Atlas of Thinkers
ThinkersAtlasTimelineWorksBlog

Explore

Compare

Two thinkers, side by side

Life

Portrait of Parmenides
Parmenides

c. 515 BCE – c. 450 BCE

Pre-SocraticEleatic

Born Elea

What is, is. What is not, cannot be thought. Change is an illusion.

Portrait of Plato
Plato

c. 428 BCE – c. 348 BCE

ClassicalPlatonist

Born Athens

He saw a world behind the world. The Forms are real; what we see are shadows.

Connection

Parmenides intellectual debt Plato — Plato named a dialogue after Parmenides and considered him the most formidable of the pre-Socratics. The theory of Forms is partly a response to the Eleatic challenge.

Shared Ideas

BeingReason

Ideas

BeingReason
JusticeBeingVirtueReason

Words

“What is, is. What is not, cannot be.”

— Parmenides

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”

— Plato

“The measure of a man is what he does with power.”

— Plato

Key Moments

c. 515 BCE

Born at Elea

c. 515 BCE

Born in Elea

c. 490 BCE

Writes Philosophical Poem

c. 475 BCE

The Poem of Being

c. 428 BCE

Born in Athens

c. 408 BCE

Meeting Socrates

399 BCE

Death of Socrates

c. 388 BCE

First Voyage to Syracuse

Works

On Nature

Apology

Crito

Symposium

Phaedo

Republic

Atlas of Thinkers

A story-first philosophy atlas. Explore history's greatest thinkers through place, time, movement, and ideas.

Explore

  • Thinkers
  • Atlas
  • Works

Browse

  • Concepts
  • Volumes

About

  • About the Atlas
  • Image Credits

Volume I · Ancient Greece · 624-262 BCE