Plato Western Philosopher
Antiquity
Birth:427 BC. AD (Athens)
Death:348 BC. (Athens)
School/tradition:Academy
Main interests:Politics, Rhetoric, Theory of knowledge
Remarkable ideas:Dialectics, Reminiscence, Realism of Ideas, Knowledge as true belief provided with reason
Influenced by:Pythagoras - Archytas of Taranto - Democritus - Parmenides -Heraclitus - Socrates
Influenced:Almost all Western philosophers
Plato (in ancient Greek / Plátôn, Athens, 427 BC / 348 BC) is a Greek philosopher, disciple of Socrates. Nicknamed the "divine Plato", he is often considered one of the first great philosophers of Western philosophy. As Alfred North Whitehead famously put it, “The surest overall description of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of annotations to Plato. .
Platonic philosophy is characterized by its extreme richness. It feels like there are no issues or questions that Plato hasn't already raised. Plato turned to political philosophy as well as to moral philosophy, the theory of knowledge, cosmology or aesthetics. His positions are still often discussed or defended by contemporary philosophy. Karl Popper criticized "Plato's communism" in the middle of the 20th century, while Platonism is a position that has been defended today by both Frege and Russell.
Plato's life is not well known; as with many other ancient philosophers, it is often difficult to distinguish between what is history, legend, or just gossip.
He was born under the archonship of Aminias, on May 7, the anniversary of the birth of Apollo (according to Diogenes Laertius, legend makes this god the father of the philosopher) in Athens in the deme of Collytos in 428/427 and died there around 348 in a wedding feast. He belonged to an aristocratic family:his father, Ariston, claimed descent from the last king of Athens (Codros), and his mother, Perictione, descended from a certain Dropides, close to Solon. She was also the cousin of Critias, one of the Thirty Tyrants.
Favorinus, in his Universal History[2], has Plato born in the house of Phidiades, son of Thaïes, in Aegina where his father had received a plot of land, when the Athenians had decided to expel the inhabitants of the island , and to send a colony there. Chronology does not make this tradition impossible; only it obliges us to admit that Plato was born in the very year in which this colonization took place. However, the historian adds that his father Ariston only returned to Athens when the victorious Lacedaemonians re-established the Aeginetes in possession of their island and had driven out the invaders, that is to say at a time when Plato was twenty-six years, and, as this detail in no way agrees with what we know of the education of our philosopher, whose masters lived in Athens, we generally prefer to reject the whole story of Favorinus, and follow that of Apollodorus, who places the place of birth in Athens, or at least in the deme of Collyte, located a quarter of an hour's walk from the city. The date is even less certain:it is usually fixed at the third year of the 87th Olympiad, on the 7th of the month thargélion, which would correspond to May 21 of the year 429 before our era.
The precise day, which would seem to be fixed with certainty by the feasts by which his disciples celebrated its anniversary for a long time, nevertheless presents particularities which arouse suspicion. Socrates was born on the 6th of the same Thagelion month, and the ancients themselves had been struck by this comparison. “The poet Ion,” says Plutarch, “was right in saying that, despite the difference between wisdom and fortune, their effects are very often similar. At least they seem to have arranged the birth of Socrates and that of Plato very appropriately, by first causing them to follow each other very closely; next, that that of the oldest, and who was to be the master of the other, should immediately precede in the order of days that of the second. Despite the doubts involuntarily aroused by the too significant comparison of these two days of the birth of Plato and that of Socrates, there is perhaps nothing more than fortuitous in this. But there is something else still:while Socrates was born on the day when Athens celebrated by a solemn sacrifice the birth of Demeter Chloe, a propitious day among all, and when the city was purified, his disciple came into the world on the day when Athens and the Ionian colonies celebrated in Delos the birth of Apollo, the god of the arts, poetry, eloquence, the god of harmony, grace and beauty. We know the predilection of the neo-Platonists for these symbolic myths intended to express certain ideas or certain relationships in a popular and poetic form. To this natural love with them of allegory and symbol was added the desire to oppose to the legends of nascent Christianity traditions no less marvelous, and to deprive it of the privilege of seizing imaginations and souls by prestigious attraction of the supernatural, always powerful, and at that time all-powerful over the spirits. Hence all sorts of myths, and particularly those of which Plato was the object, and which all link him to Apollo.
This day of birth, coinciding with the anniversary of Apollo's birth, therefore seems chosen, like the other myths which concern him, to express the impression made by his genius and the idea that was conceived of him:he is too significant, too expressive not to be suspect. Such a beautiful genius could not be the son of a man :
He was therefore the son of Apollo, who had ordered his mother's husband not to approach his wife during the first ten months of her marriage:which does not quite mean, as the holy interpreter Jerome, that Greek traditions made the prince of philosophy the son of a virgin. We see these myths recurring in all periods of his life. No sooner had he seen the light of day than his parents made a sacrifice on Mount Hymettus and dedicated their son to Pan, the Muses and Apollo. It is there, during the sacrifice, that bees come to deposit their honey on the mouth of the sleeping child, so that this verse of Homer is verified in his person:
[Greek text].
The day his father introduced him to Socrates, it happened that he had just told his friends a dream he had had the night before. It had seemed to her that she had seen a little swan fly away from the altar consecrated to Love, in the Academy, which took refuge in its bosom, and then soared towards the heavens, charming the gods and men of heaven. a sweet melody[10]. Plato himself, a few moments before dying, sees himself, in a dream, transformed into a swan - he is Apollo's bird - and, to escape the hands of the fowlers, flies from tree to tree. Finally, we notice that he reached in his life the sacred and perfect number 81, which announced, says Seneca, a more than human nature.
