Plato

Plato (c. 427-347 b.c.) wrote more than twenty philosophical dialogues, was an immensely influential classical Greek philosopher, student of Socrates, teacher of Aristotle, writer, and founder of the Academy in Athens. Plato lectured extensively at the Academy, but he also wrote on many philosophical issues. The most important writings of Plato are his dialogues in which he often records Socrates conversations, it is for this for which he is mostly known.

In Plato's writings are debates concerning the best possible form of government, featuring adherents of aristocracy, democracy, monarchy as well as other issues. A central theme is the conflict between nature and order. Another key distinction and theme in the Platonic corpus is the dichotomy between knowledge and opinion, which foreshadow modern debates between David Hume and Immanuel Kant, and has been taken up by postmodernists and their opponents, more commonly as the distinction between the 'objective' and the 'subjective'.

Perhaps Plato's greatest legacy was his dualistic metaphysics, often called Platonism or (Exaggerated) Realism. Plato also had some influential opinions on the nature of knowledge and learning which he propounded in the Meno, which began with the question of whether virtue can be taught, and proceeded to expound the concepts of recollection, learning as the discovery of pre-existing knowledge, and right opinion, opinions which are correct but have no clear justification.