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341-270 BCE)
Plato, a student of Socrates, is regarded as the father of political science and the founder of one of the
world’s first known institutions of higher learning, the Academy in Athens. The primary groundwork of
Plato’s philosophy is a threefold approach – dialects, ethics and physics, the central point of unison being
the theory of forms. For him, the highest of forms was that of the ‘good’, which he took as the cause of
being and knowledge. Plato wrote one of the first and most influential works on politics, The Republic,
which described an ideal or Utopian society. Like his mentor Socrates, Plato was a critic of democracy.
The most well-known ancient Greek Philosopher of all time, Socrates, was a master stonemason and
social critic. He never wrote anything and most of his philosophical contributions come through his
students, mainly Plato. Socrates embarked a whole new perspective of achieving practical results through
application of philosophy in our daily lives. Socrates became famous for encouraging people to critically
question everything. Socrates’ greatest contribution to philosophy was the Socratic Method in which
discussion, argument, and dialogue are used to discern the truth. Eventually, his beliefs and realistic
approach in philosophy led to his end, as he was tried and convicted for criticizing religion and corrupting
the youth. Socrates then chose death by suicide over exile from his homeland of Athens. His legendary
trial and death at the altar of the ancient Greek democratic system has changed the academic view of
philosophy as a study of life itself.
https://athensinsiders.com/the-top-10-ancient-greek-philosophers/