/lit/ - Literature

>>19579477
Aristotle talks about plato only to attack him, if you want to talk about the famous metaphysical idealism we've been received today, there's incredibly little texual evidence in plato. All we have is a mention at the end of one of the early dialogues, I forget which, and his reverence for pythagoras. Other than that, he says nothing that can't be interpreted otherwise.

Philologically, yes, our understanding of Aristotle is dire. We lost all of his exoteric works, and (probably) some esoteric works even after that trunk got dug up. However, what we do have is dense and explicit. From plato, we have fictional works with philosophical discussion generated not primarily to transmit ideas, but to make for pleasurable reading.

>How much of Epicurus survives?
We've got some fragments as well, and there's that rock he apparently is quoted in. Let me say, I wasn't really paying attention to him for a long time, but atomism is fucking based. Metaphysical idealism comes up as nearly necessary without atomism in my view.

>Why not? You absolutely need to read him to understand Aristotle.
I don't think that's a fair statement, but you're missing my point. I'm not trying to say here that platonism is useless, I'm saying that the dialogues can be appreciated without that context and they aren't very good at teaching it. The dialogues are compatible with platonism at best. I personally don't think plato was a platonist, but that's beside the point.


The reason plato's writings outlived so many contemporary ones despite the fact that their ideas survived is actually a good point to bring up. Plato's writings had an appeal outside of their content. Some of that is his being the standard for attic greek, but most of his survival should be attributed to his literary excellence.

In short, the argument that platonism matters is wholly separate from the argument that plato's dialogues matter.