One of the Demon Rebels, the floating pot space - Plato

Plato (c. 427–347 BC) was a famous Greek philosopher who wrote many philosophical dialogues and founded a famous academy in Athens.

Plato was a student of Socrates and a teacher of Aristotle, and the three of them are widely regarded as the founders of Western philosophy.

According to Diogenes and Laercius, Plato's original name was Aristokles, and later he was called Plato because of his strong body (in Greek, Platus means "flat, wide, etc.").

But Diogenes also mentions other theories, and the name Plato may also come from his smooth and broad eloquence (platutês), or because he had a broad forehead.

Because of Plato's excellent learning ability and other talents, the ancient Greeks also praised him as the son of Apollo, and said that when Plato was a baby, there were bees that rested on his lips, which made his eloquence so sweet and fluent.

In 399 BCE, when Socrates was tried and sentenced to death, Plato, completely disillusioned with the existing form of government, began to travel to Italy, Sicily, Egypt, Cyrene, and other places in search of knowledge.

It is said that at the age of forty, he returned to Athens from a trip around 387 BC and founded his own school, Plato's Academy, in the northwest corner of the city outside Athens, which became one of the first fully organized institutions of higher learning in Western civilization, and later higher academic institutions were named after them. It was also the forerunner of the university that developed in the West during the Middle Ages.

The college existed for more than 900 years until it was closed by Justinian the Great in 529 AD. The College was heavily influenced by the Huadagoras, and its curriculum was similar to the traditional Pythagorean curriculum, including arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and acoustics.

The academy produced many intellectuals, the most prominent of whom was Aristotle. In addition to Homer, Plato was influenced by many writers and thinkers before him, including Pythagoras' concept of "harmony" and Anaxagoras's teaching that Socrates should use the mind or reason as the basis for judging everything, and Parmenides' theory of the connection of all things may have influenced Plato's concept of the soul.

Socrates is the main character in the dialogues written by Plato. There is still a great deal of controversy as to how much of the dialogue is Socrates' original meaning and how much is Plato's own opinion.

Since Socrates never wrote any writings himself, this research question is often referred to as the "Socratic problem."

Another question is how far Plato fictionalized Socrates. Aristophanes also wrote many sarcastic mockery, and Sugplato had on several occasions hinted that he was a retinue of Socrates. But he never explicitly admitted it. In the Phaedo, he wrote a list of the students who accompanied Socrates on the day he committed suicide by taking medicine, and it is recorded that "Plato is ill" in the Phaedo.

In the Apology, Plato distances himself from Socrates, who claims that several of his former companions were also in the audience. He also pointed out that Plato, the brother of Adimantu, was also present in the Apology. Adimantu also appeared as a debater in "The Ideal Country".

Plato never described himself as one of the discussants in the dialogues. He describes himself only as a spectator from a distance.

The only exception is the Defence. He didn't claim to have heard any first-hand conversations. In one of the dialogues, Plato claims that these were not made up by him, but merely the Theses of Aeatedes, written under the instructions of Socrates.

Plato is generally considered to be a close student and retinue of Socrates. Strangely, however, Plato never appears as a party in these dialogues.

The trial of Socrates and the death penalty were a great shock to Plato, and the trial of Socrates is the most important and consistent event in a series of dialogues.

In many of Plato's dialogues, this trial is explicitly or indirectly mentioned, or the plot and role of this trial.

For example, in the Theateides and Epicureans, Socrates tells everyone that he must face an unfair trial.

In the Meno, Anitus warns Socrates to avoid criticizing important figures of the day so as not to get himself into trouble, and Anitus is one of those who jointly sue Socrates in the Apocalypse.

The Psalms are Socrates' defense speeches, while the Celestial and Phaedos are conversations in prison after the trial and conviction.

The trial of Socrates was quite unusual for its time, and based on current knowledge of the Athenian civilization of the fifth century BC, such a trial was unlikely.

Socrates was charged with believing in atheism, but Athens was the city with the highest degree of freedom of speech in Greece at the time, and atheism was not a sin prohibited by law, and there were many intellectuals who believed in atheism, and the public rarely condemned it.

Aristophanes never suffered punishment for his well-known plays, which not only promoted atheism, but also openly ridiculed many gods and traditional heroes, even describing Zeus as an energetic scoundrel and Hercules as a stupid man.

Equally puzzling is the fact that Socrates, in his defense, often emphasized that he was a philosophical messenger sent by Apollo, who was a very important god in the Athenian temple at the time.

Critics of Plato argued that Socrates had in fact offended the powerful, and speculated that the trial was designed by Socrates' enemies to warn others not to repeat his mistakes. This is also one of the problems in the study of Socrates. In the works of Lardines, the two men's accounts of Socrates are often very different.

The controversy of the dialogues, as well as many other dialogues that are considered Plato's own opinions, are expressed in the character of Socrates, but do not include Socrates' ideals of human and political virtue.

In the dialogues that Plato admired and loved, Socrates is portrayed as having a unique personality, surrounded by friends and foes.

In other dialogues that Plato did not appreciate, Socrates is merely a speaker with no unique personality. Some of these conversations contain his own unique wisdom, while others do not.

Many of the metaphysical dialogues that are thought to have been written by Plato himself are not only lacking in the human touch of reading, but also so abstract that only experts can understand their meaning.

Plato's dialogues have been divided into several periods: early, middle, and late. The classical historian Gregory Vlastos considers the Epicureans, the Apologies, the Epitheons, and the Phaedos to be the earliest series of dialogues, and thus more or less present Socrates as it is.

He argues that the early dialogues represent the philosophy of Socrates, while the middle and late dialogues are Plato's own philosophy, but Plato never states this in the dialogues.

Scholars have long been studying why Socrates never left any of his own writings.

Scholars have long been studying why Socrates never left any of his own writings.

Ancient Greek civilization had a centuries-long history of mature literacy before the golden age of Socrates, and dozens of other poets, philosophers, scientists, and sophists left behind a large number of writings and document fragments, but Socrates left nothing, so many still suspect that Socrates was semi-literate. (To be continued......)