"In sum, Plato argues that philosophical pleasure is the only true pleasure since other pleasures experienced by others are simply a neutral state free of pain. Socrates points out the human tendency to be corrupted by power leads down the road to timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny. From this, he concludes that ruling should be left to philosophers, who are the most just and therefore least susceptible to corruption. This ""good city"" is depicted as being governed by philosopher-kings; disinterested persons who rule not for their personal enjoyment but for the good of the city-state (polis). The paradigmatic society which"
"Xenocrates Xenocrates (; ; c. 396/5314/3 BC) of Chalcedon was a Greek philosopher, mathematician, and leader (scholarch) of the Platonic Academy from 339/8 to 314/3 BC. His teachings followed those of Plato, which he attempted to define more closely, often with mathematical elements. He distinguished three forms of being: the sensible, the intelligible, and a third compounded of the two, to which correspond respectively, sense, intellect and opinion. He considered unity and duality to be gods which rule the universe, and the soul a self-moving number. God pervades all things, and there are daemonical powers, intermediate between the divine and"
"adds to the complexity is that even the ancient sources do not know the order of the works or the dialogues. Two relevant works pertain to periods in Socrates' life, of which Aeschines could not have had any personal first-hand experiential knowledge. However, substantial amounts are extant of his works ""Alcibiades"" and ""Aspasia"". Antisthenes was a pupil of Socrates, and was known to accompany him. Aristophanes (c. 450 to 386 BC) was alive during the early years of Socrates. One source shows Plato and Xenophon were about 45 years younger than Socrates, other sources show Plato as something in the"
"John Y. Fenton. The joint influence of Advaitin and Neoplatonic ideas on Ralph Waldo Emerson was considered by Dale Riepe in 1967. Plotinus Plotinus (; , ""Plōtinos""; – 270) was a major Greek-speaking philosopher of the ancient world. In his philosophy, described in the ""Enneads"", there are three principles: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. His teacher was Ammonius Saccas and he is of the Platonic tradition. Historians of the 19th century invented the term Neoplatonism and applied it to him and his philosophy which was influential in Late Antiquity. Much of the biographical information about Plotinus comes from"
"used language that seems to posit a transcendent single deity. Different cities often worshipped the same deities, sometimes with epithets that distinguished them and specified their local nature. The earliest surviving philosophy from ancient Greece dates back to the 6th century BC, when according to Aristotle Thales of Miletus was considered to have been the first Greek philosopher. Other influential pre-Socratic philosophers include Pythagoras and Heraclitus. The most famous and significant figures in classical Athenian philosophy, from the 5th to the 3rd centuries BC, are Socrates, his student Plato, and Aristotle, who studied at Plato's Academy before founding his own"
"Disciples of Plotinus The following is a list of disciples of Plotinus. The philosopher Plotinus was the founder of the school known as Neoplatonism. Porphyry, the most important of Plotinus's pupils, was born in Tyre c. 233. He was taught first by Cassius Longinus in Athens, before travelling to Rome in 262 where he studied under Plotinus for six years. After the death of Plotinus, he edited and published the ""Enneads"", which had been compiled by his teacher. He also wrote a biography of his teacher, and many commentaries and philosophical works, some of which survive and is famous for"
"Xenophanes Xenophanes of Colophon (; ; c. 570 – c. 475 BC) was a Greek philosopher, theologian, poet, and social and religious critic. Xenophanes lived a life of travel, having left Ionia at the age of 25 and continuing to travel throughout the Greek world for another 67 years. Some scholars say he lived in exile in Sicily. Knowledge of his views comes from fragments of his poetry, surviving as quotations by later Greek writers. To judge from these, his elegiac and iambic poetry criticized and satirized a wide range of ideas, including Homer and Hesiod, the belief in the"
"and acknowledges that he knows nothing noble and good. Numerous subsequent philosophical movements were inspired by Socrates or his younger associates. Plato casts Socrates as the main interlocutor in his dialogues, deriving from them the basis of Platonism (and by extension, Neoplatonism). Plato's student Aristotle in turn criticized and built upon the doctrines he ascribed to Socrates and Plato, forming the foundation of Aristotelianism. Antisthenes founded the school that would come to be known as Cynicism and accused Plato of distorting Socrates' teachings. Zeno of Citium in turn adapted the ethics of Cynicism to articulate Stoicism. Epicurus studied with Platonic"
