Platonism

Centred on the theory of Forms: the sensible world is only a copy of eternal Forms, and knowledge is the soul's recollection of them.

Representative figures · 3

Brought philosophy down from the heavens to the marketplace, replaced teaching with questioning, and drank hemlock for it.

Built Socrates' questions into the theory of Forms, founded the Academy, and set the agenda of Western philosophy in dialogue form.

Founder of Neoplatonism, who raised Plato's Forms toward the One, from which all things emanate and to which the soul longs to return.