Home Bibliography Biographies

Brief biographies of major characters
who figure in Plato's Progeny

Melissa Lane

Arendt, Hannah (1906-75) A German Jew, Arendt studied philosophy under Martin Heidegger, with whom she had a year long affair, and then under Karl Jaspers, before escaping Germany in 1933. After doing refugee relief work in France, she emigrated to the United States in 1941, where she taught at several universities including the New School for Social Research. Her major works include a study of the origins of totalitarianism, several volumes of essays on modern politics and political philosophy, and her controversial account of the Israeli trial of Adolf Eichmann in terms of 'the banality of evil'.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834) Having become religiously radicalized at Cambridge as a young man, Coleridge embarked on a difficult and turbulent career as writer, poet, and sometime philosopher. His travels in Germany in 1798-99 made him one of the first Englishmen to understand the idealist philosophical revolution, which he popularized once back in London. His aim was to defend an active role for the mind, imagination, and conscience, and he had an enormous influence both on his friend and contemporary Wordsworth with whom he issued the Romantic manifesto, Lyrical Ballads, and on the younger generation of Romantic poets who followed them.

Crossman, Richard Howard Stafford (1907-1974) An erstwhile Oxford don who became an MP in 1945 and served as a Cabinet Minister from 1964-70, Crossman spent a year in Germany in 1930 where he had firsthand experience of the rise of Hitler about which he would write in Plato Today (1937). He worked as a journalist and then for the government during the war, in propaganda and psychological warfare, before being elected as Labour MP in 1945. He ended his career as a journalist and by writing up his controversial political diaries.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-82) A Unitarian pastor who resigned his pulpit upon realizing that he could no longer countenance even that minimal form of religious dogma, Emerson toured Europe in 1832, where he met Carlyle, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. Upon his return to New England he settled in Concord, where he developed his distinctive philosophy of Transcendentalism, becoming known as 'the sage of Concord' and inspiring Henry David Thoreau and, through his writings, Friedrich Nietzsche.

Foucault, Michel (1926-84) A French philosopher and historian, Foucault moved away from his youthful Marxism and existentialism to develop his distinctive account of the relation between power and knowledge, and the way that both are expressed and constituted in modern society through the exercise of discipline over individual bodies and minds. He developed a geneaological method, inspired by that of Nietzsche, for his studies of sexuality, prisons, politics and the self. He became professor at the Collège de France in 1969, and alongside his teaching engaged in forms of political and social action on behalf of prisoners and homosexuals.

Green, Thomas Hill (1836-1882) An English Anglican and don, Green was brought up in Yorkshire and educated at Balliol College, Oxford, under Benjamin Jowett, becoming a Fellow of Balliol in 1860. His lectures on Kant, Hegel, and Plato were the means by which he developed his distinctive idealist philosophy, and were published posthumously. Green was a political and religious reformer, who became the first Oxford don to be elected to the Oxford city council representing the town rather than the university.

Grote, George (1794-1871) A banker, political campaigner, associate of the Mills and Bentham, Grote was nevertheless best known for his history of Greece and the succeeding volumes which he published on Plato and Aristotle. His sceptical method and democratic sympathies transformed the history of the subject and set a standard for all later historians of Greece in the nineteenth century to follow.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770-1831) The last great German idealist philosopher, Hegel was educated alongside Schelling and Hölderlin at the Tübingen protestant Seminary before studying philosophy. After teaching at Jena and a period of private employment, he received a chair first at Heidelberg and then in 1818 in Berlin, where he remained for the rest of his life. Hegel's first major work, The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) was followed by his system of logic and his study of the philosophy of right; his thought can be summed up in the ambiguous dictum that 'the rational is the real and the real is the rational'.

Heidegger, Martin (1889-1976) A German who broke with Catholic philosophy and embraced a form of Protestantism, Heidegger was the student of Edmund Husserl, whom he eventually succeeded in the chair at Freiburg in 1928. Heidegger developed the philosophy known as existentialism, reflecting on the issues of mortality, temporality, and the relation between Being as such and individual beings. From 1933-34 he was rector of Freiburg University under the Nazi regime, remaining a member of the Nazi party and being proscribed from teaching after the war from 1945-50 as a result of his actions and speeches during this period.

Jowett, Benjamin (1817-1893) Master of Balliol College, Oxford, and Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford, Jowett was the moving force behind the introduction of Plato to the Oxford curriculum, as well as a number of other religious controversies and educational reforms. and his translation of Plato, which first appeared in 1871,established the Republic as the central text. He was a keen student also of Hegel and of theology, and played a variety of public roles as advisor, commissioner, and above all, as teacher of a large number of men who would become leading statesmen.

Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804) Born in Königsberg, where he lived throughout his life, Kant spent much of his life in relative obscurity as a teacher and professor working on scientific and philosophical problems. However, with works published from 1781 onward, his 'critical philosophy' set the agenda for German and indeed for European philosophy, defining new ways to approach metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics by establishing the limits and powers of reason in each domain.

