ABSTRACT
Plato was an Athenian teacher and writer. What can be known with certainty of his life beyond that is very little. Even the chronology or sequence of the dialogues, his principal writings, is a matter for guesswork. Plato’s importance lies not in what he did or when he did it, but in what he wrote. All of Western philosophy has been called a foot-note to him. If that is an exaggeration, it is no exaggeration to say that he exceeds in influence all but a few philosophic writers and that he equals any of them.
