Plato as a Scientist or Thinker

Throughout history there have been many philosophers that have made great impacts on the students for many years. One philosopher in particular that has made a tremendous impact on the youth of the world is a man named Plato. Plato is one of the world's most famous writers, and is still being taught to this day. People ask why this man is so important and why he should be still studied today when he is something of the past; well I will help them see in my paper just why he is so important to this nation. This argument will be supported by three different categories; one a biography showing how important he was to “man” and number two is about how something or someone during the time in which he lived impacted his writing. The third thing is a piece of literature called The Apology, which has been analyzed.

To start Plato was born in Athens, Greece, in 427 B.C. The eighty- year span of his life covered one of the most dramatic and commotional periods in Greek history. During his childhood, his homeland witnessed the last stages of the Peloponnesian War, a struggle for dominance between the city-state of Athens and it's arch- rival, Sparta. Plato's father, Ariston, and his mother, Perictone, both came from distinguished families, and as a member of the aristocracy, Plato was reared in the most favorable surroundings and enjoyed the best education available (Miller, 1503). His Philosophy, which stresses ethics and reason, is not a distinctly formulated system but a general representation of his thought, expressed in the form of dialogues which are praised for their artistic craftsmanship and poetic character (Reale, p.1).

Plato was expected to go into politics, and in fact he went in the total opposite direction. The closer he got to politics the more and more he wanted to get away from them (Miller, 1503). One event in particular was to have a lasting effect on him, and that was the trial, condemnation, and execution of Socrates in 399B.C. Socrates had been Plato's teacher, and Plato had a lot of respect for him. It was the event that turned him to philosophy (Miller, 1503). After his death, Plato traveled at least twice to Italy and Sicily, where he had been invited by his friend Dion to tutor Dion's nephew Dionysius II, tryant of Syracuse (Reale, p.1). He also resided for a time in the city of Megara, and he may also have traveled to Egypt and Cyrene. It was during this time that he started to write (Miller, 1503). Some writers say that Plato was trying to make Dionysius into a philosopher, but these speculations are based on hypotheses built on hypotheses by generations of scholars (Taylor 125).

Around 387 B. C., Plato established an Academy (named after the park it was located in), a school for the pursuit of philosophical and scientific research as well as the study of mathematics (Reale, p.1). The academy, located outside of ...