Kelsen, Hans (1881-1973) A Viennese Jew, Kelsen left Austria in 1933 and taught in many universities in Europe and America. His Pure Theory of Law (1934) became a founding document of legal positivism, arguing that law can be defined without reference to independent moral norms.

Lowes Dickinson, Goldsworthy (1862-1932) A classicist who became a medical doctor and then historian, Lowes Dickinson spent his career as a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, where he wrote on Plato as well as writing a series of dialogues in the Platonic genre. He became a founder of the Bryce group advocating pacifism and internationalism during the war, writing books on international relations and advocating the establishment of a League of Nations.

Murdoch, Iris (1919-1999) Trained in 'Greats' at Oxford, Murdoch worked at the end of the war for the United Nations Rehabilitation and Relief Association in Belgium and Austria, travelling among the ruins of Europe and meeting Jean-Paul Sartre, whose philosophy impressed but later exasperated her. Studying and then teaching philosophy after the war, she began to write novels as a Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford (publishing her first novel, Under the Net, in 1954) and for the rest of her life wrote both fiction and philosophy, in both defending the importance of the Platonic conception of the good and exploring the moral value of art.

Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844-1900) A German philosopher who lived much of his life in Switzerland and Italy, Nietzsche was a youthful prodigy in philology, being elected to a chair at Basel at the age of 24. His first book, however, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music (1872), made him notorious for his attacks on Socratic rationalism and his celebration of irrational aspects of the Greek psyche. Resigning his Basel chair in 1879, he meanwhile broke away from his passionate friendship with the composer Richard Wagner, to develop his own terms for the critique of morality, reason, and art. Nietzsche went mad in 1889 and spent the rest of his life being cared for by his mother and sister.

Pater, Walter (1839-1894) An influential critic and lecturer, and leading member of the Aesthetic movement, he wrote on Renaissance art, the Greek world, and a variety of topics.

Patoçka, Jan (1907-77) A Czech philosopher and dissident, Patocka was one of the last pupils of Edmund Husserl in Freiburg, and developed his own version of phenomenological philosophy. He held a chair in philosophy at the Charles University in Prague, but his teaching was interrupted in 1939-45 when the university was closed by the Nazis, and in 1949 and 1972 when he was dismissed for political reasons. He was an author of Charter 77, the Czech dissidents' manifesto for human rights, and died following police interrogation.

Plato (427-347 B.C.E.) An Athenian aristocrat, Plato seems to have become converted away from his youthful political and literary ambitions upon meeting the elder philosopher Socrates. Plato was critical of the democratic Athenian regime which had put Socrates to death, although he himself lived unmolested in Athens for most of his life, apart from travels after Socrates was executed and several voyages to give political advice to rulers and courtiers in Sicily. Many of his dialogues, which explore fundamental issues in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics and politics, feature Socrates as a character.

Popper, Karl Raimund (1902-94) A Viennese Jew, Popper developed his philosophy of critical rationalism -- centring on the idea that scientific propositions can (only) be falsified rather than verified -- as a philosophy of science and later as a philosophy of democracy. He left Vienna for New Zealand in 1937 and in 1946 moved to the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he became a close associate of fellow Viennese exile F.A. von Hayek.

Socrates (469-399 B.C.E.) Born an Athenian plebeian to a sculptor and a midwife, Socrates became famous during his life for his questioning form of ethical teaching; Aristotle would say that he had invented ethical philosophy. The circumstances of his death, ordered by the Athenian democracy, brought him even greater fame, in particular for the legendary speeches which he made (known to us only in his disciples' accounts) during his trial on accounts of introducing new gods, not worshipping the old gods, and corrupting the youth. He wrote nothing, and so is known to posterity only through the testimony of others.

Sorel, Georges (1847-1922) An engineer by training, Sorel passsed through a turbulent series of successive political affiliations, from reformist socialism, to anarcho-syndicalism, to extreme right-wing nationalism, to Bolshevism. Influenced by the philosopher Henri Bergson, who stressed the element of flux in consciousness, Sorel's writings emphasize the importance of myth and emotion in political life. He corresponded with a wide number of influential thinkers of his day and shared with many of them a contempt for ordinary parliamentary democracy and the bourgeois habits of economic man.

Wilde, Oscar (1856-1900) An Irishman born in Dublin, and educated at Trinity College Dublin and at Magdalen College Oxford, Wilde was like Pater much influenced by the Platonizing work of John Ruskin. In 1882 he toured the United States as a celebrated wit, afterwards achieving much success as a dramatist. In 1895, just after the triumphant production of his 'The Importance of Being Earnest', he brought an unsuccessful libel action against the Marquis of Queensberry whom he charged with having libelled him in relation to a sodomic relationship with the Marquis' son, Lord Alfred Douglas. Wilde was then himself arrested and convicted on related charges, serving a prison sentence and becoming a bankrupt.

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