/lit/ - Literature

re-read Sophist 241d to 249d until you get it
And did you skip Theaetetus?
Try Parmenides and Philebus next.

>>15741092
because it's a golden chain of influence

ATHENIAN: I suggest we look at the problem in this way: let’s imagine that each of us living beings is a puppet of the gods. Whether we have been constructed to serve as their plaything, or for some serious reason, is something beyond our ken, but what we certainly do know is this: wee have the see motions in us, which act like cords or strings and tug us about; they work in opposition, and tug against each other to make us perform actions that are opposed correspondingly; back and forth we go across the boundary line where vice and virtue meet. One of these dragging forces, according to our argument, demands our constant obedience, and this is the one we have to hang on to, come what may; the pull of the other cords we must resist. This cord, which is golden and holy, transmits the power of ‘calculation’, a power which in a state is called the public law; being golden,it is pliant, while the others, whose composition resembles a variety of other substances, are tough and inflexible. The force exerted by law is excellent, and one should always co-operate with it, because although ‘calculation’ is a noble thing, it is gentle, not violent, and its efforts need assistants, so that the gold in us may prevail over the other substances. If we do give our help, the moral point of this fable, in which we appear as puppets, will have been well and truly made; the meaning of the terms ‘self-superior’ and ‘self-inferior’ will somehow become clearer, and the duties of state and individual will be better appreciated. The latter must digest the truth about these forces that pull him, and act on it in his life; the state must get an account of it either from one of the gods or from the human expert we’ve mentioned, and incorporate it in the form of a law to govern both its internal affairs and its relations with other states. A further result will be a clearer distinction between virtue and vice; the light cast on that problem will perhaps in turn help to clarify the subject of education and the various other practices, particularly the business of drinking parties.

>>15141053
why would the gods preserve something false and deceitful?

>Dualism
>non-dualism
>thinking there's only the choice between this duality

Read his Laws first.
It's unironically the only way to not misunderstand the other dialogues, it also proves to yourself if you have the will-power to actually go through with studying philosophy; if you can't, just skip to the stoics and politics/economics, you midwit.