Plato cast his thoughts mainly in dialogue form. His dialogues are classified by scholars either by date of composition or by content. The chronological approach assumes that the reader is interested in understanding the development of Plato's thought, whereas the classification by subject affords a more complete statement of Plato's position on a given subject. What is beyond question is that in his youthful works he follows the principles of his master, Socrates, and that as time goes by he develops his own viewpoints.
Plato's view that the world of sense is a simulation - a 'cast', as he puts it - of reality, was to be of deep importance for the furture development of philosophy. In the Platonic vocabulary, this reality is termed Idea. The novelty of this view was that, for the first time, the existence of what-is was placed outside - indeed was independent of - the individual. According to Plato, the measure of things was not concepts and thoughts, but the essence of things as it existed in the Forms.
The 'Forms' comprise a separate world, the world of intellect. It is perfect, has always been there right from the beginning, and is eternal. The world of sense is human beings. So Plato envisaged the higher, absolute 'Form' as a regulator of nature and society, and professed that the world was fashioned to serve some definite end. On the pinnacle of this transcendental world of the 'Forms' he set the 'Form of all that is Good'. It was from this concept his views on ethics derived.
Plato's views on the state and on aesthetics are a natural consequence of the above theories. He creates a utopian state in which he does away with the family and places authority in the hands of philosophers. They are the only people who can recognize what is beneficial, and therefore good. Philosophers are also those who can perceive the common denominator in whatever is termed 'beautiful', and are hence led to beauty itself: beauty chaste and undefiled, unsullied by human fleshliness, divine Beauty itself.
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