The word `` mimesis '' ( `` imitation '' ) is usually associated with Plato and Aristotle.

Aristotle also tended to stratify all aspects of human nature and activity into levels of excellence and, like Plato, he put the pure and unimpassioned intellect on the top level.

For both Plato and Aristotle artistic mimesis, in contrast to the power of dialectic, is relatively incapable of expressing the character of fundamental reality.

And most of the great periods are represented, because we will compare Plato and Aristotle from the golden age of Greece ; ;

Plato and Aristotle

While Aristotle censors literature only for the young, Plato would banish all poets from his ideal state.

Even more important, in his Poetics, Aristotle differs somewhat from Plato when he moves in the direction of treating literature as a unique thing, separate and apart from its causes and its effects.

Both sides claimed that Plato and Aristotle supported their cause.

Aristotle (, Aristotélēs ) ( 384 BC – 322 BC ) was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great.

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

In accordance with the Greek theorists, the Muslims considered Aristotle to be a dogmatic philosopher, the author of a closed system, and believed that Aristotle shared with Plato essential tenets of thought.

Essays on Plato and Aristotle, Oxford University Press, USA.

The press was started by Aldus based on his love of classics, and at first printed new copies of Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek and Latin classics.

He was a pupil of Proclus in Athens, and taught at Alexandria for most of his life, writing commentaries on Plato, Aristotle, and other philosophers.

Eventually, they returned to Alexandria, where Ammonius, as head of the Neoplatonist school in Alexandria, lectured on Plato and Aristotle for the rest of his life.

Hierocles, writing in the 5th century, states that Ammonius ' fundamental doctrine was that Plato and Aristotle were in full agreement with each other:

* Karamanolis, G., ( 2006 ), Plato and Aristotle in Agreement?

It is noteworthy that Socrates ( Plato, Phaedo, 98 B ) accuses Anaxagoras of failing to differentiate between nous and psyche, while Aristotle ( Metaphysics, Book I ) objects that his nous is merely a deus ex machina to which he refuses to attribute design and knowledge.

While the date of composition varies wildly among scholars, ranging from the era of Plato and Aristotle to the seventh century CE.

In his earliest work, Against the Heathen-On the Incarnation, written before 319, he repeatedly quoted Plato and used a definition from the Organon of Aristotle.

Some philosophers who have had more noteworthy theories are Parmenides, Leucippus, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Plotinus, Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel, Heidegger, and Sartre.

Journalist Bee Wilson states that the image of a community of honey bees " occurs from ancient to modern times, in Aristotle and Plato ; in Virgil and Seneca ; in Erasmus and Shakespeare ; Tolstoy, as well as by social theorists Bernard Mandeville and Karl Marx.

Plato ’ s student Aristotle did not maintain his former teacher's geometric view of the elements, but rather preferred a somewhat more naturalistic explanation for the elements based on their traditional qualities.

Nor do all metaphysical idealists agree on the nature of the ideal ; for Plato, the fundamental entities were non-mental abstract forms, while for Leibniz they were proto-mental and concrete monads.

Although Aristotle strongly rejected the independent existence Plato attributed to forms, his metaphysics do agree with Plato's a priori considerations quite often.

They tend to agree also that Plato ’ s earliest works quite faithfully represent the teachings of Socrates and that Plato ’ s own views, which go beyond those of Socrates, appear for the first time in the middle works such as the Phaedo and the Republic.

Aristotle also does this himself, and though he professes to work differently from Plato by trying to start with what well-brought up men would agree with, by book VII, Aristotle eventually comes to argue that the highest of all human virtues is itself not practical, being contemplative wisdom ( theōria 1177a ).

Scholars generally agree that Plato wrote this dialogue as an older man, having failed in his effort in Syracuse on the island of Sicily to guide a tyrant's rule, instead having been thrown in prison.

" There is no historical record of the exact time the school was officially founded, but modern scholars generally agree that the time was the mid-380s, probably sometime after 387, when Plato is thought to have returned from his first visit to Italy and Sicily.

Those who wanted to close the theaters, for example, pointed to Plato's Republic and those who wished to keep them open called on the Plato of the Ion to testify in their behalf.

Even Plato had difficulties with logic ; although he had a reasonable conception of a deductive system, he could never actually construct one and relied instead on his dialectic.

Plato believed that deduction would simply follow from premises, hence he focused on maintaining solid premises so that the conclusion would logically follow.

Category: Commentators on Plato

In the Gorgias written years later Plato has Socrates contemplating the possibility of himself on trial before the Athenians: he says he would be like a doctor prosecuted by a pastry chef before a jury of children.

Though both ended up as rogue governments and did not follow through on their constitutional promises, they began as responses from the Athenian elite to what they saw as the inherent arbitrariness of government by the masses ( Plato in the Seventh Epistle does remark that the Thirty made the preceding democratic regime look like a Golden Age ).

Robert Castleden suggests Plato may have borrowed his title from Hellanicus, and that Hellanicus may have based his work on an earlier work on Atlantis.

The next sentence is often translated " Crantor adds, that this is testified by the prophets of the Egyptians, who assert that these particulars are narrated by Plato are written on pillars which are still preserved.

Cameron also points out that whether he refers to Plato or to Crantor, the statement does not support conclusions such as Otto Muck's " Crantor came to Sais and saw there in the temple of Neith the column, completely covered with hieroglyphs, on which the history of Atlantis was recorded.

The original text is found on the preface Blake printed for inclusion with Milton, a Poem, following the lines beginning " The Stolen and Perverted Writings of Homer & Ovid: of Plato & Cicero, which all Men ought to contemn: ..."

Plato ’ s student Aristotle ( 384-322 BC ) developed a different explanation for the elements based on pairs of qualities.

This remark on Plato is not of merely historical interest.

The books ends with a discussion on the origin of languages and the possibility of a Jewish influence on Plato.

Silvermintz notes that, " Historians of economic thought credit Plato, primarily on account of arguments advanced in his Republic, as an early proponent of the division of labor .” Notwithstanding this, Silvermintz argues that, " While Plato recognizes both the economic and political benefits of the division of labor, he ultimately critiques this form of economic arrangement insofar as it hinders the individual from ordering his own soul by cultivating acquisitive motives over prudence and reason.

Plato was born Dana Michelle Strain on November 7, 1964, in Maywood, California, to Linda Strain, an unwed 16-year-old, who was already caring for an 18-month-old.