/lit/ - Literature

And Aristotle agreed with Plato more than he disagreed, the critiques of Plato are almost always of the superficial interpretation of Plato (like the forms being abstract perfect shapes floating around somewhere).

>he didn't believe what he was writing.
Try reading anon. Book X of The Republic is a good start to prove you wrong.

>>16470826
>being illiterate
what does "isn't Plato's only political text"
That it is primarily an allegory of the soul doesn't refute hat it isn't the primal, which is Laws. Book X of Laws, I believe, talks of Guardians 8in addition to revealing..., yes, but what does the rest of Laws say about the Guardians and the citizens?
Perhaps you should read it yourself.

>>16470848
hands aren't following my mind

>>16470826
ATHENIAN: Now then, what sort of ruler do the gods in fact resemble?
Or rather, what rulers resemble them? Let’s compare small instances with
great, and see what rulers will serve our purpose. What about drivers of
competing teams of horses, or steersmen of boats in a race? Would they
be suitable parallels? Or we might compare the gods to commanders of
armies. Again, it could be that they’re analogous to doctors concerned
906 to defend the body in the war against disease, or to farmers anxiously
anticipating the seasons that usually discourage the growth of their crops,
or to shepherds. Now since we’ve agreed among ourselves that the universe
is full of many good things and many bad as well, and that the latter
outnumber the former, we maintain that the battle we have on our hands
is never finished, and demands tremendous vigilance. However, gods and
spirits are fighting on our side, the gods and spirits whose chattels we
b are. What ruins us is injustice and senseless aggression; what protects us
is justice and sensible moderation—virtues that are part of the spiritual
characteristics of the gods, although one can find them quite clearly residing
among us too, albeit on a small scale. Now there are some souls living on
earth in possession of ill-gotten gains, who in their obviously brutish way
throw themselves before the souls of their guardians (whether watch-dogs,
shepherds, or masters of the utmost grandeur) and by wheedling words
and winning entreaties try to persuade them of the truth of the line put
about by scoundrels—that they have the right to feather their nest with
impunity at mankind’s expense. But I suppose our view is that this vice c
we’ve named—acquisitiveness—is what is called ‘disease’ when it appears
in flesh and blood, and ‘plague’ when brought by the seasons or at intervals
of years; while if it occurs in the state and society, the same vice turns up
under yet another name: ‘injustice’.

>>16470826
>>16470919
CLINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: Thus anyone who argues that gods are always indulgent to d
the unjust man and the criminal, provided they’re given a share in the
loot, must in effect be prepared to say that if wolves, for instance, were
to give watch-dogs a small part of their prey, the dogs would be appeased
by the gift and turn a blind eye to the plundering of the flock. Isn’t this
what people are really suggesting when they say that gods can be squared?
CLINIAS: It certainly is.
ATHENIAN: So consider all those guardians we instanced a moment ago.
Can one compare gods to any of them, without making oneself ridiculous?
What about steersmen who are turned from their course ‘by libations and e
burnt offerings’, and wreck both the ship and its crew?
CLINIAS: Of course not.
ATHENIAN: And presumably they are not to be compared to a charioteer
lined up at the starting point who has been bribed by a gift to throw the
race and let others win.
CLINIAS: No sir, to describe the gods like that would be a scandalous comparison.
ATHENIAN: Nor, of course, do they stand comparison with generals or
doctors or farmers, or herdsmen, or dogs beguiled by wolves.
CLINIAS: What blasphemy! The very idea!
ATHENIAN: Now aren’t all the gods the most supreme guardians of all,
and don’t they look after our supreme interests?

Going by this, one might even postulate that the Guardians of the Republic aren't men at all. But this too can be further developed since one isn't entirely wrong in calling a philosopher-king 'a god'.

Really, another thread about the dullest philosopher in the history of Western philosophy? Seriously each dialogue following the corrupter of the youth and his interlocutors from Athens as they discuss metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics has been indistinguishable from the others. Aside from the constant unfounded assumptions, the series’ only consistency has been its lack of rigor and ineffective use of logic, all to make wisdom foolish, to make intellectualism seem absurd.

Perhaps the die was cast when Plato vetoed the idea of actually looking around the fucking world to see if his ideas made any sense; he made sure the dialogues would never be mistaken for a work of philosophy that had any real use to anybody, just ridiculously profitable source material for Christian 'theologians.' The Platonic dialogues might be pseudo-Christian (or not), but they're certainly pseudo-Aristotelian in their refusal of precision, evidence, and utility. No one wants to face that fact. Now, thankfully, they no longer have to.

>a-at least the questions were good though
"No!"
The points of discussion are dreadful; the answers were terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character considered something concrete, the author wrote instead that the character "contemplated an image the eternal Forms."

I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Plato's mind is so governed by abstractions and unverifiable superstition that he has no other style of thinking. Later I read a lavish, loving review of the dialgoues by the same Saint Augustine. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Plato at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Saint Augustine." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read Platonic philosophy you are, in fact, trained to read Augustinianism.

>>16470998
>shitty pasta
>even shittier meme
What did they mean by this?