/lit/ - Literature

>>20702988
Read On Virtue by Plotinus, the 2nd book in the 1st Ennead. Plato believes that the form of the Good is the the One and the highest form, so his “ethical” system is assimilating yourself to the Good, which is done through knowledge, which is the same as purifying yourself of Body, using your Soul to access Intellect which touches the Good

>>20703106
that is, for Plato knowledge and purification are the same, since the sensible world is the source of evil and the world of intellect is where soul gains knowledge. It’s different from how you understand knowledge. And Plotinus distinguishes between the true virtue of purification and the civic virtues.

>>20703106
Awesome, thanks for the recommendation. I have a couple questions though:
>knowledge
What term does he use? I honestly loathe the fact that knowledge is used so broadly and loosely, especially when talking about the Greeks. And I suspect that even the Greeks used knowledge broadly in their day, as I felt that Aristotle could have been even more precise in Nicomachean Ethics.
>purifying oneself of Body
Besides temperance, are there any bodily virtues that are traditionally recognized? e.g., beauty, strength, etc. I know that Socrates and Plato emphasized personal fitness, but to what extent that coincides with the philosophical life besides being a way of strengthening the will, I do not know.

>>20702988
au contraire, vice is eternal, virtue is momentary.

>>20702988
not a depressed nihilist but it's technically true

>>20703122
>What term does he use?
Pic related is from book 6 of the Republic, where he discusses the types of knowledge and that the highest object of knowledge is the Good. Belief is about the sensible world where everything changes, dianoia is the process of dialectic that the Soul uses to raise itself up to the level of Intellect where the forms are, and true knowledge is knowledge of the forms, and remember that all the forms descend from the form of the Good.
>Besides temperance, are there any bodily virtues that are traditionally recognized? e.g., beauty, strength, etc.
These are the civic virtues. Reducing the civic virtues to knowledge is a constant theme throughout Plato’s dialogues. Plotinus says that the true virtue, purification, naturally leads to the civic virtues, and although they can be present without purification, cultivating the civic virtues is a path to attaining purification.

>>20702988
I want to be limited by virtue, that would mean being virtuous.

>>20703174
What makes strength and beauty a civic virtue? They could easily be primordial virtues, pre-civic.

>>20703174
What is purification like, mechanically? Is it similar to purging lesser beliefs? Or is it matter of internalization, like what the OP suggested?

>>20703174
I may have misinterpreted your question about other types of virtue. If you’ve read nicomachean ethics then they are all the virtues that he talks about in that book. Socrates was described as ugly and idk if beauty is a virtue. Courage certainly is, but physical strength seems like something that is too specific and dependent on other things

>>20703196
Purification is turning away from the sensible world, the world of becoming. Plato describes it in Phaedo when discussing how the Soul will suffer after death if it is too attached to physical pleasures. In Phaedrus he uses the analogy of a chariot where one horse is inclining to the good and always listens to the Charioteer (reason) but the other horse doesn’t and has to be kept in line or else it will control the other horse and the charioteer itself. It is basically purging your desire for pleasure and the things of the world and living a philosophical life. Socrates lives in poverty, avoids the advances of Alcibiades, drinks moderately, doesn’t accept payment or gifts of money, and pursues conversation since dialectic is the means by which the soul can gain knowledge about the world of Being, it allows you to turn away from the physical world. Socrates always makes his interlocutor turn away from specific examples and consider what knowledge or piety or whatever is universally, i.e. he get them to turn away from the sensible world and consider the world of the forms.

>>20702988
Moral wisdom/ignorance is not the same as epistemic knowlege. It makes little sense to speak of ethical facts as opposed to empirical facts because they are proscriptive rather than descriptive. An immoral person/deed is not ignorant in the sense of unknowlegable, it is ignorant in the sense of unwise. What then, is the difference between knowlege and wisdom? We do not consider someone who knows 2+2=4 wise, though we consider them knowledgable. Whereas one who values peace more than war might be considered wise. Clearly there is a difference. Wisdom applies to situations where facts are indeterminate but that there is still a better way of perceiving matters that accords more with the good. Morally ignorant, and therefore evil, deeds are unwise in that they are destructive. They cheapen the worth of human beings and lower their standards. Because there is always the possibility to do good where one does evil, here is always the possibility that one can act wisely in accordance with virtue .

bump

>>20702988
Socrates merely says doing evil necessitates ignorance, not that ignorance necessitates evil.

Socrates shouldn't have been poor, ugly and smug. This is why you make friends with the law kids in college.

bump

>>20703174
>>20703122
The verb for "knowing" in the Apology is usually just "eidenai", lit. "seeing, knowing insofar as having seen, seeing figuratively". In the passage referred to in OP, it's derived from "gignoskein", "to perceive, to distinguish, to judge". Neither are usually thematized in any strict way between Plato and Aristotle, though the former shares the same root with both "eidos" (form) and "idea" and sometimes seems to be chosen to emphasize the forms.

>>20703106
>>20703109
>>20703248
you guys know socrates made fuck and had a kid right before he died right

>>20705086
no he already had three kids before he died. of course the picture of socrates plato died is not totally accurate or even consistent

>>20702988
No, it was clear for Plato from the start (remember Laches was an early book) that the socratic theory broke down after a while.

