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The Platonic Tradition

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The Platonic tradition in Western philosophy is not just one of many equally central traditions. It is so much THE central one that the very existence and survival of Western civilization depends on it. It is like the Confucian tradition in Chinese culture, or the monotheistic tradition in religion, or the human rights tradition in politics.

In the first of his eight lectures, Peter Kreeft defines Platonism and its “Big Idea,” the idea of a transcendent reality that the history of philosophy has labeled “Platonic Ideas” or Platonic Forms. In the second lecture, he briefly explores Plato’s two basic predecessors or sources, myth and Socrates; and then looks at 12 applications of the Forms in Plato’s own dialogues. The third lecture covers the three most important modifications or additions to Plato himself in the Platonic tradition: Aristotle, Plotinus, and Augustine, each of whom gave the Forms a new metaphysical address. The fourth lecture explores six Christian Platonists, three in the New Testament and three philosophers, Justin Martyr, Bonaventure, and Aquinas.
 The next three lectures explore the consequences of the modern abandoning of Platonism, beginning with William of Ockham’s Nominalism, as the source of nearly all modern philosophical errors, and its results in the Empiricism of Locke and Hume, the so-called Copernican Revolution in philosophy in Kant, the so-called “analytic philosophy,” which still dominates English and American philosophy departments. In the sixth essays, Kreeft looks at 13 influential kinds of positivism or reductionism in modern thought: in method, history, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, sociology, politics, logics, linguistics, sex, psychology, and theology, exemplified by Descartes, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Marx, Kant, Comte, Rousseau, Rawls, Ayer, Derrida, Freud, Skimmer, Nietzsche, and Sartre. Lecture 7 looks at the results of abandoning the Platonic tradition in ethics, the values vacuum, or nihilism, in Ecclesiastes, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoi, Marcel, and Buber. In the last lecture, Kreeft looks at some experiential evidence for Platonism, doors out of the cave that are still open, signals of transcendence.
 

139 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2012

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212 people want to read

About the author

Peter Kreeft

197 books1,074 followers
Peter Kreeft is an American philosopher and prolific author of over eighty books on Christian theology, philosophy, and apologetics. A convert from Protestantism to Catholicism, his journey was shaped by his study of Church history, Gothic architecture, and Thomistic thought. He earned his BA from Calvin College, an MA and PhD from Fordham University, and pursued further studies at Yale. Since 1965, he has taught philosophy at Boston College and also at The King’s College. Kreeft is known for formulating “Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God” with Ronald K. Tacelli, featured in their Handbook of Christian Apologetics. A strong advocate for unity among Christians, he emphasizes shared belief in Christ over denominational differences.

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5 stars
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
Profile Image for Luke Langley.
101 reviews
August 24, 2015
Alfred North Whitehead said that all of philosophy was a footnote to Plato. In this lecture series Kreeft shows this to be the case. After a basic review of the writings Plato Kreeft reviews those who built upon the Platonic tradition, such as Aristotle, Plotinus, and Augustine. He then explores philosophies such as Positivism and Nihilism which have been anti-Platonist in their outlook. Where Plato explored a world of Ideas outside of the cave, teaching a method which seeks to get at the essence of a thing be it Justice, Love, or Beauty. Yet those like Nietzsche or Sartre reduced the world view teaching a materialistic philosophy believing in nothing outside the cave walls, no spirit or soul, no essence, indeed no truth. THis is the world view which has largely been adopted and it has led to boredom and despair, but there are holes in the caves which offer promise of escape, the common belief in life after death, inspiration, understanding of the sacred, and the emptiness which of modern life despite material comfort.

