Plato’s Influences: Socio-Historical and Cultural Impact
Plato’s Influences and Socio-Historical Impact
The Presocratics who most influenced Plato were Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Parmenides. From them, Plato adopted ideas that he later used to form his Theory of Ideas. From Parmenides, he took the concept of unchanging being, and from Heraclitus, the idea of a constantly changing reality. Plato attempted to reconcile these two concepts, giving rise to the dualism that characterized his Theory of Ideas: an intelligible world of immutable ideas (Parmenides) and a sensible world in constant change (Heraclitus). This idea is tinged with the Pythagorean concept of numbers and the transmigration of souls, which connects both worlds. Plato also received insights into language issues through Cratylus, a disciple of Heraclitus.
The Influence of Sophists and Socrates
The Sophists and Socrates also influenced Plato’s thoughts. From the Sophists, he adopted an anthropological and ethical-political perspective, and they served as dialectical opponents against hedonism. Socrates, his great teacher, exerted a major influence, particularly in the areas of problem definition and moral themes in his works.
The Implications of Platonic Thought
The implications of Platonic thought on Western philosophy are enormous and continuous. The most immediate influence was exerted through his own school, the Academy, and his most famous pupil, Aristotle, who took up the legacy of his master in a more scientific and less theoretical spirit. Plato also influenced the early centuries of our era through Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, which combined Plato with religious influences characteristic of that time (Jewish and Christian), whose main representative was Plotinus. Later, Plato’s ideas were present in the works of early Christian writers, most notably St. Augustine, who laid the foundations of medieval orthodoxy with the first synthesis between Greek philosophy (especially Plato) and Christianity. Plato also influenced the medieval Augustinian commentary.
In the Renaissance, there was a reinterpretation of Platonism that adapted to the natural parameters of the time and was expressed in the idealization of women. Platonic solutions (ethical and gnosciological) have heavily influenced thought to this day and are significant in Descartes and Leibniz, Kant, and phenomenology, among others.
Plato’s Life and Times
Plato was born in 427 BC in Athens. After Athens, he lived in a period of prosperity thanks to emerging trade that benefited from the Delian League. The hegemony of Athens provoked suspicions in Sparta, leading to confrontation between the two in the Peloponnesian War, in which Plato himself participated as a soldier. The war ended with the defeat and the end of the hegemony of Athens.
After the Peloponnesian War, Athens was briefly governed by the Thirty Tyrants, which involved friends and relatives of Plato and was characterized by corruption and terror. With the fall of the oligarchic government, democracy was re-established, but it was very corrupt and condemned Socrates, Plato’s mentor, to drink hemlock. This deeply marked Plato’s thought and life, leading him to lose all interest in politics and devote himself entirely to philosophy and the pursuit and creation of the ideal government.
For this reason, Plato undertook a series of trips around the Mediterranean, coming into contact with the Orphic-Pythagorean current and Euclidean mathematics, which were important at that time. During one of these trips, he met a relative of the governor Dion of Syracuse and, with his help, tried in vain on three separate occasions to convince the governor of Syracuse to implement his political ideals. Back from his first trip to Syracuse, he founded the Academy, his high school, and after the third trip, he returned to Athens and died at age 31 (467 BC).
In his philosophical work, the book “The Republic” certainly stands out.