A dialogue that explores the issue of knowledge. Definitions of knowledge and their refutations. The Socratic method of midwifery. The philosophical life. A portrayal of Socrates' personality as a great dialectician.

Plato was born in 427 BC, a scion of a prominent Athenian family. He received an excellent education and became acquainted with the Greek philosophical currents. However, what decisively shaped his ethical 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 conception became the basis for the later Platonic theory of Ideas.

Plato profoundly interpreted Socrates 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 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 nearly ten centuries, until the time of Justinian. Plato dedicated himself to teaching and writing until his death in 348 BC.

All his surviving works were classified by Thrasyllus into nine tetralogies. Almost all belong to the genre of dialogue, in which Plato distinguished himself, not only as a leading philosopher but also as a true poet. His teaching derives from the doctrines of Greek thought, Orphism, Pythagoreanism, and Ionian philosophy, and of course, the Socratic discourse, ultimately shaping into a colossal philosophical system as Plato's personal creation.

His philosophy—ethical, ontological, political—is the foundation of world Idealism and perhaps influenced the thought of all ages more than any other.