One more interesting point is that Plato never wrote a book on Goodness itself because he said that no such book could be written. It is too high an idea and an only come in flashes of inspiration.
Profile Image for Glenn Bowlan.
89 reviews
October 18, 2020
This is quite a good overview of the responses to Platonic metaphysics from a devoutly Catholic perspective. Peter Kreeft makes each topic feel important and relevant. This is not a dispassionate review of philosophical positions. Kreeft's positive and affirmative message makes this lecture series feel like a sermon or a self-help book.
50 reviews2 followers
September 9, 2025
Just read this for a second time. Even better than the first time. I ca not more highly recommend this book.
Profile Image for Jessica.
71 reviews13 followers
October 21, 2024
Excellent and engaging overview of the Platonic Tradition. Highly recommend for all adults to listen to these lectures. Learning about the many distortions of philosophy is foundational to understanding how we got to the point we are at in this postmodern world. We need to return to Plato, objective truth, and the end goal of education and knowledge being wisdom not power. Now I need to dive into more of Plato’s dialogues.
“It’s all in Plato, all in Plato: bless me, what do they teach them at those schools!” - Digory Kirke in C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle
Profile Image for Chandler Collins.
486 reviews
March 8, 2025
From what I can gather, Peter Kreeft loves over-generalizations and simplifications. Did you know that everyone in the history of philosophy was a Platonist aside from the Sophists, Ockhamists, and Nihilists? While that is rather crudely stated, that is the gist of Kreeft’s argument as he traces the Platonic tradition throughout the history of philosophy. He even calls the likes of Aristotle a Platonist who just “gives the universals a new address.” This statement from Kreeft exhibits the flattening of nuanced and distinct positions that he performs to depict a history of philosophy as a unified Platonic tradition. It really wasn’t until Ockham’s nominalism and later Nihilism that this consensus was called into question. I don’t buy this view at all. Based on Kreeft’s work, you would have no idea that there were Christians who could and did hold to philosophical positions other than Platonism. Kreeft is a clear and accessible communicator which is why I gave it 3 rather than two stars, but I had to take everything he said with a grain of salt. I also got uncomfy by some of the divinized language he used for Socrates: for Kreeft, Socrates is the “Christ of philosophy.” Kreeft also teaches that Jesus, John, and Paul were Platonists so there is that. Would have been a better analysis if it was conducted by someone who didn’t think Platonism was the greatest intellectual system in world history.
Profile Image for sch.
1,279 reviews23 followers
July 31, 2020
2020 Jul. Kreeft recorded these eight lectures in 2012. There is no Course Guide, unlike his other "Modern Scholar" audiobooks, so I've had to copy the following descriptions from the first lecture:

1. Definitions: Platonism and the Doctrine of the Forms
2. Plato's Predecessors (Myth and Socrates) and the Forms in the Dialogues
3. The Three Greatest Platonists: Aristotle, Plotinus, and Augustine
4. Six Christian Platonists (Writers in the New Testament and Philosophers)
5. Anti-Platonism: Occam and Nominalism (Metaphysics)
6. Anti-Platonism: Thirteen Species of Positivism & Reductionism
7. Anti-Platonism: Nietzsche and Nihilism (Ethics)
8. Experiential Evidence for Platonism

Finished, wonderful. For me, this is a paradigm-shifting lecture series. It has Kreeft's characteristic combination of lucidity and density (solidity), reasonable exposition supplemented by illuminating illustration. My major takeaway is "Aristotle was a Platonist." So obvious, yet so easy to miss. But I mean it as a sort of shorthand for the many moments of brightness, clarity, illumination that I experienced while listening. I need to listen to it again (or read it in book form, see below), but before that I want to revisit Richard Weaver's IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES and finish Kreeft's own SOCRATIC LOGIC, which seems increasingly important--even essential--to my role as an English teacher, and to my own worldview.

