Plato: Biography Of This Ancient Greek Philosopher
There are many reasons to think that Plato is the true founder of philosophy as an institutionalized discipline. This philosopher made philosophy an academic knowledge, never better said, since he taught it in his new Academy of Athens.
Plato’s life takes place in many places and, despite coming from a wealthy family, his story is that of someone who had a very bad time having to be exiled from his hometown and becoming a slave due to the misfortunes of the war. .
Concerned with power, he is credited with the idea that a just world would be one whose rulers were philosophers. Let’s discover more about the life and thoughts of this philosopher through a biography of Plato one of the most prominent thinkers of the Western world.
Aristocles of Athens, known by his nickname Plato (in Greek Πλάτων, Plátōn “the broad-shouldered”), was born around 428 BC in Athens, although there are sources that suggest that he could have been born in Aegina. In any case, this philosopher traveled throughout much of the Mediterranean and was nourished by ideas from many currents of thought. The result was Platonic philosophy, one of the fundamental influences of Western culture
Early years and family context
Plato was born into a wealthy and powerful family, in fact, his father Ariston believed that his extensive wealth was due to being descended from Codro, the last king that Athens had.
As for the mother, Perictione, she and her relatives seemed to descend from the ancient Greek legislator Solon in addition to being related to two very important figures of her time: Critias and Charmides, tyrants who had participated in an oligarchic coup d’état along with 28 other tyrants perpetrated in the year 404 BC.
From the marriage between Ariston and Perictione, two sons and a daughter were born in addition to Plato: Glaucon, Adeimantus and Potone. When Ariston died, his mother Perictione remarried, this time with his uncle Pirilampes, who was a friend of Pericles , a very important politician in the history of Greece. From the union of Perictione and Pirilampes Antiphon, Plato’s half-brother, was born.
Philosophical training
Thanks to coming from a family of extensive wealth, Plato’s education was broad and deep, having the opportunity to be taught by various illustrious figures of his time. It is likely that when he began his studies in philosophy he was a disciple of Cratylus considered a follower of the teachings of the philosopher Heraclitus.
However, the most important moment in Plato’s training came in 407 BC. Barely being 20 years old, he had the opportunity to meet Socrates who would become his teacher when he was 63 years old. For 8 years Socrates transmitted everything he knew to young Plato, only stopped by his imprisonment and death.
Interest in politics
Due to the characteristics of his family, in which many members were or had been political men, the young man considered becoming one of them as well. However, upon knowing first-hand how his relatives, the tyrants Critias and Charmides, ruled, and not noticing many differences with how the democrats who replaced them did it, Plato became disillusioned by politics.
For Plato, the political path to find justice was precisely philosophy In fact, one of his maxims that has transcended the passage of time is that justice will only be real if the rulers are philosophers, or the rulers begin to philosophize.
Exile from Athens
When his teacher Socrates was unjustly accused of a crime and sentenced to death, Plato decided to flee to the city of Megara, in Attica. Although he had not committed any crime, he flees for fear of being judged given his close and deep ties with his teacher Socrates. It is believed that he must have remained in Megara for about three years where He had the opportunity to interact with Euclid of Megara and the school of philosophy of that city
After Megara he traveled to Egypt and later moved to the region of Cyrenaica, present-day Libya. There he was able to interact with the mathematician Theodore and the philosopher Aristippus of Cyrene. After his stay in Cyrenaica, Plato traveled to Italy, where he intended to meet Archytas of Tarentum, a versatile man of knowledge who boasted of being a mathematician, statesman, astronomer and philosopher. However, it must be said that There are sources that consider that, after being in Cyrenaica, he traveled directly to Athens
Visit to King Dionysius I
Around 388 BC Plato traveled to the island of Sicily, in whose capital, Syracuse, he met Dion, brother-in-law of Dionysius I , king of the city. Dion was an admirer of philosophers who followed the teachings of Socrates and informed the king of Plato’s presence. The king, intrigued by such an interesting visit, sent for the philosopher to his palace. Despite the initial interest, the relationship between the two must not have been very good because, although the reasons are unknown, Dionysius I ended up expelling Plato.
In his second exile, the philosopher was forced to leave Syracuse aboard a Spartan ship, stopping at Aegina. At that time Aegina and Athens were at war and, upon stopping, Plato ended up being converted into a slave in that first city. Fortunately, he was later rescued by Anniceris, a philosopher of the Cyrenaic school whom he had met when he was in Cyrene.
Academy Foundation
Plato would return to Athens around the year 387 BC, where he would take the opportunity to found his best-known institution: the Academy He built it on the outskirts of Athens, next to a garden dedicated to the hero Academus, which is why it received such a name.
