Plato

Notes

Plato (c. 428–348 BCE), Athenian philosopher, student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle, and founder of the Academy. Almost everything we know of Socrates comes through his dialogues, of which the Apology, Socrates' defence at his trial, is the shortest and the most useful. The Republic gives us the cave, the philosopher-king and the theory of forms. I do not share his metaphysics, which puts the real world somewhere other than the one we can check, but the method of the dialogues, asking what a word means and refusing to stop, is the method this vault tries to use.

Student of Socrates
Taught Aristotle

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato

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Justified True Belief

The JTB account dates back to Plato's Theaetetus. Edmund Gettier's 1963 paper "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" showed that a belief can be justified and true by luck, without amounting to knowledge (Gettier Problems). My position side…

Objective morality

The theist's claim that objective morality requires a god, and that we have objective morality, so there is a god, is addressed under Moral Argument - Argument from Objective moral values. Even if objective morality existed, the Euthyphro…

Argument from Degrees of Perfection

Plato's Form of the Good stands behind it; C. S. Lewis and Peter Kreeft give popular versions in which our sense that some things are better than others implies a standard of perfect goodness.

Moral Argument - Argument from Objective moral values

I also reject premise 1, on independent grounds. Even if objective moral values existed, God would not be a satisfactory ground for them. The Euthyphro dilemma (Plato, c. 380 BC) applies: is something good because God commands it, or does…

Apology

Plato (c. 399 BCE)

Republic

Plato (c. 375 BCE)

Euthyphro dilemma

"Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" - Plato, Euthyphro (c. 380 BC), 10a

Theory of Forms

Plato's Theory of Forms holds that the objects of the physical world are imperfect copies of eternal, unchanging, non-physical Forms (or Ideas), and that true knowledge is knowledge of the Forms rather than of their shadows. Every beautifu…

Aristotle

Aristotle (384–322 BC), Greek philosopher, student of Plato, tutor of Alexander the Great and founder of the Lyceum, where Theophrastus succeeded him. He wrote on logic, physics, biology, ethics, politics, rhetoric and poetry, invented for…

Plutarch

Plato

Socrates

Taught Plato

Euthyphro Dilemma

"Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" - Socrates, in Plato's Euthyphro (c. 380 BC), 10a

Plato's Cave

Plato uses this story to illustrate his theory of **Forms**: the idea that the physical world is only a shadow of a deeper, unchanging reality. It also serves as a metaphor for education, truth, and the philosopher's role in society.