>>20705100
I'm not just talking historically, Plato goes out of his way to remind about the body: Socrates' recent born child and wife he must've fucked to produce said child, Plato being absent because he's taking care of himself while sick, Socrates rubbing his legs after the chains are off, the fable he thinks about that yokes pain and pleasure, playing with Phaedo's hair, covering his body as the poison takes effect. Everwhere Plato rolls his eyes at body-hatred.

>>20702988
Read Meno and Protagoras

>>20702988
stop trying to understand through words like a midwit. Eternal knowledge is transcendent. When you know you know.

>>20702988
dunno, i only that i know nothing

>>20705086
>gignoskein
>eidenai
Fascinating. And what about in Theaetetus?

>>20706797
In Theaetetus, "knowledge" (the subject they're after) is "episteme"; literally it's something like "that which can be stood [steme] upon [epi]", and math seems to be the best example of it (which underlines a puzzle in Theaetetus; why don't these two mathematicians use their expertise to seek what knowledge is? Eventually Theaetetus does start to apply the method he's described as having used at the beginning, but it's puzzling that it takes so long and that his first answer should be "perception"). The word also has the connotation of "science", more like the Latin "scientia". Something, maybe not systematic, but "grounded".

>>20706877
so, we have three words subsumed under the English word knowledge:
>knowledge as seeing, perception
>knowledge as distinguishing
>knowledge as foundation
And it's even funnier that you bring up the long-winded structure of Theaetetus because Socrates debunks knowledge as perception in the very beginning.

Honestly? The more I read into the Socratic Dialogues, the more I'm convinced that most people teaching Plato have no fucking idea what he truly meant, and the more I regret not minoring in Greek.

>>20706901
debunks knowledge as perception AND as distinguishing too, I forgot to add.

>>20706901
I agree, though I can understand why there are so many schools of thought about Plato, the dialogues are so puzzling, and, at least in my experience, just when you think you've got something, something else seems to unsettle everything.

It is puzzling that gignoskein and eidenai don't seem to be thematized the way the other key "Platonic words" are (i.e., there's no dialogue on "gignoskein"), but that does mean there's a good deal of (to me, anyway) pleasing work to do figuring things out.

Something else you might find interesting, regarding terms for belief (to parallel your interest in knowledge words). We have:

Dokein, doxa (opinion, reputation in the sense of public or perceived opinion, belief in the weak sense of "I opine"; this is also the word translated as "doctrine" or "dogma" in Aristotle when he talks about anyone else's views)

Oiomai (to suppose, for something to seem a way; seems to be very modest)

Petho (strictly "to have heard", "to have obeyed", insofar as obeying "to have been persuaded", "to trust"; much is made of this in both Republic and Phaedo)

Nomizein (strictly "to follow the laws/customs", to act or worship in a customary or legally prescribed way, to believe insofar as to go along with custom)

Hegesthai (strictly to lead, to introduce, to bring in, but in the middle verbal meaning, to lead oneself, which then comes to take the meaning of "I think/believe" on account of having lead oneself in some way)

In Apology, Socrates' famous "I know that I know nothing" is really more "Of the things I don't know (eidenai), I don't even suppose (oiomai) that I know (eidenai) them." Nomizein and hegesthai are also important in the argument with Meletus about Socrates' belief in the gods. If Diogenes Laertius preserved the indictment perfectly like he claims, the proper indictment about Socrates' heterodoxy is expressed as something like "not believing (nomizein) in the city's gods, but introducing (hegesthai) new daimons". During the argument itself, Socrates suppresses hegesthai and only talks about nomizein a ridiculous number of times in a row before bringing up daimons, then he stops using nomizein entirely and only uses hegesthai in the sense of "I lead myself to believe". It's very strange.

>>20706995
>Socrates' famous "I know that I know nothing" is really more "Of the things I don't know (eidenai), I don't even suppose (oiomai) that I know (eidenai) them."
I'm having trouble parsing this statement. Is he being modest about his awareness of his ignorance? Or is he's demonstrating that he's aware of his "unknown unknowns"? If it's the latter, then Socrates's humility takes a Pyrrhonic turn, that one cannot know if that one knows or not.

>>20707031
My understanding is that he's denying he knows, but further, he doesn't even modestly think he knows whatever he doesn't know.

There's several ways to deal with this, I think.

1) You could argue that the Socrates of Apology is the "historical" Socrates, and the Socrates depicted almost everywhere else is really just Plato. I don't accept this for too many reasons to get into here, not least because there's moments in even the more "Platonic" dialogues that express a non-dogmatic doubtfulness about certain things.

2) You could argue that Socrates' statement can be qualified by context. He's claiming both that human wisdom might be meager and that the particular "domains" that he's ignorant of are "what's good and beautiful". He does say right after that the poets express true things, but lack any knowledge of how, while the artisans do in fact know things but suppose they know everything else while they don't. So 1) only the politicians don't seem to know anything whatsoever. 2) the poets express truths that potentially could be known, 3) the artisans really do know things, namely, their arts (how to use tools, how to make this or that thing). So maybe you have a hierarchy of things to know, the most difficult being the Good and the Beautiful, which Socrates denies access to.

