Plato's Philosophy: A Detailed History PDF

 **DISCUSS ONLY THE MOST IMPORTANT IN HIS TEACHING BASED ON NATURE,ORIGIN, DESTINY OF HUMAN PERSON**. **Reference:** [Plato \| Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy](https://iep.utm.edu/plato/) **INTRODUCTION** **Plato (427---347 B.C.E.)** Plato is one of the world's best k...

 **DISCUSS ONLY THE MOST IMPORTANT IN HIS TEACHING BASED ON NATURE,ORIGIN, DESTINY OF HUMAN PERSON**. **Reference:** [Plato \| Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy](https://iep.utm.edu/plato/) **INTRODUCTION** **Plato (427---347 B.C.E.)** Plato is one of the world's best known and most widely read and studied philosophers. He was the student of Socrates and the teacher of [Aristotle](https://iep.utm.edu/aristotl), and he wrote in the middle of the fourth century B.C.E. in ancient Greece. Though influenced primarily by Socrates, to the extent that Socrates is usually the main character in many of Plato's writings, he was also influenced by [Heraclitus](https://iep.utm.edu/heraclit), [Parmenides](https://iep.utm.edu/parmenid), and the Pythagoreans. There are varying degrees of controversy over which of Plato's works are authentic, and in what order they were written, due to their antiquity and the manner of their preservation through time. Nonetheless, his earliest works are generally regarded as the most reliable of the ancient sources on Socrates, and the character Socrates that we know through these writings is considered to be one of the greatest of the ancient philosophers. Plato's middle to later works, including his most famous work, the *Republic*, are generally regarded as providing Plato's own philosophy, where the main character in effect speaks for Plato himself. These works blend [ethics](https://iep.utm.edu/ethics), [political philosophy](https://iep.utm.edu/polphil), moral psychology, [epistemology](https://iep.utm.edu/epistemo), and metaphysics into an interconnected and systematic philosophy. It is most of all from Plato that we get the theory of Forms, according to which the world we know through the senses is only an imitation of the pure, eternal, and unchanging world of the Forms. Plato's works also contain the origins of the familiar complaint that the arts work by inflaming the passions, and are mere illusions. We also are introduced to the ideal of **["Platonic love:"]** Plato saw **LOVE** as *[motivated by a longing for the highest Form of beauty---]*The Beautiful Itself, and love as the motivational power through which the highest of achievements are possible. Because they tended to distract us into accepting less than our highest potentials, however, Plato mistrusted and generally advised against physical expressions of love. **1. BIOGRAPHY** **A. Birth** **B. Family** The republic binangggit ang pagigng perpekto, pagiging patas at pampolitikal atbuhay. 20 years napag-aaral. MIND OVER MATTER 36 DIALOGUES BOOKS AND 13 LETTERS OF THE REPUBLIC AFTER WRITING HIS WORKS WAS LOAST AFTER RENAISSANCE **C. Early Travels and the Founding of the Academy** **D. Later Trips to Sicily and Death** **2. Influences on Plato** **A. Heraclitus** **B. Parmenides and Zeno** **C. The Pythagoreans** **D. Socrates** ALTHEAA **3. Plato's Writings** **A. Plato's Dialogues and the Historical Socrates** **B. Dating Plato's Dialogues** **C. Transmission of Plato's Works** CAMSSS **4. Other Works Attributed to Plato** **A. *Spuria*** **B. Epigrams** **C. *Dubia*** **5. The Early Dialogues** **A. Historical Accuracy** ALTHEAA Contemporary scholars generally endorse one of the following four views about the dialogues and their representation of Socrates: 1. [The Unitarian View:]\ This view, more popular early in the 20th Century than it is now, holds that there is but a single philosophy to be found in all of Plato's works (of any period, if such periods can even be identified reliably). There is no reason, according to the Unitarian scholar, ever to talk about "Socratic philosophy" (at least from anything to be found in Plato---everything in Plato's dialogues is *Platonic *philosophy, according to the Unitarian). One recent version of this view has been argued by Charles H. Kahn (1996). Most later, but still ancient, interpretations of Plato were essentially Unitarian in their approach. Aristotle, however, was a notable exception. 2. [The Literary Atomist View:]\ We call this approach the "literary atomist view," because those who propose this view treat each dialogue as a complete literary whole, whose proper interpretation must be achieved without reference to any of Plato's other works. Those who endorse this view reject completely any relevance or validity of sorting or grouping the dialogues into groups, on the ground that any such sorting is of no value to the proper interpretation of any given dialogue. In this view, too, there is no reason to make any distinction between "Socratic philosophy" and "Platonic philosophy." According to the literary atomist, all philosophy to be found in the works of Plato should be attributed only to Plato. 3. [The Developmentalist View:]\ According to this view, the most widely held of all of the interpretative approaches, the differences between the early and later dialogues represent developments in Plato's own philosophical and literary career. These may or may not be related to his attempting in any of the dialogues to preserve the memory of the historical Socrates (see approach 4); such differences may only represent changes in Plato's own philosophical views. Developmentalists may generally identify the earlier positions or works as "Socratic" and the later ones "Platonic," but may be agnostic about the relationship of the "Socratic" views and works to the actual historical Socrates. 4. [The Historicist View:]\ Perhaps the most common of the Developmentalist positions is the view that the "development" noticeable between the early and later dialogues may be attributed to Plato's attempt, in the early dialogues, to represent the historical Socrates more or less accurately. Later on, however (perhaps because of the development of the genre of "Socratic writings," within which other authors were making no attempt at historical fidelity), Plato began more freely to put his own views into the mouth of the character, "Socrates," in his works. Plato's own student, Aristotle, seems to have understood the dialogues in this way. CAMSSS **6. The Middle Dialogues** **a. Differences between the Early and Middle Dialogues** **b. The Theory of Forms** **C. Immortality and Reincarnation** **d. Moral Psychology** **E. Critique of the Arts** **f. Platonic Love** **7. Late Transitional and Late Dialogues** **a. Philosophical Methodology** **c. The "Eclipse" of Socrates** **d. The Myth of Atlantis** **e. The Creation of the Universe**