Paper Summary:

This paper examines how, for the great majority of his career, Plato built a philosophical system based on a refutation of the Sophist teachings. Plato blamed the Sophists for the arrest and execution of his mentor Socrates. It shows how in every aspect of the theories he developed he opposed their beliefs and their conclusions and how, as a result, the direction of Greek and therefore Western philosophy was moved in a radically different direction to one that emphasized the existence of absolute truth rather than situational relativity.

From the Paper:

"The members of the lowest class would be to produce and distribute goods and services to the rest of the community. The second group, representing the will, would be made up of soldiers. Finally, the highest class would be the aristocracy, or the philosopher-kings, who would govern and make decisions for the greatest good. Rather than have these classes fixed by birth, Plato believed that the process of education would sort out who belonged in which group for each generation. Unlike the Sophist belief in social equality, Plato's system created a way for every person to serve the society as a whole depending on his capacity and ability."

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