A dialogue that addresses the issue of pleasure. What is the highest good, pleasure or wisdom? Definition of the dialectical method. Psychological analysis of types of pleasure. True and false pleasure. Pleasure as a goal. The happy mixed life.

Plato was born in 427 BC, the scion of a prominent Athenian family. He received a great education and became acquainted with Greek philosophical currents. However, what fundamentally shaped his moral and spiritual essence was Socrates, with his life, philosophy, and death. The great philosopher was the reason the young Plato turned to philosophy, and the Socratic conceptualization formed the basis for the subsequent Platonic theory of Ideas.

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

Plato devoted himself to teaching and writing until his death in 348 BC. His works, all preserved, were categorized by Thrasyllus into nine tetralogies. Almost all belong to the genre of dialogue, through which Plato emerged, in addition to being a great philosopher, as a true poet. His teaching stems from the doctrines of Greek thought, Orphism, Pythagorean and Ionian philosophy, and of course 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 has influenced perhaps more than any other the thought of all time.