Latest / Ancient Greece: Philosophy, Democracy, and Endless War — Fexingo History / Plato's Academy: Philosophy School Founded by a Wrestler
Transcript
- Luna: So we’ve covered Athenian democracy, the battles, the festivals — but I keep wondering, where did all those philosophers actually do their work? Lucas: That’s exactly what I want to get into today. In roughly 387 BCE, a man in his early sixties named Plato — you know him from the dialogues featuring Socrates — bought a piece of land just outside the walls of Athens, in a suburb called Hekademeia, named after the hero Academus. And there he founded what we now call the Academy. Lucas: But it wasn’t a school in the modern sense. No tuition fees, no fixed curriculum, no degrees. It was more like a community of people — mostly men, but we have hints that at least one woman may have attended — who gathered to talk, debate, and study mathematics, astronomy, ethics, and political theory. The whole thing probably cost Plato a small fortune, because he didn’t charge students. Luna: Wait — no tuition? How did it survive? Lucas: That’s the puzzle. The best guess is that Plato was independently wealthy, and he also received gifts and patronage from wealthy friends — most famously from Dionysius II, the tyrant of Syracuse. But that relationship turned sour, and Plato actually ended up getting imprisoned briefly. We’ll come back to that. Lucas: The Academy was more than just a place for philosophy — it was a hub for mathematical research. Over the entrance, legend has it, was inscribed 'Let no one ignorant of geometry enter.' Whether that’s true or not, the curriculum certainly emphasized mathematics as a gateway to abstract thought. Plato himself believed that mathematical truths were a step toward understanding the Forms — perfect, eternal ideas that lie behind the messy world we see. Luna: Right, the Theory of Forms. I’ve heard about it — like the idea of a perfect circle that no physical circle can match. Lucas: Exactly. For Plato, the highest form of knowledge — epistēmē — was knowledge of these Forms, as opposed to mere opinion, doxa. And the Academy was a place to train the mind to move from shadows to reality, just like in the Allegory of the Cave. Lucas: Now, one of Plato’s most famous students was, of course, Aristotle. He joined the Academy around 367 BCE, when he was about seventeen, and stayed for twenty years. But when Plato died in 348, Aristotle wasn’t chosen to lead the school — that honor went to Plato’s nephew, Speusippus. And Aristotle later founded his own school, the Lyceum. Luna: So there was a succession crisis? Lucas: Not exactly a crisis, but there was a clear sense of lineage. Speusippus was a mathematician who focused on numbers and the Forms. Then Xenocrates took over — he was more systematic, wrote a lot about ethics. After him came Polemon, and then Crates. The Academy kept going for centuries, well into the Roman period, long after Greece had lost its political independence. Lucas: In fact, the Academy flourished under the Romans. Cicero studied there in 79 BCE. He admired the skeptical turn the school had taken under Arcesilaus and Carneades — they shifted from Plato’s dogmatism to a more questioning, probable-knowledge approach. Luna: Skepticism? That seems like a big shift from the Theory of Forms. Lucas: It was. The so-called 'New Academy' insisted that nothing could be known with certainty, only approximated. But that’s part of what made the school so resilient — it could adapt. And it lasted until 529 CE, when the Byzantine emperor Justinian ordered it closed as part of his campaign to suppress pagan philosophy. Luna: That’s almost nine hundred years — longer than any university today. Lucas: Exactly. And think about what the Academy produced: not just Plato’s dialogues, but the foundations of Western logic, ethics, and political thought. And it all started because Plato wanted a place where people could pursue wisdom together, not for profit, but for its own sake. Luna: It’s kind of amazing that something so idealistic could survive so long. Lucas: It really is. And speaking of idealism — the Academy was ad-free too, in a sense. No commercial sponsors, no ad breaks. Which is actually how we like to run this show. We deliberately don’t run ads, because we want these conversations to feel like a genuine exchange, not a product. If you value that choice and want to help keep it going, you can support us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It’s a small way to keep this independent. Luna: Yeah, I think that’s one of the reasons listeners stick around — it really does feel like we’re just talking history. Lucas: So back to the old Academy — one fascinating detail is that the site itself was originally a gymnasium, an athletic training ground. Plato chose that location deliberately: he wanted philosophy to be a kind of mental wrestling. In fact, Plato himself was a champion wrestler in his youth — his birth name was Aristocles, but his wrestling coach nicknamed him Platon, meaning 'broad-shouldered.' Luna: Wait — Plato the philosopher was a wrestler? Lucas: He was. And he brought that competitive, physical energy into his philosophy. The dialogues are like matches — Socrates throws a question, the opponent tries to parry, and eventually gets pinned down by logic. So the Academy was partly an extension of the wrestling ground. Lucas: Another little-known figure is Eudoxus of Cnidus, a mathematician and astronomer who joined the Academy around 368 BCE. He developed a theory of concentric spheres to explain planetary motion, and he also worked on the method of exhaustion — a precursor to calculus. He was so respected that some say Plato deferred to him on mathematical matters. Luna: So the Academy wasn’t just philosophy — it was cutting-edge science. Lucas: Absolutely. And that interdisciplinary spirit is part of its legacy. When the Academy finally closed, many of its texts were preserved in the East, in places like Baghdad, where they influenced Islamic philosophy. So in a way, the school never really died — it just migrated. Luna: I guess that’s the ultimate proof of its value. Lucas: Exactly. And it all started with a broad-shouldered wrestler who bought a grove and started talking.