Plato For Beginners

Robert Cavalier, Eric Lurio

• Publisher: For Beginners
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781939994189
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

All philosophy is a footnote to Plato. No other person so shaped the Western world and the way we think about it.Plato’s questions remain as real for us today as they were 2500 years ago, and as human beings, we can not avoid their presence nor shirk our responsibility to attempt to answer them:

• What is Justice?
• What is Truth?
• What is Beauty?
• What kind of society should we build?
• How do we know what we know?

Plato For Beginners  introduces the reader to Socrates, Plato’s mentor whose martyrdom led Plato to formulate a new system of knowledge based on reason. Socrates was found guilty and sentenced to death for refusing to recognize the gods of the State and for introducing other divinities. He was also found guilty of corrupting youth. Plato For Beginners  also covers the history of Greece as well as the life and ideas of this great philosopher and his influence over time, from early Christianity to the 20th Century. The reader learns what he meant by Truth, Beauty, and the Good. Classical dialogues such as  Symposium, Phaedo, The Apology, and  The Republic  are all explored in the context of his time and our own.

INDEX

Academy, Platos, 73–75, 142–43, 150

Achilles, 89

Agora, 16

Alcibiades, 28–29

Alexander the Great, 144, 146

analysis, 74–75

animals, origin of, 128

Antisthenes, 45

Anytus, 33, 36

apologies, 46

Apology, 46

Archelaus, 47, 105

Archytas, 70, 121

Aristippus, 45

aristocracy, 11, 110

Aristophanes, 26

Aristotle, 2, 145–147, 149

Athens, 7, 10–16, 32–36, 68

political evolution of, 10–12

war with Sparta, 13–15, 26–31

Augustine, Saint, 148

autocracy, 9

beauty, 86–87, 94–97

Carthage, 118

Castiglione, Baldessare, 150

cave, allegory of the, 100–104

Chairephon, 25

chariot and charioteer, allegory of, 77–79, 83–84

children, 113, 131

Christianity, 99, 148–149

circle, knowledge of, 50–53

city-states:

decline of, 144

ideal, 107–15, 129–41

classes, social, 133, 136–37

classicism, 6, 150

Cleisthenes, 11

Cleon, 27

Cleophon, 30

common good, 130...

Table of contents

• Coverpage
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Who was Plato?
• History of Greece
• The life of Socrates
• Plato After the Death of Socrates
• The Path of Knowledge
• Plato’s First Trip to Italy
• The Path of Love
• The Divided Line and the Image of the Cave
• Plato’s Second Trip to Italy
• Plato’s Cosmology
• Plato’s Last Work
• Plato and Aristotle
• EPILOGUE
• INDEX