Socrates and Plato

Socrates & Plato
The philosopher Socrates remains, as he was in his lifetime (469–399 B.C.E.),an enigma, an inscrutable individual who, despite having written nothing, is considered one of the handful of philosophers who forever changed how philosophy itself was to be conceived. All our information about him is second-hand and most of it vigorously disputed, but his trial and death at the hands of the Athenian democracy is nevertheless the founding myth of the academic discipline of philosophy, and his influence has been felt far beyond philosophy itself, and in every age. Because his life is widely considered paradigmatic for the philosophic life and, more generally, for how anyone ought to live, Socrates has been encumbered with the admiration and emulation normally reserved for founders of religious sects—Jesus or Buddha—strange for someone who tried so hard to make others do their own thinking, and for someone convicted and executed on the charge of irreverence toward the gods. Certainly he was impressive, so impressive that many others were moved to write about him, all of whom found him strange by the conventions of fifth-century Athens: in his appearance, personality, and behavior, as well as in his views and methods. (1)

Plato (429–347 B.C.E.) is, by any reckoning, one of the most dazzling writers in the Western literary tradition and one of the most penetrating, wide-ranging, and influential authors in the history of philosophy. An Athenian citizen of high status, he displays in his works his absorption in the political events and intellectual movements of his time, but the questions he raises are so profound and the strategies he uses for tackling them so richly suggestive and provocative that educated readers of nearly every period have in some way been influenced by him, and in practically every age there have been philosophers who count themselves Platonists in some important respects. He was not the first thinker or writer to whom the word “philosopher” should be applied. But he was so self-conscious about how philosophy should be conceived, and what its scope and ambitions properly are, and he so transformed the intellectual currents with which he grappled, that the subject of philosophy, as it is often conceived—a rigorous and systematic examination of ethical, political, metaphysical, and epistemological issues, armed with a distinctive method—can be called his invention. Few other authors in the history of philosophy approximate him in depth and range: perhaps only Aristotle (who studied with him), Aquinas, and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same rank. (2)

King's College, London, produces an excellent set of audio discussions of Socrates and Plato. Discussion topics include:

  • Socrates without Plato
    • Peter of King’s College London looks at Socrates and how he paved the way for Plato -- with whom philosophy might be said to come of age. Episodes on Plato investigate the literary and philosophical features of such famous dialogues as the Meno, Phaedo, Republic, Parmenides, and Timaeus, as well as lesser known works like the Euthydemus, the Charmides and the Cratylus.  Also, look for interviews with Raphael Woolf, Fiona Leigh, Frisbee Sheffield and MM McCabe for further discussions on Socrates and Plato.
  • Plato's Socrates
    • Peter Adamson discusses the way he is portrayed in the early dialogues of Plato, especially the Apology. Topics include Socratic ignorance and Socrates' claim that no one does wrong willingly.
  • Woolf on Socrates
    • Peter's colleague Raphael Woolf joins him to discuss Socrates as he is portrayed by Plato: the gadfly of Athens. But was he an ascetic? And could it really be true that virtue is knowledge?
  • Plato's Life and Works
    • Peter discusses the life story and writings of Plato, focusing on the question of why he wrote dialogues.
  • Charmides and Euthydemus
    • Peter discusses virtue, self knowledge and some bad arguments in two lesser-known dialogues of Plato: the Charmides and the Euthydemus.
  • Plato's Gorgias
    • Peter discusses examines one of Plato’s great dialogues on ethics, the Gorgias, in which Socrates compares rhetoric to pastry-making and squares off against the immoralist Callicles.
  • Plato's Meno
    • Peter tackles one of Plato's most frequently read dialogues, the Meno, and the theory that what seems to be learning is in fact recollection.
  • Plato's Theaetetus
    • Peter examines Plato’s Theaetetus, discussing the relativist doctrine of Protagoras, the flux doctrine of Heraclitus, and the two famous images of the wax tablet and aviary.
  • McCabe on Plato
    • What is Plato's understanding of knowledge, and how does he think that knowledge relates to virtue? Peter tackles these questions with his King's colleague MM McCabe in this interview.
  • Plato's Phaedo
    • In the Phaedo, Plato depicts the death of Socrates, and argues for two of his most distinctive doctrines: the immortality of the soul and the theory of Forms.
  • Plato's Republic, part I
    • In his masterpiece the Republic, Plato describes the ideal city and draws a parallel between this city and the just soul, with the three classes of the city mirroring the three parts of the soul. Peter discusses this parallel and the historical context that may have influenced Plato's political thought.
  • Plato's Republic, part II
    • The most famous work of Plato is the Republic and its most famous passage is the allegory of the cave. In this episode Peter looks at the allegory, along with the Form of the Good and divided line.
  • Plato's Parmenides
    • Plato sets out criticisms against his own theory of Forms in the Parmenides. In this episode Peter looks at the criticisms, including the Third Man Argument, and asks what Plato wants us to conclude from them
  • Leigh on the Sophist
    • Peter talks to Fiona Leigh of University College London about Plato's Sophist, which revises the theory of Forms to explain how falsehood is possible.
  • Plato's Cratylus
    • Peter discusses Plato's contribution to the philosophy of language, the Cratylus, a dialogue which uncovers a theory of Heraclitean flux hidden within ancient Greek.
  • Plato's Timaeus
    • Peter looks at Plato's Timaeus, focusing on the divine craftsman or demiurge, the receptacle, and the geometrical atomism of Plato's elemental theory.
  • Plato's Erotic Dialogues
    • Peter discusses Plato’s erotic dialogues, the Lysis, the Phaedrus and the Symposium, and talks about the relationship between love, friendship and philosophy in Plato’s thought.
  • Sheffield on Platonic Love
    • Frisbee Sheffield, an expert on Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus, chats to Peter about love and friendship in the erotic dialogues.
  • Plato on Myth
    • Plato criticized both the epic poetry of Homer and Hesiod, and the tragic and comic poets. Yet he invented myths of his own. So what was his attitude towards literature and myth? Peter tackles this question in a final episode on Plato.

Gabriel Richardson Lear is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago.  She specializes in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy.  Her book, Happy Lives and the Highest Good: An Essay on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (Princeton, 2004), is about the relationship between morally virtuous action and theoretical contemplation in the happiest life.

Plato and his Legacy

Professor Keith Ward of Gresham College discusses the question of whether Christian theology is only a footnote to Plato.

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