Note: Based on the table of contents, the missing "course guide" for this series is to be found here and here, in Kreeft's separate book of the same title, published in 2018.
Profile Image for François B.
27 reviews15 followers
August 7, 2019
This is a fantastic read. I am very glad that Dr. Kreeft decided to take his Platonic lectures and put them into book format. I first came across this book's first 4 chapters (lectures) on Youtube as "The Plato Lectures" or "The Platonic Lectures". I recommend everyone to go listen to them, they are about 45 mins each. I was so impressed by the lucidity with which he touches upon Plato's "big idea" that I eagerly scoured the internet to see if I could find a book version of them. Thankfully I did and the book contains 4 extra chapters (lectures) to really give a well rounded understanding of Plato's philosophy of Forms along with it's antithesis found in various "enlightenment" philosophers and the logical consequences of abandoning the notion of metaphysical "Forms".

I caught about a dozen typing errors, which isn't too bad for Lectures intended for audio which were then put in writing. I can't recommend this book enough. I had learned and read about Plato and his "Forms" quite a bit previously however I have come to see that I never truly understood them until Dr. Kreeft kindly came along and framed it properly.
Profile Image for Nathan Otten.
3 reviews2 followers
May 5, 2014
A history of the Platonic tradition from a Platonist. He is a bit bombastic toward the other views, but does a good job explaining platonism and it's impact through the ages. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this one.
Profile Image for Clint.
34 reviews
August 7, 2014
To quote Kreeft referring to another colleague's writings (with my slight modificaiton:)): "Anything (Kreeft) writes (or teaches on) turns to gold." This is deep stuff, but, in my opinion, there is no better person to introduce any topic in philosophy than Kreeft.
Profile Image for Arthur Lammers.
26 reviews7 followers
February 26, 2016
Extremely readable. Will not substitute for the original material, but an amazing starting point for further inquiry into Plato's influence on the majority of philosophical thought.
Profile Image for Julio A Borges.
16 reviews1 follower
January 3, 2021
Great introduction

Great introduction from the best teacher. I advise to combine this book with kreeft’s history of ethics. A very instructive course
Profile Image for Rebekah Valerius.
4 reviews
January 3, 2020
I can’t recommend this lecture series enough! In them, Dr. Peter Kreeft gives an excellent introduction to Western thought that’s both accessible and delightful to listen to. Kreeft is perhaps one of the best popularizers of philosophy today. As an admirer of C.S. Lewis, Kreeft frequently makes use of his metaphor of looking both at and along something. He has written an entire book series in which he creates illuminating dialogues between Socrates and various modern philosophers – from Hume, to Kant, to Freud, and more. The best philosophy, after all, is done in dialogue.

In the lecture series, Kreeft’s main thesis is that Western philosophy stands on the shoulders of Plato (whose name means broad shoulders) and his idea of a transcendent Logos, or Good, as the ultimate reality. Kreeft is not the only one to make this observation. Modern mathematician and philosopher Lord A. N. Whitehead said that “the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Plato is philosophy.”

Kreeft demonstrates that where modern philosophy tries to detract from Plato, it ends in meaninglessness and absurdity. We are left in the darkness of the cave.

“Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”

Or, as G.K. Chesterton wrote, “we cannot enjoy thoroughly even a pas-de-quatre at a subscription dance unless we believe that the stars are dancing to the same tune.”

Kreeft traces how early, pre-modern philosophy added to and completed Plato’s system beginning with his student Aristotle, and continuing on with Christian thinkers such as St. John the Apostle (who identified Plato’s Logos as Jesus – the One through Whom and for Whom the world was created), Justin Martyr, Augustine, Aquinas, and Bonaventure.

He then discusses how modern thinkers began the ill-fated and ultimately self-defeating task of trying to subtract from Plato. Starting with the nominalism of Ockham and ending with the nihilism of Nietzsche, modern philosophy is best described as a retreat back into the darkness of the cave, away from Logos – the bright, shining sun of Plato’s allegory. Ideals are always judges, aren’t they? They make us uncomfortable because they reveal to us who we really are. We’d rather withdraw into the darkness of Plato’s cave, than stand in the revealing light of the risen sun (Son!).

