Plato (c.428 to c.347 bc) was an Athenian philosopher during the Classical period in Ancient Greece, founder of the Platonist school of thought, and the Academy, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. He is widely considered the pivotal figure in the history of Ancient Greek and Western philosophy, along with his teacher, Socrates, and his most famous student, Aristotle. Plato was the innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms in philosophy. Plato is also considered the founder of Western political philosophy. His most famous contribution is the theory of Forms known by pure reason, in which Plato presents a solution to the problem of universals known as Platonism (also ambiguously called either Platonic realism or Platonic idealism. He is also the namesake of Platonic love and the Platonic [...] own most decisive philosophical influences are usually thought to have been along with Socrates, the pre-Socratics Pythagoras, Heraclitus and Parmenides, although few of his predecessors' works remain extant and much of what we know about these figures today derives from Plato himself. Unlike the work of nearly all of his contemporaries, Plato's entire body of work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years. Although their popularity has fluctuated over the years, the works of Plato have never been without readers since the time they were written.

Preface; Abbreviations; Introduction; Part I. Prolegomena to the Dialogue: 1. Introduction; 2. Summary and analysis of composition; 3. Is the Clitophon unfinished?; 4. The Clitophon as a Short Dialogue; 5. The characters of the dialogue; Part II. Meaning and Authenticity: 6. Philosophical protreptic in the fourth century BCE; 7. Protreptic in the Clitophon; 8. Protreptic in Plato; 9. Elenchos in the Clitophon; 10. Justice in the Clitophon; 11. The meaning of the Clitophon; 12. Date and authenticity; Text and translation; Commentary; Appendices: I. The ending of Aristotle's Protrepticus; II. Note on the text; Bibliography; Indexes.