Platonism holds that the world we see is not the whole of reality. Things change and pass away, but what makes them just, beautiful or true would be something stable that reason can grasp: the Ideas, or Forms. Its central question is how to move from opinion to true knowledge. For Platonists, knowing the Good changes one's life, and philosophy is a path that transforms the soul.
It arose in Athens in the fourth century BC, when Plato turned the conversations of his teacher Socrates into a system and founded the Academy. Centuries later Plotinus created Neoplatonism, which deeply shaped Saint Augustine and, through him, Christian thought. In seventeenth-century England Ralph Cudworth led the Cambridge Platonists, and in the twentieth century Iris Murdoch defended the idea of the Good in ethics. Current debates on whether numbers and values are real still engage this tradition.
Core ideas
Beyond the world of the senses there are eternal, unchanging Ideas
To know is to rise from opinion to truth
The Good is the highest standard for life and knowledge
Where to start reading
Each thinker's starter book, picked for beginners.