Christianity tells us that Plato’s Ideals are ultimately a Person, and though the Logos is our Judge, He is also our Redeemer Who is Love Himself. This is how Christianity completes Platonism; it reveals to us that the Ideal, the Good, is infinitely Personal and Merciful.

The last lectures on modern philosophy are particularly fascinating as they help us understand the world in which we find ourselves. Even as Christians, we often unconsciously adopt the premises of the cave. The surface of our lives may have improved since the time of Plato, but just below the veneer, we are as darkened and empty as our models of Space. Kreeft covers thinkers such as Ockham, Hume, Descartes, Pascal, Kant, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Comte, and more.

My recommendation: buy these lectures and listen to them slowly. Kreeft is one of the best living teachers in Christendom today. This series would be excellent for advanced high school students, too.

Warning: If this is your first exposure to the philosophy of Plato, the first few lectures might seem heavy. Again, I suggest listening to these slowly and several times through. That said, Kreeft does repeat the heart of Plato’s philosophy many times throughout the entire series and in different ways. If you do not understand him the first time, he will repeat it and perhaps in a new form that makes more sense to you. That’s what makes him such a stellar teacher!
110 reviews2 followers
October 15, 2024
This is a great lecture series on the most important/influential ideas of Plato, mainly the Forms and the form of the Good, and how that idea was developed by other ancient and medieval thinkers and later abandoned by modern thinkers beginning with William of Ockham. Kreeft’s love of Plato and medieval thinkers illuminates aspects of their thinking that might otherwise remain hidden, and his analysis of modern thinkers seems fair (though I’m sure many would disagree).

Largely, Plato and those who followed in his footsteps sought to show that the world/reality is actually bigger, more interesting, more beautiful than what we can see. Theirs was a philosophy of moreness, where things that loved were merely signs of real Love, or later, participated in a Being Who is Love.

The modern turn developed ideas without the Forms, and these ideas tend toward the idea that the world is perhaps even less than what we see. Love is nothing but serotonin. Justice is nothing more than arbitrary rules we put on things out of utility or convenience. The only thing we can be certain of is that our own mind exists, and sometimes, we can only be certain that we’re really simply advanced computers. It’s a world that leads us deeper into the cave, trapping us in our own subjective worlds, rather than pointing outward to a reality so massive that the only response is to love it and conform to it.
Profile Image for Hunter Ross.
554 reviews190 followers
July 5, 2025
Philosophy is a literally "love of wisdom," a thirst for knowledge and a hunger for meaning. This is an amazing lecture series and I wish I could rate it more than five stars. Professor Kreeft has a direct and engaging way of speaking and I sincerely wish I could be in his literal classroom, but virtual will have to suffice. Although he uses other examples this modern nihilism that infects and defiles our souls, worms its way through our brains, blights and spoils our spirit seems to be the intellectual standard and so many living amongst the decaying Ivory Towers of academia will happily belittle you and mentally bludgeon you into their unhappy mental-little-shop-of-nothing. Well, I will follow Plato out of the cave and dance with St. Augustine and be the happier for it. Professor Kreeft has a keen and cutting wit that is dry and pounces out of no where, but several times had me laughing out loud. I am not sure this is the best beginning book for Plato, I have read him extensively and taken previous courses, but maybe it is? It certainly has framed all I have read before about him and I imagine you will get a better reading of Plato if you start with this. Either way, definitely do not miss this gem.
Profile Image for David Kirschner.
262 reviews3 followers
January 23, 2019
Interesting lectures on Plato and his influence. Lots of thought-provoking stuff for me mostly about religion and epistemology. The author is a Christian and not shy about either the supremacy of monotheism or his disdain for modern society, which according to him has decayed into nihilistic meaninglessness. He'll say things like "atheists are snobs" and so on, but if you follow his logic, you see what he means, even if you disagree and can make counter-arguments. My favorite parts were the parts about philosophers who abandoned Plato because I suppose I'm one of these modernists who doesn't believe in much that can't be strongly suggested scientifically. He and I have different ideas about what makes the world of possibilities expand and shrink and about what enchants and disenchants modern life. Alas. Nice little listen.
Profile Image for Levi.
207 reviews14 followers
November 28, 2017
This audiobook was an incredible encounter with ancient Greek, early Christian, Medieval, and Modern Philosophy. Kreeft does an exceptional job of explaining the influence Plato has had throughout the ages. Then, he aptly defines how different people have either added to, subtracted from, synthesized, or repudiated Plato throughout the ages up until the modern and post-modern eras. I recommend this to anyone interested in philosophy and especially to those who are either interested in learning more about Plato and ancient Greek philosophy or have encountered some of Plato's work.
Profile Image for Brett Fortenberry.
21 reviews
November 28, 2024
Peter Kreeft is by far the most enjoyable author of philosophy to listen or read. I remember the first time I read The Best Things in Life by him. Such a great read. These lectures on Platonjsm are super accessible. I’ve started and stopped reading Plato’s Republic so many times. Kreeft’s lectures rekindled my motivation to try again with a new appreciation for platonism and the history of philosophy. I was in a bit of a reading rut, and I feel like this was a nice way to get back in the game.
Profile Image for Trevor Atwood.
306 reviews30 followers
Read
July 20, 2024
Another excellent offering from Kreeft.

