Why is plato considered a great philospher if he was mouth piece for socrates?

Question

seems like he really jiust repeated what socrates taught? who is greatest philopspher of today? in your opinon? most influential?

Answer 1

Good point. But there are those who believe with some merit that Plato made up most of Socrates' beliefs. All we really know is that Socrates died in those years and what Plato says.

Answer 2

Plato was not a mouthpiece for Socrates. The fact that he wrote everything he could remember of Socrates' lessons is testament to his love of Socrates' words. But he was an able thinker in his own right, and was clear enough that when he taught Aristotle, the younger man was able to see with the same clarity--that Plato was wrong about almost everything.

"There is only one fundamental issue in philosophy: the cognitive efficacy of man’s mind. The conflict of Aristotle versus Plato is the conflict of reason versus mysticism. It was Plato who formulated most of philosophy’s basic questions—and doubts. It was Aristotle who laid the foundation for most of the answers. Thereafter, the record of their duel is the record of man’s long struggle to deny and surrender or to uphold and assert the validity of his particular mode of consciousness.

"If there is a philosophical Atlas who carries the whole of Western civilization on his shoulders, it is Aristotle. He has been opposed, misinterpreted, misrepresented, and—like an axiom—used by his enemies in the very act of denying him. Whatever intellectual progress men have achieved rests on his achievements.

"Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history’s brilliant eras; whenever it fell, so did mankind. The Aristotelian revival of the thirteenth century brought men to the Renaissance. The intellectual counter-revolution turned them back toward the cave of his antipode: Plato.

"Throughout history the influence of Aristotle’s philosophy (particularly of his epistemology) has led in the direction of individual freedom, of man’s liberation from the power of the state . . . Aristotle (via John Locke) was the philosophical father of the Constitution of the United States and thus of capitalism . . . it is Plato and Hegel, not Aristotle, who have been the philosophical ancestors of all totalitarian and welfare states, whether Bismarck’s, Lenin’s or Hitler’s."

Review of J.H. Randall’s Aristotle,

The Objectivist Newsletter, May 1963, 19.

Aristotle is still the greatest philosopher of "today." Western civilization rose through him via Thomas Aquinas' incorporation of his ideas into Christianity, primarily, but also through Occam and ibn Rushd and others of the Late Middle Ages.

In the 20th Century civilization got another boost from Aristotle through Ayn Rand, who used Aristotle's epistemology to defend individual sovereignty.

She also emphasized the identification of the evil brought about by the illogic of other philosophers. "It is Aristotle who first formulated the principles of correct definition," she said, then went on to define the illogic of the modern Platonists, given life again through Kant, Platonists who once again are bringing down the civilization of man.

It isn't Socrates doing that.

Answer 3

We know Plato primarily because of his "dialogs" in which the main character (protagonist) was Socrates. How much of this actually was said by Socrates and how much was written by Plato will always be debated. Almost certainly the bulk of the dialogs reflect Plato's view of philosophy based on a Socratic Method of investigation.

Aristotle built on that, and every philosopher since then has added (or subtracted) from this body of thought (at least from a Western Perspective).

As to today's greatest Philosopher I would suggest either Grace Allen, or Y. Berra.

Answer 4

Plato went a good deal beyond Socrates.  

Check out 'Platonic Idealism'.

Answer 5

Ayn Rand, when she died John Belushi died around the same time, which one did you hear about?  

She wrote that when Philosophers die no one knows, but eventually they know.

Her time is almost here.