 Aristotle (384—322 B.C.E.

o Aristotle is a towering figure in ancient Greek

philosophy, making contributions to logic,
metaphysics, mathematics, physics, biology,
botany, ethics, politics, agriculture, medicine, dance
and theatre. He was a student of Plato who in turn
studied under Socrates. He was more empirically-minded
than Plato or Socrates and is famous for rejecting
Plato's theory of forms.

 As a prolific writer and polymath, Aristotle radically

transformed most, if not all, areas of knowledge he
touched. It is no wonder that Aquinas referred to him
simply as "The Philosopher." In his lifetime, Aristotle
wrote as many as 200 treatises, of which only 31 survive.
Unfortunately for us, these works are in the form of
lecture notes and draft manuscripts never intended for
general readership, so they do not demonstrate his reputed
polished prose style which attracted many great followers,
including the Roman Cicero. Aristotle was the first to
classify areas of human knowledge into distinct disciplines
such as mathematics, biology, and ethics. Some of these
classifications are still used today.
 As the father of the field of logic, he was the first to
develop a formalized system for reasoning. Aristotle
observed that the validity of any argument can be
determined by its structure rather than its content. A
classic example of a valid argument is his syllogism: All
men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is
mortal. Given the structure of this argument, as long as
the premises are true, then the conclusion is also
guaranteed to be true. Aristotle’s brand of logic dominated
this area of thought until the rise of modern propositional
logic and predicate logic 2000 years later.
 Aristotle’s emphasis on good reasoning combined with his
belief in the scientific method forms the backdrop for most
of his work. For example, in his work in ethics and
politics, Aristotle identifies the highest good with
intellectual virtue; that is, a moral person is one who
cultivates certain virtues based on reasoning. And in his
work on psychology and the soul, Aristotle distinguishes
 sense perception from reason, which unifies and interprets
the sense perceptions and is the source of all knowledge.

 Aristotle famously rejected Plato’s theory of forms, which

states that properties such as beauty are abstract
universal entities that exist independent of the objects
themselves. Instead, he argued that forms are intrinsic to
the objects and cannot exist apart from them, and so must
be studied in relation to them. However, in discussing art,
Aristotle seems to reject this, and instead argues for
idealized universal form which artists attempt to capture
in their work.
 Aristotle was the founder of the Lyceum, a school of
learning based in Athens, Greece; and he was an inspiration
for the Peripatetics, his followers from the Lyceum.

 Philosophy of Nature
o Aristotle sees the universe as a scale lying between
the two extremes: form without matter is on one end,
and matter without form is on the other end. The
passage of matter into form must be shown in its
various stages in the world of nature. To do this is
the object of Aristotle's physics, or philosophy of
nature. It is important to keep in mind that the
passage from form to matter within nature is a
movement towards ends or purposes. Everything in
nature has its end and function, and nothing is
without its purpose. Everywhere we find evidences of
design and rational plan. No doctrine of physics can
ignore the fundamental notions of motion, space, and
time. Motion is the passage of matter into form, and
it is of four kinds: (1) motion which affects the
substance of a thing, particularly its beginning and
its ending; (2) motion which brings about changes in
quality; (3) motion which brings about changes in
quantity, by increasing it and decreasing it; and (4)
motion which brings about locomotion, or change of
place. Of these the last is the most fundamental and
important.

 Aristotle rejects the definition of space as the void.