3) Socrates is being at least somewhat rhetorical, and he knows more than he lets on. After all, if you know that what the politician says about the Good or the Beautiful is wrong, you might in fact be able to suppose (oiomai) to know (eidenai) something in order to at least say "they're not that". Later on, Socrates does claim that the "greatest good" is "making speeches about virtue everyday", so he either contradicts himself unknowingly or modulates his defense speech at different points. He is, after all, making a public speech, something unusual for him (but compare his denial at the beginning of the customs of how a trial is done with his later statement about serving on council to determine the fates of the Athenian generals), and you can see a rhetorical choice in the three classes he gives as examplrs of who he questioned (Anytus stands in for the politicians and artisans, Meletus for the poets; Lycon stands in for the orators, but they're not made an example of, presumably because he's a more sensitive case--his son was murdered by the Thirty Tyrants, so Socrates perhaps isn't going to rub his face in during the trial).

I suspect some combo of 2 & 3, but that'd need more spelling out than I have time for.

>>20707119
NTA but thanks for these effortposts. There really is years and years worth of stuff to go over in Plato and Aristotle alone it seems. How long and difficult is learning Greek?

>>20707186
I took Greek in college for a year and a half, maybe 12 years ago. If you check out the Classics threads, they'll have good resources. It's perfectly feasible to get enough grasp after a year if you sit yourself down three times a week to go over a lesson or two. My grasp could be much better, but I can look at the Greek and find the key terms to get an idea of why a translator put something the way they do. You'll find you'll still need a dictionary or the help of Perseus for identifying exceptional terms or forms.

I used the Mollins-Williamson textbook, btw, good for being able to dive into Plato's Meno.

bump

is it true that "Platonism" as we know it, as if every object's identity is an abstraction which definitely exists in some other realm, is a made up position that Plato never held? if so, then how would Plato describe the identities of things like tables and shit? a contingent multitude of abstract universals like rectangles, firmness, functionality, etc., that congeal together in memory or something?

>>20708838
Well, Plato doesn't really forwardly say what he thinks, so the basic assumption is :whatever Socrates says = Plato" (but then there's problems of making sense of the differences between dialogues and identifying when Socrates is being ironic and not).

Probably an important subject to look into is how exactly hypothesis works in Plato, and what to make of the status of objects of hypothesis. Meno, Phaedo, Republic, and Parmenides all suggest something important about hypothesizing something, but less clear is how the hypothesized thing relates to reality.

>>20709090
Well, what do you think?

bump

old ass bearded ass white ass nigga

>>20709090
Why are people too scared to make good guesses these days?

>>20709090
>all suggest something important about hypothesizing something, but less clear is how the hypothesized thing relates to reality.
How is this not clear? You hypothesize about something to find out what it would entail if it were true. Most of the time this is what leads Socrates to his insights about reality, namely what can't be true because if it were absurdity would result, and given that this can't be true, that this other principle with fascinating results must be maintained. It doesn't always run like this, sometimes there is no proof or refutation from absurdity, but this is the gist of it.

>>20707318
How do you feel about Plato’s Seventh Epistle where he openly espouses the so called “unwritten doctrine” urging that nothing of importance should be committed to writing?

>>20711921
probably denies that it's written by Plato

>>20711921
>>20712010
I think the seventh letter is legit, the Academy didn't seem to have the same problems keeping track of Plato's writings that the Lyceum did with Aristotle, within the first two generations of members with a memory of Plato they would've known.

>>20711918
It's not *that* clear, and partly because hypothesis receives different treatments (in the Republic, it seems to be how dialectic works, in the Parmenides it's an exercise for thoroughly seeing the consequences of positing "x", in Meno it replaces recollection as a way of trying to say what something is without necessarily leding to certainty, in Phaedo it's treated as an indirect path toward knowledge of each of the beings resulting in trust but not certainty). Because its approached a little differently each occasion it comes up, it needs to be carefully looked at. In the Republic it looks like it leads to knowledge, but in Meno it ends up leading to opinion, even if true opinion in the best case.

You might be able to say, at the very least (to go back to the question I was addressing at >>20708838) that the Forms as hypothesized are meant to test what we could know, *if* we could know discursively (through giving an account in speech). But that seems different then believing the Forms are really there.

>>20712121
What is your best guess at what Plato really thought?

>>20711921
To get into this a little more, it's at least something as a basic phenomena that Plato's already familiar with enough to put in the mouths of certain figures (but then you have to be cautious about how to take it in each case). Some examples:

- Protagoras in the dialogue of his name claims that Homer and the anciemt poets and wise men all concealed their real thoughts out of fear of opprobrium. In context, he's trying to get students by saying that he's different in being more frank about things, but then the next thing he does is give an account of what he teaches in a myth.

- In Theaetetus, Socrates recognizes that Protagoras has a covert teaching in addition to his overt teaching. He also claims Homer, among others, was also someone who hid his real teaching in his poetry.

- In Timaeus, the title character at 28c says that to teach all men about the origins of things is impossible.

- In the Republic, speaks about the danger of knowledge at 496a and 537e.

So much for the basic issue. But then the question is "does that mean the dialogues don't have Plato's opinions, or at least his most important ones?" And this might be something addressed by both the seventh letter and Phaedrus. In the seventh letter, he doesn't just say you can't write it, he says "But I do not think such an undertaking concerning these matters would be a good for human beings, unless for some few, those who are themselves able to discover them through a small indication." That is, it's possible to write about the truly serious things if one does so through indications rather than saying it outright. And this seems to be repeated in the Phaedrus with the idea of "logographic necessity" and the idea of playful writings as a way to work around the problems with writing (one thing to note there is that the flaws Socrates lists of writing, i.e., not being able to answer the questions someone addresses it, not knowing who to speak up among and who to be silent to, are all flaws of even spoken speech).

