Platonic dialogue offers, mixed to varying degrees, three aspects: it is a drama, it is mostly a discussion, it sometimes contains a continuous exposition. First, a drama: sometimes the place, the time, and the circumstances are marked with precision, as … Read More
From the time immediately following Plato, there has been disagreement about the meaning of his dialogues. From Antiquity to the present day, we see divergent doctrines claiming to be his inspiration; at the time of Cicero, for example, some attached … Read More
In his long career, Plato published a very large number of dialogues, all preserved, whose chronology can be restored as follows: . 1° Dialogues immediately preceding or following the death of Socrates: Protagoras, Ion, Apology of Socrates, Crito, Euthyphron, Charmides, … Read More
Plato was born in Athens in 427 B.C., in an aristocratic family which included considerable figures in the city, including his mother’s cousin, Critias, who was one of the Thirty Tyrants. His youthful years passed amid the most serious political … Read More
(For simplicity, Plato’s idealism is often contrasted with Aristotle’s alleged empiricism, as evidenced by the gesture of each of the two philosophers in this detail of a fresco by Raphael.) In 1702, the German philosopher Leibniz coined the term idealism … Read More
Education Plato’s educational model (paidèia) differentiates the level of education according to students’ skills. Thus, a basic education includes, in addition to gymnastics and other bodily exercises, and music (the exercise of the spirit), without being imposed by force, because … Read More
Dialectics, a process that leads us to the knowledge of Forms and ultimately to the highest Form of the Good (Seyffert, Nettleship, and Sandys 1894, 481), through discussion, reasoning, questionnaire, and interpretation, has preoccupied philosophers since antiquity (Corbett and Connors … Read More
In the traditional interpretation, the Republic is a continuation of the discussions in Gorgias, according to which virtue and polis laws are a trick invented by a mass of weak people to capture the lust for power of the best … Read More
Sfetcu, Nicolae (2022). “Plato’s Philosophy”, in Telework, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.21536.05121, URL = https://www.telework.ro/en/platos-philosophy/ Abstract Plato’s philosophy is in line with the pre-Socratics, sophists and artistic traditions that underlie Greek education, in a new framework, defined by dialectics and the theory … Read More
Sfetcu, Nicolae (2022). “Plato: Biography”, in Telework, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.15396.96647, URL = https://www.telework.ro/en/plato-biography/ Abstract The main biographical source about Plato, according to the testimony of the Neoplatonic Simplicius, was written by the disciple Xenocrates, but unfortunately it has not reached … Read More
(Rhamnous, an ancient Greek city in Attica.) Plato, the Greek philosopher, describes the effect of local climate change in Attica in his Critias: “The land was the best in the world, and was therefore able in those days to support … Read More
Etymologically, the word philosophy derives from the ancient Greek φιλοσοφία, composed of φιλεῖν, “loving” and σοφία, “wisdom, knowledge”, that is to say literally: love of wisdom or love of knowledge. It should be noted that the word φιλοσοφία is effectively … Read More