Empty space is an impossibility. Hence, too, he disagrees
with the view of Plato and the Pythagoreans that the
 elements are composed of geometrical figures. Space is
defined as the limit of the surrounding body towards what
is surrounded. Time is defined as the measure of motion in
regard to what is earlier and later. It thus depends for
its existence upon motion. If there where no change in the
universe, there would be no time. Since it is the measuring
or counting of motion, it also depends for its existence on
a counting mind. If there were no mind to count, there
could be no time. As to the infinite divisibility of space
and time, and the paradoxes proposed byZeno, Aristotle
argues that space and time are potentially divisible ad
infinitum, but are not actually so divided.
 After these preliminaries, Aristotle passes to the main
subject of physics, the scale of being. The first thing to
notice about this scale is that it is a scale of values.
What is higher on the scale of being is of more worth,
because the principle of form is more advanced in it.
Species on this scale are eternally fixed in their place,
and cannot evolve over time. The higher items on the scale
are also more organized. Further, the lower items are
inorganic and the higher are organic. The principle which
gives internal organization to the higher or organic items
on the scale of being is life, or what he calls the soul of
the organism. Even the human soul is nothing but the
organization of the body. Plants are the lowest forms of
life on the scale, and their souls contain a nutritive
element by which it preserves itself. Animals are above
plants on the scale, and their souls contain an appetitive
feature which allows them to have sensations, desires, and
thus gives them the ability to move. The scale of being
proceeds from animals to humans. The human soul shares the
nutritive element with plants, and the appetitive element
with animals, but also has a rational element which is
distinctively our own. The details of the appetitive and
rational aspects of the soul are described in the following
two sections.
 Pythagoras (c. 570 - 490 B.C.) was an early Greek Pre-
Socratic philosopher and mathematician from the Greek island
of Samos.
 He was the founder of the influential philosophical and
religious movement or cult called Pythagoreanism, and he was
probably the first man to actually call himself a
philosopher (or lover of wisdom). Pythagoras (or in a
 broader sense the Pythagoreans), allegedly exercised an
important influence on the work of Plato.
 As a mathematician, he is known as the "father of
numbers" or as the first pure mathematician, and is best
known for his Pythagorean Theorem on the relation between
the sides of a right triangle, the concept of square
numbers and square roots, and the discovery of the golden
ratio.
 Unfortunately, little is known for sure about him, (none of
his original writings have survived, and his followers
usually published their own works in his name) and he
remains something of a mysterious figure. His secret
society or brotherhood had a great effect on later esoteric
traditions such as Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry.
 Sizeable Pythagorean communities existed in Magna
Graecia, Phlius, and Thebes during the early fourth century
BC. Around the same time, the Pythagorean
philosopher Archytas was highly influential on the politics
of the city of Tarentum in Magna Graecia. According to
later tradition, Archytas was elected
as strategos ("general") seven times, even though others
were prohibited from serving for more than a year, and
never lost a single battle. Archytas was also a renowned
mathematician and musician. He was a close friend of
Plato and he is quoted in Plato's Republic.
 Aristotle states that the philosophy of Plato was heavily
dependent on the teachings of the Pythagoreans. Cicero
repeats this statement, remarking that Platonem ferunt
didicisse Pythagorea omnia ("They say Plato learned all
things Pythagorean").According to Charles H. Kahn, Plato's
middle dialogues, including Meno, Phaedo, and The Republic,
have a strong "Pythagorean coloring", and his last few
dialogues (particularly Philebus and Timaeus) are
extremely Pythagorean in character.
 According to R. M. Hare, Plato's Republic may be partially
based on the "tightly organised community of like-minded
thinkers" established by Pythagoras at
Croton. Additionally, Plato may have taken from Pythagoras
the idea that mathematics and abstract thought are a secure
basis for philosophy, as well as "for substantial theses
in science and morals".Plato and Pythagoras shared a
"mystical approach to the soul and its place in the
 material world"and it is probable that both were influenced
by Orphism. The historian of philosophy Frederick
Copleston states that Plato probably borrowed his
tripartite theory of the soul from the Pythagoreans.
Bertrand Russell, in his A History of Western Philosophy,
contends that the influence of Pythagoras on Plato and
others was so great that he should be considered the most
influential philosopher of all time. He concludes that "I
do not know of any other man who has been as influential as
he was in the school of thought."
 A revival of Pythagorean teachings occurred in the first
century BC when Middle Platonist philosophers such
as Eudorus and Philo of Alexandria hailed the rise of a
"new" Pythagoreanism in Alexandria. At around the same
time, Neopythagoreanism became prominent. The first-century
AD philosopher Apollonius of Tyana sought to emulate
Pythagoras and live by Pythagorean teachings. The later
first-century Neopythagorean philosopher Moderatus of
Gades expanded on Pythagorean number philosophy and
probably understood the soul as a "kind of mathematical
harmony." The Neopythagorean mathematician and
musicologist Nicomachus likewise expanded on Pythagorean
numerology and music theory. Numenius of Apamea interpreted
Plato's teachings in light of Pythagorean doctrines.

 Philosophy of Socrates
 Socrates believed that philosophy should achieve practical
results for the greater well-being of society. He attempted
to establish an ethical system based on human reason rather
than theological doctrine. He pointed out that human choice
was motivated by the desire for happiness. Ultimate wisdom
comes from knowing oneself. The more a person knows, the
greater his or her ability to reason and make choices that
will bring true happiness. Socrates believed that this
translated into politics with the best form of government
being neither a tyranny nor a democracy. Instead,
government worked best when ruled by individuals who had
the greatest ability, knowledge, and virtue and possessed a
complete understanding of themselves.
 For Socrates, Athens was a classroom and he went about
asking questions of the elite and common man alike, seeking
to arrive at political and ethical truths. Socrates didn’t
 lecture about what he knew. In fact, he claimed to be
ignorant because he had no ideas, but wise because he
recognized his own ignorance. He asked questions of his
fellow Athenians in a dialectic method (the Socratic
Method) which compelled the audience to think through a
problem to a logical conclusion. Sometimes the answer
seemed so obvious, it made Socrates's opponents look
foolish. For this, he was admired by some and vilified by
others.

 During Socrates's life, Athens was going through a dramatic

transition from hegemony in the classical world to its
decline after a humiliating defeat by Sparta in the
Peloponnesian War. Athenians entered a period of
instability and doubt about their identity and place in the
world. As a result, they clung to past glories, notions of
wealth, and a fixation with physical beauty. Socrates
attacked these values with his insistent emphasis on the
greater importance of the mind. While many Athenians
admired Socrates's challenges to Greek conventional wisdom
and the humorous way he went about it, an equal number grew
angry and felt he threatened their way of life and
uncertain future.

 Pre-Socratic Era - The Pre-Socratic period of

the Ancient era of philosophy refers to Greek
philosophers active before Socrates, or contemporaries
of Socrates who expounded on earlier knowledge.

 The Pre-Socratic philosophers rejected traditional

mythological explanationsfor the phenomena they saw around
them in favor of more rational explanations. They started
to ask questions like where did everything come from, and
why is there such variety, and how can nature be described
mathematically? They tended to look for universal
principles to explain the whole of Nature. Although they are
arguably more important for the questions they asked than
the answers they arrived at, the problems and paradoxes they
identified became the basis for later mathematical,
scientific and philosophic study.
 The Presocratics were 6th and 5th century BCE Greek thinkers
who introduced a new way of inquiring into the world and
the place of human beings in it. They were recognized in
antiquity as the first philosophers and scientists of the
Western tradition. This article is a general introduction
to the most important Presocratic philosophers and the main
themes of Presocratic thought. More detailed discussions
can be found by consulting the articles on these
philosophers (and related topics) in the SEP (listed
below). The standard collection of texts for the
Presocratics is that by H. Diels revised by W. Kranz
(abbreviated as DK). In it, each thinker is assigned an
identifying chapter number (e.g., Heraclitus is 22,
Anaxagoras 59); then the reports from ancient authors about
that thinker's life and thought are collected in a section
of “testimonies” (A) and numbered in order, while the
passages the editors take to be direct quotations are
collected and numbered in a section of “fragments” (B).
Alleged imitations in later authors are sometimes added in
a section labeled C. Thus, each piece of text can be
uniquely identified: DK 59B12.3 identifies line 3 of
Anaxagoras fragment 12; DK 22A1 identifies testimonium 1 on
Heraclitus.

