/lit/ - Literature

>>13592939
if you materialist you will never understand obviously.

>>13592960
>You have to share my worldview for my argument to be valid
Eh

>>13592939
>The Gods disagree
>Therefore nothing can be pious
M'lady

>>13592985
I mean yeah, all discourse is like that.

>>13592939
Why?
Because the man inflicting injustice, assuming they have a healthy sense of justice, will forever chastise themselves for it.
The man suffering from injustice will also chastise the man who commits injustice.

You do not need to suffer from anything you do not believe in.

>>13592985
well yea did you read the end of that dialogue ? it was an afterlife judgement of the soul.

>>13593005
Which is a roundabout way of saying: Do good for goodness sake.

>>13592996
>Because the man inflicting injustice, assuming they have a healthy sense of justice, will forever chastise themselves for it.
Assuming the man in question has consciousness at all. We know for a fact that there are people with zero remorse.

Does corrupt statesman suffer from his misdeeds?

>>13593005
Religious argument is no different from "cause I said so"

>>13593008
A man without consciousness, without a sense of justice, is no man at all.
I do not think his argument holds water in the totally detached way our society is built today, such as with the corrupt statesman. He simply does not need to receive the necessary sensory input to convince him he is committing injustice, so he does not.

If he did, he would suffer.

>>13593007
>>13593023
i think you can look at it as an allegory as well. Bad thing will inevitably bring back something worse so its not worth it.

>>13593037
>He simply does not need to receive the necessary sensory input to convince him he is committing injustice, so he does not.
Ergo he's not miserable. Quod erat demonstrandum

>>13593037
>A man without consciousness, without a sense of justice, is no man at all.
That's how you see it. They see it as being more cunning and resourceful and you as gullible and weak. They win at the game of life while we're pointlessly arguing about virtue

>>13593046
>inevitably
No. We don't know that. There may never be any repercussions.

>>13592939
The point of several of the arguments in the Gorgias is that they function in accordance with Gorgianic rhetoric, i.e., without knowledge, so Polus is refuted in an argument about justice, pleasure, the advantageous, and the good, without any of these being sufficiently investigated into. Socrates proceeds by just taking advantage of what he notes Polus's own preferences and opinions are, and so of course neither Polus nor anyone else is especially persuaded, but the point is that Gorgianic persuasion, for all it promises, can't offer anything more.

>>13593062
not according to Plato, its quit consistent in his arguments good= more goo, bad brings more bad.
If you want more just read them especially with the sophist and rhetoricians, because they can be classified as the most powerful in that world.

>creates a city where music is only made in Dorian and Phrygian modes
Yeah I'm thinking it was based

Who says justice ever ruled the world?

>>13592960
What if the one inflicting injustice is a materialist too?

>>13592985
of course a narrower worldview cannot justify the answer the questions provided by a wider one

>>13592985
of course a narrower worldview cannot justify the answers provided by a wider one

The most prosperous society will also the most virtuous.
The men of vice harm their own future means of acquisition. Everything is cheaper and easier in a honest and dutiful culture.

>>13592939
>>The man inflicting injustice is more miserable than the man suffering from injustice

masochism 101.

>>13593059
An animal does not feel remorse.
Is an animal more cunning than you?

>>13593426
An animal does not sit on the top of social hierarchy unlike sociopathic CEOs and politicians.

>>13593401
Corrupt human nature prevents such society from emerging. Let me remind you that ancient Greeks were enjoying fruits of slave labor

Animals uses bodies as human shields

>>13592939

And yet it's much easier to stop inflicting injustice than it is to stop suffering from it
This is what matters
No point in fixating on who's more miserable

>>13593513
But what's the point in being victim instead of predator?

>>13593480
>implying some men aren't born to be serfs

>>13593401
*blocks your path*

>>13592985
protip: this applies to pretty much everything. realizing that gives you a good perspective, especially when you realize how this applies to your own beliefs.

>>13592939

Very relevant.

>>13593101
Needs more locrian

>>13593059
I think you are this man and need reassurance because you feel guilty. That’s what Socrates is talking about. You can sit still with yourself about this, whereas the man of virtue hardly feels the need to point out the obvious, if he does it is because he wills himself, that is a freeman

>>13594736
Cant*

That is certainly true, o my Sokrates.

>>13593472
To be fair, many animals would be above us in the food chain if not for our hierarchies. At least the sociopaths rarely actually eat us.

>>13592939
Semantics.

>>13592939
>Because I said so
You didn't read the Gorgias, did you?

>>13592960
Calling a realist a "materialist" is disingenuous because only the material is real, so of course the realist is a "materialist," and people who aren't realists are delusional.

>>13595010
>realist
Why are people who don't have the slightest clue about philosophy and philosophical terms trying to discuss them? At least, look up the word "realist" and what it means in a philosophical context before you make a total fool out of yourself.