One imortant point to wrestle with (relevant to Speussipus, Xenocrates, and Aristotle) is whether Plato would therefore even share in oral speech with friends his deepest thoughts, and whether, when they claim to speak of his doctrines, they modulate what they say with understanding or not. It's a very hard thing to work out.

>>20712149
Well, I don't really want to say, for the reasons he gives in the seventh letter: it either would inflate hopes beyond measure (unlikely here lol), or result in contempt for opinions that the person shared with may not have worked out or try to work out.

And partly, I don't feel like I have even close to everything worked out. I've been reading him and secondary lit and philological commentaries and Neoplatonic and Muslim commentaries, and I've been doing this for 12-13 years. There isn't really an end in sight.

Hm, how about this: I think Al-Farabi's Life of Plato gets him about right. It's a very short work summarizing all the dialogues if you want tobdownload it and check it out.

>>20712149
Or how about this:

For Plato, to have wisdom of the whole would require being a god, but that isn't philosophy (per Symposium and Phaedrus and Phaedo). In Symposium, Eros = philosophy, which means desiring out of a lack, but the gods don't lack wisdom, they have it (this is repeated at the end of Phaedrus). In Phaedo, practicing dying and being dead = philosophy, but the gods don't die, and we aren't pure divine souls but beings mixing soul and body. These two definitions of philosophy, I take it, are related to Socratic ignorance in the Apology. That doesn't mean no knowledge, but very fragile limited knowledge.

>>20712222
>>20712248
Thanks, anon. I know how difficult it is to coax an opinion about of people who've carefully studied Plato. But I always felt like the goal of philosophy was to figure out what's going on with the world. Al-Farabi... he's the guy who thought that every scientific explanation was a miracle, right? I'm surprised to believe that you think he got Plato right.

>>20712149
Not him but similar to when the Buddha said he's only telling people a fraction of what he's actually seen, because we would only be distracted and distort the knowledge of the supersensible into a "system"

Which is in fact what almost every esoteric cosmological discourse degenerates into, people memorizing it like a "magic system" while never having direct experience. You just can't describe something qualitatively "other," and not only is the level and type of consciousness attained in an awakened state radically "other," that itself is only the foundation and launching point for direct experience of the cosmos beyond that point.

>And this inner vision, what is its operation? Newly awakened it is all too feeble to bear the ultimate splendour. Therefore the Soul must be trained—to the habit of remarking, first, all noble pursuits, then the works of beauty produced not by the labour of the arts but by the virtue of men known for their goodness: lastly, you must search the souls of those that have shaped these beautiful forms.

>But how are you to see into a virtuous soul and know its loveliness? Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendour of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine.

>When you know that you have become this perfect work, when you are self-gathered in the purity of your being, nothing now remaining that can shatter that inner unity, nothing from without clinging to the authentic man, when you find yourself wholly true to your essential nature, wholly that only veritable Light which is not measured by space, not narrowed to any circumscribed form nor again diffused as a thing void of term, but ever unmeasurable as something greater than all measure and more than all quantity—when you perceive that you have grown to this, you are now become vision itself: now call up all your confidence, strike forward yet a step—you need a guide no longer—strain, and SEE.
(Plotinus)

>>20712260
nvm I confused Al-Ghazali with Al-Farabi. I really need to explore Muslim philosophy more thoroughly. It's fascinating.

>>20712260
I think that's certainly true of philosophy (and what Plato's doing), but at least up until recently (it's still true, but to a different extent), there's always been consequences to saying things about the truth of the world aloud, right? To use a great modern example, Leibniz shared *only the titles of the sections" of his Discourse on Metaphysics with a Catholic friend, who wrote back alarmed at what he read, resulting in Leibniz having to use all his wiles to assuage him and shelving the essay. Asking even what seems like a harmless question today like "what is law" could have consequences for how people live and behave. Even a conversation that ends in "aporia" (literally, to be without resources, for Plato, to be perplexed) about something might result in the interlocutor deciding "huh, guess laws are all arbitrary, guess I'll do whatevs I want lol lmao" and acting terrible. (Plato seems to write with his uncle Charmides and cousin Critias at least always a little bit in mind.)

Farabi is a lot of fun, though kinda dry. He's kind of an Averroist before Averroes. Every piece of writing by him seems to be directed to a different audience, but his own self-understanding (from the introduction to his commentary on Plato's Laws) is that he's doing the same thing.

>>20712260
To say a little more, there's two short dialogues devoted to potential studentsvof Socrates, Cleitophon and Theages. In Cleitophon, a young man abandons Socrates for Thrasymachus because he thinks Socrates won't teach him what justice is. In Theages, a young man and his father demand Socrates teach the son how to get what he wants, which turns out to be tyranny, and Socrates has to do everything in his power to politely dissuade them.

