PLATO

PLATO, philosopher (ca. 427–347 B.C.). A student of Socrates, Plato became the most important of the ancient Greek philosophers. Together with his pupil, Aristotle, he laid the foundations for the philosophy (q.v.) of Greco-Roman antiquity and the Byzantine era (q.v.); his influence continues to be predominant, at the expense of Aristotle, in the Eastern Christian world. Although scholars debate the degree to which Plato himself wished to articulate a fundamentally religious worldview, there is no question that this was the way that he was read by the thinkers of the late Roman era and, more particularly, by the Church Fathers (q.v.). His language of the “One” in the Parmenides and “the Good” in the Republic, the eschatology of the Phaedo and the soul’s ascent in the Phaedrus, together with the account of the world’s origins in the Timaeus, were given specifically theistic and even mystical overtones. His demarcation between the sphere of the intelligibles, the ideas or forms, and the sensibles, i.e., the realm of matter and flux, and his assignment of primacy to the former, dominated not only pagan thinkers, but lay at the core of such influential Christian writers as Clement and Origen of Alexandria (qq.v.). His was, moreover, a vocabulary that had already found its way into the New Testament itself (e.g., Heb), and Jewish thought as well (e.g., Wis and Philo). The language of Orthodox theology, asceticism, and liturgy (qq.v.) is indelibly marked by Platonic influence. One can find it in the Cherubic Hymn, in the Cappadocians on the Trinity, in the Philokalia (qq.v.)-in short, everywhere.