In modern times, Friedrich Nietzsche diagnosed Western culture as growing in the shadow of Plato (famously calling Christianity “Platonism for the masses”), while Alfred North Whitehead noted “the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
His most famous contribution is the theory of Forms known by pure reason, in which Plato presents a solution to the problem of universals, known as Platonism (also ambiguously called either Platonic realism or Platonic idealism).
Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato is a central figure in the history of Ancient Greek philosophy and the Western and Middle Eastern philosophies descended from it.
