Name: Karen Anne G.

Marcial
Sec: BSCD 1B Time: 4:00pm – 5:30pm

PLATO
Athenian Philosopher

PLATO’S WORKS (According to the Wikipedia)

• Apology • Epigrams • Laches • Menexenus

• Charmides • Euthydemus • Laws • Meno
• Cratylus • Euthyphro • Lesser Hippias • Parmenides
• Critias • Gorgias • Letters • Phaedo
• Crito • Ion • Lysis • Phaedrus

• Protagoras • Statesman • Timaues

• The Republic • Symposium
• Sophist • Theaetetus

PLATO’S CONTRIBUTION (According to the Stetson University)

Plato's main contributions are in philosophy, mathematics and science. However, it is not as easy
as one might expect to discover Plato's philosophical views. The reason for this is that Plato wrote
no systematic treatise giving his views, rather he wrote about 30 dialogues written in the form of
conversations. Not only are these dialogues important works of philosophy, but they are superb
pieces of literature.
Through these dialogues, Plato contributed to the theory of art, in particular dance, music, poetry,
architecture, and drama. He discussed a whole range of philosophical topics including ethics,
metaphysics where topics such as immortality, man, mind, and Realism are discussed. He
discussed the philosophy of mathematics, political philosophy, and religious philosophy. In his
theory of Forms, Plato rejected the changeable, deceptive world that we are aware of through our
senses proposing instead his world of ideas which were constant and true. In his Republic, Plato
talks of geometrical diagrams as imperfect imitations of the perfect mathematical objects which
they represent. He also contributed to logic and legal philosophy, including rhetoric.
Although Plato made no important mathematical discoveries himself, his belief that mathematics
provides the finest training for the mind was extremely important in the development of the subject.
Plato's contributions to the theories of education are shown by the way that he ran the Academy
and his idea of what constitutes an educated person. Over the door of the Academy was written:
"Let no one unversed in geometry enter here".
Plato concentrated on the idea of "proof" and insisted on accurate definitions and clear hypotheses.
This laid the foundations for Euclid's systematic approach to mathematics. All of the most
important mathematical work of the fourth century was done by friends or pupils of Plato,
including Eudoxus, Aristotle, and Archytas.
In mathematics Plato's name is attached to the Platonic solids. In the Timaeus, there is a
mathematical construction of the elements earth, fire, air, and water being represented by the cube,
tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron repectively. The fifth Platonic solid, the dodecahedron,
is Plato's model for the whole universe.

PLATO’S VIEW OF MAN/THE SELF

In The Republic, Plato postulates that Man differentiates from animals in three ways: the soul,
which is immortal; the desire for and acquisition of knowledge; and the tendency of Man to
become social and political.
This sense the ideal of life proposed by Plato is a process of self-knowledge, not in the sense
of self-perception, but as an inner wisdom of what is really valuable for one- self.