According to Plato
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London (England) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Love -- Fiction; Political fiction; Satire
Greek428 BC – 348 BC
Plato
Athens
Student of Socrates and founder of the Academy, author of the dialogues on justice, love, and the Forms.
Biography
Plato was born into an aristocratic Athenian family and seemed destined for politics until he watched his city execute Socrates. That death became the hinge of his life. He left Athens, traveled, and returned to found the Academy — the first enduring institution of higher learning in Europe, which would run for nearly nine centuries.
His dialogues — the Republic, Phaedo, Symposium, Timaeus among some thirty works — are philosophy written as drama, with Socrates usually the protagonist. At their center stands the theory of Forms: the visible world of particular things is a realm of shadows and change, while true reality belongs to eternal, immaterial Forms — Justice itself, Beauty itself, the Good itself — which the soul knew before birth and strains to recollect. The famous allegory of the cave in Republic Book VII makes the claim vivid: most of humanity watches flickering images on a wall, mistaking them for the world.
From this metaphysics flows his politics. If knowledge of the Good is possible but rare, the just city should be ruled by those who possess it — philosopher-kings, trained through decades of mathematics and dialectic. The Republic works out this city in speech, alongside a psychology that divides the soul into reason, spirit, and appetite, with justice as their right ordering.
For religious history, Plato is inescapable. The Timaeus describes a divine craftsman — the Demiurge — shaping the cosmos according to eternal patterns, and the Phaedo argues for the soul's immortality. Early Christian and Islamic thinkers alike found in him a pagan who had almost reached them; Augustine said the Platonists came closer to Christianity than any other school, and the Neoplatonism built on his work became the philosophical grammar of medieval theology in three faiths.
Works
Arguments of Celsus, Porphyry, and the Emperor Julian, Against the Christians: Also Extracts from Diodorus Siculus, Josephus, and Tacitus, Relating to the Jews, Together with an Appendix
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Christianity -- Controversial literature -- Early works to 1800; Theology -- Early works to 1800
Charmides
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Classical literature; Ethics -- Early works to 1800; Knowledge, Theory of -- Early works to 1800; Socrates, 470 BC-399 BC; Temperance -- Early works to 1800
Crito
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Classical literature; Dialogues, Greek -- Translations into English; Justice -- Early works to 1800; Philosophy, Ancient
Euthydemus
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Classical literature; Logic -- Early works to 1800; Philosophy, Ancient; Socrates, 470 BC-399 BC; Sophists (Greek philosophy)
Euthyphro
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Classical literature; Philosophy, Ancient; Piety -- Early works to 1800; Socrates, 470 BC-399 BC
Gorgias
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Classical literature; Ethics -- Early works to 1800; Political science -- Early works to 1800
Meno
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Classical literature; Ethics -- Early works to 1800; Socrates, 470 BC-399 BC; Virtue -- Early works to 1800
Ocellus Lucanus on the nature of the universe : $b Taurus, the Platonic philosopher, on the eternity of the world. Julius Firmicus Maternus of the thema mundi. Select theorems on the perpetuity of time, by Proclus.
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Astrology -- Early works to 1800; Science -- Early works to 1800
Parmenides
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Classical literature; Dialectic -- Early works to 1800; Ontology -- Early works to 1800; Parmenides; Philosophy, Ancient; Reasoning -- Early works to 1800; Socrates, 470 BC-399 BC; Zeno, of Elea
Phaedrus
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Classical literature; Love -- Early works to 1800; Lysias; Rhetoric -- Early works to 1800; Rhetoric, Ancient; Socrates, 470 BC-399 BC; Soul -- Early works to 1800
Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 1
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Philosophy, Ancient; Plato; Socrates, 470 BC-399 BC
Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 2
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Philosophy, Ancient; Plato; Socrates, 470 BC-399 BC
Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 3
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Philosophy, Ancient; Plato; Socrates, 470 BC-399 BC
Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 4
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Philosophy, Ancient; Plato; Socrates, 470 BC-399 BC
Platonism in English poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
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English poetry -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism; English poetry -- Greek influences; Neoplatonism in literature; Plato -- Influence; Renaissance -- England; Thesis (Ph. D.)
Protagoras
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Classical literature; Protagoras; Socrates, 470 BC-399 BC; Sophists (Greek philosophy); Virtue -- Early works to 1800
Sophist
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Classical literature; Logic, Ancient; Meaning (Philosophy); Methodology; Ontology; Sophists (Greek philosophy)
Symposium
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Classical literature; Love -- Early works to 1800; Philosophy, Ancient; Socrates, 470 BC-399 BC
The dialogues of Plato in five volumes, Vol. 2 (of 5) : $b Translated into English with analyses and introductions
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Dialogues, Greek -- Translations into English; Philosophy, Ancient
The philosophical and mathematical commentaries of Proclus on the first book of Euclid's elements (Vol. 1 of 2) : $b To which are added, A history of the restoration of Platonic theology, by the latter Platonists: And a translation from the Greek of Proclus's Theological elements
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Euclid. Elements; Platonists
The Republic
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Classical literature; Justice -- Early works to 1800; Political science -- Early works to 1800; Utopias -- Early works to 1800
The Republic
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Justice -- Early works to 1800; Political science -- Early works to 1800; Utopias -- Early works to 1800
The Republic of Plato
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Justice -- Early works to 1800; Political science -- Early works to 1800; Utopias -- Early works to 1800
The six books of Proclus, the Platonic successor, on the theology of Plato (vol. 1 of 2) : $b translated from the Greek, to which a seventh book is added, in order to supply the deficiency of another book on this subject, which was written by Proclus, but since lost, also, a translation from the Greek of Proclus' Elements of theology, to which are added a translation of the treatise of Proclus, On providence and fate, a translation of extracts from his treatise, entitled, Ten doubts concerning
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Neoplatonism -- Early works to 1800; Plato -- Early works to 1800; Theology -- Early works to 1800
The six books of Proclus, the Platonic successor, on the theology of Plato (vol. 2 of 2) : $b translated from the Greek, to which a seventh book is added, in order to supply the deficiency of another book on this subject, which was written by Proclus, but since lost, also, a translation from the Greek of Proclus' Elements of theology, to which are added a translation of the treatise of Proclus, On providence and fate, a translation of extracts from his treatise, entitled, Ten doubts concerning p
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Neoplatonism -- Early works to 1800; Plato -- Early works to 1800; Theology -- Early works to 1800
The works of Plato (Vol. 1 of 6) : $b A new and literal version chiefly from the text of Stallbaum
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Philosophy -- Early works to 1800
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Books by & about Plato
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