StoaThe mindsPlaton
Π
428–348 BCE · Athens

Platon

Plato was a student of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle, and the founder of the Academy, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Almost everything Socrates is to us, we owe to Plato's dialogues. In them he built a vast philosophy of his own: the theory of Forms, the tripartite soul, the just city of the Republic, and the famous allegory of the cave, where prisoners mistake shadows for the real world.

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

Platon — Republic, Book 2

Core ideas

The Forms: a reality more real than the sensesJustice in the soul and in the cityThe allegory of the cave: education as turning toward the light

Talk to Platon, in their own voice

Ask anything. Answers are drawn only from their own writing and world.

Start the conversation