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 GO

In This ArticlePlato
Introduction
General Overviews
Online Resources
Bibliographies
Prosopography
toggleThe Complete Works
Lexica and Indices
toggleLife of Plato
Alcibiades
Apology of Socrates
Charmides
Cratylus
Critias
Crito
Euthydemus
Euthyphro
Gorgias
Hippias Minor and Major
Ion
Laches
toggleLaws
toggleLetters
Lysis
Menexenus
Meno
toggleParmenides
Phaedo
togglePhaedrus
Philebus
Protagoras
toggleRepublic
toggleSophist
Statesman
toggleSymposium
toggleTheaetetus
toggleTimaeus
Dubious
Alcibiades II
 Cleitophon
toggleEpinomis
Hipparchus
Minos
Rival Lovers
Theages
Halcyon
Axiochus
Definitions
Demodocus
Epigrams
Eryxias
On Justice
Sisyphos
On Virtue
Plato as Author, Myth, and Literature
togglePlato as Philosopher
Ethics and Politics
Platos Theory of the Arts
toggleInterpreting Plato
Platos Legacy

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Plato
Luc Brisson, Richard Dufour

Introduction

Born at Athens in a family of noble descent, Plato (b. c. 428427 d. c. 348347 BCE), naturally sought throughout his
life to play a political role as councilor or legislator, not only at Athens but also abroad, especially in Sicily. A writer and
philosopher, Plato was above all a citizen who, as is attested by the ten books of the Republic and the twelve books
of the Laws (which constitute almost half of his work), wished to reform the political life of his city by assigning power
not to wealth or to military force, but to knowledge. Against the traditional vision of culture in his time, essentially
transmitted by poetry, Plato proposed a new system of education based on knowledge, in which mathematics plays
an important role, and which culminates in the contemplation of true realities and of the Good. Platos life is therefore
inseparable from his thought. Fairly early, a dogmatism (the term being taken in the minimal sense of the exposition
of a doctrine) developed, with the appearance of a doctrine whose principal points became more specific over time.
This doctrine is characterized by a twofold reversal. First, the world of things perceived by the senses is a mere
image of a set of intelligible forms that represent true reality, for they possess the principle of their existence within
themselves. Second, human beings cannot be reduced to their bodies, for their true identity coincides instead with an
incorporeal entity, the soul, that accounts for all motion, both material (growth, locomotion, etc.) and spiritual (feelings,
sense perceptions, intellectual knowledge, and so on).

General Overviews

There are many presentations of Plato, his life, his work, and his doctrine, but the most exhaustive is Erler 2007. The
presentations in Friedlnder 19641969, Guthrie 1975-1978 are still valuable.Fine 2008 is of particular interest.

Erler, Michael. 2007. Die Philosophie der Antike. Vol. 2.2, Platon. Basel, Switzerland: Schwabe.
E-mail Citation
 Written after the model of the other volumes in the series, this recent volume of 792 pages is a true summa, with a
bibliography of nearly 200 pages.
Fine, Gail, ed. 1999. Plato 1, Metaphysics and epistemology. Plato 2, Ethics, politics, religion, and the
soul. Oxford Readings in Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
E-mail Citation
A collection of thirty-seven articles on various aspects of Platos philosophy, published after 1970 in the English-
speaking world.
Fine, Gail, ed. 2008. The Oxford handbook of Plato. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195182903.001.0001E-mail Citation
A collection of twenty-two previously unpublished articles on various aspects of Platos philosophy in the English-
speaking world.
Friedlnder, Paul. 19641969. Plato. 3 vols. Translated by Hans Meyerhoff. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Univ. Press.
E-mail Citation
Original work in German, Platon, 3 vols. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 19541960). An essential work by a German scholar. It
gives a good idea of the state of research on Plato during the first half of the 20th century.
Guthrie, W. K. C. 19751978. A history of Greek philosophy. Vol. 4, Plato: The man and his dialogues,
earlier period. Vol. 5, The later Plato and the Academy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
E-mail Citation
The standard presentation of Plato, his life and work in English, with each dialogue constituting the subject of a
particular study.
Vlastos, Gregory, ed. 1978. Plato: A collection of critical essays. 1, Metaphysics and epistemology; 2,
Ethics, politics, and philosophy of art and religion. 2 vols. Notre Dame, IN: Univ. of Notre Dame Press.
E-mail Citation
Plato scholarship in the English-speaking world in the period between the end of World War II and 1970.
LAST MODIFIED: 06/26/2012

DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780195389661-0006

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