Hence, in honor of his ghosts, a sacrifice offered by Magi who happened to be in Athens. Indeed, this number of 81 is the square of 9, and 9 is the number of the Muses, daughters and companions of Apollo. All these myths therefore seem to mark the impression that his genius made on the ancients and express the idea that they formed of them. Like Homer, to whom they like to compare him, Plato is for them the living and human type of moral beauty, measure and harmony of which Apollo is the divine type.
His real genealogy gave him an origin no less glorious than that attributed to him by this symbolic mythology:he belonged to the greatest and most illustrious families of Athens and by his father as by his mother was of royal and even divine race. Ariston, his father, traced the origin of his family back to Codros, son of Melanthos, who himself descended from Neleus and Neptune.
Following the custom of the great families of his country, Plato took the name of his grandfather Aristocles, which he changed later, to take that under which he is universally known, and which was given to him, either because of the width of his chest; either because of the beauty of his broad forehead, or finally because of the broad and extended character of his mind. Plato's real name would therefore be Aristocles, the name of his grandfather, Plato being supposed to be a nickname meaning width, perhaps in reference to his size:it was his gymnastics master who gave it to him. Another explanation is that he talked a lot (but he had a thin voice), or that he had a broad forehead.
His mother's family, Périctione, played a great role in the internal history of Athens and in its revolutions and political agitations. It was linked by Glaucon and Critias to Dropide, brother or cousin of Solon, who also descended from Codrus. Critias, son of Callæschros, his great-uncle, Charmides, his maternal uncle, had sided with the oligarchic government, and after getting used to it, the first especially, a sad celebrity, had died the same day in the fight that Thrasybulus delivered to the Tyrants, and whose success delivered Athens from their violent and bloody domination. Plato therefore had the most intimate relations with the aristocratic party, and seems not to have been insensitive to the illustration of his family, which he mentions in the Charmides[21] and the Timaeus. It is through this relationship, and as a result of his intimate relations with Critias and Charmides, that we have tried to explain the character of his political ideas and his marked preferences, although accompanied by express reservations[23], for the regime. aristocratic of which Lacedaemon was the type.
Plato had two brothers; Adimante and Glaucon, who figure in the Republic[24], and a sister named Potone, whose son Speusippus succeeded his uncle in the Academy.
None of the elements which, according to the ideas of the Greeks, constituted a perfect education[26], he lacked. His gymnastics master was Ariston d'Argos, and it is even said that he took advantage of his lessons well enough to win two prizes at the Olympic Games and the Isthmian Games. Music was taught to him by Dracon, pupil of the famous Damon, and by Métellus d'Agrigente. All his dialogues, and particularly the Timaeus, attest that he had pushed very far the theoretical studies of this art, which, in antiquity, were closely related to mathematics. It was Dionysius the grammarian, mentioned in the Lovers, who initiated him into that body of liberal knowledge which the ancients called grammar, and long before his trip to Egypt he had perhaps heard in Athens the famous mathematician Theodore of Cyrene, who had come to visit this city before the death of Socrates.
The importance of mathematics was undoubtedly great in his eyes; Plato was one of the greatest promoters of this science, and if we are to believe a tradition reported by Proclus, it is to him that the invention of the analytical method and conic sections is due.
According to family documents preserved by Speusippus, his spirit, from childhood, lively and rapid, docile and modest, ardent and industrious, put this liberal education to good use; but, in spite of the legitimate hopes that could be aroused both by the great support of his family and his own talents, he early renounced political life, the only one, however, that was worthy of a man, according to the feeling of all the people. antiquity, and which he himself considered not only as the greatest honor, as the greatest duty of a good citizen, but as the perfection and, so to speak, the crowning of the philosophical life. If we are to believe the seventh letter, the authenticity of which is accepted, and the testimony of which appears considerable in the eyes of those who contest it, he would have tried politics, and even taken some part in the government of the Thirty, but he would have quickly given it up, disgusted by the excesses and fury of the parties:
“In my youth, I indeed felt the same as many in this case; I imagined that as soon as I had become master of myself, I would go straight to occupy myself with the common affairs of the city. And that's how chance made me find the things of the city. The regime of the time being indeed subjected to the violent criticism of the greatest number, a revolution occurred. (...) And I, therefore, seeing this, and the men who occupied themselves with politics, the more I examined in depth the laws and customs at the same time as I advanced in age, the more it seemed to me that it it was difficult to administer the affairs of the city properly. It was indeed not possible to do so without trustworthy friends and associates - and it was not easy to find some among those at hand, for our city was no longer administered according to the customs and habits of our fathers. (Letter VII)
He was introduced to painting, wrote poems, dithyrambs, lyrical verses and tragedies.
He was a pupil of Cratylus (disciple of Heraclitus of Ephesus) and Hermogenes (disciple of Parmenides), then became a pupil of Socrates around the age of 20. Following this meeting, Plato abandoned the idea of competing for tragedy and burned all his works. Plato will transmit the teaching of his master by appropriating and transforming it.
After the death of Socrates (which he did not attend), he left for Megara. He then traveled to Egypt, Cyrene, Italy (where he met Philolas and Timaeus) and Sicily. He was received at the court of Dionysius, in Syracuse, and won over to philosophy Dion, brother-in-law of the tyrant.
Near Colone and the Acadèmos gymnasium, he created a school, the Academy, on the model of the Pythagoreans.
The young Aristotle (known as the "reader" by his master) will follow his teachings, then break away from them to found his own school:the Lycée.