Person427 BC – 347 BC

Plato

Disciple of Socrates who founded the Academy in Athens and wrote dialogues such as the Republic, setting out the theory of Forms and rule by philosopher-kings

Born into an Athenian aristocratic family, he became a disciple of Socrates, and his teacher’s execution turned him against democracy. Around 387 BC he founded the Academy outside Athens, a community of learning that lasted more than nine hundred years. He held that beyond the world of the senses lie the Forms, the true reality, and argued in the Republic that philosophers who know the Forms should rule. Most of his works are dialogues in which Socrates speaks.

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1 related event

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399 BC – 322 BCThe Death of Socrates and Greek Philosophyauthor
In 399 BC an Athenian court sentenced Socrates to death for corrupting the young. His disciple Plato and Plato’s pupil Aristotle built the framework of Western philosophy.

People who appear alongside

Socrates470 BC – 399 BC
Athenian philosopher who sought universal truth by questioning others into recognising their ignorance, and was executed for corrupting the young
Aristotle384 BC – 322 BC
Pupil of Plato and tutor of Alexander who founded the Lyceum and systematised logic, ethics, politics and natural science

Themes this person appears in

Greece and Rome2000 BC – AD 476
From the Aegean civilisation to the fall of the Western Roman Empire — the classical civilisation built by the democracy of the polis and the Roman republic and empire