Plato
428 BCE – 348 BCE · Greece
Plato was an Athenian aristocrat who, after the execution of his teacher Socrates in 399 BCE, gave up any ambition in politics and founded the Academy, the first lasting school of philosophy in the West. His dialogues stage Socrates in conversation about justice, love, knowledge, the soul and the city. They are philosophy written as drama, and they set the agenda for everything after: Whitehead’s remark that the European tradition is “a series of footnotes to Plato” is only slightly unfair.
