/lit/ - Literature

>>13710459
Because it's rather silly. It'd be borderline dystopia, with anyone who writes poems getting expelled.

There is no one autistic enough

>implying the Islamic Republic of Iran isn't the earthly realization of Plato's glorious vision

>>13710459
I think the Nazis were close enough and see what happened

>>13710459
Plato tried it himself with Dionysius II. Didn't work lmao.

>>13710487
Paradise until they lost the war?

>>13710459
Briefly put, it's an ideal not a template.

>>13710492
Yes, that's what happens when you try to show the cumbrain cave prisoners the light, they gang up on you en mass and attempt to destroy you

>>13710495
but why hasn't a single group of people tried it in the over 2000 years since it's been written?

will it be another 2000 years before people finally give it a go?

>>13710502
i mean not plato's republic specifically but the general idea

>>13710459
Pretty much every government has become a half-assed attempt at it. Basically smart and/or rich people rule un-encumbered by the concerns of the lower classes who are themselves kept entertained with bread and circus.

>>13710503
Well if you count the various attempts at undemocratic rule by people who seized control through various revolutions and then designed system of varying meritocracy (Iranian clergy, Communist party in China or the Soviet Union) for people to become leaders then you could say that the general idea has been put it in practice.

>>13710459
> Why has nobody tried to breed a spherical cow in a vacuum?

To anyone knowledgeable on this text, is there any film, animated or live action, or television series, that depicts Plato’s ideas in an accurate way? Anything that comes close?

>>13710459
He tried himself and had to run the fuck away from the mess he had created iirc

>>13710665
The Matrix

>>13710673

I should have been more specific. I was wondering if any dystopia fiction was centered around a “Republic” that Plato’s plans for design.

Will Durant made the case (briefly) that the closest we came was dark ages Europe. With men of appetite (merchants, guild masters), men of spirit (nobility, knighthood), and men of intellect (royalty, clergy) being basically where Plato would have put them. The extravagant monarch is the only real deviation from the plan, who ideally would live communally with his fellow intellectuals.

>>13710717
Well and also there was no state schooling that separated men by their merit either. But Plato does justify social immobility with the metals myth (some men are bronze, silver, gold etc) and that basic justification was used but the mechanism being Divine right.
Like I said it's not perfect, closest is the operative word, but that sort of hierarchy isn't actually too alien.

>>13710459
We have. Platonic noocracy is a special case of epistocracy and if you live in the west you almost certainly live in a diploma democracy.

Because last time it plunged the world into a dark age.
Plato is a cringy fuck

>>13710717
>>13710717
the really big monarchs didnt come until later, when people were living under somewhat decentralized lords it might have been more like what you're envisioning.

>>13710459
He did try

>>13710459
>>13710487

>>13710459
Modern-day China

>>13710459
It'd be a dystopian hellhole because Plato was a pleb (not even his fault, just because of how little foundation he had to work with)

>>13710977
Seems more like a military academy prep school. Fitting for the nazi regime maybe, but not Plato's philosopher-king.

>>13710491
Because Dionysius was a paranoid tyrant who let his court influence him.

>>13710459
Because at best, it's a hypothetical thought experiment about a utopia that's probably not meant to be taken seriously, almost exactly like Thomas More's own Utopia. It's doubtful that Socrates or Plato geniunelly thought that it would, or should, work out in this way.

At worst, it's an extremely autistic version of the Sparta's Laconism.

>>13710459
>why has nobody tried to implement a plato's republic-type society?
In the Republic Plato says that the city will eventually devolve, from the great city it is into first a timocracy, then an oligarchy, then a democracy, and finally into tyranny, and he seems to hint that this kind of fate is inevitable. Looking around, I'd say he's p much right.

>>13710474
Literally this. The Ayatollah studied and wrote on the Republic, and his studies strongly influenced how he shaped Iran into what it is.

But, you know, missing the point made at the end of book 9 that the city in speech is a blueprint for the soul, not an actual polity,

>>13710689
Ergo Proxy. It's some wack anime with a Plato government

>>13710459
Plato writes his best city in the first few pages,
everyone living in a small village, eating healthy and passing on their tradition
The disutopia from then on is a GREEDY CITY that requires war for luxuries.
Essentially Luxuries are the root of all evil, and Platos republic is the evil that comes out of that .

>>13710673
no, the matrix is just the movie version of simulacra and simulation

>>13710459
>try to explain a good system
>people accuse you to be a demon
>explain it's for the greater good
>people tell you to drink your tasty stuff and shut up already
>Remind people to prepare the chicken then

No mention of Platonopolis?

Question, what would being the philosopher-king actually entail? I'm forgetting if Plato ever mentions anything specific.

>>13710459
Plotinus tried to get a grant to build Platonopolis base on The Laws.

>>13711668
I'm not sure that it's that luxuries are evil, but the city in truth doesn't seem like it has room for the appetites of people with spiritedness. Spiritedness is a big problem in the Republic, but it does seem to contribute to philosophical thought.

>>13713288
>you will never have a comfy life with your philosopher bros in Platonopolis

>>13711574
Are you that Straussian Plato effortposter? I enjoyed your posts, and actually screencapped them. Keep up the good work

>>13710654
why not though?

>>13710510
>smart and/or rich
it's only rich people most of them too dumb to hold a real job

>>13714671
Hahaha, yes I am! Glad you've enjoyed them, anon!