>>20712200
Thanks. Which dialogues would you say are the most important from an esoteric perspective and contain the most amount of deep knowledge? I read Plato a long time ago and the ones I’ve been meaning to re-read are the Phaedrus and the Cratylus because I remember they spoke to me most in my first reading.
>>20712260
>>20712222
Would love to know what you guys think of this: https://youtu.be/rWV7U7S8TRA
Gerson is a major Plato scholar, for reference.

>>20712357
>In Theages, a young man and his father demand Socrates teach the son how to get what he wants, which turns out to be tyranny, and Socrates has to do everything in his power to politely dissuade them.
what a LARPing fanfic, Aristophanes already exposed Socrates for doing exactly that thing in The Clouds

>>20712447
>if you find Platonism unacceptable, you ought to abandon philosophy
incredibly based, agreed

>>20702988
It's nice to see someone engaging with Plato and thinking about what he says rigorously.

>We may be aware of the difference between good and bad, but have we truly internalized it? Do we always learn from our poor experiences with vice? Have we fully contemplated the fleeting, momentary nature of vice versus the eternal strength of virtue?
I think this is precisely his point, perhaps better emphasised in Phaedo. Anyone who had perfect knowledge about vice and virtue would never choose vice.

>How can mortal beings attain eternal knowledge?
This is also discussed quite thoroughly in Phaedo. I would recommend reading that dialogue next.

>Finally, what does this say about free will? Perhaps the most intimidating aspect of Socrates's perfect virtue for the modern man is the threat of losing one's liberty. What kind of kind of rational person wants to be limited by virtue?
The point is that it is actually the only rational choice. Vice is only a rational choice when your knowledge is so incomplete as to make you unable to evaluate the situation around you. The word 'rational' has some unfortunate connotations in the 21st century, there's an understanding of 'rational behaviour' in terms of economic activity (see: Rational choice theory) that gets confused with the more pure form of rationality that philosophy tends to use. This idea you have of a rational modern man who doesn't want to have his options limited seems to me to be quite firmly entrenched in this economic type of rationality.

>>20705417
i don't think so. the chains are an occassion for him to quip about pleasure following pain. this is married to the ensuing dialogue in that the greatest pleasure (soul freeing from body) follows the greatest pain (death). these readings of plato's dialogues as being rebuttals to socrates always have very little substance. why does aristotle construct a philosophy that responds to the arguments of socrates if plato believed the opposite?

>>20712488
>>if you find Platonism unacceptable, you ought to abandon philosophy
Without being too autistic, I think what he's saying is more fundamental than that, having to do with the definition of philosophy itself, rather than a mere value judgement. It's kind of a long speech, might make a thread on it.

>>20712526
>This idea you have of a rational modern man who doesn't want to have his options limited seems to me to be quite firmly entrenched in this economic type of rationality.
OP here, it's certainly an Anglosphere mentality of rationality. I remember reading the Clarke-Leibniz debates about how Clarke scoffed at Leibniz's arguments for God's rationality (which Leibniz thought was evident in the finely-tuned, eternally self-perpetuating clockwork universe) as something that would be a limiting factor on God's power. Clarke wanted to emphasize God's liberty above everything else, especially during a time where the main British fears were slavery to either a political or a religious tyrant. And I think this mindset continues on in the fetishization of liberty, often without much consideration towards what ends liberty ought to be applied. Leibniz thought that Clarke's God was just a pernicious, capricious dictator, which was the most damaging conception of them all, which did damage to our ability to reconcile with God, and I believe that he was on the money.

>>20712544
>I think this mindset continues on in the fetishization of liberty, often without much consideration towards what ends liberty ought to be applied.
I think for Plato "freedom" (not that he would call it freedom) has a very clear aim, which is to build a society that cultivates virtue. First Alcibiades outlines quite an interesting political relationship where Alcibiades should let slaves take care of all his material needs while he cultivates virtue in his soul, in order to become a political leader who then builds a society that cultivates the souls of those within it. The point I want to stress is that the soul cultivation seems to be tied to having a large degree of freedom - he has to rely on the labour of slaves to achieve it, and presumably they don't have the same luxury.

>>20712447
Lol, the lazy (but true) answer is: all of them! Even the shoter apparently aporetic dialogues have a lot going on in them. But, I suppose, since you're interested in Phaedrus, re-read that one, maybe with the following questions and observations in mind:

- What is the relation between the two halves of the dialogue (the first half on the lover and the second half on speeches)?

- Socrates, after his two speeches, makes the strange claim that both speeches were really one speech (265e-266b). How so?

- Related to the last point, the first speech Socrates gives is supposed to revise the first speech (of Lysias). How are the three speeches related?

- Socrates talks about short cuts and longer paths toward understanding (246a, 272b-c, 274a). What are the implications of this subject? In the first instance, there's said to be a longer and divine account of the soul; is it implied here, if the myth is a shortcut? (How does the soul, described at 245c-246a, fit into the rest of the myth?)

- Socrates introduces logographic necessity as a standard for speech making at 263e-264e, and gives two images of it: parts like an animal, and a temporal dimension that drives the meaning. Are these two the same? Different? Does Phaedrus as a dialogue itself have a logographic necessity that can be judged by this passage? The rest of the dialogues?

- Socrates describes two forms of speech at 265c-266b, and each has its own purpose; how does this passage apply exactly to the speeches earlier? What happens if we apply these passages to the other dialogues?

- There are roughly three passages describing something like the same thing: 249c, 265d, 273d-e. Do they unify into anything? If so, how?)

