He based his work on Plato's emission theory wherein he described the mathematical rules of perspective and describes the effects of refraction qualitatively, although he questioned that a beam of light from the eye could instantaneously light up the stars every time someone blinked.

Augustine's perspective follows from and is built upon the neo-Platonic views of his era, which in turn have their original roots in Plato's cosmogony.

Presupposed in Plato's system is a doctrine of levels of insight, in which a certain kind of detached understanding is alone capable of penetrating to the most sublime wisdom.

The idea here is one of discharge but this must stand in opposition to a second view, Plato's notion of the arousal of emotion.

In Plato's mind there is an irresolvable conflict between the poet and the philosopher, because the poet imitates only particular objects and is incapable of rising to the first level of abstraction, much less the highest level of ideal forms.

Plato's attitude toward poetry has always been something of an enigma, because he is so completely sensitive to its charm.

And we can add that Krutch's interpretation of purgation is also one answer to Plato's fear that poetry will encourage our passions.

In Plato's Republic communism is -- to speak anachronistically -- a communism of Janissaries.

Moreover, it is too readily forgotten that in the Republic what gave the initial impetus to Plato's excursus into the construction of an imaginary commonwealth with its ruling-class communism of goods, wives, and children, was his quest for a canon for the proper ordering of the individual human psyche ; ;

To derive Utopian communism from the Jerusalem Christian community of the apostolic age or from its medieval successors-in-spirit, the monastic communities, is with an appropriate shift of adjectives, misleading in the same way as to derive it from Plato's Republic: in the Republic we have to do with an elite of physical and intellectual athletes, in the apostolic and monastic communities with an elite of spiritual and religious athletes.

Whether or not Plato's tale of the lost continent of Atlantis is true, skeptics concede that the myth may have some foundation in a great tsunami of ancient times.

Together with Plato and Socrates ( Plato's teacher ), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy.

The traditional story about his departure reports that he was disappointed with the direction the academy took after control passed to Plato's nephew Speusippus upon his death, although it is possible that he feared anti-Macedonian sentiments and left before Plato had died.

Thus, according to the character Pausanias in Plato's Symposium, Aphrodite is two goddesses, one older while the other younger.

A centre for the arts, learning and philosophy, home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum, it is widely referred to as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy, largely due to the impact of its cultural and political achievements during the 5th and 4th centuries BC in later centuries on the rest of the then known European continent.

He is best known for his appearance in Plato's Symposium, which describes the banquet given to celebrate his obtaining a prize for his first tragedy at the Lenaia in 416.

Stylistic evidence suggests that the poem ( with most of Plato's other alleged epigrams ) was actually written some time after Plato had died: its form is that of the Hellenistic erotic epigram, which did not become popular until after 300 BC.

An example of ancient aesthetics in Greece through poetry is Plato's quote: " For the authors of those great poems which we admire, do not attain to excellence through the rules of any art ; but they utter their beautiful melodies of verse in a state of inspiration, and, as it were, possessed by a spirit not their own.

Atlantis ( in Greek,, " island of Atlas ") is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC.

The philosopher Crantor, a student of Plato's student Xenocrates, is often cited as an example of a writer who thought the story to be historical fact.

His work, a commentary on Plato's Timaeus, is lost, but Proclus, a Neoplatonist of the fifth century AD, reports on it.

A character in the narrative gives a history of Atlantis that is similar to Plato's and places Atlantis in America.

In the Timaeus, Plato's major cosmological dialogue, the Platonic solid he associated with fire was the tetrahedron which is formed from four triangles and contains the least volume with the greatest surface area.

Cerberus featured in many prominent works of Greek and Roman literature, most famously in Virgil's Aeneid, Peisandros of Rhodes ' epic poem the Labours of Hercules, the story of Orpheus in Plato's Symposium, and in Homer's Iliad, which is the only known reference to one of Heracles ' labours which first appeared in a literary source.

According to Dr Rupert Thompson, the Orator of The University of Cambridge, the earliest reference to drinking games in Western literature is from Plato's Symposium The Drinking Party.

Plato's account of Atlantis may have also inspired parodic imitation: writing only a few decades after the Timaeus and Critias, the historian Theopompus of Chios wrote of a land beyond the ocean known as Meropis.

Plotinus sought to reconcile Aristotle's energeia with Plato's Demiurge, which, as Demiurge and mind ( nous ), is a critical component in the ontological construct of human consciousness used to explain and clarify substance theory within Platonic realism ( also called idealism ).

For instance, something or someone ugly on the outside can be beautiful on the inside, which is one of the main points of Plato's dialogue, Alcibiades, and the Symposion, in which Alcibiades also appears.

Plato's Forms include numbers and geometrical figures, making them a theory of mathematical realism ; they also include the Form of the Good, making them in addition a theory of ethical realism.

Because it is beyond being ( epekeina tes ousias is a phrase from Plato's Republic 509b ), it is also beyond thought, because thinking requires the determinations which belong to being: the division between subject and object, and the distinction of one thing from another.

The intelligible-intellectual moment also consists of three triads, and the intellectual moment is a hebdomad ( seven elements ), among which is numbered the Demiurge from Plato's Timaeus and also the monad of Time ( which is before temporal things ).

He also accepts Plato's illiberal measures such as the censorship of literature.

One of Plato's students, Aristotle, is known to have also been an experimentalist, and may have taken the concept up from his teacher's teacher.

In addition to being credited for pithy sayings, the wise men were also apparently famed for practical inventions ; in Plato's Republic ( 600a ), it is said that it " befits a wise man " to have " many inventions and useful devices in the crafts or sciences " attributed to him, citing Thales and Anacharsis the Scythian as examples.

Philosophical texts have influenced the series as well: many similarities exist between Amber and Plato's Republic ( see the Allegory of the cave ) and the classical problems of metaphysics, virtuality, solipsism, logic, possible worlds, probability, doubles and essences are also repeatedly reflected on.

Thersites is also mentioned in Plato's Gorgias ( 525e ) as an example of a soul that can be cured in the afterlife ; and in The Republic he chooses to be reborn as an ape.

The Allegory of the Cave — also known as the Analogy of the Cave, Plato's Cave, or the Parable of the Cave — is an allegory used by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work The Republic to illustrate " our nature in its education and want of education " ( 514a ).

( See also Plato's metaphor of the Sun, which occurs near the end of The Republic, Book VI )

In De Differentiis Plethon compares Aristotle's and Plato's conceptions of God, arguing that Plato credits God with more exalted powers as " creator of every kind of intelligible and separate substance, and hence of our entire universe ", while Aristotle has Him as only the motive force of the universe ; Plato's God is also the end and final cause of existence, while Aristotle's God is only the end of movement and change.

Plato's work also contains references to puppetry.

Soon after Plato, Xenophon wrote his own Symposium ; also, Aristotle is said to have written several philosophical dialogues in Plato's style ( none of which have survived ).

Plato's dialogues also have metaphysical themes, the most famous of which is his theory of forms.

Plato's pupil Aristotle established the rules of deductive reasoning but also used observation and inductive reasoning, applying himself to the systematic study of almost every form of human endeavor.

The writings in these codices comprised fifty-two mostly Gnostic treatises, but they also include three works belonging to the Corpus Hermeticum and a partial translation / alteration of Plato's Republic.

Along with these other allegories, Plato's charioteer myth ( Phaedrus 245c-257b ) certainly also deserves mention.

Plato's disciple, Aristotle, also disagreed that polythiestic deities existed, because he could not find enough empirical evidence for it.