>>13595155
Why do you assume I don't know what I'm talking about? Do you understand what I'm saying? I'm saying the term "materialist" is bullshit. The sophists were realists.

>>13592939
It's actually a central thought of Plato's ethics. When you read the Republic, you will find its deeper meaning.

According to Plato, a "just mind" (ψυχη is normally translated with "soul" instead of "mind", but that's misleading since the term "soul" seems to mean something else nowadays) is a mind which is "in good order" and in "harmony". And only a man with a mind which is in good order can be a happy man.

What does "in good order" and "in harmony" mean?
There are three parts of the mind: the reasonable part, the fortified one (the will) and the compulsive one (the desires). Those three parts have to be established in a certain hierarchy if your mind is supposed to be well-ordered, which is as follows:
The reasonable part of the mind is the only part which can recognize the "idea of justice" (which is the idea of the whole system I'm describing here). If it recognizes said idea, it knows what justice is and is therefore "wise" and "considerate" ("considerate" means: it's acting in accordance with the idea of justice). Neither the will nor the desires are able to recognize the idea of justice since they're not reasonable.
According to the idea of justice, the reasonable part convinces the will to act (want stuff) according to it. Since the will is unable to recognize the idea of justice, it has to believe in it. If the will deeply believes in the idea of justice and follows it against all attacks, it becomes "brave" and "considerate".
Those attacks are coming from the desires which drive to everything feasible including acts which aren't in accordance with the idea of justice. Therefore, the brave will has to suppress all desires which don't aim at considerate acts. Thereby, the desires become considerate and the idea of justice is put fully into effect. The just mind, the well-ordered mind, the harmonic mind is actualized.

Since Plato identifies happiness (ευδαιμονια) with said harmony of the mind, it becomes pretty evident why he thinks someone who's inflicting injustice is more miserable than someone who suffers it. Someone who's inflicting injustice is simply far away from an well-ordered mind and is therefore really, really unhappy.

Funnily enough, Kant pretty much says the same (which would be a little bit much to put down here) - the main difference between Plato's and Kant's ethics is that Kant doesn't identify the good (autonomous) will (which acts according to reason instead of desire) with happiness and therefore as an end in itself. Instead, he sees it as a means to an end which is eternal happiness in paradise. Therefore, Kant thinks, the "moral law in our hearts" is an indication (if not a proof) of the existance of God since it would be useless as long as there's no otherworldly reward for obeying it.

>>13595424
Thank you for elaboration. It was really helpful

>>13592939
To be fair, the Abrahamic God does seem pretty miserable.

>>13595424
Holy shit thank you for for explaining this out. I'm not OP but I've been wondering basically the same thing and I was never able to put 2 and 2 together through all the dialogues I read.

>>13592939
you rather be bitten by a dog or bite a dog?

>>13594736
You are right about me needing reassurance. I can't help but think I'm foolish in my longing for highest ideals. I'm ashamed of my kindness and honesty for they're often appear to be weaknesses. I'm tormented by self-doubt and lack of clarity. What if virtue is a handicap. What if we're all playing the game and I'm the only dunce not cheating

>>13592939
Youre a retard and you should just give up reading philosophy now

>>13595626
Depends. Is it a hot dog?

the same way a knife isn't to blame for a homicide, the unjust action isn't to blame but the doer which taints himself with dishonor and impurity

>>13595010
You’re suppressing the correlative. He’s not defining realists as materialists, he’s simply referring to materialists. Materialism is not equivalent to realism.

>>13595167
Realism is not equivalent to materialism.
Objective idealism is an example of realist idealism. Honestly you should be aware of the dinstinction between realism, materialism, and idealism if you're going to even open a thread about philosophy.

>>13596268
>Realism is not equivalent to materialism.
Exactly my point. Materialism is the Platonist's strawman against realists so they never have to address the arguments of the realists.

>>13596550
Plato is considered to be a prototypical realist, but nevermind...

>>13596771
By who?

>>13593023

assuming you don't believe in afterlife. what kind of state do you want your soul/mind to be in when you die?

>>13596815
Everyone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_realism

>>13595424
agree with almost everything except soul being a bad translation. mind is a modernization cope. Although protestantism attached a funny meaning to soul Plato certainly doesn't mean "brain". remember the dialogue where he teaches that soul is an attunement like a harp? or our soul going on to be judged after the death of our body? it's a sort of eternal intelligence

>>13593903

If your arguments completely hinge on your worldview, you are literally brainlet.

>>13596845
>Everyone.
Not a good answer, especially since Platonism is championed in academia.

>>13597290

>>13596825
It's not about what I want. My mind will return to the same state it had before I was born. Nothingness

>>13597556
how do you know you experienced nothingness?

