LAKHES or ON COURAGE: The examination of bravery and courage through the Socratic doctrine that equates virtue with knowledge. The unity of virtue. Connection of the individual virtues.

LYSIS or ON FRIENDSHIP: Friendship and its significance. Who becomes friends and why. Is friendship an end or a means that leads to another, ultimate goal? We feel true love for that which all so-called loves culminate in, for that which presents itself as the final purpose of our feelings.

Plato was born in 427 BC, a scion of an esteemed Athenian family. He received an excellent education and became acquainted with Greek philosophical movements. However, what decisively shaped his moral and spiritual essence was Socrates, with his life, philosophy, and death. The great philosopher was the reason young Plato turned to philosophy, and the Socratic conceptual framework became the foundation for the later Platonic theory of Ideas.

Plato interpreted Socrates deeply as a man and teacher, capturing his personality in many of his works. He traveled to Egypt, Cyrene, and Greater Greece, where he unsuccessfully tried to apply his political principles in the organization of the Greek cities of Sicily. In 387 BC, he founded the Academy in Athens, a famous center for philosophy and the Muses, which lasted almost ten centuries, until the time of Justinian.

Plato dedicated himself until his death (348 BC) to teaching and writing. His works, all of which have survived, were classified by Thrasyllus into nine tetralogies. Almost all belong to the genre of dialogue, with which Plato emerged, in addition to being a leading philosopher, as a true poet.

His teaching stems from the doctrines of Greek thought, Orphism, Pythagoreanism, and Ionian philosophy, and of course from the Socratic discourse, and ultimately takes shape, as a personal creation of Plato, into a colossal philosophical system. His philosophy - ethical, ontological, political - is the foundation of global Idealism and perhaps influenced thought throughout all eras more than any other.

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