57 The Life of Plato w/ Robin Waterfield

Ancient Greece Declassified

Dr. Lantern Jack

History, Education

4.8 • 587 Ratings

🗓️ 31 December 2024

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Even after thousands of years of supposed progress in philosophy, there are still some who maintain that the entire history of western philosophy consists of footnotes to Plato. But who was Plato the man? If there is anyone who can answer that question, it's our guest in this episode. Robin Waterfield is a renowned scholar of antiquity who has written the first ever full biography of the ancient philosopher in English. Check out the book here.

Contents of the episode, with timestamps:

[04:10] Plato's early life

[06:46] Relationship to Socrates

[12:27] Philosophical method

[14:53] Theory of Forms

[18:27] How Plato became famous

[23:42] Sophists VS Philosophers

[31:55] Founding the Academy

[35:25] Relationship to Aristotle

[47:07] Political intrigues in Sicily

[48:51] Disilusionment and later works

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, thanks for tuning in to ancient Greece, Declassified.
0:13.8	Episode 57, The Life of Plato.
0:22.1	I've gotten several emails over the past months asking me,
0:25.2	whatever happened to the series on Plato's Republic, and are you going to finish it?
0:30.1	Yes, that's still the plan.
0:32.0	And in order to whip myself back into shape, I decided to take a little break from the Persian
0:36.5	wars and do something on
0:38.0	Plato this time. Don't worry, you will get your finale on the life and times of Themisticles.
0:43.9	It'll just be in a couple of episodes from now, because next month I'll be in Greece for the Persian
0:48.3	Wars tour, and so for that month, I have a really fascinating conversation on ancient music
0:53.4	that I'll be releasing,
0:55.0	and after that, we'll finish the Themistocles trilogy, and then we can resume and wrap up
1:00.2	the Republic. Deal? Deal. So we've spent boatloads of time talking about Plato on this
1:07.2	podcast, but we haven't said much about his life. Who was the person behind this massive corpus of dialogues that has defined Western philosophy ever since?
1:17.6	Hopefully, today's conversation will give you some insights into the man behind the ideas.
1:22.6	An FYI, the following interview is also available at YouTube.com slash lanternjack.
1:28.7	I hope you like it.
1:33.7	Ever since the 4th century BC, Plato has consistently been considered one of the greatest
1:39.7	philosophers of all time.
1:41.5	Even today, after all the supposed progress that philosophy has made over the
1:45.7	millennia, there are still some who maintain that the entire history of Western philosophy
1:50.3	consists in footnotes to Plato. So what if you're curious to find out about Plato, the man?
	...

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