This institution was a kind of sect of wise men organized with its regulations that also had a student residence, library, classrooms and specialized seminars. This academy It would be a model for the later universities of the Middle Ages
Return to Syracuse
In 367 BC Dionysius I of Syracuse died, inheriting the throne to his son Dionysius II. Dion saw fit to bring Plato back to become the tutor of the newly crowned king and invited him again to come to Sicily. Naturally, Plato had reservations about him, since he had been expelled from there and, through a series of unfortunate events, he ended up being made a slave in the flight from him. He still dared to travel to Syracuse and accepted the offer, leaving Eudoxo the direction of the Academy.
Once Plato had arrived in Syracuse, Dionysius II distrusted both the philosopher and Dion. He considered that these two were competition for him and his throne, so he soon took action and ended up banishing them, although without completely denying an eventual return. First he expelled Dion and then Plato, again
Last years
Plato returned directly to Athens and stayed there until 361 BC when Dionysius II invited him again. Plato did not trust it at all and decided to go in the company of some disciples, this time leaving Heraclides Ponticus in charge of the Academy. In an unexpected turn of events Dionysius II once again saw Plato as a threat and, this time, decided to arrest him
Fortunately, Plato was rescued with the help of Archytas of Taranto. From then on, distrustful of anyone outside the city of Athens and his invitations, The philosopher decided to dedicate himself completely to the Academy, directing it until his death, between the years 348 or 347 BC
Your philosophy
Plato was greatly influenced by the philosophy of Pythagoras from its beginnings. For Plato it was the soul, and not the body, that really meant the true essence of being. In fact, he believed that the body was nothing more than a packaging that hindered our search for truth and limited the free expression of our being. The soul was an entity weighed down by the physical world and the senses
Plato was of the opinion that the soul came from an elevated world, a dimension where it would have had contact with the truth. At some point, the soul gave itself over to base pleasures and, as a result, was forced to reduce itself to the physical and known world, becoming imprisoned within the body.
Three part theory
In his three-part theory he considers that The soul has three faculties: impulsiveness, rationality and the passionate element
The impulsive faculty was linked to the ability to give orders and also to willpower. It was related to strength and drive, as well as ambition and rage.
The faculty of rationality was, according to Plato, the highest faculty among all others. He related it to intelligence and wisdom and, according to him, it was the philosophers who had it most developed.
The passionate faculty, on the other hand, was the most inferior of all and was related to the natural impulse to avoid pain and seek pleasure. Plato indicated that this was the element that promoted the taste for material goods, which hindered the soul in its search for the truth and the essence of things.
The two realities
For Plato there were what we could call two types of realities. On the one hand we have the real realm, which was formed by the world of ideas, and on the other we have the semi-real realm, made up of the material and sensible world.
According to Plato, the world of ideas is eternal, not subject to time or space , being able to be understood as the true essence of reality. On the other hand, the semi-real world is imperfect, ambiguous, unstable and has limits that depend on space and time.
Thus, Plato gave the concept of ideas a notion related to those universal elements, which serve as models that constitute truths that are maintained over time. For him, ideas were concepts such as virtue, beauty, equality and truth, that is, abstract and conceptually perfect, well-defined concepts.
The myth of the cave
The myth of the cave is, surely, the best allegory to understand the duality exposed by Plato in his philosophy. In this myth it is explained that There is a realm linked to ideas, which is unintelligible, and there is another that is totally associated with the sensible world , which would be what flesh and blood beings experience. The interior of the cave represents the sensible world, while life outside of it would be related to the world of ideas.
For Plato, living inside the cave implies living in a world full of darkness and being completely subjected to worldly pleasures. The act of getting out of the cave is the representation of leaving behind the search for pleasures and going in search of knowledge, of real ideas. That is to say, Leaving the cave is synonymous with prioritizing reason ahead of impulsiveness and pleasure The further we are from the cave, the more knowledge we gain and the closer we are to the truth.
Division of the human soul and relationship with politics
Plato separates the “real” into two opposite worlds. On the one hand we have the positive, which is represented by the soul, the intelligible and the sky, while on the other we have the negative, represented by the body, the earth and the sensible. That is to say, the positive was the world of ideas, while the negative was the physical world From these reflections he relates these ideas to what the ideal State should be like, in which Plato established a division regarding the formation of the human soul.
The three faculties of the soul are located in three different places in the body. Reason is found in the head, courage or the impulsive faculty is found in the heart, and the passionate faculty or appetite is found in the lower abdomen. These three faculties and the structures in which they are housed are what move man and incline him towards his decisions.
According to Plato, The man who dedicated himself to governing had to be the one who dominated reason and wisdom above the other two faculties That is, the good ruler was one who possessed a soul with a tendency to seek the truth. It is here where he defended the idea that good rulers should be philosophers, that is, men who prioritized reason ahead of the other two faculties, or that at least kings philosophized trying to seek the truth to bring prosperity to their land.
