Thinker · Platonism
Plato
c.428 – 348 BC · Platonism · The Greeks · 4 works
The whole sprawling system comes out of one move: there are two levels of reality, a changing world the senses touch and a changeless world only the mind can reach, and everything that matters (knowledge, virtue, beauty, who should rule) depends on climbing from the first toward the second. One thread runs through all of it: Plato never says any of this in his own voice. He writes plays, and the man doing the talking is usually Socrates.
What changed
Before
The world one can know is the world one can touch
After
The world one can touch is exactly the world one can't truly know
Inside the walk-through
The problem Plato walked into
The Forms
Knowledge and the immortal soul
The Sun, the Line, and the Cave
The just soul and the just city
"Platonic love"
What it changed, and who answered
The works
