Why Did Plato Claim that Philosophy Was the Greatest Music?

The purpose of this paper is to establish the fundamental reason for Plato’s claim that philosophy is the greatest music. Holding that the main reason for the perceived ambiguity of this assertion stems from a discrepancy between Plato’s understanding of music and philosophy and their modern meanings, the author first elaborates on the original Greek notion of music and compares it with the contemporary one. In the second part of the paper, the author explores Plato’s relationship with music, examining the role he assigned to music within his philosophy. It turns out that the traditional view of Plato’s negative attitude towards music is false. The author provides the reader with a more complex analysis of the problem and offers a positive view of music in Plato's work, which is then linked to Plato’s political preference for the Phrygian mode, pointing towards a rarely observed Dionysian aspect in his thought. The paper concludes that only through careful cultural contextualization of Greek philosophy does it become clear why, for Plato, philosophy was the greatest form of music.