues; but his own thoughts and disposition turned him altogether away from  the skeptical attitude.  In many of the dialogues the voice is the voice of Socrates, but the thought is the thought of Plato.(H.G. Wells.  The Outline of History:  Ancient History.  NY:   Triangle, 1920.  331)

  When Socrates was executed in 399 B.C., Plato left Athens for a number of years, returning to Athens in 387 B.C. to found his own academy near the sanctuary of the hero Academus.  The details of the founding of the Academy are sketchy.  

The still prevalent idea that he founded the Academy in the early 380s rests entirely on one vague phrase in Diogenes Laertes Life of Plato, suggesting that after his travels Plato lived at the Academy.  "Academy" was the name of Plato's house, and we have nothing to indicate that Plato started his school in this house at the moment he began to reside there or even that he began to reside there immediately or soon after his return from his travels.  There is some evidence that Plato was teaching young men at the Academy before the inauguration of the school we think of as "The Academy," with the curriculum described in Book VII of the Republic (Edwards, 315).

Plato's academy is considered the first "university."  As W. H. D. Rouse explains, it is the establishment of the Academy that begins the story of the intellectual legacy of Plato:

Socrates wrote nothing himself; but, after his death, his favourite and most brilliant pupil, Plato, set up a schooll of philosophy in 386 B.C. in a place called Academy in an olive grove on the outskirts of Athens, and wrote his memories of what he had heard, and made this into a more or less  complete system, adding much of his own, no doubt, but grouping all under the name of his beloved teacher.  Plato did write his own work, and kept his records under constant revision, discussing them with his pupils.(Great Dialogues of Plato.  Trans. by W.H.D. Rouse.   NY:  Mentor, 1956.  9-10)

Plato's philosophical views have shaped much of the thought that followed in Western society.  Among his interests were political theory.  He believed that the ideal was not a government, but order.  This order should be managed by a society's best thinkers and ethicists.  Plato was also a monotheist and the tenets of his faith are reflected in his other works:

Plato believed that good people attain their reward for goodness in another world.   His blend of mystical and empirical wisdom denied scientists their place in the rational scheme of things, for, in his view of nature, phenomena should be contemplated rather than observed, measured, manipulated, and explained.  His preference for thought over action was a rejection of the Athenian world, won at great cost by the doers who established the first democracy.  To Plato, liberty meant little; poetry, even less.  He is said to have written dithyrambs and tragedies, but to have torn them up after his first meeting with Socrates.  Plato based his idealized society on a transcendant never-never land, far from the realities of war, treachery, and cups of poisonous hemlock (Mary Ellen Snodgrass.  Greek Classics.  Lincoln, NE:  Cliffs, nd.  322).

Plato's dialogues were written for a popular audience, and they are all of his works that have survived.  His academic writings, his lectures, either were not written down or have not survived the ages.  Many of the dialogues were aimed at vindicating Socrates.  In total, Plato penned 42 dialogues and 13 letters.  These works establish the corpus of his philosophy:

Plato spent the major portion of his life contemplating reality.  He deplored dogma and favored a sincere, arduous search for truth, a system which reflects his own inner questioning of the true and just path.  His conclusions about the nature of the ideal life has influenced succeeding generations of thinkers, including Aristotle, Plotinus, St. Augustine, Kant, Nietzsche, and Husserl (Snodgrass, 323).

The next pages examine Plato's philosophies with a specific focus on his views on rhetoric and literature.