Plato
The Republic, the dialogues
Whitehead's remark that all Western philosophy is footnotes to Plato is barely an exaggeration. The dialogues invented philosophical writing as a literary form; the Theory of Forms shaped metaphysics for two millennia.
Key works
- The Republic~375 BC— Justice, the soul, the cave allegory
- Symposium~385 BC— The nature of love and beauty
- Phaedo~360 BC— Socrates' death and the immortality of the soul