 Our understanding of the Presocratics is complicated by the

incomplete nature of our evidence. Most of them wrote at
least one “book” (short pieces of prose writing, or, in
some cases, poems), but no complete work survives. Instead,
we are dependent on later philosophers, historians, and
compilers of collections of ancient wisdom for disconnected
quotations (fragments) and reports about their views
(testimonia). In some cases, these sources had direct
access to the works of the Presocratics, but in many
others, the line is indirect and often depends on the work
of Hippias, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Simplicius, and other
ancient philosophers who did have such access. The sources
for the fragments and testimonia made selective use of the
material available to them, in accordance with their own
special, and varied, interests in the early thinkers. (For
analyses of the doxographic tradition, and the influence of
Aristotle and Theophrastus on later sources, see Mansfeld
1999, Runia 2008, and Mansfeld and Runia 1997, 2009a, and
2009b.) Although any account of a Presocratic thinker has
to be a reconstruction, we should not be overly pessimistic
 about the possibility of reaching a historically
responsible understanding of these early Greek thinkers.
 Calling this group “Presocratic philosophers” raises
certain difficulties. The term, coined in the eighteenth
century, was made current by Hermann Diels in the
nineteenth, and was meant to mark a contrast between
Socrates who was interested in moral problems, and his
predecessors, who were supposed to be primarily concerned
with cosmological and physical speculation. “Presocratic,”
if taken strictly as a chronological term, is not accurate,
for the last of them were contemporaneous with Socrates and
even Plato. Moreover, several of the early Greek thinkers
explored questions about ethics and the best way to live a
human life. The term may also suggest that these thinkers
are somehow inferior to Socrates and Plato, of interest
only as their predecessors, and its suggestion of archaism
may imply that philosophy only becomes interesting when we
arrive at the classical period of Plato and Aristotle. Some
scholars now deliberately avoid the term, but if we take it
to refer to the early Greek thinkers who were not
influenced by the views of Socrates, whether his
predecessors or contemporaries, there is probably no harm
in using it. (For discussions of the notion of Presocratic
philosophy, see Long's introduction in Long 1999, Laks
2006, and the articles in Laks and Louguet 2002.)
 A second problem lies in referring to these thinkers as
philosophers. That is almost certainly not how they could
have described themselves. While it is true that Heraclitus
says that “those who are lovers of wisdom must be inquirers
into many things” (22B35), the word he uses, philosophos,
does not have the special sense that it acquires in the
works of Plato and Aristotle, when the philosopher is
contrasted with both the ordinary person and other experts,
including the sophist (particularly in Plato), or in the
resulting modern sense in which we can distinguish
philosophy from physics or psychology; yet the Presocratics
certainly saw themselves as set apart from ordinary people
and also from others (certain of the poets and historical
writers, for example, as we can see from Xenophanes and
Heraclitus) who were their predecessors and contemporaries.
As the fragment from Heraclitus shows, the early Greek
philosophers thought of themselves as inquirers into many
things, and the range of their inquiry was vast. They had
 views about the nature of the world, and these views
encompass what we today call physics, chemistry, geology,
meteorology, astronomy, embryology, and psychology (and
other areas of natural inquiry), as well as theology,
metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. In the earliest of
the Presocratics, the Milesians, it can indeed be difficult
to discern the strictly philosophical aspects of the views
in the evidence available to us. Nevertheless, despite the
danger of misunderstanding and thus underestimating these
thinkers because of anachronism, there is an important
sense in which it is quite reasonable to refer to them as
philosophers. That sense is inherent in Aristotle's view
(see, e.g., Metaphysics I, Physics I, De Anima I, On
Generation and Corruption I): these thinkers were his
predecessors in a particular sort of inquiry, and even
though Aristotle thinks that they were all, for one reason
or another, unsuccessful and even amateurish, he sees in
them a similarity such that he can trace a line of
continuity of both subject and method from their work to
his own. The questions that the early Greek philosophers
asked, the sorts of answers that they gave, and the views
that they had of their own inquiries were the foundation
for the development of philosophy as it came to be defined
in the work of Plato and Aristotle and their successors.
Perhaps the fundamental characteristic is the commitment to
explain the world in terms of its own inherent principles.
 By contrast, consider the 7th century BCE poem of Hesiod,
his Theogony (genealogy of the gods). Hesiod tells the
traditional story of the Olympian gods, beginning with
Chaos, a vague divine primordial entity or condition. From
Chaos, a sequence of gods is generated, often by sexual
congress, but sometimes no cause for their coming to be is
given. The divine figures that thus arise are often
connected with a part of the physical universe, or with
some aspect of human experience, so his theogony is also a
cosmogony (an account of the generation of the world). The
divinities (and the associated parts of the world) come to
be and struggle violently among themselves; finally Zeus
triumphs and establishes and maintains an order of power
among the others. Hesiod's world is one in which the major
divinities are individuals who behave like super-human
beings (Gaia or earth, Ouranos or sky, Cronos — an
unlocated regal power, Zeus); some of the others are
personified characteristics (e.g., Momus, blame; and
 Dusnomia, lawlessness). For the Greeks, the fundamental
properties of divinity are immortality (they are not
subject to death) and great power (as part of the cosmos or
in managing events), and each of Hesiod's characters has
these properties (even though in the story some are
defeated, and seem to be destroyed). Hesiod's story is like
a vast Hollywood-style family history, with envy, rage,
love, and lust all playing important parts in the coming-
to-be of the world as we know it. The earliest rulers of
the universe are violently overthrown by their offspring
(Ouranos is overthrown by Cronos, Cronos by Zeus). Zeus
insures his continued power by swallowing his first consort
Metis (counsel or wisdom); by this he prevents the
predicted birth of rivals and acquires her attribute of
wisdom (Theogony 886–900). In a second poem, Works and
Days, Hesiod pays more attention to human beings, telling
the story of earlier, greater creatures who died out or
were destroyed by themselves or Zeus. Humans were created
by Zeus, are under his power, and are subject to his
judgment and to divine intervention for either good or ill.
(A good discussion of the Hesiodic myths in relation to
Presocratic philosophy can be found in McKirahan 2011.
Burkert 2008 surveys influence from the east on the
development of Presocratic philosophy, especially the
myths, astronomy, and cosmogony of the Babylonians,
Persians, and Egyptians.)
 Hesiod's world, like Homer's, is one that is god-saturated,
where the gods may intervene in all aspects of the world,
from the weather to mundane particulars of human life,
acting on the ordinary world order, in a way that humans,
limited as they are by time, location, and narrow powers of
perception, must accept but cannot ultimately understand.
The Presocratics reject this account, instead seeing the
world as a kosmos, an ordered natural arrangement that is
inherently intelligible and not subject to supra-natural
intervention. A striking example is Xenophanes 21B32: “And
she whom they call Iris, this too is by nature cloud /
purple, red, and greeny yellow to behold.” Iris, the
rainbow, traditional messenger of the gods, is after all,
not supra-natural, not a sign from the gods on Olympus who
are outside of and immune from the usual world order;
rather it is, in its essence, colored cloud.
 Calling the Presocratics philosophers also suggests that
they share a certain outlook with one another; an outlook
that can be contrasted with that of other early Greeks.
Although scholars disagree about the extent of the
divergence between the early Greek philosophers and their
non-philosophical predecessors and contemporaries, it is
evident that Presocratic thought exhibits a difference not
only in its understanding of the nature of the world, but
also in its view of the sort of explanation of it that is
possible. This is clear in Heraclitus. Although Heraclitus
asserts that those who love wisdom must be inquirers into
many things, inquiry alone is not sufficient. At 22B40 he
rebukes four of his predecessors: “Much learning does not
teach understanding; else it would have taught Hesiod and
Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus.”
 Heraclitus' implicit contrast is with himself; in 22B1 he
suggests that he alone truly understands all things,
because he grasps the account that enables him to
“distinguish each thing in accordance with its nature” and
say how it is. For Heraclitus there is an underlying
principle that unites and explains everything. It is this
that others have failed to see and understand. According to
Heraclitus, the four have amassed a great deal of
information — Hesiod was a traditional source of
information about the gods, Pythagoras was renowned for his
learning and especially views about how one ought to live,
Xenophanes taught about the proper view of the gods and the
natural world, Hecataeus was an early historian — but
because they have failed to grasp the deeper significance
of the facts available to them, their unconnected bits of
knowledge do not constitute understanding. Just as the
world is a kosmos, an ordered arrangement, so human
knowledge of that world must be ordered in a certain way.
 Heraclitus (fl. c. 500 B.C.E.)

