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School · 428 BCE–500 CE

Platonism

Platonist inquiry developed from Plato's dialogues into traditions that treated intelligible principles, dialectic, education, and the soul as mutually illuminating philosophical concerns.

Shared questions

  • How can dialectic lead from unstable appearances to knowledge of intelligible principles and the good?

Internal disagreements

  • How literally Plato's dialogues prescribe a metaphysics of Forms and how political, mathematical, and ethical inquiries fit together.

Key texts

  • Republic — Plato's dialogue joins an account of justice to education, knowledge, and political order.