>>13592985
>relativism isn't retarded
sure anon

>>13593050
But he is not a man

>>13596981
>muh objectivity
grow up.

>>13595652
forget plato. read nietzsche

>>13592939
>>13592996
Plato was spooked as fuck.

>>13592939
Disregarding subjectivity and all that
The way I understand this is that willingly bad people have to live their lives without the means to properly self reflect and achieve enlightenment

>>13597409
>Platonist
>is a gatekeeper on discourse
No surprise there. Plato isn't a prototypical realist, by the way, and your appeal to popularity doesn't prove otherwise.

>>13592939
I believe this more and more as I get older.
All the corrupt assholes I've ever known end up surrounded exclusively by other corrupt assholes eventually

>>13598345
Belief in spooks is the arch-spook.

Except the republic presents elaborates an elaborate, rational combination of metaphysics, epistemology, psychology, and political theory (the last being metaphorical) just to answer that question?
You can dispute the argument but you have to be an ignoramus to think that he asserts it without giving an answer to the question why.

>>13598322
> nothing is objectively true bro

>>13598337
Nietzsche makes me even more ashamed for adhering to slave morality

>>13598384
Good point. You will not necessarily be punished by internal (consciousness) or external (karma) forces but you will naturally drive away good people in your life.

>>13592985
>describing light to a blind man
yes
if lack and/or reject certain senses and experiences

>>13598394
Anon, forgive my ignorance. I have yet to read Republic. In case I didn't make myself clear enough I agree with Socrates. I admire virtuous people but it is pure emotion while I need rational reasons for being a good person. I see it as a combination of cultural brainwashing and natural programming to put interests of your tribe above self-interest. When these natural and cultural mechanisms malfunction we get antisocial characters. I want to be a virtuous man but I need it to be rational choice instead of blindly following my programming.

>>13592939
It depends how much you value and identify with your active self rather than your passive sense.
It's made even clearer in the apologia and the criton.
>they can kill me but not harm me

>>13598376
Plato is THE realist.
It's also the one thing he got wrong and prevents him from being right about everything.

>>13598992
If he's a realist, then how come:

1. his Socrates talks about an ideal city that makes no sense,
2. his philosophy is masked in allegory and a fictionalized Socrates, and
3. his philosophy is centered around his theory of forms?

>>13600146
It's pretty simple: you're using the term "realist" in a vague, amateurish sense of the word while the other one(s) are using it in its philosophical meaning.

When philosophers talk about "realists", they pretty much always mean ontological/metaphysical realists. An ontological realist is someone who thinks universals/abstract entities do exist/are real. The opposite position is called nominalism (although there are idealistic/conceptualistic positions on the problem, too, which represent a kind of a middle course between those extremes). And there are also a lot of different types of both realism and nominalism.

An abstract entity is an entity which exists outside of time and space and isn't part of the physical world ("redness" for example), nevertheless, interacts with it - they were/are used to solve problems which were/are pretty hard to solve without the assumption of abstract entities.
Plato's theory of forms is pretty much the most well-known example of (ontological) realism.

>>13600146
>>13600659
By far the best position you can take on the problem of universals is the one Uma and Geralt took btw.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfWodl10kbI

>>13598989
Interesting can we explicate this further? I was bullied throughout my work because It didnt bother me then. But nwo it does, because I let tyrants get away with being tyrants. Id like to not do allow that. So.... i'm plagued by my failure to act, but I didn't care in the moment of not acting, I felt unscathed. But now I see what my inaction lead to and allowed. What would Plato make of this?

>>13600146
>1. his Socrates talks about an ideal city that makes no sense,
Did you even cognize book 2?

>>13600659
>When philosophers talk about "realists", they pretty much always mean ontological/metaphysical realists.
...you just proved my point. There is nothing realistic about metaphysics; by definition it's beyond the empirical, i.e. the observable. The definition philosophers after Plato were using had been borrowed by Plato and his descendants who deliberately moved the goalposts in the first place so that they could claim to be realists, even though he was the opposite of a realist in ancient Greece. Thucydides was a Greek realist. The fact that Thucydides is not immediately associated with realists anymore shows exactly who was championing academia for centuries.

>An ontological realist is someone who thinks universals/abstract entities do exist/are real.
In other words, someone who thinks that something, which by definition isn't observable, is real. In other words, someone who has a paradoxical grasp on what is real.

>An abstract entity is an entity which exists outside of time and space and isn't part of the physical world ("redness" for example), nevertheless, interacts with it
Something which by definition couldn't ever be observed to interact with things, apparently interacts with things, and this is simply a given. What a wonderful foundation for philosophy, science, and morality.

>>13600797
Yeah, hence why I said it makes no sense. Utopias like that never do.

>>13600873
You didnt understand. Read book two again, he is quite clear. He isnt trying to construct the perfect city he is trying to construct a just soul. Using the city as an analogy or symbol. Its not actually a city, is a macrocosm of the microcosm.

