An introductory video on three of our greatest Philosophers – Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

Socrates 470/469 BC – 399 BC)was a classical Greek (Athenian) philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy.

He is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes. Plato’s dialogues are among the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity, though it is unclear the degree to which Socrates himself is “hidden behind his ‘best disciple’, Plato”.

Plato  428/427 or 424/423 BC – 348/347 BC) was a philosopher, as well as mathematician, in Classical Greece and an influential figure in philosophy, central in Western philosophy.

He was Socrates’ student, and founded the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with Socrates and his most-famous student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science.[ Alfred North Whitehead once noted: “the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”

Aristotle  384–322 BCE) was a Greek philosopher and scientist born in Stagirus, northern Greece, in 384 BCE.

His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, whereafter Proxenus of Atarneus became his guardian.At eighteen, he joined Plato’s Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven (c. 347 BCE). His writings cover many subjects – including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric, linguistics, politics and government – and constitute the first comprehensive system of Western philosophy.

Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip of Macedon, tutored Alexander the Great between 356 and 323 BCE. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, “Aristotle was the first genuine scientist in history. … Every scientist is in his debt.”