Plato: A Very Short Introduction

Plato was the first to institutionalize philosophy (giving us the word ‘Academy’) and to think of it as requiring both a systematic pursuit of truth and a radical dependence on argument, with others and with oneself. It is not surprising that he left a divided legacy of dogmatists and sceptical enquirers, or that his dialogues have lent themselves, over two thousand years, to the most divergent interpretations. For in the end, his deepest message is not that we should believe in Forms, or the importance of virtue, but that we should engage with him, and with our own contemporaries, in aspiring to understand these matters.

Two very differing interpretations are nearly contemporary with Plato himself. His nephew Speusippus, who succeeded him as head of his philosophical school, held that Plato's real father was not Ariston but the god Apollo. A whole corresponding tradition grew up: Plato was born on Apollo's birthday; bees came and sat on his infant lips; his teacher Socrates dreamed of a swan, Apollo's bird, just before meeting Plato. Thinking of Plato as semi-divine, alien to us, is not so startling in a world in which great families claimed descent from the gods.