plato's philosophy and theories, please explain!?

[william m]

Hey, i just need some insight into platos philosophy and his theroies.

A basic outline of what he proposed would be great.

also how does his work influence the modern world?

thanks again!

[fun.notnuts]

The Theory of Forms typically refers to Plato's belief that the material world as it seems to us is not the real world, but only a shadow of the real world. Plato spoke of forms in formulating his solution to the problem of universals. The forms, according to Plato, are roughly speaking archetypes or abstract representations of the many types and properties (that is, of universals) of things we see all around us.

"Platonism" is a term coined by scholars to refer to the intellectual consequences of denying, as Socrates often does, the reality of the material world. In several dialogues, most notably the Republic, Socrates inverts the common man's intuition about what is knowable and what is real. While most people take the objects of their senses to be real if anything is, Socrates is contemptuous of people who think that something has to be graspable in the hands to be real. In the Theaetetus, he says such people are "eu a-mousoi", an expression that means literally, "happily without the muses" (Theaetetus 156a). In other words, such people live without the divine inspiration that gives him, and people like him, access to higher insights about reality.
PLATO:
Classical Greek philosopher, who together with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, helped to lay the philosophical foundations of Western culture.[2] Plato was also a mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world. Plato was originally a student of Socrates, and was as much influenced by his thinking as by what he saw as his teacher's unjust death.
You could say it was due to Plato that we got schools of learning that we have today.
Philosophy developed because of him too..

[Yaoi Shonen-ai]

http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/plat.htm

[Adam R]

Um. Plato said a lot. A LOT. And A lot of his student's work was just signed "Plato" because he was the head of their school, so we're not sure what he actually wrote. Not only that, but nobody really agrees on how to interpret what we have.

I always associate Plato with his theory of forms, which I'm pretty sure is impossible to summarize accurately. Hopefully somebody will do it better than me after this answer, but here goes: Forms are what it is that makes something what it is. So the form of a dog is whatever it is to be a dog. The form of hardness "participates in the form of rock". He thought that these forms were real (or at least kinda real) things that we somehow realized a connection to as we learn; in a weird way that changes depending on whether its his early work or late etc.

Learning was very important in his political philosophy, which involved a powerful state training people to do whatever job they are most suited for.

I don't know his ethics well enough to attempt a gross summary, but I will say this: morality has something to do with the form of the "good".

How did he influence the modern world? Not that much. It still spins around 365 1/4 times for each time it swoops around the sun. Its roughly the same size, and still in its position between Venus and Mars. But I guess he did influence every Western Philosopher who came since. Even the ones who hated him.