1. Plato

2. Plato’s background 428-347 BCE (81 years!)
Wealthy Athenian aristocratic family
Became a student of Socrates
Founded the Academy in 387 BCE
Met Aristotle in 367 BCE
His curriculum focused heavily on instruction in philosophy
He saw all other disciplines as inferior to philosophy
His teaching style favors spoken discourse over written
This echoes Socrates
Wrote several dialogues that feature Socrates
Plato’s family made sure that he had a strong Greek education, which would include instruction in literature, music, astronomy, geometry, politics, rhetoric, and gymnastics
He loved theater in his youth, both comic and tragic, and even attempted to write some of his own tragedies
These turned out to be utter failures
As an adult, Plato wrote about how much he despised the theater
He didn’t meet Socrates until he was 20 years old (he would have completed the standard Greek education by now, so it is considered quite late)
He became Socrates’ most devoted pupil
He watched Socrates go to trial on charges of corrupting the youth in 399 BCE. Socrates lost this trial and was sentenced to death. He chose to drink hemlock (poison) before they could execute him.
His death had a profound impact on Plato. He left Athens to travel around Italy, Sicily, and maybe even Egypt
The Academy was a school in which Plato taught. It is there that his most famous pupil, Aristotle, studied under him.
Socrates never wrote anything down. Thus, it is through his student Plato that we have any sort of feel for Socrates’ philosophies
It is generally believed that Plato uses Socrates as a mouthpiece for his own beliefs, thus what Socrates believes, so too did Plato
There is some danger in this as there are inconsistencies within Plato’s various written dialogues
The sheer irony is that he speaks so denigratingly against writing, but yet he wrote quite prolifically and now this is the only way we have record of his views
Source: Bizzell and Herzberg, 16

3. Mimesis
Imitation; the representation of imitation of the real world in a work of art, literature, etc.
Imitation of another person’s words, mannerisms, actions, etc.
This is a super key term for Plato
Part of his philosophy revolves around this idea of true forms which we’ll talk about in just a second
Anything that is not the true form is said to be mimetic; it mimics the true form, but it is not the true form
Plato says there are three levels of mimesis
Level one, the perfect level, is the original form; no one has ever seen this before and there is only one form for each thing we see on Earth
Level two, the more respectable level, is what we see in nature and in the worthwhile crafts people create (homes, chairs, etc.) While not perfect, this level of mimesis is ok because it is as close as humans can get to the real deal
Level three, the less respectable level, is what we see in art. Here, artworks, literature, etc. are mimicking nature or the crafts people create, effectively making it a copy of a copy, or a copy twice removed from the original. The whole point for Plato was to get as close to the original as possible, so he saw art and literature as a step backwards.
Source: The Oxford English Dictionary

4. Plato’s Forms There is ONE universal form for everything
One universal form for a chair
One universal form for a leaf
One universal form for justice
One universal form for love
This universal form can be applied to many different things
There are several different chairs in this room, but they are all called chair because they all have something common in their resemblance to the form chair
Forms are hierarchical: ordered from best to worst
The philosopher’s job was to discover the true forms through study, questioning, and dialogue starting with the form of The Good
Plato believes that the gods created one single perfect chair, house, leaf, etc. They could never make another so perfect as this one a) because they had already done so and this is kind of a one-time deal and b) because if perfection already exists, why would you make another
Instead, the gods created copies of their perfect forms here on Earth
An object is identified as such because of its inherent possession of qualities that resemble the true form
Think of a leaf. If I asked each of you to draw a leaf, I would likely get all different ones. Some might to a maple leaf, others might do an elm leaf, others still might do a stylized artsy leaf. None of these are the ONE universal form for a leaf, but because of their inherent leafness, we call them all leaves
Similarly, there are many forms of love: there’s that love you feel for your parents, the love you feel for your friends, and the love you feel for your boyfriend/girlfriend. Hopefully these are all different (otherwise you’ve got some weird issues going on that you should probably get checked out), and yet we still call them all love.
At the top of Plato’s hierarchy is the supreme form of Good. All others are ranked in their connection (or opposition) to that form
Justice and love are somewhere towards the top, chairs and leaves are somewhere in the middle, and deception and evil are somewhere towards the bottom
Plato believed that select individuals, if they devoted enough care and attention to the task (and had a natural intelligence, he was big on that), could actually discover the true form of Good as the gods intended. If they could achieve that, they could then discover the true forms of EVERYTHING
Source: Honderich

5. Plato’s Writings Apology (of Socrates) (399 BCE) Phaedrus (360 BCE)
The Republic (380 BCE)
Plato wrote wayyyyyy more than these, but these are arguably the most important works throughout his career. They help define his philosophy
The Apology is Plato’s first work published just after Socrates’ death
It is important because it marks the beginning of Plato’s writing career (some believe that Socrates’ death was a wake-up call to the fact that by privileging speaking over writing, Socrates’ legacy had no way of living on unless someone started writing his ideas down)
It is Socrates’ trial. The authenticity of the speeches elaborated in the dialogue is unclear. Plato was there, but he definitely could’ve used some literary license with some of it
Phaedrus began for Plato as a work about love, but morphed into way more than that by the time he was done
He talks about how writing is a gift man should’ve never accepted from the gods because it shortens a man’s memory
He talks about the art of rhetoric and how much he hates it because it doesn’t reveal the truth or the good of things
We should probably note that at the same time Plato had his Academy, teachers of rhetoric, branded sophists by Plato, also had schools. They charged money even, and so Plato may have done this to attract more students to his school
Republic is probably his best-known work (and also the longest)
He talks about justice, the just man, the city state, the construction of government
As well as immortality, the soul, his theory of forms, and the role of the philosopher within the state
Source: "Works by Plato."

6. Plato’s Ideal State Not a Democracy! Ruled by a Philosopher King
Strong emphasis on moral and virtuous behavior
Citizens would learn to be moral and virtuous through their leader
Possibility for exile
Somethings were just banned: art, literature, music
Athens had adopted democracy back in 776 BCE. By the time Plato came around, however, that government had been corrupted and had become a tyranny. We should therefore have sympathy for his views through that context, even though they will seem repulsive to our own beliefs in modern American society
The philosopher King was one who had obtained knowledge of the true Forms
He would be wise, educated in all subjects
He would be virtuous and would seek to do good through all of his actions
He would be benevolent, but would also exact punishment on those who were truly guilty
Plato even said that an unjust act that goes unpunished is the greatest punishment of all, so the Philosopher King is actually doing the criminal a favor by punishing him (Gorgias)
He would improve the character of his citizens so as to elevate the moral fiber of everyone who came under his rule
The citizens for their part, while not smart enough to know the true forms, could at least learn from the copy provided by their great ruler
They would learn virtue and goodness from him
If not, they did run the possibility of being exiled
Because art just produces copies of copies, it has no place in an ideal state that is trying to approach the true, universal form of goodness. The only exceptions were stories and songs that sang of the virtues of the heroes or the teachings of the gods.
Source: Plato

7. Works Cited
Bizzell, Patricia, and Bruce Herzberg. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present. 2nd ed., Bedford/St. Martins, 1990.
Honderich, Ted, ed. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford UP,
The Oxford English Dictionary.
Plato. Republic. Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: Norton, 2001.
"Works by Plato." The Internet Classics Archive, MIT, classics.mit.edu/Browse/browse-Plato.html. Accessed 23 July 2018.