 A Greek philosopher of the late 6th century BCE, Heraclitus

criticizes his predecessors and contemporaries for their
failure to see the unity in experience. He claims to
announce an everlasting Word (Logos) according to which all
things are one, in some sense. Opposites are necessary for
life, but they are unified in a system of balanced
exchanges. The world itself consists of a law-like
interchange of elements, symbolized by fire. Thus the world
 is not to be identified with any particular substance, but
rather with an ongoing process governed by a law of change.
The underlying law of nature also manifests itself as a
moral law for human beings. Heraclitus is the first Western
philosopher to go beyond physical theory in search of
metaphysical foundations and moral applications.

 Criticism of Ionian Philosophy

 Heraclitus' theory can be understood as a response to the

philosophy of his Ionian predecessors. The philosophers of
the city of Miletus (near Ephesus), Thales, Anaximander,
and Anaximenes, believed some original material turns into
all other things. The world as we know it is the orderly
articulation of different stuffs produced out of the
original stuff. For the Milesians, to explain the world and
its phenomena was just to show how everything came from the
original stuff, such as Thales' water or Anaximenes' air.
 Heraclitus seems to follow this pattern of explanation when
he refers to the world as "everliving fire" (DK22B30,
quoted in full in next section) and makes statements such
as "Thunderbolt steers all things," alluding to the
directive power of fire (DK22B64). But fire is a strange
stuff to make the origin of all things, for it is the most
inconstant and changeable. It is, indeed, a symbol of
change and process. Heraclitus observes,

 All things are an exchange for fire, and fire for all
things, as goods for gold and gold for goods. (DK22B90)

 We can measure all things against fire as a standard; there

is an equivalence between all things and gold, but all
things are not identical to gold. Similarly, fire provides
a standard of value for other stuffs, but it is not
identical to them. Fire plays an important role in
Heraclitus' system, but it is not the unique source of all
things, because all stuffs are equivalent.

 Ultimately, fire may be more important as a symbol than as

a stuff. Fire is constantly changing-but so is every other
stuff. One thing is transformed into another in a cycle of
changes. What is constant is not some stuff, but the
 overall process of change itself. There is a constant law
of transformations, which is, perhaps, to be identified
with the Logos. Heraclitus may be saying that the Milesians
correctly saw that one stuff turns into another in a
series, but they incorrectly inferred from this that some
one stuff is the source of everything else. But if A is the
source of B and B of C, and C turns back into B and then A,
then B is likewise the source of A and C, and C is the
source of A and B. There is no particular reason to promote
one stuff at the expense of the others. What is important
about the stuffs is that they change into others. The one
constant in the whole process is the law of change by which
there is an order and sequence to the changes. If this is
what Heraclitus has in mind, he goes beyond the physical
theory of his early predecessors to arrive at something
like a process philosophy with a sophisticated
understanding of metaphysics.