"and never diminishes as time goes by. For a political theorist to do this in public was one of Machiavelli's clearest breaks not just with medieval scholasticism, but with the classical tradition of political philosophy, especially the favorite philosopher of Catholicism at the time, Aristotle. This is one of Machiavelli's most lasting influences upon modernity. Nevertheless, Machiavelli was heavily influenced by classical pre-Christian political philosophy. According to Machiavelli refers to Xenophon more than Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero put together. Xenophon wrote one of the classic mirrors of princes, the ""Education of Cyrus"". wrote: ""The Cyrus of Xenophon was a hero"
"did Paulinus. Disciples of Plotinus The following is a list of disciples of Plotinus. The philosopher Plotinus was the founder of the school known as Neoplatonism. Porphyry, the most important of Plotinus's pupils, was born in Tyre c. 233. He was taught first by Cassius Longinus in Athens, before travelling to Rome in 262 where he studied under Plotinus for six years. After the death of Plotinus, he edited and published the ""Enneads"", which had been compiled by his teacher. He also wrote a biography of his teacher, and many commentaries and philosophical works, some of which survive and is"
"Plotinus Plotinus (; , ""Plōtinos""; – 270) was a major Greek-speaking philosopher of the ancient world. In his philosophy, described in the ""Enneads"", there are three principles: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. His teacher was Ammonius Saccas and he is of the Platonic tradition. Historians of the 19th century invented the term Neoplatonism and applied it to him and his philosophy which was influential in Late Antiquity. Much of the biographical information about Plotinus comes from Porphyry's preface to his edition of Plotinus' ""Enneads"". His metaphysical writings have inspired centuries of Pagan, Islamic, Jewish, Christian, and Gnostic metaphysicians"
"Crates, Zeno studied under the philosophers of the Megarian school, including Stilpo, and the dialecticians Diodorus Cronus, and Philo. He is also said to have studied Platonist philosophy under the direction of Xenocrates, and Polemo. Zeno began teaching in the colonnade in the Agora of Athens known as the Stoa Poikile (Greek Στοὰ Ποικίλη) in 301 BC. His disciples were initially called Zenonians, but eventually they came to be known as Stoics, a name previously applied to poets who congregated in the Stoa Poikile. Among the admirers of Zeno was king Antigonus II Gonatas of Macedonia, who, whenever he came"
"the mortal, which consist in conditions of the soul. He held that mathematical objects and the Platonic Ideas are identical, unlike Plato who distinguished them. In ethics, he taught that virtue produces happiness, but external goods can minister to it and enable it to effect its purpose. Xenocrates was a native of Chalcedon. By the most probable calculation he was born 396/5 BC, and died 314/3 BC at the age of 82. Moving to Athens in early youth, he became the pupil of Aeschines Socraticus, but subsequently joined himself to Plato, whom he accompanied to Sicily in 361. Upon his"
"to side with the intellectual instead. Xenophanes Xenophanes of Colophon (; ; c. 570 – c. 475 BC) was a Greek philosopher, theologian, poet, and social and religious critic. Xenophanes lived a life of travel, having left Ionia at the age of 25 and continuing to travel throughout the Greek world for another 67 years. Some scholars say he lived in exile in Sicily. Knowledge of his views comes from fragments of his poetry, surviving as quotations by later Greek writers. To judge from these, his elegiac and iambic poetry criticized and satirized a wide range of ideas, including Homer"
"influence both in Greece and throughout the Mediterranean. The first extensive works of literature in Attic are the plays of the dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes dating from the 5th century BC. The military exploits of the Athenians led to some universally read and admired history, as found in the works of Thucydides and Xenophon. Slightly less known because they are more technical and legal are the orations by Antiphon, Demosthenes, Lysias, Isocrates, and many others. The Attic Greek of the philosophers Plato (427–347 BC) and his student Aristotle (384–322 BC) dates to the period of transition between Classical"
"attempted to find the total number of syllables that could be made from the letters of the alphabet. According to Plutarch, Xenocrates result was 1,002,000,000,000 (a ""myriad-and-twenty times a myriad-myriad""). This possibly represents the first instance that a combinatorial problem involving permutations was attempted. Xenocrates also supported the idea of ""indivisible lines"" (and magnitudes) in order to counter Zeno's paradoxes. Attribution Xenocrates Xenocrates (; ; c. 396/5314/3 BC) of Chalcedon was a Greek philosopher, mathematician, and leader (scholarch) of the Platonic Academy from 339/8 to 314/3 BC. His teachings followed those of Plato, which he attempted to define more closely,"