A great read for understanding Plato and the platonic tradition- particularly its relationship to Christianity. Also great for a survey in platonic and anti- platonic philosophies.

Kreeft is succinct, understandable, humorous, and speaks with a kind of grandfatherly- whimsy- that absolutely leaves me worshipping God every time.

Take up and read.
Profile Image for Amanda.
114 reviews
Read
December 23, 2024
When I checked it out on Hoopla I didn't realize it's a lecture series and not an audio"book"... But I'm still counting it ;)

I'm slowly working my way through Plato and just trying to understand it! This lecture series was helpful, especially in comparing platonism to other world views like Christianity and nihilism.
Profile Image for James Livermore.
105 reviews
July 9, 2025
Absolutely fantastic review of how Plato was viewed through the ages. I found this perspective amazing. Professor Kreeft is incredibly knowledgable and I found his take on Plato and later Christian thinkers who modeled themselves after some of his thinking refreshing in an age of stark nihilism and disbelief.
Profile Image for Bryan .
571 reviews
August 13, 2025
Wonderfully written and highly effective educational content. The author made this a very enjoyable experience for me and I'm looking forward to learning more from other books he has written. I have high hopes that I will continue to contemplate thought-provoking and deeply engaging content in his other books, as good as what was contained in this book.
Profile Image for Luke Mohan.
25 reviews1 follower
October 25, 2022
Summarized very generally what I learned in my collegiate Ancient Philosophy, Modern Philosophy, Ethics and Metaphysics courses very succinctly and readably. The version I had was rife with typos and editorial mishaps, but besides being irritating, we’re not a big deal.
1 review
February 20, 2025
Kreeft is always wonderful

Kreeft's simple style and directness always makes philosophy come alive. He is a delight to read and always penetrative without the smugness you get from so many.
Profile Image for Mike.
670 reviews15 followers
July 24, 2018
The last lecture was best.
Profile Image for Simon O'Mahony.
148 reviews
January 4, 2022
Excellent summary of the Platonic tradition relative to Christianity, and it's place in the history of Philosophy. This is a resource I will come back to again.
Profile Image for Gil Michelini.
Author 3 books12 followers
June 30, 2022
I wish I were in tge classroom with Dr. Kreeft because I have so many questions.
Now, I need to listen to this again to fully understand what it means for me today.
11 reviews
April 18, 2024
Like most of Prof. Kreeft's work - engaging, clear, enjoyable, and deep. Good company on long car rides.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews

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