May Plato’s Academy be Considered as the First Academic Institution?

Plato's Academy is undoubtedly the first higher education institution in history, and in ancient Athens itself represents the most important educational institution. It constituted in the context of the universal development that took place in ancient Athens, in the 5th and 4th century BC, and it continued to work until the Byzantine Emperor Justinian forbade the work of all schools of philosophy (529 AD). This development, which is part of the so-called Golden Age of ancient Athens, represents the period of Greek history in which the foundations of Western civilization originated, as we know it today. Plato appears as one of the greatest philosophers of ancient Greece, along with Socrates and Aristotle, to the first of whom appears as a student and to the second as a teacher. Philosophy in the true sense of the word was created in Plato's era in ancient Athens (Russell, 1975), and Plato's Academy, in which he, along with his students, talked about various philosophical topics through the Garden of Akademos, was the impetus for this development. There are also opinions that the development of philosophy after Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle is only of reproductive character when it comes to the basics of philosophy.