"Greek text was published by Leonhard von Spengel in 1859. An English translation by John M. Dillon was published in 1990. Dexippus (philosopher) Dexippus (; fl. 350) was a Greek philosopher, a pupil of the Neoplatonist Iamblichus, belonging to the middle of the 4th century AD. He wrote commentaries on Plato and Aristotle of which one, an explanation and defense of the Aristotelian Categories, is partially extant. In this work Dexippus explains to one Seleucus the Aristotelian Categories, and endeavours at the same time to refute the objections of Plotinus. He also advocated the harmony of the philosophies of Plato"
"Polemon (scholarch) Polemon (, ""gen"".: Πολέμωνος; d. 270/269 BC) of Athens was an eminent Platonist philosopher and Plato's third successor as scholarch or head of the Academy from 314/313 to 270/269 BC. A pupil of Xenocrates, he believed that philosophy should be practiced rather than just studied, and he placed the highest good in living according to nature. Polemon was the son of Philostratus, a man of wealth and political distinction. In his youth, he was extremely profligate; but one day, when he was about thirty, on his bursting into the school of Xenocrates, at the head of a band"
"said. Also, Xenophon, being an historian, is a more reliable witness to the historical Socrates. It is a matter of much debate over which Socrates it is whom Plato is describing at any given point—the historical figure, or Plato's fictionalization. As British philosopher Martin Cohen has put it, ""Plato, the idealist, offers an idol, a master figure, for philosophy. A Saint, a prophet of 'the Sun-God', a teacher condemned for his teachings as a heretic."" It is also clear from other writings and historical artefacts, that Socrates was not simply a character, nor an invention, of Plato. The testimony of"
"Xenophilus Xenophilus (; 4th century BC) of Chalcidice, was a Pythagorean philosopher and musician, who lived in the first half of the 4th century BC. Aulus Gellius relates that Xenophilus was the intimate friend and teacher of Aristoxenus, and implies that Xenophilus taught him Pythagorean doctrine. He was said to have belonged to the last generation of Pythagoreans, and he is the only Pythagorean known to have lived in Athens in the 4th century BC. We learn from Diogenes Laërtius that Aristoxenus wrote that when Xenophilus was once asked by someone how he could best educate his son, Xenophilus replied,"
"Polus Polus (Greek: Πῶλος, ""colt""; fl. c. 5th century BCE) was an Ancient Greek Athenian philosophical figure best remembered for his depiction in the writing of Plato. He was a pupil of the famous orator Gorgias, and teacher of oratory from the city of Acragas, Sicily. All that is known of Polus derives from the Socratic dialogues of Plato, which suggests he was an associate of Socrates. He features heavily in the ""Gorgias"", a dialogue on the nature of rhetoric. Polus also appears in the ""Phaedrus"" and ""Theages"" dialogues, and book 1 of Aristotle's ""Metaphysics"". Much of what is known"
"never been without readers since the time they were written. Plato's thought is often compared with that of his most famous student, Aristotle, whose reputation during the Western Middle Ages so completely eclipsed that of Plato that the Scholastic philosophers referred to Aristotle as ""the Philosopher"". However, in the Byzantine Empire, the study of Plato continued. The only Platonic work known to western scholarship was Timaeus, until translations were made at a time post the fall of Constantinople, which occurred during 1453, George Gemistos Plethon brought Plato's original writings from Constantinople in the century of its fall. It is believed"
"the philosophical life."" Serapion was a 3rd-century neoplatonic philosopher and student of Plotinus. Porphyry wrote of Serapion in the ""Life of Plotinus"" that ""Then there was Serapion, an Alexandrian, who began life as a professional orator and later took to the study of philosophy, but was never able to conquer the vices of avarice and usury."" Zethos was a 3rd-century neoplatonist and disciple of Plotinus. Porphyry stated of Zethos in the ""Life of Plotinus"", ""Another friend was Zethos, an Arabian by descent, who married a daughter of Ammonius' friend Theodosius. Zethos, too, was a doctor. Plotinus was deeply attached to"
"those striving to be leaders (see mirrors for princes). The linking of moral code and education is an especially pertinent quality subscribed to Cyrus that O’Flannery believes is in line with modern perceptions of leadership. Xenophon’s entire classical corpus is extant. The following list of his works exhibits the extensive breadth of genres in which Xenophon wrote. These works were probably written by Xenophon when he was living in Scillus. His days were likely spent in relative leisure here, and he wrote these treatises about the sorts of activities he spent time on. Xenophon Xenophon of Athens (; , ,"
"them many of the principles established by earlier philosophers, and developed the whole of this material into the unity of a comprehensive system. Aristotle of Stagira, the most important disciple of Plato, shared with his teacher the title of the greatest philosopher of antiquity. But while Plato had sought to elucidate and explain things from the supra-sensual standpoint of the forms, his pupil preferred to start from the facts given us by experience. Except from these three most significant Greek philosophers other known schools of Greek philosophy from other founders during ancient times were Stoicism, Epicureanism, Skepticism and Neoplatonism. Byzantine"