 Plato (c. 428 - 348 B.C.) was a hugely

important Greekphilosopher and mathematician from
the Socratic (or Classical) period.
 He is perhaps the best known, most widely studied and
most influential philosopher of all time. Together with
his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, he
provided the main opposition to the Materialist view of the
world represented by Democritus and Epicurus, and he helped
to lay the foundations of the whole of Western Philosophy.
 In his works, especially his many dialogues, he
blended Ethics, Political
Philosophy, Epistemology, Metaphysics and moral
psychology into an interconnected and systematic philosophy.
In addition to the ideas they contained (such as his
doctrine of Platonic Realism, Essentialism, Idealism, his
famous theory of Forms and the ideal of "Platonic love"),
many of his writings are also considered superb pieces
of literature.
 Plato was the founder of the famous Academy in Athens, the
first institution of higher learning in the western world.
The philosophical school which he developed at the Academy
was known as Platonism (and its later off-shoot, Neo-
Platonism).
 Plato is perhaps the first philosopher whose complete
works are still available to us. He wrote no systematic
 treatises giving his views, but rather he wrote a number
(about 35, although the authenticity of at least some of
these remains in doubt) of superb dialogues, written in the
form of conversations, a form which permitted him to develop
the Socratic method of question and answer. In his
dialogues, Plato discussed every kind of philosophical idea,
including Ethics (with discussion of the nature of
virtue), Metaphysics (where topics include immortality, man,
mind, and Realism), Political Philosophy (where topics such
as censorship and the ideal state are discussed), Philosophy
of Religion (considering topics such
as Atheism, Dualism and Pantheism), Epistemology (where he
looked at ideas such as a priori knowledge and Rationalism),
the Philosophy of Mathematics and the Theory of
Art (especially dance, music, poetry, architecture and
drama).
 We have no material evidence about exactly when Plato wrote
each of his dialogues, nor the extent to which some might
have been later revised or rewritten, nor even whether all
or part of them were ever "published" or made widely
available. In addition to the ideas they contained, though,
his writings are also considered superb pieces
of literature in their own right, in terms of the mastery
of language, the power of indicating character, the sense
of situation, and the keen eye for
both tragic and comic aspects.
 None of the dialogues contain Plato himself as a character,
and so he does not actually declare that anything asserted
in them are specifically his own views. The characters in
the dialogues are generally historical,
with Socrates usually as the protagonist (particularly in
the early dialogues). It is generally thought that the views
expressed by the character of Socrates in Plato's dialogues
were views that Socrateshimself actually held, and the works
had the effect of gradually rehabilitatingSocrates's rather
tarnished image among Athenians in the wake of his death. As
time went on, though, the dialogues began to deal more with
subjects that interested Plato himself, rather than merely
providing a vehicle for the ideas of Socrates. It seems
likely that Plato's main intention in his dialogues was more
to teach his students to think for themselves and to find
their own answers to the big questions, rather than
to blindly follow his own opinions (or those of Socrates).
 Among the (likely earlier) Socratic
dialogues are: "Apology", "Charmides", "Crito", "Euthyphro",
"Ion", "Laches", "Lesser
Hippias", "Lysis", "Menexenus" and "Protagoras". The
following are often considered "transitional"
dialogues: "Gorgias", "Meno" and "Euthydemus". The middle
dialogues are generally seen as the first appearances of
Plato's own
views: "Cratylus", "Phaedo", "Phaedrus", "Symposium", "Repub
lic", "Theaetetus" and "Parmenides". The late
dialogues probably indicate Plato's more mature thought,
including criticisms of his own
theories: "Sophist", "Statesman", "Philebus", "Timaeus", "Cr
itias" and "Laws". The huge "Republic" in particular is
considered one of the single most influential works in the
whole of Western Philosophy, although his account
of Socrates' trial in the "Apology" may be the most read.
 Central to Plato's Metaphysics is his theory of Platonic
Realism, which inverts the common sense intuition about what
is knowable and what is real. Confusingly, this is also
known as Platonic Idealism, and indeed Idealism may be a
better description. Plato believed
that universals (those properties of an object which can
exist in more than one place at the same time e.g. the
quality of "redness") do in fact existand are real. However,
they exist in a different way than ordinary physical objects
exist, in a sort of ghostly mode of existence, unseen and
unfelt, outside of space and time, but not at any spatial or
temporal distance from people's bodies (a type of Dualism).
 Part and parcel of Plato's Platonic Realism is his theory
of Forms or Ideas, which refers to his belief that
the material world as it seems to us is not the real world,
but only a shadow or a poor copy of the real world. This is
based on Plato's concept (or Socrates' through Plato)
of hylomorphism, the idea that substances are forms inhering
in matter. He held that substance is composed of matter and
form, although not as any kind of a mixture or amalgam, but
composed homogeneouslytogether such that no matter
can exist without form (or form without matter). Thus, pure
matter and pure form can never be perceived, only
comprehended abstractly by the intellect.
 Forms, roughly speaking, are the pure and
unchanging archetypes or abstract representations of
universals and of all the things we see around us, and they
 are in fact the true basis of reality. These ideal Forms
are instantiated by one or many different particulars, which
are essentially material copies of the Forms, and make up
the world we perceive around us. Plato was therefore one of
the first Essentialists in that he believed that all things
have essences or attributes that make an object or substance
what it fundamentally is. According to Plato, true
knowledge or intelligence is the ability to grasp the world
of Forms with one's mind, even though his evidence for the
existence of Forms is intuitive only.
 This idea was most famously captured and illustrated in
Plato's Allegory of the Cave, from his best-known work, "The
Republic". He represented man's condition as being chained
