Paedrus And Gorgias Analysis

Phaedrus and Gorgias Response Paper
Looking at both Plato’s Gorgias and Plato’s Phaedrus, the differences are easily noticed in comparison to one another. Gorgias was a text coming from Plato when he was a younger man, and not as experienced, living in a city of war, these elements add a hint of aggressiveness to the reading. Whereas Phaedrus was written when Plato was an older man, and the city was in a time of peace, and the setting had taken place in the wilderness, these facets gave the text a more calming tone compared to Gorgias. Aside from these few characteristics explained, each text has wildly different main ideas presented within them that individualize the two books. Even though the texts are so different, they both connect with
Plato grew up in Athens Greece in the time of the first educators, therefore education played a large role in his life. Plato was a student of another famous philosopher known as Socrates. Through Plato’s education he became very close to his teacher Socrates. When Socrates passed away from a forced suicide in 399 B.C.E, it is said to have taken a large emotional toll on Plato, so large that, Plato traveled for 12 years in southern Italy, studying mathematics, philosophy, theology, and many different fields of studies, and when he returned in 387 B.C. E, the philosopher began his writing. His writings consisted of the explorations of cosmology, political philosophy, theology, and his theories on justice and equality. In his writing, it is easy to see how his teachings were so influenced by Socrates, because many of the topics and aspects Plato wrote from were the expanded ideas from Socrates himself. Education obviously played a large role in Plato’s life, he understood knowledge as a virtue, “Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.” (Plato) Therefore, as Plato aged, he instituted a school in Athens called the Academy, and there he became the educator of another famous philosopher named Aristotle. He stayed teaching and lived out the rest of his days until he passed away in 348 B.C.E. His writing, theories, and idea have had such a lasting impact on philosophy, western thought and is deemed a reference still to this day for scholars and i the modern teachings of philosophy and western