Why do we love Plato? Because Plato himself was a lover: lover of comrades, lover of the intoxication of dialectical revelry, passionate seeker of the elusive reality behind thoughts and things. We love him for his unstinted energy, for the wild nomadic play of his fancy, for the joy which he found in life in all its unredeemed and adventurous complexity. We love him because he was alive every minute of his life, and never ceased to grow; such a man can be forgiven for whatever errors he has made. We love him because of his high passion for social reconstruction through intelligent control; because he retained throughout his eighty years that zeal for human improvement which is for most of us the passing luxury of youth; because he conceived philosophy as an instrument not merely for the interpretation but for the remolding of the world. We love him because he worshiped beauty as well as truth, and gave to ideas the living movement of drama, and clothed them in all the radiance of art. —Will Durant, The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time 

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The featured image is a photograph of a sculpture of Dionysus, Plato, or Poseidon, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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