in the darkness of a cave, with only the false light of
a fire behind him. He can perceive the outside world solely
by watching the shadows on the wall in front of him, not
realizing that this view of existence is limited, wrong or
in any way lacking (after all, it is all he knows). Plato
imagined what would occur if some of the chained men were
suddenly released from this bondage and let out into the
world, to encounter the divine light of the sun and perceive
“true” reality. He described how some people would
immediately be frightened and want to return to the familiar
dark existence of the cave, while the more enlightened would
look at the sun and finally see the world as it truly is. If
they were then to return to the cave and try to explain what
they had seen, they would be mocked mercilessly and called
fanciful, even mad. In the allegory, Plato saw the outside
world, which the cave's inhabitants glimpsed only in a
second-hand way, as the timeless realm of Forms, where
genuine reality resides. The shadows on the wall represent
the world we see around us, which we assume to be real, but
which in fact is a mere imitation of the real thing.
 Plato's theory of Forms was essentially an attempt to solve
the dichotomy between Parmenides' view (that there is no
real change or multiplicity in the world, and that reality
is one) and that of Heraclitus (that motion and multiplicity
are real, and that permanence is only apparent) by means of
a metaphysical compromise. Plato himself, though, was well
aware of the limitations of his theory, and in particular he
later concocted the "Third Man Argument" against his own
theory: if a Form and a particular are alike, then there
must be another (third) thing by possession of which they
are alike, leading to an infinite regression. In a later
 (rather unsatisfactory) version of the theory, he tried
to circumvent this objection by positing that particulars do
not actually exist as such: rather, they "mime" the Forms,
merely appearing to be particulars.
 In the "Timaeus", Plato gave his account of the natural
sciences (physics, astronomy, chemistry and biology) and
the creation of the universe by the Demiurge. Unlike the
creation by the God of medieval theologians, Plato's
Demiurge did not create out of nothing, but
rather ordered the cosmos out of already-existing chaotic
elemental matter, imitating the eternal Forms. Plato took
the four elements (fire, air, water and earth), which he
proclaimed to be composed of various aggregates
of triangles, and made various compounds of these into what
he called the Body of the Universe.
 In recent years, more emphasis has been placed on
Plato's unwritten teachings, which were passed on orally to
his students and not included in the dialogues (on several
occasions, Plato stressed that the written transmission of
knowledge was faulty and inferior to the spoken logos). We
have at least some idea of this from reports by
his students, Aristotle and others, and from
the continuity between his teachings and the interpretations
of Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists. One recurring theme is
that the first principle of everything, including the
causation of good and of evil and of the Forms themselves,
is the One (the cause of the essence of the Forms). It can
be argued, then, that Plato's concept of God
affirms Monotheism, although he also talked of an Indefinite
Duality (which he also called Large and Small).
 In Epistemology, although some have imputed to Plato the
remarkably modern analytic view that knowledge is justified
true belief, Plato more often associated knowledge with
the apprehension of unchanging Forms and their relationships
to one another. He argued that knowledge is
always proportionate to the realm from which it is gained,
so that, if one derives an account of
something experientially then (because the world of sense is
always in flux) the views attained will be mere opinions. On
the other hand, if one derives an account of something by
way of the non-sensible Forms, then the views attained will
be pure and unchanging (because the Forms are unchanging
too). In several dialogues, Plato also floated the idea that
knowledge is a matter of recollection ("anamnesis"), and not
 of learning, observation or study. Thus, knowledge is not
empirical, but essentially comes from divine insight.
 To a large extent, it is Plato who is responsible for
the modern view of the Sophist as a greedy and power-
seeking instructor who uses rhetorical sleight-of-hand and
ambiguities of language in order to deceive, or to
support fallacious reasoning. He was at great pains in his
dialogues to exonerate Socrates from accusations of Sophism.
Plato, and Aristotle after him, also believed in a kind
of Moral Universalism(or Moral Absolutism), opposing
the Moral Relativism of the Sophists.
 In Ethics, Plato had a teleological or goal-orientated
worldview, and the aim of his Ethics was therefore to
outline the conditions under which a society might function
harmoniously. He considered virtue to be an excellence of
the soul, and, insofar as the soul has several
components (e.g. reason, passions, spirit), there will be
several components of its excellence: the excellence
of reason is wisdom; the excellence of the passions are
attributes such as courage; and the excellence of
the spirit is temperance. Finally, justice is that
excellence which consists in a harmonious relation of the
other three parts. He believed, then, that virtue was a sort
of knowledge (the knowledge of good and evil) that is
required to reach the ultimate good (or eudaimonia), which
is what all human desires and actions aim to achieve, and as
such he was an early proponent of Eudaimonism or Virtue
Ethics.
 Plato's philosophical views had
many societal and political implications, especially on the
idea of an ideal state or government (much influenced by the
model of the severe society of Sparta), although there is
some discrepancy between his early and later views
on Political Philosophy. Some of his most famous doctrines
are contained in the "Republic" (the earliest example of
a Utopia, dating from his middle period), as well as in the
later "Statesman" and the "Laws".
 In general terms, Plato drew parallels between
the tripartite structure of the individual soul and body
("appetite-stomach", "spirit-chest" and "reason-head") and
the tripartite class structure of societies. He divided
human beings up, based on their innate intelligence,
strength and courage, into: the Productive (Workers),
labourers, farmers, merchants, etc, which corresponds to the
 "appetite-stomach"; the Protective (Warriors), the
adventurous, strong and brave of the armed forces, which
