What was plato famous for

Had he stuck with this plan, the history of Greece and the Western World as a whole might have been extremely different.

So what changed his mind? When Socrates was executed in BCE over political disputes, Plato turned his focus to philosophy instead.

He wrote Laches about courage, Lysis about friendship, and Charmides, which talks about common sense, these are but a few. Altogether, his dialogues basically formed what his philosophical teachings would be when he got to his Academy. Plato created his own school, The Academy in Athens. Students who attended The Academy learned topics like philosophy, of course, but also astronomy, math, biology, and political theory. There was no tuition and anyone who wanted to learn there could.

The academy would run through goodwill and charity. Parents gave donations and presents. He also encouraged his students to be celibate and live simply. On average, students stayed for four years, though the famous Aristotle was more of a perpetual student of the Academy, he stayed there for 20 years. Plato played a vital role in encouraging the Greek intelligentsia to regard science as a theory. His Academy taught arithmetic as part of philosophy, as Pythagoras had done, and the first 10 years of a course at the Academy included the study of geometry, astronomy, and music.

These characters argue and disagree with one another, and Plato used these exchanges of different viewpoints to set ideas and thoughts against one another, allowing the best ideas to rise to the surface. This technique guaranteed a thorough examination of each idea and is still used in philosophical discourse today.

In contrast to the Republic, Laws concerned itself less with defining the ideal state, and more with planning a practical, if imperfect, system of government. The biographer Diogenes Laertius tells how it was left unfinished and written on wax tablets.

Save my name and email in this browser for the next time I comment. Here, we have listed the top 12 contributions of Plato: Contents hide. Established the First University in Europe. Insight into the Philosophical Teachings of Socrates. The Theory of Forms. Epistemology or Theory of Knowledge. However, Dionysius II was jealous of Dion whom he forced out of Syracuse and the plan, as Plato had expected, fell apart.

Plato returned to Athens, but visited Syracuse again in BC hoping to be able to bring the rivals together. He remained in Syracuse for part of BC but did not achieve a political solution to the rivalry. Dion attacked Syracuse in a coup in , gained control, but was murdered in Field writes in [ 6 ] that Plato's life On the contrary, he was a man of the world, an experienced soldier, widely travelled, with close contacts with many of the leading men of affairs, both in his own city and elsewhere.

Plato's main contributions are in philosophy, mathematics and science. However, it is not as easy as one might expect to discover Plato's philosophical views. The reason for this is that Plato wrote no systematic treatise giving his views, rather he wrote a number of dialogues about 30 which are written in the form of conversations.

Firstly we should comment on what superb pieces of literature these dialogues are [ 6 ] :- They show the mastery of language, the power of indicating character, the sense of a situation, and the keen eye for both its tragic and its comic aspects, which set Plato among the greatest writers of the world. He uses these gifts to the full in inculcating the lessons he wants to teach.

In letters written by Plato he makes it clear that he understands that it will be difficult to work out his philosophical theory from the dialogues but he claims that the reader will only understand it after long thought, discussion and questioning.

The dialogues do not contain Plato as a character so he does not declare that anything asserted in them are his own views. The characters are historic with Socrates usually the protagonist so it is not clear how much these characters express views with which they themselves would have put forward.

It is thought that, at least in the early dialogues, the character of Socrates expresses views that Socrates actually held. Through these dialogues, Plato contributed to the theory of art, in particular dance, music, poetry, architecture, and drama. He discussed a whole range of philosophical topics including ethics , metaphysics where topics such as immortality, man, mind, and Realism are discussed. He discussed the philosophy of mathematics, political philosophy where topics such as censorship are discussed, and religious philosophy where topics such as atheism, dualism and pantheism are considered.

In discussing epistemology he looked at ideas such as a priori knowledge and Rationalism. In his theory of Forms, Plato rejected the changeable, deceptive world that we are aware of through our senses proposing instead his world of ideas which were constant and true. Let us illustrate Plato's theory of Forms with one of his mathematical examples. Plato considers mathematical objects as perfect forms. For example a line is an object having length but no breadth.

No matter how thin we make a line in the world of our senses, it will not be this perfect mathematical form, for it will always have breadth. In the Phaedo Plato talks of objects in the real world trying to be like their perfect forms.

By this he is thinking of thinner and thinner lines which are tending in the limit to the mathematical concept of a line but, of course, never reaching it. Another example from the Phaedo is given in [ 6 ] :- The instance taken there is the mathemtical relation of equality, and the contrast is drawn between the absolute equality we think of in mathematics and the rough, approximate equality which is what we have to be content with in dealing with objects with our senses.

Pericles transformed his The two most powerful city-states in ancient Greece, Athens and Sparta, went to war with each other from to B. The Peloponnesian War marked a significant power shift in ancient Greece, favoring Sparta, and also ushered in a period of regional decline that signaled the Greek philosophy and rhetoric moved fully into Latin for the first time in the speeches, letters and dialogues of Cicero B.

A brilliant lawyer and the first of his family to achieve Roman office, Cicero was one of the How will it end? Who was the first man? Where do souls go after death? The warrior Achilles is one of the great heroes of Greek mythology.

One of the greatest ancient historians, Thucydides c. Hercules known in Greek as Heracles or Herakles is one of the best-known heroes in Greek and Roman mythology.

His life was not easy—he endured many trials and completed many daunting tasks—but the reward for his suffering was a promise that he would live forever among the gods Live TV. This Day In History.