The laws are more for the interpretation you are positing.

>>13600873
Yeah, you clearly won that argument. Might you please leave this thread now? Philosophy obviously isn't for you. You already know everything and the consistency of your worldview is irrefutable.

>>13601180
>You didnt understand.
Glaucon did.

>>13600873
Plato never claimed to be a "realist", but whatever...

>>13593059
>POINTLESSLY arguing about virtue

>>13595424
Thank you Anon.

>>13601180
>just an analogy
Then what was the point of all the elaboration on eugenics and deceiving the best on mating with the best?
I think he just used the discussion on justice and soul as a segway to his ideal city.

In classical ethics virtue is what trains your disposition and inclination to act in certain ways. The good or end of man is eudaimonia which is blessedness, happiness, or prosperity. A state of being well and doing well in being well. This is why it's worse to inflict injustice, because you're moving yourself away from your purpose as a rational human being.

By Musonius, from the lecture on whether a philosopher will file a suit against someone for assault

(1) He said that he would never file a lawsuit against anyone for assault; nor would he advise anyone who thinks that the study of philosophy is worthwhile to file one. Consider the things people think they are injured by when they experience them; none of these things will in fact injure them or cause them shame. These things include being jeered at, beaten, or spat upon, with assaults being the worst of these outrages. When they are whipped in public and revel in being whipped, Spartan boys make it clear that such things are neither shameful nor injurious. If a philosopher cannot scorn blows or jeering, he is useless, inasmuch as a philosopher must make it clear that he scorns even death.

(2) "But, by Zeus, the person who does these things-who mocks and thinks that he is committing outrage by slapping, jeering, or doing some such thing-has hostile intent! Indeed, Demosthenes believes that people can insult with a mere glance, that such glances are unbearable, and that, somehow or other, people lose control because of them."

(3) Those who do not know what is really good and what is really shameful, and who are overly concerned with their own fame-these people think that they are being injured if someone glares at them, laughs at them, hits them, or mocks them. But a man who is thoughtful and sensible-as a philosopher should be-is disturbed by none of these things. He believes that the shame comes not in being insulted but in behaving in an insulting manner. What wrong does the person who experiences wrong do? The person who does wrong, however, is thereby shamed. But since the person who is wronged does not thereby do wrong, he is not thereby shamed. Consequently, a sensible person would not resort to lawsuits or indictments since he would not think that he had been insulted. Indeed, it is petty to be vexed or put out about such things. He will calmly and quietly bear what has happened, since this is appropriate behavior for a person who wants to be magnanimous.

1/2

>>13601518
(4) Socrates obviously refused to be upset when he was publicly ridiculed by Aristophanes; indeed, when Socrates met Aristophanes, he asked if Aristophanes would like to make other such use of him. It is unlikely that this man would have become angry if he had been the target of some minor slight, since he was not upset when he was ridiculed in the theater! Phocion the Good,so when his wife was insulted by someone, didn't even consider bringing charges against the insulted. In fact, when that person came to him in fear and asked Phocion to forgive him, saying that he did not know that it was his wife whom he offended, Phocion replied: "My wife has suffered nothing because of you, but perhaps some other woman has. So you don't need to apologize to me."

(5) And I could name many other men who were targets of abuse, some verbally attacked and others injured by physical attacks. They appear neither to have defended themselves against their attackers nor to have sought revenge. Instead, they very calmly bore the wrong committed by their attackers. Indeed, plotting how to bite back someone who bites and to return evil against the one who ftrst did evil is characteristic of a beast, not a man. A beast is not able to comprehend that many of the wrongs done to people are done out of ignorance and a lack of understanding. A person who gains this comprehension immediately stops doing wrong.

(6) It is characteristic of a civilized and humane temperament not to respond to wrongs as a beast would and not to be implacable towards those who offend, but to provide them with a model of decent behavior. A philosopher who thinks it right to forgive someone who offends him and acts accordingly is obviously better than one who thinks that he must defend himself by filing lawsuits and indictments, but who in fact is disgracing himself by doing things inconsistent with his own teachings. A philosopher is, after all, inconsistent if he says that a good man could never be wronged by a bad man, but then, while claiming to be a good man, charges that he is wronged by bad men.

>>13601464
Yea, so check out his Laws, he recognized that he didn't address an actual Ideal city and its laws correctly. Because he was interested in explicating what Justice was.

>>13600781
He would likely tell you to act but realize the action itself is the most important.

>>13600659
Honestly the term is too polysemic to be of much use.
You mention a realist vs nominalist question, but the word could be interpreted as idealism vs realism or even other meanings.

>>13598395
Incase you ever catch someone saying
>Nothing is objective
You just hit them with
>Even that statement?

>>13595424
Good, based and redpilled post, sir.