"Following the founding of Isocrates’ academy, Plato (a rival of Isocrates) founded his own academy as a rival school of philosophy. Isocrates encouraged his students to wander and observe public behavior in the city (Athens) to learn through imitation. His students aimed to learn how to serve the city. Some of his students included Isaeus, Lycurgus, Hypereides, Ephorus, Theopompus, Speusippus, and Timotheus. Many of these students remained under the instruction of Isocrates for three to four years. Timotheus had such a great appreciation for Isocrates that he erected a statue at Eleusis and dedicated it to him. Because of Plato's"
"Chaerephon Chaerephon (; , ""Chairephōn""; c. 470/460 – 403/399 BCE), of the Athenian deme Sphettus, was an Ancient Greek best remembered as a loyal friend and follower of Socrates. He is known only through brief descriptions by classical writers and was ""an unusual man by all accounts"", though a man of loyal democratic values. Chaerephon is mentioned by three writers of his time, all of whom were probably well acquainted with him: Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato. Considered together, these sources suggest that Chaerephon was a well-known, alert, energetic, engaging individual, possibly with a distinctive physical appearance and probably a bit"
"of his students. In the play, Socrates is ridiculed for his dirtiness, which is associated with the Laconizing fad; also in plays by Callias, Eupolis, and Telecleides. Other comic poets who lampooned Socrates include Mnesimachus and Ameipsias. In all of these, Socrates and the Sophists were criticized for ""the moral dangers inherent in contemporary thought and literature"". Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle are the main sources for the historical Socrates; however, Xenophon and Plato were students of Socrates, and they may idealize him; however, they wrote the only extended descriptions of Socrates that have come down to us in their complete"
"Plutarch of Athens Plutarch of Athens (; c. 350 – 430 AD) was a Greek philosopher and Neoplatonist who taught at Athens at the beginning of the 5th century. He reestablished the Platonic Academy there and became its leader. He wrote commentaries on Aristotle and Plato, emphasizing the doctrines which they had in common. He was the son of Nestorius and father of Hierius and Asclepigenia, who were his colleagues in the school. The origin of Neoplatonism in Athens is not known, but Plutarch is generally seen as the person who reestablished Plato's Academy in its Neoplatonist form. Plutarch and"
"Although his friends offered to help him escape from prison, he chose to remain in Athens and abide by his principles. His execution consisted of drinking the poison hemlock and he died in 399 BC. Plato was a student of Socrates. Plato founded the Academy of Athens and wrote a number of dialogues, which applied the Socratic method of inquiry to examine philosophical problems. Some central ideas of Plato's dialogues are the immortality of the soul, the benefits of being just, that evil is ignorance, and the Theory of Forms. Forms are universal properties that constitute true reality and contrast"
"by the philosophy and mythological cosmogonies of the ancient Near East, as well as Indian Vedanta philosophy, but philosophy, as we understand it, is a Greek creation."" Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. He is widely considered the most pivotal figure in the development of philosophy, especially the Western tradition, unlike nearly all of his philosophical contemporaries. Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher and scientist. His writings cover many subjects – including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theater,"
"Syrianus Syrianus (, ""Syrianos""; died c. 437) was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, and head of Plato's Academy in Athens, succeeding his teacher Plutarch of Athens in 431/432. He is important as the teacher of Proclus, and, like Plutarch and Proclus, as a commentator on Plato and Aristotle. His best-known extant work is a commentary on the ""Metaphysics"" of Aristotle. He is said to have written also on the ""De Caelo"" and the ""De Interpretatione"" of Aristotle and on Plato's ""Timaeus"". He was a native of Alexandria, Egypt and the son of Philoxenus. We know little of his personal history, but"
"One School of Plato and Aristotle"", that Ammonius' view was that the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle were in harmony. Eusebius and Jerome claimed him as a Christian until his death, whereas Porphyry claimed he had renounced Christianity and embraced pagan philosophy. Plotinus ( – ; Greek: Πλωτῖνος), born in upper Egypt, was a major Egyptian philosopher of the ancient world who is widely considered the father of neoplatonism. Much of our biographical information about him comes from Porphyry's preface to his edition of Plotinus' ""Enneads"". While he was himself influenced by the teachings of classical Greek, Persian and Indian"