- What's up with the city and nature? Compare 230d with 275b-c. Why does the dialogue take place outside of the city? Does it ever escape political concerns?

- Are Socrates' criticisms of writing the same as Ammon's? Compare 274e-275b with 275d-e.

- There's much talk about what one would need to know in order to make proper speeches--is that knowledge available to us? What do we do with 278c-d?

- Why is *Phaedrus* the appropriate person to have this dialogue with? Who is he? (Compare his appearances in Symposium and the opening of Protagoras; also download Debra Nails's Prosopography of Plato, a collection of everything we know about the people in the dialogues.) All of the talk about what it means to speak to and persuade others: how does that work out concretely with Socrates talking to Phaedrus? Does Phaedrus change at all? A lot, a little, nada?

>>20712447
>Gerson is a major Plato scholar
he's a scholar of neoplatonism

>>20712447
As for Gerson, I'm of two minds on him. He's an excellent translator of Plotinus and an historian of Neoplatonism. I'm not sure he's wrong per se re: Ur-Platonism, but I would maybe qualify it. I tend to think he needs to be balanced with the work of Harold Cherniss on the early Academy, and that they both need to be re-balanced re: ancient vs modern skepticism and what's going on with the sophists contemporary with Socrates.

>>20712539
You're not wrong about the themstic relation, but *if* one holds to a strong anti-body position in Phaedo, then it glosses over details suggesting the necessity (or even the Good) of soul being yoked to body in the dialogue. It's always possible that Plato, like Homer, "nods" when writing, but it seems doubtful; one of the examples of recollection given is recognizing someone on the street, which is hard to put together with recollection being of things in the realm of soul (is there a Form of Cebes that can be recollected?).

>>20712623
I'll add one more point here:

- In light of the myth's account of what the lover does to make the beloved fall in love with him, who is Socrates? Who is Socrates when he talks to anyone at all? How does this approach effect the interlocutors, *if* it effects them?

>>20712222
isn't Al-Farabi completely silent on the theory of the forms, participation in the forms, etc.? he always come across as more Aristotelian to me

>>20712753
Just about. I think he brings them up elsewhere, but not when he's talking about Plato himself.

>>20712765
you really think that Plato was just kidding about the form of the Good? bruh

>>20712770
No, but the Good is hard to talk about. First you'd have to evaluate what it means that it's an idea (and in the Republic, consistently an idea) instead of an eidos, whether the words idea and eidos are actually used interchangeably or we're only assuming they are, and what to make of Socrates point blank refusing to tell Glaucon what his opinion of the Good is.

Farabi might have reasons from refraining from bringing up the Forms directly, possibly related to not wanting to go full ham on a theological controversy.

>>20712791
>what to make of Socrates point blank refusing to tell Glaucon what his opinion of the Good is.
Probably because there's no one size fits all approach. You ever wonder what happens when you tell Glaucon, the reigning alpha male, what to dogmatically hold onto at any cost? He's going to die for that dogma. You better hope you can tell him the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and that he can apprehend it in its entirety.

I'm thinking about going back to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Politics to re-explore the (perhaps contradictory) idea of "objective justice according to wisdom, differential practice according to circumstance." Think it's worthwhile?

>>20712799
Lol, that certainly fits Glaucon's character, but then with Socrates talking about the dangers of dialectics and knowledge, maybe better to let him off with good likenesses? (There's a recent book out by Jacob Howland that argues that Glaucon might've joined the Thirty Tyrants and died on the street Polemarchus accosts him and Socrates on. Not impossible; we know Adeimantus had kids, but hear nothing about Glaucon after a certain point, and it does play into the Republic's allusions to the tyrants, since Polemarchus, Niceratus, and possibly Cleitophon were all killed by them.)

The exploration you want to do in Aristotle absolutely sounds worth doing. If I had more time, I'd like to look into that myself.

>>20712831
>maybe better to let him off with good likenesses?
Likenesses won't do. Virtue is a double-edged sword. Borrowing from the analogy in the beginning of Book I of the Republic, a good doctor also knows how to kill his patients as well as he knows how to save them. If you're worried about the possibility of a tyrannical doctor, then there's only two safe options: the hopelessly incompetent doctor who prescribes you homeopathic medicine, and the God-like doctor of perfect virtue. This is also my headcanon for why liberal society is afraid of virtue and why modern people associate thumotic impulses with fascism.
>There's a recent book out by Jacob Howland that argues that Glaucon might've joined the Thirty Tyrants and died on the street Polemarchus accosts him and Socrates on.
What's it called? Sounds like a blast.
>If I had more time, I'd like to look into that myself.
Or maybe even the history of the word "methexis", e.g. participation. I opened a thread on it a couple weeks back because Wikipedia hinted that it had something to do with drama, which obviously has profound implications, and I tried my best to explore that (it seems like mostly a dead end, but led me to a lot of cool commentary from Nancy, Gadamer, Heidegger, etc.). You can check the warosu archives if you want. I still wonder about the history of that word prior to Plato.

>>20712904
>If you're worried about the possibility of a tyrannical doctor, then there's only two safe options
To continue the use of the doctor image, what of medicinal lies?

