/lit/ - Literature

>>23267356

>>22253725
PBUH.

>>22237311
The really disappointing thing is that the modern West still hasn't realised that its own ancient thinkers also perfected spirituality and spiritual realisation...
>>22237913
King Charles is probably the most spiritually inclined upper class Westerner of this century, my pea-brained friend.

>>22204458
Just read Plato bro.
>"Oh, you fear death? Why? You don't even know what it's like."

>>22106409
>ENTER

>>21318689
Read Parmenides. There, done.

>>21046312
I disagree. I did try reading Rhetoric though, but I dropped it because I was bored out of my mind. I feel much more affinity for and interest in the works of Plato.

>>20375413
It is.

>>19868322
>We have finally done it Socrates. We have created the perfect society.. We have created... the Republic!

>>19750892
>>19750903
This. How can we say what is better when we don't know what 'better' is?

Only Aristotle (who studied with him), Aquinas, and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same rank, and yet Plato remains outstanding among these philosophers.

>>19712594
Fun fact: it's possible to read Plato's entire complete works in just a year, simply by reading 5 pages a day!

What are the best books of Plato's unwritten doctrines?

>steals the doctrines of the Babylonians and the Orphics and rewrites them in a simplistic way for brainlets
>refuses to elaborate the first principles in his writings because writing is le bad and piecing together his mess without fundamental oral knowledge is easy according to him
>dies
>later Aristotle gives us an account of his sekrit oral doctrines and criticizes him for being a stingy faggot who didn't want to reveal the core of his doctrines
>centuries later some illiterate retards claim the One and the Dyad are neoplatonic fanfiction
He just had to write down his fucking thoughts

>We have finally done it, Socrates. We have created the perfect society. We have created.... The Republic
greek philosophy everyone

I am really not sure what the point of this dialogue was. Parmenides puts a pretty tough challenge to the theory of forms, but with the right adjustments I think I can get past it. The second half is completely confusing, though. It seems to me like Parmenides is trying to demolish his own theory of oneness, quite successfully at that. A lot of the arguments he makes look like reduction to absurdity. Parts of the second half also seem incoherent and self-contradictory. It doesn't help that occasionally I get the feeling that Parmenides swaps between referring to Monist metaphysical oneness and referring to a numerical property of being one.
I might return to this dialogue again at a later point, but this was probably the least meaningful one for me thus far.

How come there is a form of non-being? I was told by some anons here that things like evil etc. do not have their own form but should rather be characterised as an absence of something substantial. I assumed the same would be the case for non-being - it would be a lack, rather than a thing in itself. Yet, it seems to me that Sophist suggests there is such a thing as a Form of Non-being. Can I get some clarity on this?

> Note to janitors and would-be reporters: This thread is, in fact, on topic since the discussion here is primarily concerned with what lessons Plato's dialogues (literature) have for us in these uncertain and difficult times as regards the pandemic, and I stress that this thread is not about the pandemic itself; I sympathize with the view that such a thread may serve as nothing more than a covert political thread where discussion is focused more on the pandemic than the literature of Plato—note that this would be more a fault of the board and offending anons than it would be of I and this particular thread—however (1) there are overt political threads here daily and (2) politics is not something that's inherently alien to literature and (3) I reject the implicit view that literature, especially philosophical literature, is a sterile mass of pages which is not meant to or cannot be related back to our lived experiences; furthermore, (4) most of the argumentation in this thread will be textually supported and (5) the scope of this thread does not encompass the pandemic in general (it is not off-topic). All discussion will be about Plato and how Plato's views on government might serve as a model for how governance in a pandemic should be carried out (literary interpretation). I thank you very much for reading this far, and I hope you will understand :)
Plato's comments on democracy and the individual under said government in his Republic foretold of the modern world under liberalism and foreshadowed a coming disaster.
I ask whether we did not learn from Plato's dialogues that rule by people of reason and knowing is preferable to a state of excess freedoms; for what good is a government if instead of reacting promptly to the situation at hand it ignores it to appease the appetites of the selfish and ignorant (even if they constitute most of the population)? Recall Plato's analogy of the doctor and the baker from Gorgias, a perfect illustration of how the will of the people can often be misguided and, in many cases, ridiculous, wherever their natural inclination to advance their own interests meets the limits of their judgement regarding what is good or bad for them—as is often the case wherever transitory negative effects are more obvious than the deep and lasting good effects of some political measure—so that in a situation as pressing as a global pandemic we see waves of anti-vaxx protests and antipathy towards health-care professionals and state-officials.