corresponds to the "spirit-chest"; and
the Governing (Rulers or Philosopher Kings), the
intelligent, rational, self-controlled and wise, who are
well suited to make decisions for the community, which
corresponds to the "reason-head". The Philosophers and the
Warriors together are thus the Guardians of Plato's ideal
state.
 Plato concluded that reason and wisdom (rather than rhetoric
and persuasion) should govern, thus effectively rejecting
the principles of Athenian democracy (as it existed in his
day) as only a few are fit to rule. A large part of
the "Republic" then addresses how the educational
system should be set up (his important contribution to
the Philosophy of Education) to produce these Philosopher
Kings, who should have their reason, will and desires united
in virtuous harmony (a moderate love for wisdom, and
the courage to act according to that wisdom). The
Philosopher King image has been used by many after Plato
to justify their personal political beliefs.
 He also made some interesting arguments
about states and rulers. He argued that it is better to be
ruled by a tyrant (since then there is only one person
committing bad deeds) than by a bad democracy (since all the
people are now responsible for the bad actions). He
predicted that a state which is made up of different kinds
of souls will tend to decline from an aristocracy (rule by
the best) to a timocracy (rule by the honourable), then to
an oligarchy (rule by the few), then to a democracy (rule by
the people) and finally to tyranny (rule by a single
tyrant).
 In the "Laws", probably Plato's last work and a work of
enormous length and complexity, he concerned himself with
designing a genuinely practicable (if admittedly not ideal)
form of government, rather than with what a best
possible state might be like. He discussed the empirical
details of statecraft, fashioning rules to meet the
multitude of contingencies that are apt to arise in the
"real world" of human affairs, and it marks a rather grim
and terrifying culmination of the totalitarian tendencies in
his earlier political thought.
 Plato's views on Aesthetics were somewhat compromised and he
had something of a love-hate relationship with the arts. He
 believed that aesthetically appealing objects were
beautiful in and of themselves, and that they should
incorporate proportion, harmony and unity among their parts.
As a youth he had been a poet, and he remained a
fine literary stylist and a great story-teller. However, he
found the arts threatening in that they are powerful shapers
of character. Therefore, to trainand protect ideal citizens
for an ideal society, he believed that the arts must
be strictly controlled, and he proposed excluding poets,
playwrights and musicians from his ideal Republic, or at
least severely censoring what they produced. He also argued
that art is merely imitation of the objects and events of
ordinary life, effectively a copy of a copy of an ideal
Form. Art is therefore even more of an illusionthan is
ordinary experience, and so should be considered at
best entertainment, and at worst a dangerous delusion.
 In the "Symposium" and the "Phaedrus", Plato introduces his
theory of erôs or love, which has come to be known
as "Platonic love". Although he invented the image of two
lovers being each other's "other half", he clearly regards
actual physical or sexual contact between lovers
as degraded and wasteful forms of erotic expression. Thus,
unless the power of love is channelled into "higher
pursuits" (culminating in the knowledge of the Form of
Beauty), it is doomed to frustration, and people sadly
squander the real power of love by limiting themselves to
the mere pleasures of physical beauty. On an unrelated note,
he is also responsible for the famous myth of Atlantis,
which first appears in the "Timaeus".
 Plato's consideration of epistemology, or the theory
of knowledge, comes mainly in the "Theaetetus". In it, he
(through the person of Socrates) considers three different
theses - that knowledge is perception, that knowledge
is true judgement, and that knowledge is true judgement
together with an account - refuting each of them in turn,
without leaving us with any definitive conclusion or
solution. One is left, though, with the impression that
Plato's own view is probably that what constitutes knowledge
is actually a combination or synthesis of all these separate
theses.
 Although the study of Plato's thought continued with
the Neo-Platonists, his reputation was completely eclipsed
during Medieval times by that of his most famous
student, Aristotle. This is mainly because Plato's original
 writings were essentially lost to Western civilization until
they were brought from Constantinople in the century before
its fall by the Greek Neo-Platonist George Gemistos
Plethon (c. 1355 - 1452). The
Medieval Scholastic philosophers, therefore, did not
have access to the works of Plato, nor the knowledge
of Greek needed to read them. Only during the Renaissance,
with the general resurgence of interest in classical
civilization, did knowledge of Plato's philosophy become
widespread again in the West, and many of the greatest early
modern scientists and artists
who broke with Scholasticism saw Plato's philosophy as the
basis for progress in the arts and sciences. By the 19th
Century, Plato's reputation was restored, and at least on
par with Aristotle's.
 Plato's influence has been especially strong
in mathematics and the sciences. Although he made no
important mathematical discoveries himself, his belief that
mathematics provides the finest training for the mind was
extremely important in the development of the subject (over
the door of the Academy was written, "Let no one unversed in
geometry enter here"). He concentrated on the idea
of "proof", insisting on accurate definitions and clear
hypotheses, all of which laid the foundations for
the systematic approach to mathematics of Euclid (who
flourished around 300 B.C.)
 However, Plato also helped to distinguish
between pure and applied mathematics by widening the gap
between "arithmetic" (now called Number Theory)
and "logistic" (now called Arithmetic). Plato's resurgence
in the Modern era further inspired some of the greatest
advances in Logic since Aristotle, primarily through Gottlob
Frege and his followers Kurt Gödel (1906 - 1978), Alonzo
Church (1903 - 1995) and Alfred Tarski (1901 - 1983).
 Plato's name is also attached to the "Platonic
solids" (convex regular polyhedrons), especially in
the "Timaeus", in which the cube, tetrahedron, octahedron,
and icosahedron are given as the shapes of the atoms of
earth, fire, air and water, with the fifth Platonic solid,
the dodecahedron, being his model for the whole universe.
