Tanya asked:

Are Plato's philosophies influenced by Buddhist ideas and Eastern philosophies? If so, are there any
works written about this comparison?

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Both The Buddha and Confucius lived about three hundred years before Plato, so it is quite possible
that some of their ideas filtered through to him. But, to be honest, it is very difficult to say. How could
we know who is influenced by whom? We can look to either explicit statements that 'I was influenced
in this by X' or we could look for similarities between their ideas.

If we look for explicit information, then only documented connection between the ancient Western and
Eastern traditions which I am aware of is that of Pyrrho of Elis, a little later than Plato, who is said to
have studied under Indian 'sadhu' philosophers (Called the 'gymnosophists', or 'naked philosophers'
by the Greeks) while travelling with Alexander the Great. The extreme form of scepticism which
Pyrrho came to espouse does indeed seem quite similar to much Hindu thought, but it is quite at odds
with the belief in the real existence of absolute knowledge presented by Plato.

If we look for similarities of ideas, then there is an excellent and very detailed work outlining the
comparisons between Western and Chinese philosophy by Fung-Yu Lan. Extracts from it are
available in the west in The Philosophical Writings of Fung-Yu Lan. He draws detailed comparisons
between Plato, Aristotle, Democritus as well as Hume, Mill and others and their Chinese equivalents.
The trouble here is that, East or West, we are the same sort of creatures in the same world living the
same sorts of lives and therefore being confronted with the same sorts of problems. It is no surprise
that we often come up with the same answers. You may care to look at the comparison of Confucius
and Plato available at http://www.san.beck.org/C%26S-Contents.htmland you'll see what I mean.

Glyn Hughes