GREEK PHILOSOPHY – II. RATIONALISM
§ 12 – The Disciples of Plato
The disciples of Plato were numerous.(1) But the difficulties that have just been pointed out in Plato’s doctrines made it impossible that any of them, even Aristotle, should be complete followers of Plato. In fact, it has to be said that just what was most characteristic in Plato’s technical doctrines —the theory of Ideas and of the state founded thereon— was not adopted without modification and developed, by any of his disciples. But there was a marked difference in the ways in which the ideas of Plato were taken up and developed by his followers, and on the basis of this we may divide them into two classes, into which fall, on the one hand, Aristotle, who had mastered all of Plato’s teaching, and had adopted and developed in natural sequence a larger portion of it than any other of Plato’s disciples, and, on the other, certain persons who became leaders in the school of Plato, the Academy, after his death, and who gave adherence only to comparatively limited portions of the Platonic theory, particularly, what has above been given as the Later Theory of Plato. We take up first these incomplete disciples, the members of the Academy.
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(1) See the list given by Zeller in Plato and the Older Academy, pp. 553-555, note.