THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF PLATO
THE LIFE
Plato was born in 427 and died 347 BC. He had a wide knowledge of most of the pre-Socratics as he was influenced mostly by Socrates work, making him the main character of most of his writings. Plato had a deep interest in philosophy and in his early 30’s formed a philosophical school named after a Greek hero (the Academia) where the word Academy was derived from today, this Academy was functional for centuries till it was closed by Justinian the Emperor in 529 CE. In his older stages of life he was invited by Dion the leader of Dionysus who he always admired, but had little success with him as both Plato and Dion where forced out of the Kingdom by the stronger Dion’s who later murdered the king on an attempted coup against them.
WRITINGS
Most of Plato’s writings that still exist now are in form of dialogues. He chose to write in this format because he believed using characters and conversations was important to grab the interest of his readers and therefore to reach a wider audience. In some of his popular writings like the Socratic, Phaedo, symposium and Protagoras Plato deliberately used pedagogical questions to create a sense of puzzlement among his readers, leaving them with indirect answers, inducing arguments that expanded the philosophical reasoning.

ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY
According to Jefferson, God who has endowed all of us with indelible rights, such as , The right to pursue life, liberty and happiness. However if we humans where indeed created by a just and loving God then why are we not born equal as it is obvious we came to this world with different talents and capacities.
As ancient philosophy developed, the stoics, platens and Christians insisted the world is the result of providential divine activity laying out unsolvable questions like, “Why does god despite untrammelled power fail to arrange the world as we humans strive to arrange our own modest affairs with equality and justice for all?” and “why are some people born without gifts that are naturally given to others?
However other sceptics like platens and the Gnostics believe God’s plan was to divide the soul into 3 types, (the best souls, the worst souls and the souls’ the worst souls and the souls who must struggle through righteousness), others scholars think Christ came to redeem the whole human race.
Birth of Origen:
Origen the most philosophical knowledge Greek father was the son of a Christian father who died at the dawn of the 20th century. Origen wrote lengthy commentaries on several books of the bible like the “Hexapla” which he layed out a transliteration of the hibru into Greek characters, 3 attempted Greek translations of the hibru and the generally acceptable Septuagint. Origen in a more general perspective had a strongly platonic view of God, describing him as the perfect, incorporeal ideal.
THE FOUR CAUSES
According to Aristotle there are four kinds of cause or explanation, i.e material, formal, efficient, and final. This English words where drawn from the Latin explanations of Aristotle Greek.
The Material Cause: This is primarily what anything is made of e.g. statues being made of bronze
The Formal Cause: This is whatever gives something its definition or determination e.g. the form of the octave i.e if you have two strings at the same tension with one of them exactly half of the other, the noise they give when struck will be one octave apart.
The Efficient Cause: This is the source of the primary principle of change or stability e.g. the man who gives advice, the father (of the child)