>>13710665
Fate Extra CCC.
Gilgamesh's kingdom is exactly the republic as envisioned by Plato, not even joking. Game's trash tho

>>13715440
Kek just want to say you made me reread the Republic too after reading those posts: I am currently on book nine where he is comparing erotic love to a giant drone, surrounded by a bodyguard of other desires. Shit is comfy, and I feel like taking the Republic seriously as a work of philosophy is making my life better. Thanks anon.

>>13710665
obviously the smurfs

>>13711574
>But, you know, missing the point made at the end of book 9 that the city in speech is a blueprint for the soul, not an actual polity,
I have no stock in this fight, but couldn't one argue that the Koran fills in the gaps in Plato? I have no idea if that's what Khomeini actually argued, but that seems to be the stock response from any Abrahamic Religion looking to justify taking what some Greek who worshiped Zeus said and folding it into their religion.

>>13715440
And i'm the guy who challenged your idea that the middle part of the soul creates reasons. I still don't understand since the middle part of the soul is meant to protect the decrees of reason and not challenge them, let alone create them.

You're rebuttal was to check out the way socrates responds, or acts, or even notes how hes surged on by a competitiveness which points to you that he is saying his spirit is pushing him forward. But then why doesn't he just say that? Or perhaps we have no problems and we should find a better word besides "Reasons" that the middle part of the soul creates

>>13715634
That's awesome! I'm thrilled to hear you've gone back over it!

For the hell of it, if you'd like, here's a .rar full of commentaries, essay, lectures, etc. on the Republic, including the Straussian ones I tend toward.

https://mega.nz/#!aJQClKzJ!kRL9N_7wM1Rc8pGfdCnijeiyaJdq4Z8AICk4NLiY7mA

>>13715734
I wouldn't be surprised if he made such an argument. I mean, there's nothing stopping anyone from trying to set up a polity that way, I just think it misses Plato's point, and I think Plato underlines that in the book itself.

>>13715808
It's certainly not the easiest thing to explain; let me make an attempt.

So with the Leontius passage from the other thread, the surrounding context is Socrates trying to argue that reasoning, spiritedness, and appetite are all separate faculties or elements of soul. The difficulty of maintaining that is that the Leontius story itself seems to suggest otherwise. Appetite is easier to see, so we'll start with that. Where does the appetite to see the dead bodies come from in Leontius? Is it at all an appetite like thirst or hunger? Now, perhaps the appetitive faculty sometimes also hungers for unusual sights, such as dead bodies; but why is it specified that the bodies are those of *executed criminals*? In the dialogue about Justice, this might be incidental, but I suspect not.

Now, spiritedness is an odd choice to use for translation, since it tends to suggest Christian spirits. Closer would be the kind of spirit we use in the phrase "that was a spirited game". The word also means "anger", and usually anger of the indignant kind, the kind over being wronged or being treated unjustly.

Another quick thing to notice is that Socrates conflates appetite (epithumia, which contains the root for thumos, a.k.a., spiritedness) and desire (eros), so there's some sneaky arguing, and one should wonder a little to what extent we're supposed to also be seeing what the souls of people like Glaucon and Adeimantus are like.

So, let's ask the question directly: is the desire to see the corpses of executed criminals caused by epithumia, or by thumos? Leontius blames his eyes, but while we may derive pleasure from looking at things, how is that relevant to the fact that the corpses are of executed criminals? Appetite, abstracted apart from mind more broadly, would never see such a thing. It's a displacement on account of thumos, blaming appetite for its own desire to see justice done, and its own shame at its pleasure in violence.

Now, for reasoning, probably the easiest way to see what I mean is by tracing the usages of the word spirited, and seeing what's associated with them, and then looking at how Socrates argues for the division of the soul into three faculties (keep in mind his references though to the longer way!); if you do a quick search and find through some document of the Republic, you'll start seeing that before the spirited part of the soul appears, spiritedness makes a whole host of appearances, and is described pretty well. Take those references, and start looking at character behaviors, such as the brash intrusions by Glaucon and Adeimantus, or some of Socrates's own "aw shucks, I can't figure it out; WAIT FUCK YOU GUYS I JUST FIGURED IT OUT BECAUSE FUCK YOU TWO" moments, and compare it with what's said about spiritedness.

Now, why won't Plato spell it out? In short, I think he thinks the way of argument is required to see certain things; i.e., you need to have the experience before the account makes sense.

>>13710459
/lit/ should be restructured according to Plato’s Republic.

>>13710459
Communist Ethiopia, the dictator literally banned love songs from being played on the radio as well.

Although any totalitarian government could be considered some form of inspiration from The Republic. Plato was advocating for the biggest government imaginable after all.

>>13716277
Yes

With all the adults older than 10 banished

>>13716548
>implying this isn't already true

>>13710665
There's Rossellini's Socrates biopic, though it also mixes Plato's account with Xenophon's, and does plenty of exaggerating.

That's nazi germany. I believe hitler youth camps were inspired by spartans that would send their boys away to make them into soldiers too

Bump

>>13710459
Caligula did with on city actually. But you are a fool if you are reading the republic outlined as something that is meant to be desirable.

>>13718752
B-but I want children to be taken away from their families at birth and raised by state-sponsored Nurses. I want absolutely no one to know who their parents are.

India's caste system too.

>>13710459
Wilson and his progressive pals sure tried their darndest.

>>13718770
Isn't that just fro their own sacred texts?

>>13720302
But are they Just?

>>13710459
Because its impossible and thats by design.

>>13710977
How is this related?

>>13711564
Wait, does it have to go in that order? Why?

If it had been tried, would you know? maybe not

>>13710459
because i shit on your metaphysics.

>>13710459
The CCCP already failed

>>13725253
*blocks your path*