I agree with Ahed as it is really hard to choose among these great philosophers. Between Socrates and Plato, it’s a tie. These two classic Greek philosophers arguably started the whole thing. Their ideas created the foundation for much of Western thought. If I have to choose one, I will go for the teacher, Socrates

Ahed has a related question with 55 answers!

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Who_is_the_greatest_philosopher_and_why?

Dear Jesus,

In fact, the three of them are big prophessors. Socrates was noted for his dedication to careful reasoning. He sought genuine knowledge and employed everything to the pursuit of Truth.

The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance - Socrates

For me Socrates. His influence is the most important for all philosophers after his life. And very imposing his personal bitter fate to get poisoned because of disregard of the gods and bad influence for the youth.

@Venkata,

your are right, students can improve the knowledge of their teachers, but who has the greater influence? So I prefer Socrates.

According to Alfred North Whitehead, "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato" (Process and Reality, p. 39, Free Press, 1979).

Furthermore Plato was not only a philosopher but an excellent writer! Reading a dialogue one admire his powers in expressing very difficult points. 

However I regard Aristotle as greater since he saved "forms" and :ideas" but he rooted these on the real world. 

Socrates, was essentially a "teacher" like Jesus or Pythagoras. 

One of the greatest philosopher of modern times was Kant, who tried to bridge the tow competing theories: empiricism vs. apriorism.  

cant answer...everyone has its own entity.

Plato gave us the abstraction of the World of Ideas and had significant contribution to Religion studies. Socrates Apology is a turning point in Ancient Greek Religion.

Aristotle is the founder of many scientific branches such Logic, Physics & Meta-Physics, Biology, Psychology, Politics and many other. Unfortunately his work has not been saved in its entire volume.

By speaking in modern language, probably Aristotle has a greater impact factor than Plato.

Given the vicissitudes of the manuscripts through which we receive Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, we can never be sure that we inherit them as their authors conceived them. Socrates supposedly never wrote his teachings down. Therefore of precisely what he said we can´t be certain. A number of Greek authors presented him as a conventional figure of a sage, spouting their own doctrines.  Today we mostly assume that he held the ideas that Plato ascribed to him. Yet Plato´s Dialogues, as Costas remarks, are artworks, and we know that art proceeds by conventions not corresponding always to outer reality.  What Socrates contributed was mainly an ethics, a way of living introspectively, knowing that one does not know.  Plato´s contribution was probably greater: it was a method, the dialectic, plus a literary genre, the Socratic dialogue, imitated by neoclassicizing cultures of all subsequent times.  Of all Plato´s writings, the "Symposium" or Banquet is the most influential, the "Republic" is repeatedly quoted, but his longest work, the unfinished "Laws" (Nomoi) is perhaps his deepest.  Aristotle, Plato´s best student, perfected the art of writing treatises, the form mostly used by philosophers after him.  He was a system builder, grounding his thought on his metaphysics, then proceeding from there to his logic, esthetics, ethics, psychology, biology, etc.  Which of the three thinkers is most important?  Difficult to say. They all form a chain of thought, in which one link cannot dispense with the other. 

Dera Demetris,

"Plato gave us the abstraction of the World of Ideas", this is not true. Aristotle did, not Plato. For Plato the forms and ideas we given apriori, in a third world. When we see e.g a square we remember "The Square". So it is the opposite of abstructuion!

I agree with Ahed as it is really hard to choose among these great philosophers. Between Socrates and Plato, it’s a tie. These two classic Greek philosophers arguably started the whole thing. Their ideas created the foundation for much of Western thought. If I have to choose one, I will go for the teacher, Socrates

Ahed has a related question with 55 answers!

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Who_is_the_greatest_philosopher_and_why?

@Behrouz,

your comment is ok. But here we are discussing only about three greek giants, who started the post socratic philosophy aera. And we can try to find a kind of hirarchy.

Dear @Jesus, I do agree with dears @Ahed and @Behrouz in that all of them are great; I would arrange them in the order:  Socrates, Plato, and then Aristotle.

Dear Costas,

You should correct the next link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_idealism

"Platonic idealism usually refers to Plato's theory of forms or doctrine of ideas. Some commentators hold Plato argued that truth is an abstraction. In other words, we are urged to believe that Plato's theory of ideas is an abstraction, divorced from the so-called external world, of modern European philosophy, despite the fact Plato taught that ideas are ultimately real, and different from non-ideal things—indeed, he argued for a distinction between the ideal and non-ideal realm.

These commentators speak thus: For example, a particular tree, with a branch or two missing, possibly alive, possibly dead, and with the initials of two lovers carved into its bark, is distinct from the abstract form of Tree-ness.[1] A Tree[1] is the ideal that each of us holds that allows us to identify the imperfect reflections of trees all around us."

Dear Demetris,

You say "Some commentators hold Plato argued that truth is an abstraction." You should notice that "truth" is a different thing form ontology. There are many theories of truth, the main one is Tarski's, and another is through situation theory.

Summarising, Platonic ontology, IS NOT an abstraction of the real world. Aristotle's ontology, yes it is such an  abstraction.

Let me please quote Fichte here: "The kind of philosophy you choose depends on the kind of person you are". The framework of Fichte's quote is not relevant here.

This means that, openly or implicitly we already are a sort of person because of series of factors (birth, sex, facility, biography, etc.) and that determines somehow what kid of philosophy we prefer.

Without going into details Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle philosophies entail certain well established characteristics that have been the subject of numerous works along history. Their philosophy is closely related to their own biographies and cultural moments.

Being as it might be, in may case, I personally prefer Socrates.