>What's it called? Sounds like a blast.
Glaucon's Fate. Besides putting together an interesting novel thesis, it's also a rare example of a scholar publishing something wherein he says "my earlier book on the Republic I think was wrong". Not finished with it, and I'm not sure I agree with his overarching thesis about how to take the Republic, but absolutely engaging.

>Or maybe even the history of the word "methexis", e.g. participation
Oh shit, you're that anon! I was the one looking into it with you! Great to see you here!

When I was in college, I did an essay on Parmenides, and I had all these notes, basically a glossary I made for myself, tracking when idea or eidos was used, when he used methexis or metalambano (there might be a third term, but I'd have to look for my notes if I still have them), whether Aristoteles answers with orthos, kalos, or alethes, etc. I remember being struck by the fact that methexis gets used an order of magnitude more than metalambano, but couldn't make heads or tales of why.

>>20712989
I think one thing I took away from Parmenides was that there was a little bit of a meaningfully playful pun on how his name has "ides" (ideas or eides) in it, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was.

>>20712989
>To continue the use of the doctor image, what of medicinal lies?
That's Machiavelli. And that boils down to the baser desires of the doctor, our ability to deceive (which I think Rousseau has a great account of in his 2nd Discourse). Contrary to many, I think Socrates trounces Thrasymachus in the first Book I when it comes to eternal time scales and certainty. The problem, unfortunately, is the fact that we're mortal. Time is limited, and our judgment is unreliable.
>Thrasymachus sneaks back into the debate over the role of the family in Book V
Also pretty fun to consider. I can't tell if Thrasymachus re-enters the fold purely out of the thrill of victory or because he somehow has a stake in the family as well.
>Oh shit, you're that anon! I was the one looking into it with you! Great to see you here!
It's great to see you here as well, anon. I hope to continue seeing you around before I ship off to Ukraine.

>>20713048
>That's Machiavelli
But isn't that also what Socrates suggests to Cephalus, and introduces with the Noble Lies?

Re: Thrasymachus, there's so much going on with him. One fascinating thing to notice (and it's the kind of thing that once you see it, it really puzzles) is that he doesn't get embarrassed when he blushes; the word in Greek literally means "to turn red", and the explanation Socrates gives in his narrative voice is just...it was hot, on account of it being summer, and he was arguing effortfully. So he's totally shameless! He's a great example of spiritedness.

Then with book 5, between Socrates' little comment that he and Thrasymachus just became friends, *and weren't even enemies before*, and Socrates' expression of disappointment in his own arguments at the end of book 1, makes me wonder if there's something more to what Thrasymachus says than the mere defense of something like realpolitik.

(There's also the curious formal feature to the book 1 argument that if Socrates is right, then Thrasymachus is right, because Socrates has been shown to be the stronger.)

(And fun historical note, Thrasymachus towards the close of the Peloponnesian War was made an ambassador to Athens on behalf of Chalcedon, to keep Athens from exercising reprisals against them. It gives his speech praising injustice, when justice according to him is the advantage of the stronger, come across this funny way.)

>I hope to continue seeing you around before I ship off to Ukraine.
Cheers dude, and likewise. Hope you stay safe out that way.

>>20712200
>- Protagoras in the dialogue of his name claims that Homer and the anciemt poets and wise men all concealed their real thoughts out of fear of opprobrium.
This was common as the main fear of philosophers and erudites was being accused of being a physicos, someone who reduced the Gods to expressions of physical events, a death sentence. The charges laid at Socrates feet are strange in that they aren't the typical wording of the charges of being a physicos, but it essentially boils down to the same. Either the charges were not reported correctly in the Apology, or Meletos made his life more complicated for seemingly no reason.

>>20713139
I'd assume the latter, though Socrates certainly gives him enough rope to hang himself when he offers Meletus the choice of deciding whether Socrates doesn't believe in the civic gods and introduces new ones, or doesn't believe in any full stop.

I'd imagine Anytus and Lycon headpalming if they didn't end up getting the result they wanted anyway.

>>20713192
>when he offers Meletus the choice of deciding whether Socrates doesn't believe in the civic gods and introduces new ones, or doesn't believe in any full stop.
Yeah, that was clearly not going to work on a jury made mostly of indigents and retards.
However, being a Lawfag with a bit of interest in Ancient Law history, if the Apology is an accurate representation of Socrates defense, then he was absolutely done for from the start. Every Ancient case hinges on character witnesses and evidence. There's this roman law case were the barrister literally started by admitting his client did the murder, in plain day, in view of everyone, but then spends the rest of his case explaining why his client is based and the victim was a cringe faggot, and gets exonerated.
Socrates having so few character witness or having those being some of the most hated personalities of Athens basically guaranteed he'd lose.

>>20713261
Lol I agree. I've been going over the Apology for the last two months with a friend, and it's actually really funny how much Socrates dares Athens to find him guilty and put him to death.

At one point, for the oracle story, he claims as his witness Chaeraphon...who's dead. Then he says, "eh, ask his brother", who, according to Xenophon, hated him.

Even the (philosophically interesting) claim when arguing with Meletus that if he does wrong, it's out of ignorance, and he should be punished by being refuted and taught, amounts to saying aloud in a trial of 500 jurors that penal law should never be applied ever. He's such a troll.

