Plato: Greece (CA. 428-348 B.C.) (Audio Classics: The Giants of Philosophy)

Plato was the first great philosopher of the West to organize and record the issues and questions that define philosophy. A student of Socrates, Plato preserved the teachings of his mentor in many famous "dialogues" that deal with classic issues like law and justice, perception and reality, death and the soul, mind and body, reason and passion, and the nature of love. The most famous of all Platonic doctrines is the "theory of forms," the idea that there are changeless, eternal forms on which existing things are modeled. To Plato, human beings consist of an immortal soul together with a body that keeps it in the twilight world of changing, perishing things. The soul has a love for the eternal, the Good, which gives life stability and meaning. The ideal government, Plato believed, must reflect the structure of the human soul, guarded by those with a sure knowledge of the good.