Plato lived and taught in Athens in the 4th and 5th centuries B.C.

Plato lived and taught in Athens in the 4th and 5th centuries B.C.

Taught by Socrates, Plato in turn was the teacher of Aristotle. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential philosophers in the Western tradition.

It is nearly impossible to summarize Plato’s influence on the development of Western thought and civilization. One of his most important contributions (among many) was the notion of dualism—that is that the body and the soul are distinct, one mortal and corrupt, the other immortal and perfectible. 

Plato used illustrations called “allegories” in his teaching. One of the most famous is the allegory of the cave, which he used to illustrate how relying only on our senses to perceive reality allows us to be deceived. He imagined a cave where prisoners were kept chained from birth, facing a wall. The prisoners in the cave could not move their heads and all they were ever able to see was the wall before them. In the distance behind them was a fire, and when objects passed between the fire and the prisoners, they cast shadows on the cave wall. Prisoners in such a condition, Plato argued, would come to believe that the shadows on the wall were real objects, when in fact they were merely reflections of reality. If such a prisoner was released and was able to see the fire and the material objects casting the shadows, he would believe them to be unreal and would continue to believe that it was the shadows on the wall that were real. The task of a philosopher, Plato argued, is to climb out of the cave of ignorance and discover true knowledge (with the expectation that he will be ridiculed and attacked for denying that the cave wall shadows are the true reality).

The exact dates of Plato’s life are unknown. He died in Athens, when in his early 80’s.

As the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead put it, all of Western philosophical thought “consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”

The image is Raphael’s depiction of Plato in his early 16th century painting “The School of Athens.”