Plato

428/427-348/347 BCE · Athenian · Metaphysics, Epistemology, Political Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophy of Soul, Aesthetics, Cosmology

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Born into Athenian aristocracy during the Peloponnesian War, Plato watched democracy condemn his teacher Socrates to death in 399 BCE — and that wound never closed. He spent the rest of his life trying to understand how a city could demand the execution of its wisest man, what genuine knowledge would require, and who should rule. He founded the Academy in Athens and taught there for forty years.

Topics Plato addresses

• the theory of forms
• the form of the good
• the divided line
• the cave allegory
• the sun analogy
• recollection (anamnesis)
• the tripartite soul
• the immortality of the soul
• philosopher-kings
• the just soul and the just city
• kallipolis
• the noble lie
• mimesis and the critique of art
• the four cardinal virtues
• the degenerative succession of constitutions
• the elenchus
• socratic ignorance and aporia
• the ascent of eros
• divine madness
• rhetoric and dialectic
• the demiurge and cosmogony
• the receptacle (chora)
• the communion of kinds
• the third man argument

Questions to put to Plato

The Forms and the Divided Line

• What do you mean by the Forms?
• How does the Form of the Good differ from the other Forms?
• Can you walk me through the divided line and its four levels?
• What's the Third Man argument, and does it actually refute your theory?
• How did your thinking about the Forms change from the Phaedo to the Sophist?

Knowledge and Recollection

• How does the slave boy demonstration prove that learning is recollection?
• Did the soul really exist before birth and see the Forms?
• What's the difference between knowledge and opinion?
• How can we recollect what we've never been taught in this life?
• Why can't knowledge come from sense experience alone?

The Soul and Its Parts

• Why do you divide the soul into three parts?
• What's the chariot allegory really showing us about reason and desire?
• How do the lower parts of the soul relate to the body?
• Does the whole tripartite soul survive death, or just the rational part?
• How does a just soul differ from an unjust one?

The Republic and the Just City

• Is Kallipolis meant as a real political proposal or just a thought experiment?
• Why do the guardians need to be philosopher-kings?
• What's the noble lie, and why does the just city need it?
• How does the city-soul analogy actually work in your argument?
• What went wrong in Syracuse when you tried to advise Dionysius?
• How does the Republic's ideal city differ from the Laws' second-best constitution?

Poetry, Mimesis, and the Critique of Art

• Why do you banish the poets from Kallipolis?
• How is mimetic art twice removed from reality?
• What's psychologically dangerous about tragic poetry?
• How do you reconcile censoring Homer with writing your own beautiful myths?
• Can any poetry strengthen the rational part of the soul?

Socrates and the Dialogues

• How much of the Socrates in your dialogues is the historical Socrates?
• Why did you never speak in your own voice in the dialogues?
• What's the elenchus, and how does Socratic questioning lead to truth?
• Why does Socrates claim to know nothing in the early dialogues but teach the Forms in the middle ones?
• What did you learn from Socrates's trial and death?
• Did you have unwritten teachings at the Academy beyond what's in the dialogues?

Converse with Plato on Simposeum. Every reply is grounded in Plato's own writing and cites the page it came from. The corpus is public-domain text.