Plato

In Philosophy there were many philosophers that made a difference in society nothing more than Plato. Plato was a public figure to society and had a major contribution to our society and medieval philosophy, through his ideas and works. Plato helped to lay the philosophical foundations of Western culture through Plato definition of forms and his contribution to society and the virtuous life

Plato had a major impact on the philosophical foundation of Western Culture Philosophy through Plato's definition of forms and his contribution to society and his discovery of the virtuous life. Plato's life begins around the year 428 BCE. He was borned into Athenian household who was rich and strong connections to political sections of Solon and Pisistratus. Plato's parents were Ariston and Perictone, his older brothers were Adeimantus and Glaucon, and his younger sister was Potone. Plato's parents saw the future of Plato as dealing with politics because they wanted to keep it within the heritage. But that all changed when the war of Peloponnesian War which begin a couple years before Plato was born and continue well after he was twenty, this entitled lead to decline of the Athenian Empire. The war was followed by a rabid conservative religious movement that led to the execution of Plato's mentor, Socrates. Together these events forever altered the course of Plato's life. While as a young boy Plato engaged in many forms of poetry, only later that turn into philosophy. There evidence that Plato sometime during his youth he became acquainted with doctrines of Cratylus, a student of Heraclitus, who, along with other Pre-Socratic thinkers such as Pythagoras and Parmenides, provided Plato with the foundations of his metaphysics and epistemology. After the chaos of Athens final defeat in 404 and the establishment of the Sparta government and the events that followed, it dramatically affected the direction of his thinking. After the turmoil of the war, the tyranny known as the Thirty Tyrants governed Athens. Two of Plato's relatives became heavy involved in the government. Plato's

Critias (his mother's uncle) and Charmides (his mother's brother) played roles in this regime. Critias was identified as one of the more extreme members and chief advocate of the government, while Charmides played a smaller role as one of the Eleven, a customs/police force which oversaw the Piraeus. In 339 Socrates is brought to trial on corrupting the youth, introducing new gods into the city, atheism, and engaging in unusual religious practices. Socrates was found guilty on the charges and was later executed a month later. The execution of Socrates weighed heavily on Plato and he been to turn away from politics and he thought the behavior of the courts was unjustified. Plato then left Attica with other friends of Socrates and spent the next twelve years in travel and study. During his travels he met with wise-men, priests, and prophets of many different lands, and studied not only philosophy but geometry, geology, astronomy, and religious matters. He began to start writing extensively after the execution of Socrates. Plato divided his writing into three groups. The first group the "Socrates Dialogues "were said to be written between 399 and 387. Plato was forty when he visited Italy. In Italy he discovered the Academy. Plato's Academy was school for people who wanted to study religion and philosophical activities. The next twenty six years Plato became more profound and his talents refined. In 367 Dionysus of Syracuse died, leaving his son as the supreme ruler of a growing empire. Dion, his uncle and guardian, persuaded young Dionysus II to send for Plato, who was to serve as his personal tutor. In 365 Syracuse entered into war, and Plato returned to Athens. (Around the same time, Plato's most famous pupil, Aristotle, entered the Academy.) In 361, Dion wrote Plato begging him to return. Plato did so, setting out on his third and final voyage to Italy. Plato was soon spirited out of Syracuse from where he went back to Athens.

Plato came up with many ideas. One of the major and well known was the forms such as truth or good he developed. A form is defined as an abstract property or quality. Forms are pure, cause, ultimately real, archetypes,systemically interconnected meaning that they are connected to each other and the material objects are in an intricate system that reflects both the way they flow down from the form of the good and that's gives a way to gain knowledge about the way the forms operate. Plato's theories of the forms were meant to solve the ethical problem which was How can humans live a fulfilling, happy life in a contingent, changing world where everything they attach themselves to can be taken away?. The second problem that Plato was trying to solve was The Problem of Permanence and Change. The question he asks everyone was how can the world appear to be both permanent and changing? The world we perceive through the senses seems to be always changing. The world that we perceive through the mind, using our concepts, seems to be permanent and unchanging. Which is most real and why does it appear both ways? The solution that he came up with was splits up the existence into two realms into material a transcendent realms of forms. He says that humans have access to the realm of forms through the mind, through reason, given Plato's theory of the subdivisions of the human soul. This gives them access to an unchanging world, invulnerable to the pains and changes of the material world. By detaching ourselves from the material world and our bodies and developing our ability to concern ourselves with the forms, we find a value which is not open to change or disintegration. This solves the first, ethical, problem.

He also says by splitting existence up into two realms also solves the problem of permanence and change. We perceive a different world, with different objects, through our mind than we do through the senses. It is the material world, perceived through the senses, that is changing. It is the realm of forms, perceived through the mind that is permanent and immutable. It is this world that is more real; the world of change is merely an imperfect image of this world.

Plato carved out a subject matter for philosophy by formulating and discussing a wide range of metaphysical and ethical questions. He explain the similarities and resemblances