Who is Plato and what did he contribute to philosophy?

Plato was a student of Sokrates and he was also aristotle’s teacher. Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato is a central figure in the history of philosophy.

Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher who lived from around 428 BCE to around 348 BCE. His exact dates of birth and death are not known.

The most common fact known about his family is that he has a noble family.

Plato is widely considered to be one of the fathers of Western philosophy, and many of his ideas continue to be influential in philosophy today.

So what are these effects?

• Plato was an innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms in philosophy.
• His most famous contribution is the Theory of forms, where he presents a solution to the problem of universals.
• He is also the namesake of Platonic love.
• He founded the first university in the world.

Platonic dialogues defined the literary genre subsequent philosophers used. Plato wrote approximately 35 dialogues, in most of which Socrates is the main character. Strictly speaking, the term refers to works in which Socrates is a character.

As it is known, Socrates does not have any writings of his own, but it is possible to learn and understand Socrates from Plato’s dialogues.

Dialectic is the name Plato gives to his method, to the highest form of thought. In dialectic one examines one’s assumptions, one’s basic concepts, and one arrives at better assumptions and concepts. It is perfectly possible, for Plato, that one would not, for the moment, examine one’s concepts.

The theory of Forms is a philosophical theory attributed to Plato, that the physical world is not as real or true as timeless, absolute, unchangeable ideas.

According to this theory, ideas in this sense, often capitalized and translated as “Forms”, are the non-physical essences of all things, of which objects and matter in the physical world are merely imitations.

The material world, the one we can see, touch, hear and smell, is really just half-seen images of the reality of the forms. Relying on your physical senses alone — trusting what you see, for instance, is, to Socrates, making yourself effectively blind. The world we see is only a reflection of the forms the world represents (and not even that accurately). A form, whether it’s a circle, or a table, or a tree or a dog, is, for Socrates, the answer to the question, What is that? Only understanding forms can lead to true knowledge.

Allegory of the cave is a good example for theory of forms. Plato explains in his book the republic.

In the allegory “The Cave”, Plato describes a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners’ reality, but are not accurate representations of the real world. The shadows represent the fragment of reality that we can normally perceive through our senses, while the objects under the sun represent the true forms of objects that we can only perceive through reason.

Socrates explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are actually not the direct source of the images seen. A philosopher aims to understand and perceive the higher levels of reality. However, the other inmates of the cave do not even desire to leave their prison, for they know no better life.

Platonic love is a type of love in which sexual desire or romantic features are nonexistent or have been suppressed or sublimated, but it means more than simple friendship.

The term is derived from the name of Greek philosopher Plato, though the philosopher never used the term himself. Platonic love, as devised by Plato, concerns rising through levels of closeness to wisdom and true beauty, from carnal attraction to individual bodies to attraction to souls, and eventually, union with the truth.

The Platonic Academy of Athens was founded by Plato around 387 BC. The school was dedicated to the study of knowledge, mathematics, medicine, rhetoric, and astronomy.

The site acquired its name from the legendary hero Academos. And as ı say before, his most famous student was arıstotales.

The academy, which was destroyed during a war, was subsequently rebuilt in 410 AD. The Academy was eventually permanently shut down by the Emperor Justinian in 529 AD.

As can be understood from the articles I have described above, Plato’s contributions to philosophy are quite large and it is understood that he also led the philosophers who lived after him.