Plato's beliefs as regards the universe were that the stars,
planets, Sun and Moon all move round the Earth
in crystalline spheres. The sphere of the Moon was closestto
the Earth, then the sphere of the Sun, then Mercury, Venus,
 Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and furthest away was the sphere of
the stars. He believed that the Moon shines by reflected
sunlight.
 Plato often discusses the father-son relationship and the
question of whether a father's interest in his sons has
much to do with how well his sons turn out. In ancient
Athens, a boy was socially located by his family identity,
and Plato often refers to his characters in terms of their
paternal and fraternal relationships. Socrates was not a
family man, and saw himself as the son of his mother, who
was apparently a midwife. A divine fatalist, Socrates mocks
men who spent exorbitant fees on tutors and trainers for
their sons, and repeatedly ventures the idea that good
character is a gift from the gods. Plato's
dialogue Crito reminds Socrates that orphans are at the
mercy of chance, but Socrates is unconcerned. In
the Theaetetus, he is found recruiting as a disciple a
young man whose inheritance has been squandered. Socrates
twice compares the relationship of the older man and his
boy lover to the father-son relationship
(Lysis 213a, Republic 3.403b), and in the Phaedo, Socrates'
disciples, towards whom he displays more concern than his
biological sons, say they will feel "fatherless" when he is
gone.
 In several of Plato's dialogues, Socrates promulgates the
idea that knowledge is a matter of recollection, and not of
learning, observation, or study.[63]He maintains this view
somewhat at his own expense, because in many dialogues,
Socrates complains of his forgetfulness. Socrates is often
found arguing that knowledge is not empirical, and that it
comes from divine insight. In many middle period dialogues,
such as the Phaedo, Republic and Phaedrus Plato advocates a
belief in the immortality of the soul, and several
dialogues end with long speeches imagining the afterlife.
More than one dialogue contrasts knowledge and opinion,
perception and reality, nature and custom, and body and
soul.
 Several dialogues tackle questions about art: Socrates says
that poetry is inspired by the muses, and is not rational.
He speaks approvingly of this, and other forms of divine
madness (drunkenness, eroticism, and dreaming) in
the Phaedrus (265a–c), and yet in the Republic wants to
outlaw Homer's great poetry, and laughter as well. In Ion,
 Socrates gives no hint of the disapproval of Homer that he
expresses in the Republic. The dialogue Ion suggests
that Homer's Iliad functioned in the ancient Greek world as
the Bible does today in the modern Christian world: as
divinely inspired literature that can provide moral
guidance, if only it can be properly interpreted.
 Socrates and his company of disputants had something to say
on many subjects, including politics and art, religion and
science, justice and medicine, virtue and vice, crime and
punishment, pleasure and pain, rhetoric and rhapsody, human
nature and sexuality, as well as love and wisdom.
 Philosophy of Protagoras c. 490 – c. 420 BC) was a pre-
Socratic Greek philosopher and is numbered as one of
the sophists by Plato. In his dialogue, Protagoras, Plato
credits him with having invented the role of the
professional sophist.
 He also is believed to have created a major controversy
during ancient times through his statement that, "Man is
the measure of all things", interpreted by Plato to mean
that there is no absolute truth, but that which individuals
deem to be the truth. Although there is reason to question
the extent of the interpretation of his arguments that has
followed, that concept of individual relativity was
revolutionary for the time, and contrasted with other
philosophical doctrines that claimed the universe was based
on something objective, outside human influence or
perceptions.
 Even though he was mentored by Democritus, Protagoras did
not share his enthusiasm for the pursuit of mathematics.
"For perceptible lines are not the kind of things the
geometer talks about, since no perceptible thing is
straight or curved in that way, nor is a circle tangent to
a ruler at a point, but the way Protagoras used to say in
refuting the geometers" (Aristotles, Metaphysics 997b34-
998a4). Protagoras was skeptical about the application of
theoretical mathematics to the natural world; he did not
believe they were really worth studying at all. According
to Philodemus, Protagoras said that "The subject matter is
unknowable and the terminology distasteful". Nonetheless,
mathematics was considered to be by some a very viable form
of art, and Protagoras says on the arts, "art (tekhnê)
 without practice and practice without art are nothing"
(Stobaeus, Selections 3.29.80).
 Protagoras also was known as a teacher who addressed
subjects connected to virtue and political life. He
especially was involved in the question of whether virtue
could be taught, a commonplace issue of fifth century BC
Greece, that has been related to modern readers through
Plato's dialogue. Rather than educators who offered
specific, practical training in rhetoric or public
speaking, Protagoras attempted to formulate a reasoned
understanding, on a very general level, of a wide range of
human phenomena, including language and education. In
Plato's Protagoras, he claims to teach "the proper
management of one's own affairs, how best to run one's
household, and the management of public affairs, how to
make the most effective contribution to the affairs of the
city by word and action".
 He also seems to have had an interest in "orthoepeia"—the
correct use of words—although this topic is more strongly
associated with his fellow sophist Prodicus. In his
eponymous Platonic dialogue, Protagoras interprets a poem
by Simonides, focusing on the use of words, their literal
meaning, and the author's original intent. This type of
education would have been useful for the interpretation of
laws and other written documents in the Athenian
courts.[9] Diogenes Laërtius reports that Protagoras devised
a taxonomy of speech acts such as assertion, question,
answer, command, etc. Aristotle also says that Protagoras
worked on the classification and proper use of grammatical
gender.
 The titles of his books, such as Technique of
Eristics (Technē Eristikōn, literally "Practice of
Wranglings"—with wrestling used as a metaphor for
intellectual debate), prove that Protagoras also was a
teacher of rhetoric and argumentation. Diogenes Laërtius
states that he was one of the first to take part in
rhetorical contests in the Olympic games.