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Plato
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Plato was one of the early stars of Western philosophy. The son of an aristocrat, he studied under the great Greek thinker, Socrates. After years of travel and study, Plato founded the Academy in his native Athens in 387 B.C.; it became a famous hotbed of philosophical and scientific discussion, and is regarded by many as the first known university in the world. Plato's writings mostly take the form of dialogues, or "dialectics," in which knowledge is revealed as two characters ask and answer questions of each other. (Socrates was often one of the characters.) Plato's text The Republic, in which he lays out his ideas on the perfect state, remains a staple of college reading lists around the world.
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Plato, born in Athens around 427 BC, was considered to be one of the earliest philosophers. He lived during the Age of Synthesis. After his father's death his mother married a friend of Pericles so he was politically connected to both the oligarchy and democracy. After the Peloponnesian War, his mother's brother and uncle tried to persuade him to join in the oligarchical rules of Athens. Instead, Plato joined his two older brothers in becoming a student of Socrates. Socrates forced them to challenge then to examine their ideas and beliefs critically, which was annoying and antagonizing many in the process.
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Plato had a career in the military and politics and traveled widely before (and even after) starting his famous school, the Academy, in Athens. Many of his views are known from imagined dialogues that feature his friend Socrates [b. Athens, Greece, 469 bce, d. Athens. 399 bce]. Plato, although not a mathematician himself, viewed geometry as the basis of the study of any science. This fit with his philosophical concept of ideal forms, such as a perfectly onedimensional line that drawn lines imitate.
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Plato had political ambitions as a young man and appeared destined to follow the family tradition. He became disillusioned with Athenian politics... as both the Empire and its politics had begun to decline since the onset of the Peloponnesian War (several years before Plato's birth). Outside the political sphere, Plato enjoyed success in athletics and engaged in both poetry and drama. According to Aristotle, Plato also became familiar with the teachings of Cratylus—a student of Heraclitus—as well as those of other pre-Socratic thinkers such as Pythagoras and Parmenides. These teachings provided the young philosopher with an introduction to the foundations of Greek metaphysics and epistemology.
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Plato, the son of Ariston and Perictione, was born in Athens, or perhaps in Aegina, about 428 BC, the year after the death of the great statesman Pericles. His family, on both sides, was among the most distinguished in Athens. Ariston is said to have claimed descent from the god Poseidon through Codrus, the last king of Athens; on the mother's side, the family was related to the early Greek lawmaker Solon. Nothing is known about Plato's father's death. It is assumed that he died when Plato was a boy. Perictione apparently married as her second husband her uncle Pyrilampes, a prominent supporter of Pericles; and Plato was probably brought up chiefly in his house.
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The exact birthdate of Plato is unknown. Based on ancient sources, most modern scholars estimate that he was born in Athens or Aegina between 424 and 423 BC His father was Ariston. According to a disputed tradition, reported by Diogenes Laertius, Ariston traced his descent from the king of Athens, Codrus, and the king of Messenia, Melanthus. Plato's mother was Perictione, whose family boasted of a relationship with the famous Athenian lawmaker and lyric poet Solon. Perictione was sister of Charmides and niece of Critias, both prominent figures of the Thirty Tyrants, the brief oligarchic regime, which followed on the collapse of Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian war (404-403 b.c.e.). Besides Plato himself, Ariston and Perictione had three other children; these were two sons, Adeimantus and Glaucon, and a daughter Potone, the mother of Speusippus (the nephew and successor of Plato as head of his philosophical Academy).
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Plato