The life of Plato emerged from Laertius, writing in the 3rd century CE, 500 years after Plato's death. Laertius describes Plato as fighting in the Athenian army as a hoplite at Corinth and Tangara but also at Delium where he gained a prize for valour. But when the latter was fought, Plato (real name Aristocles) was about five years old. An astounding feat!This might simply be confusion with Socrates. Not all the Dialogues accorded to Plato may be his, and ascribed work has been lost. about 27 works are known to be definitively by Plato.
My own discussions on Plato suggest he had Socrates essentially authoritarian brief, but how can we really know? From this point, the works of other teachers (usually recorded by others) such as Jesus can be fruitfully challenged and parts of Muhammad's programmatic declarations.
This is a simple question, that allows a wide spectrum of perspevtives
My vantage point is a linguistic one. Here, the theory of forms by Plato is relatable to the theory of reference which is widely discussed in twentirth century studies of Sementics (The Meaning of Meaning by Richard and Ogden, 1989, originally 1923) and in Text Linguistics (Cohesion in English by Halliday and Hasan, 1976). A discussion of the theory of reference is also included in a paper br Farida Baka and myself entitled "Terminology Evolution and Translation: Specificity of Referant and User's Epistemic Contiuumm..., 2016".
Plato's theory of forms has also bear elaborated on by Aristotle in his Poetics and by Muslim theologians in thier discussion of monotheism.
Omar Sheikh Al-Shabab
The theory of forms pops up in many discussions, so much so that it is possible it predates Plato. Is it with pre-Socratic philosophy?
But let's not forget, Plato disappeared from view, or at least his philosophy did, and only Aristotle was known.
There is a lot of literature on the subject, and I recommend to start with one of the "Companion" books on Plato to start the research, e.g. the Blackwell Companion on Plato, or the Cambridge Companion on Plato. This reserach will never be finished for good, and therefore you can indeed expect to find new and fresh answers, if you only dive deeply enough into the subject. Concerning Muhammad, the founder of Islam, there is even more information to be puzzled together in a fresh way. No no, this is not about ridiculing the Islamic religion, or to take away its basis. Quite the contrary: It is about coming closer to a realistic scenario what really happened, and how to understand this or that cryptic or misunderstood Quranic or Hadith text. The rest is a matter of belief, just as with Jesus and Christianity. You cannot debunk a religious belief by historical research. You may find better interpretations for religious texts (which is something!), but no debunking. So, I recommend three entry points on Muhammad's life (besides the traditional texts): 1. Tom Holland's book "In the Shadow of the Sword". 2. Hans Jansen: "Mohammed eine Biographie" (he concludes that Muhammad was not a historical figure, but this is a premature conclusion, the real value of the book is to demonstrate all the problems and possible solutions), 3. Dan Gibson's project (book, film, and youtube presence) about the city of Petra most probably being the real birthplace of Islam.
Thorwald Franke
The problem with Plato lies in the lateness of the material on him and why he does not seem mentioned at the time, and this in some ways is the problem with Jesus, the biography of the preacher caught up in the demands of Judaism, St Paul, et al. My work on Muhammad indeed brings into question the events surrounding the early years of Islam and like many others have so far rested on Persia's involvement. Religions can debunk themselves so any attempt to do so calls forth needless hostility. Tom Holland's book takes a specific direction dealing in several ways with the violence attached to the religion. Most Muslims simply ignore it as Christians ignore unsavoury questions regarding their religion, such as slavery, the questionable logic of forgiveness and other Christian ideas.
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