Giovanni Casertano was a founding member of the IPS, was born in Santa Maria Capua Vetere on 6 March 1941. A pupil of Giuseppe Martano, the first holder of the History of Ancient Philosophy chair at the University of Naples, he was full professor of History of Ancient Philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Naples from 1980 to 2009. A member of the College of Honorary Citizens of the ancient city of Elea and Doctor honoris causa at the University of Brasilia, a refined scholar of the pre-Socratics, the Sophists and, above all, of his beloved Plato, he taught generations of students to think katà philosophian. With Gabriele Giannantoni, Mario Vegetti and Giovanni Cerri, as well as with many other scholars, both Italian and foreign, now deceased, he collaborated in the construction of the best international philosophical historiography on antiquity. Among his many important books, we only mention here those on Plato: L’eterna malattia del discorso. Quattro studi su Platone (1991); Il nome della cosa. Linguaggio e realtà negli ultimi dialoghi di Platone (1996); Paradigmi della verità in Platone (2007); Fedone o dell’anima. Dramma etico in tre atti (2015); Una filosofia degli uomini per gli uomini. Venticinque studi su Platone (2021); Platone e il mare (2023); Il bene e la linea. Prima divenni un noto pianista, e poi cominciai ad imparare la musica (2023); Morte (Vita). Viaggio dal concetto all’incantesimo, ovvero dai presocratici a Platone (2023). It was to the study of the Phaedo that Giovanni Casertano devoted the years immediately following his retirement. He was keynote speaker at the XI Symposium Platonicum on the Phaedo, speaking for the first time in Portuguese at a Platonic Symposium. His Phaedo was intended to warn readers against an ascetic reading of Plato, against a reading that attributed to the philosopher a disdain for the body, for pleasure, for physical and joyful love, and for whatever else always appeared to him to be priceless achievements of ancient reflection. He tirelessly taught his students that philosophy is life and love of life, love of what is divine in mortals, love of thought, which is ‘the only way for nature to know itself’. The IPS will always remember him as a great teacher, a free spirit, a man who lived up to his ideals, ironic and joking, generous, and always open to dialogue.