Dear Roland,

Thanks for raising the emotional dimension of ancient Greek philosophy. My brothers buy me fiction for my all too multitudinous birthdays, but I really prefer to curl up with a philosophy book from Antiquity. Every two years I try to relearn my ancient Greek.

Although Aristotle commands, "Vote for me" for his rationality, which has ordered the thought of the rational parts of the Middle Ages (Scholasticism), of the Renaissance, Baroque, and Enlightenment, Plato claims my "love."  To you and dear Carlos, I object that Socrates has too many filters through which we have to discern his thought.  There is no direct contact with it:  like Jesus in a later century, he never wrote anything down. Aristotle´s writings have a zero-degree affective temperature (except for the "Nicomachean Ethics," which he wrote for his son).  But Plato is almost always good literature that you can read for pleasure!  His "Symposium," I would venture to say, may be, after the Bible, the most influential work both on Western philosophy and on literature (Carlos, correct me if I err).  All three thinkers are historically necessary, but only one enjoys my emotional preference. 

Socrates had a good support through plato... To know more on Greek philosphers..

https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/greek_philosophers.pdf

Dear Roland, thanks for your support for my Platonism. I know that practically speaking, world civilization owes the most to Aristotle. What would contemporary science be without him, even if it corrects his errors? However, there is no rational accounting for affects and tastes: de gustibus non disputandum.  I love Plato because his works smack of veracity,  because his thought is so universal, because he invents words when he doesn´t find adequate ones, and because he is antidogmatic.  Anyhow, we have a debt of gratitude to the three Greeks here mentioned and even to many others unmentioned: certain pre-Socratics like Heraclitus and Parmenides, the Sophists (who helped Socrates to reason), and the Stoics, among many others. I don´t even count scientists like Pythagoras, Euclid, Hippocrates, Galen, etc.

We can't help with our preferences and tastes, for our weaknesses and love! To be sure, they are absolutely incommensurable - hence we will never find a consensus in here.

Nonetheless, I would like to mention something important. Recent historiography and hermeneutics have indeed allow us all not to be that dependent on unique sources such as Plato (or Aristotle) in respect to Socrates. A number of great authors have shed new fresh lights on the trio, and on the Greek philosophy and spirit as well.

What I mean is that, for good or for bad, we are not contrived to believe that Plato's version is the only or the best vis-à-vis Socrates.

Among a number of  books, please let's take a look, one more time, to B. Snell's "The discovery of the mind", f.i.

Ortega y Gasset, who studied Greek philosophers in the original Greek, repeatedly affirmed that we will never understand the Greeks!  If this is so, no wonder, Carlos, tha there can be no consensus, not only in tastes but also in information about them.  No, I do not believe that Plato is the only authority for Socrates. There are Aristophanes, Xenophon, and a host of others.  Thanks, though, for the reference to Snell.

It is easy to set aside Aristotle, because he just continued the work of Plato, with some own thoughts. The crucial question is only: Socrates or Plato? Socrates gave the impulse, yet Plato made something of this impulse. Without Plato we would even not know about Socrates, or only rare things. I would say, Plato is more important, because we all get impulses from various persons, yet we rarely make something of it. To make something of an initial impulse is the important thing. This is what Plato did. And Plato surely added a lot to the roots he took over from Socrates, yet Plato also took over influences from other thinkers, like Empedocles.

Ways of Thinking about Thinking

There are several primary ways in which philosophers think about perceptions. People use these same ways of thinking in their own philosophizing about themselves. There are a number of names for these patterns of thinking, and the more clearly you understand them, the more easily you can use them in your daily life. Here are names for six of them, their meanings, and some examples of them using fruits:

comparison--examining similarities (red & green apples).

contrast--examining differences (apples vs. oranges).

analysis--taking things apart to examine them (apple parts).

synthesis--fitting things together in new wholes (apple tree).

addition--asking what would happen if something were added to a process (growing apple-oranges).

deletion--asking what would happen if something were deleted from a process (growing apples with no crunch).

Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were very adept with the above charateristics

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~jewel001/humanities/book/5philosophy.htm

I think that there is no need to choose between them, since:

"According to Alfred North Whitehead, "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato" (Process and Reality, p. 39, Free Press, 1979). 

That may have been an exaggeration, but it is true that Plato (together with his mentor, Socrates, and his pupil, Aristotle) introduced the world to the way of thinking  we call philosophy (which comes from a Greek root meaning "love of wisdom")."

https://sites.google.com/site/platofootnote/

all are great

Another different take would be: some people prefer an oral discussiln and presentation. Then Socrates would be the winner. Other people, however, would prefer to write and argument about the discussions. In this case, they would vote for Plato.

Socrates taught Plato and Plato taught Aristotle.

So ideas of the three Philosophers are based, mainly on Socrates.

My main interest goes to the work of Plato in his Timaeus involving his Geometry and Cosmogony.

Of most interest, for me, are  his two orthogonal triangles [ by which origins of all triangles derive] and  in particular his “ MOST BEAUTIFUL TRIANGLE ”.

In this work the current interpretation of this triangle is contrasted with its new proposition, with relevant reasoning. Philosophical ideas of ratios are interpreted

geometrically.

I attach part of my work, presented to various National and International conferences and exhibitions:

http://www.stefanides.gr/Html/quadrature.html

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http://www.stefanides.gr/Html/GOLDEN_ROOT_SYMMETRIES.html

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http://www.stefanides.gr/html/Root_Geometries.html

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http://www.stefanides.gr/html/All_triangles_derive.html

Regards

Data D=5,083FOUR 1

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Data THE QUADRATURE TRIANGLE PLATOS MOST BEAUTIFUL TRIANGLE

Data PCST* By Panagiotis Stefanides

Data SOMATOIDES

Data Three Tetrahedra in Golden Ratio- Building Blocks of a Quart...