This article traces the circumstances, which led to Plato becoming a great philosopher. Gradual unraveling of the article brings out more of young Plato and how he became a part of Socrates' circle. Doing philosophy meant trying to understand how to live the life of a just person: getting rid of illusions about what we know or what we think we want, and coming to see what living well really consists of. That is the manifesto Socrates enunciates in his speech (...) to the jurors in the Apology. That is the theme Plato makes him elaborate and defends on a massive scale in the Republic, the longest and most complex of all his works. Fundamental in what he took from Socrates is the idea that philosophy is an inquiry, and inquiry best pursued in conversation with someone else. (shrink)

Anyone who has read Plato’s Republic knows it has a lot to say about mathematics. But why? I shall not be satisfied with the answer that the future rulers of the ideal city are to be educated in mathematics, so Plato is bound to give some space to the subject. I want to know why the rulers are to be educated in mathematics. More pointedly, why are they required to study so much mathematics, for so long?

In most of the Socratic dialogues, Socrates professes to inquire into some virtue. At the same time, he professes not to know what the virtue in question is. How, then, can he inquire into it? Doesn't he need some knowledge to guide his inquiry? Socrates' disclaimer of knowledge seems to preclude Socratic inquiry. This difficulty must confront any reader of the Socratic dialogues; but one searches them in vain for any explicit statement of the problem or for any explicit solution (...) to it. The Meno, by contrast, both raises it explicitly and proposes a solution. (shrink)