Plato's comments on democracy and the individual under said government in his Republic foretold of the modern world under liberalism and foreshadowed a coming disaster.
I ask whether we did not learn from Plato's dialogues that rule by people of reason and knowing is preferable to a state of excess freedoms; for what good is a government if instead of reacting promptly to the situation at hand it ignores it to appease the appetites of the selfish and ignorant (even if they constitute most of the population)? Recall Plato's analogy of the doctor and the baker from Gorgias, a perfect illustration of how the will of the people can often be misguided and, in many cases, ridiculous, wherever their natural inclination to advance their own interests meets the limits of their judgement regarding what is good or bad for them—as is often the case wherever transitory negative effects are more obvious than the deep and lasting good effects of some political measure—so that in a situation as pressing as a global pandemic we see waves of anti-vaxx protests and antipathy towards health-care professionals and state-officials.
To be quite sure, this is not to say that COVID Dictatorship is preferable either (although it is perhaps preferable to doing nothing), consider the following from the Laws:
> The Athienian: And is our legislator to have no preface to his laws, but to say at once Do this, avoid that-and then holding the penalty in terrorem to go on to another law; offering never a word of advice or exhortation to those for whom he is legislating, after the manner of some doctors? For of doctors, as I may remind you, some have a gentler, others a ruder method of cure; and as children ask the doctor to be gentle with them, so we will ask the legislator to cure our disorders with the gentlest remedies.

>>19525376
>the lack of democracy in countries like Australia is astonishing
Oh fuck off, this is the literate board you're talking to, not /pol/. Plato clearly refuted democracy and showed why we should listen to qualified intelligent experts instead of a bunch of random angry rednecks in his Republic. Guess what? Australias infections are down and here in Canada we're doing a lot fucking better than you guy down south there. READ IT NOW.

>Theater is dishonest
>Learn all about it in these plays I wrote

I am currently reading his complete works. I am not very far in yet but I am wondering about some things. How do we determine what forms exist and the boundaries between them? For instance, is there such a thing as a Form of the Bad? Or is the bad simply the absence of the Form of the Good? If the forms represent immortal, ontological and spiritual categories, does that mean bad things are just their lack, or expressions of material corruption, rather than that of "bad" forms? Or are bad things just materiality itself? Is there a limited set of Forms? How do we know what forms there are and how to differentiate them?

Take this for example. Is a beautiful woman the result of a combination between the Form of the Beautiful and the Form of the Feminine, or is there a special Form of the Beautiful Feminine? This is not very clear to me, but I feel like if I understood it, I would be able to work with Plato's framework very easily.

On an off-topic note, Plato's works are incredible. I did not think I would enjoy them this much, and I am very glad I did not "start with the Greeks", as I would have spoilt this wonderful experience for myself. Not only are the dialogues enlightening, they are also inspiring and, dare I say, funny. Genuine works of art, IMO. I originally planned to just read through them and familiarise myself with them, especially since I have a good-ish memory, but now I am starting to feel that maybe I should go back to the start and take notes on all the things I found interesting. Just in a few of the dialogues I have found wondrous gems, and I feel that if I keep reading, I may not necessarily have the time to digest and integrate all those great observations. I am quite split in on the matter though, since I am already spending two hours a day on just reading Plato.

Which is the dialogue in which Plato explains his Theory of Forms in the most complete and systematic way?

>In the Middle Ages, the only book of Plato in general circulation was the first part of the dialogue Timaeus (to 53c), as a translation, with commentary, by Calcidius (or Chalcidius).

Why do you insist this moron is important when only the moderns have him as a reference?