Edades filosóficas: Plato

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Socrates. The Fall of Athens

Xenophon

[Socrates was] a citizen performing the duties required of him as the state directed and bravely refusing to act illegally in spite of the vehement demands of an angry Ecclesia. It so happened that at the trial of the generals in 406 B. C. Socrates was one of the presidents of the assembly. When it was demanded that generals be judged and condemned together, contrary to established procedure, Socrates refused to put the motion.

That this was characteristic of him is shown by other acts in his life. He served as a hoplite in the army, and was commended for valour at the Battle of Delium in 424 B. C. Athens was for eighteen months ruled by an oligarchy called the Thirty Tyrants, whose actions in many ways resembled those of certain totalitarian government of our time. They forbade intellectual and philosophical teaching, a decree with which Socrates refused to comply. And in a wave of indiscriminate arrests of their opponents, they insisted on blameless citizens carrying out these arrests in order to implicate them in their enormities. On one occasion five Athenians were ordered to arrest a certain Leon. Four of them carried out the order; the fifth, Socrates, refused. Such was the man who faced trial and condemnation in 399 B. C. and lives in the pages of Plato and Xenophon.

The Fall of Athens. Selections form Xenophon's Hellenica. Introduction, pp. xxv-xxvi.

The Ancient Greek philosophers

The Ancient Greek philosophers have played a pivotal role in the shaping of the western philosophical tradition. This article surveys the seminal works and ideas of key figures in the Ancient Greek philosophical tradition from the Presocratics to the Neoplatonists. It highlights their main philosophical concerns and the evolution in their thought from the sixth century BCE to the sixth century CE.

The Ancient Greek philosophical tradition broke away from a mythological approach to explaining the world, and it initiated an approach based on reason and evidence. Initially concerned with explaining the entire cosmos, the Presocratic philosophers strived to identify its single underlying principle. Their theories were diverse and none achieved a consensus, yet their legacy was the initiation of the quest to identify underlying principles.

This sparked a series of investigations into the limit and role of reason and of our sensory faculties, how knowledge is acquired and what knowledge consists of. Here we find the Greek creation of philosophy as “the love of wisdom,” and the birth of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were the most influential of the ancient Greek philosophers, and they focused their attention more on the role of the human being than on the explanation of the material world. The work of these key philosophers was succeeded by the Stoics and Epicureans who were also concerned with practical aspects of philosophy and the attainment of happiness. Other notable successors are Pyrrho’s school of skepticism and the Neoplatonists such as Plotinus who tried to unify Plato’s thought with theology.

Thanks to Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Grecia antigua

Plato's "Phaedo"

Plato's Phaedo [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

The Phaedo is one of the most widely read dialogues written by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. It claims to recount the events and conversations that occurred on the day that Plato’s teacher, Socrates (469-399 B.C.E.), was put to death by the state of Athens. It is the final episode in the series of dialogues recounting Socrates’ trial and death. The earlier Euthyphro dialogue portrayed Socrates in discussion outside the court where he was to be prosecuted on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth; the Apology described his defense before the Athenian jury; and the Crito described a conversation during his subsequent imprisonment. The Phaedo now brings things to a close by describing the moments in the prison cell leading up to Socrates’ death from poisoning by use of hemlock.

Among these “trial and death” dialogues, the Phaedo is unique in that it presents Plato’s own metaphysical, psychological, and epistemological views; thus it belongs to Plato’s middle period rather than with his earlier works detailing Socrates’ conversations regarding ethics. Known to ancient commentators by the title On the Soul, the dialogue presents no less than four arguments for the soul’s immortality. It also contains discussions of Plato’s doctrine of knowledge as recollection, his account of the soul’s relationship to the body, and his views about causality and scientific explanation. Most importantly of all, Plato sets forth his most distinctive philosophical theory—the theory of Forms—for what is arguably the first time. So, the Phaedo merges Plato’s own philosophical worldview with an enduring portrait of Socrates in the hours leading up to his death.

Edades filosóficas

Havelock's 'Preface to Plato', XI-XIV

Platón y la informática