Plato

Their big question

Is what we see all that is real?

Plato was Socrates’ student, and he wrote the questions down. He built a school called the Academy, where people argued about ideas for 900 years.

His most famous picture is the cave. Imagine people chained in a cave facing a wall. Behind them is a fire, and puppets walk in front of the fire. All the prisoners ever see are shadows, and they think shadows are everything there is.

One prisoner gets free. He walks out and is blinded by the sun. Slowly he sees trees that are more real than the shadows. Plato’s question for you: how do you know you are not still in the cave?

“Philosophy begins in wonder.”

The word 'wonder' here means being curious about things nobody is making you think about.

Three things worth knowing

• Almost every word for a library, an academy or a university traces back to his school.
• He thought honest arguing was the best way to find out what is true.
• His student, Aristotle, disagreed with him a lot - and they stayed friends in the way only philosophers can.

Try it — think like Plato

Shine a torch on your hand and look at its shadow on the wall. Which is more real, the hand or the shadow? Now try to explain your answer without saying 'because you can touch it'.

Plato Silanion Musei Capitolini MC1377 (cropped) — Marie-Lan Nguyen. Source on Wikimedia Commons.