PlatoPlaton

(circa 427-347 BCE) The father of western philosophy.

The facts of Plato’s life are easy to relate but the effect he has had on western culture is impossible to measure; Plato was the son of Ariston and Periktione and lived just after the Age of Perikles (Pericles), i.e. 444-429 BCE; his family was literate and politically active and assumed to have been part of the Athenian aristocracy; as a student of Sokrates (Socrates), Plato learned that ideas could be fatal and much of his work centers around the philosophy and execution of Sokrates (399 BCE).

As a teacher, Plato began lecturing in an olive grove near the city of Athens that was sacred to the hero, Akademus (Academus); the term, Academy, was taken from this olive grove and has come to mean any center of learning; Plato wrote prolifically and much of his writing has survived the ravages of time; most of Plato’s work is in the form of dialogues and his ideas are expressed in conversations, as opposed to speeches.

There are, literally, thousands of books written about Plato, his works and his contributions to western culture; I recommend: Plato by Bernard Williams (ISBN 0415923956 paperback) and any of the Benjamin Jowett translations of Plato.