>>20713261
>then he was absolutely done for from the start.
it was still kind of close. a large chunk of the jury choses to exonerate

>>20713105
One thing that always bothered me about Book V is the fact that the problems of the family seem like they can be boiled down to an ever-ongoing series of naturalistic problems to solve. Today's solution leads to tomorrow's problem. One situation's pro becomes another situation's con. And eventually, Socrates is forced to give up: getting rid of the "unit" family for the guardians only leads to the "class" family of the guardians, whose interests will eventually be at odds with teh rest of the state. But I don't know if Plato could have ever anticipated the deracinating forces of technological progress and social atomization. With the welfare state and advances in medical care, genetic engineering, etc., many of the "hard" problems that ultimately stumped Socrates might no longer exist.

Now, I don't mean to reduce philosophical problems to naturalistic management, as I'd love to see what happens if Socrates were questioned today, but it shows that even human nature itself is contingent. Hell, thinking about abortion debates makes me question whether personhood is an immaterial thing, if it's defined in such a way that it's contingent on technological advances (one day, we will be able to incubate the zygote outside of the womb... so then life begins at conception?). And who knows where we go from there. We pursue desires in such a way that their fulfillment destroys the ground that justifies said desire. e.g. transgenderism and the destruction of the essence of gender. Then where do we go?

>>20713392
>Now, I don't mean to reduce philosophical problems to naturalistic management, as I'd love to see what happens if Socrates were questioned today, but it shows that even human nature itself is contingent
That's a very very good question, and I'm still unsure myself what the "truth" is.

I do have to admit to being constantly astounded by how much in the way of modern attitudes Plato's already aware of in the dialogues, like the analysis of democracy (love of novelties as such, the demand that animals be treated with the dignities of men, a conflation of freedom with license, etc.). Hell, modern ideas like NLP are basically just what Gorgias asserts rhetoric can do. There does seem to be an awareness in Plato and Aristotle of applying techne to nature, but they both seem very doubtful of it, ultimately. At some point I'd like to focus on that issue; I have this vague feeling they've thought about it in a considered way, and probably in light of people like Protagoras, who seems modern like no one else in the dialogues with his teaching that techne can make nature amenable, if not fundamentally moldable.

>>20713503
>I'm still unsure myself what the "truth" is.
Heidegger's definition always stuck with me as operative. Unconcealment.

>>20711921
>>20712010
doesn't matter if it was written by plato because he still teaches the importance of unwritten doctrine in the Laws and Aristotle directly states that he had unwritten doctrines and provides details about Platonic numerology and the One

>>20705862
you're peak midwit

>>20712831
>There's a recent book out by Jacob Howland that argues that Glaucon might've joined the Thirty Tyrants and died on the street Polemarchus accosts him and Socrates on. Not impossible; we know Adeimantus had kids, but hear nothing about Glaucon after a certain point, and it does play into the Republic's allusions to the tyrants, since Polemarchus, Niceratus, and possibly Cleitophon were all killed by them.)
I love The Republic, read it several times and picked up on a ton of literary details, so the very notion of this theme instantly made something click in my head, and I couldn't hold back the tears so I left my cafe table and ran into the bathroom so I could let it all out. WTF. So you're telling me that Plato is trying to save his brother from political suicide? I didn't think philosophy could have so much SOVL bros. Is The Republic the greatest work of philosophy ever written? It sure seems like it. It has EVERYTHING.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q5zNHNIewg

>>20714495
Yeah, that's the gist of what Howland has in mind, though less "saving Glaucon" and more "reflecting on his brother's turn in the myth of Er".

(The only passage in Xenophon where Plato is named, is this little bit in the Memorabilia where Socrates is said to intercede with Glaucon attempt to speak in front of the assembly on behalf of Charmides *and Plato*. Touching, I think.)

>>20705862
So unbelievably based words can't describe the baseness

>>20714247
Peak midwit and evidence of a particular partaking in the Form of midwit ergo Plato was wrong

Heraclitus' fragments are the way, and so is the Tao Te Ching.
>The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; The Named is the mother of all things

>The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.
>I have searched myself.

>>20714927
>teenager discovers aphophatic theology for the first time

>>20714964
>apophatic*
Hardly. Unless these are apophatic?

>This universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be—an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures

>How can anyone hide from that which never sets?
>The thunderbolt pilots all things.

>>20715107
>says the Tao can't be told
>starts telling anyway

>>20715144
It's a good thing it is Heraclitus doing the telling then.
In case you're serious, there's a certain amount of paradox and metaphor in what they say, and trying to decipher it with so cursory a glance will lead you to manifest nonsense. Also read Tao's full quote as I didn't bother to post it all. (Full quote is clearer).

>>20715406
>whoaaaa, we're back to apophatic theology again
*yawn* get filtered by Christ more

>>20715107
retroactively refuted by Parmenides. Heraclitus simply couldn't contend with the Eleatic doctrine

I think organisms perceive order/pattern/repetition because they indicate local minimums of entropy and this leads us to unconsciously consider identity/resemblance (2 of deleuzes 4 pillars of representationl the other 2 arent as important phenomenologically imo) as a natural epistemological basis for inquiry when we are really just being spooked by epiphenomena

>>20716514
thanks

>>20716514
Uh huh

>>20713340
>it was still kind of close. a large chunk of the jury choses to exonerate
Probably out of respect for his military actions and age. Once the guilty sentence had been passed, a lot of those who had voted for exoneration switched their votes to the death sentence instead of a fine.