/lit/ - Literature

>>22361302
Hard question. In Republic bk. X 597b-d, the idea of couch, or the couch in nature, is guessed to be made by a god, but this isn't argued out (note Socrates' and Glaucon's "I suppose"). In the Timaeus, the demiurge looks to the ideas, which seem to be external to it (29a, 68e-69c). In Parmenides, it's a bit ambiguous whether possession of Knowledge means a god contains the ideas or whether they're external, or what (134c-e).

>>22361302
You mean the Christian God? That's like asking if Caesar was a communist.

>>22361302
Aristotle or Neoplatonists are where you must turn for an answer. I believe the general idea is something like Euclid's "mathematics is but the thoughts of God" (arguably not Abrahamic God but even pagans have concept of supreme deity quite often see for example the Hindoos)

It's ultimately ambiguous in Plato. Read the 7th Letter. You have to wait until the Neoplatonists to get more specific answers to this, and then they also differ among themselves, or even differ internally (in a way different from how Plato's polyphony does). Also there is a lot of argument about how "Neoplatonic" Plato was. I think it's pretty clear that Plotinus was right-er than the Proclean types who systematize everything and inadvertently reify their conceptual architectonic as THE ACTUAL structure of the cosmos, so that they gradually lose sight of its provisional/merely kataphatic character and start to argue "within" the logic of their own system, FORGETTING to go and actually achieve union with and insight into the One. But some Plato scholars would accuse what I'm saying right now of "Neoplatonizing." I think Dillon thinks that Plato and even elements of the sceptical post-Plato Academy were more "Neoplatonic" than conventional wisdom and received opinion allows.

But yeah long story short it's ambiguous and you just gotta meet God yourself, not try to make sense of these things at the very limits of language and conceptual thought, because the latter are only supposed to be bridges that TAKE you to those limits, beyond which you have to step for yourself. But again this is a Neoplatonizing way of thinking about it, reading subsequent "Platonism" into Plato. It's basically the docta ignorantia doctrine of Cusa.

>>22361362
Do you know of any scholarly coverages of Plato that use meticulous concordances of statements like these?

>>22361302
Plato didn't know God the Father, so do you believe he actually knew God?

>>22361302
>are they ideas within the mind of God?

This is Augustine's conclusion. It's why, while it's proper to call Christian Aristotelians Thomists, it's also proper to call Christian Platonists Augustinians.

Augustine and Aquinas basically serve the same function in theology that Plato and Aristotle serve in philosophy. You've got to pick one of them.

>>22361483
This is wrong.

>>22361535
Then don't ersatz downvote it, respond to it.

>>22361483
If you can't meet God in a book, you won't find him a meditation mat

Or ideally you could find in both

But ideally when you find you should stop arguing right? Hopefully? Part of the peace?

>>22361483
>Do you know of any scholarly coverages of Plato that use meticulous concordances of statements like these?
Not offhand, though I'm sure searching for "plato god" on libgen will net you some monographs trying to figure out how the theological passages fit together.

>>22361483
>>22361652
>Do you know of any scholarly coverages of Plato that use meticulous concordances of statements like these?

Extradeical and Intradeical Interpretations of Platonic Ideas by Harry Wolfson is what you're after.

>>22361749
The Philo and Spinoza guy? Nice, and great recommendation thank you

>>22361302
Plato’s form of justice and the good may as well be analogous to god for all intents and purposes. In Timaeus, keep in mind his cosmic story has Gods and it has a creator of the Gods which we can link to the forms in some way. Ie the Gods are subservient to their own creator

>>22362530
In the Timaeus, the demiurge-god creates the gods and everything else by looking to the Forms implied to stand outside of it. The Good of the Republic sounds like a god if god = eternal, unchanging cause of beings, but there's no argument there for it, and the Republic bk. X passage can be read as insinuating that there are gods responsible for each idea. So it's all very messy to put together without ignoring parts of different passages in favor of a harmonized view.

>>22362540
OP’s question is leading and irrelevant anyways since even if Plato believed in a monotheist deity which there is no evidence for, it would by definition have to work alongside the Forms since the Forms are pure good and a God must be pure good too. This is something Socrates says in the Republic about why he hates Homer for portraying the gods incorrectly. It’s a leading/ irrelevant question.

>>22362557
It might be a leading question re: whether there's one god or many, but the thrust of asking whether the Forms are internal or external to god/s isn't irrelevant, since knowledge of such would be in part knowledge of how the Forms are, and what we could expect of the god/s and what the god/s ought expect of us, right?

>it would by definition have to work alongside the Forms since the Forms are pure good and a God must be pure good too
The Forms aren't "pure good"; they're implied to be caused by the Idea of the Good, but there are Forms of vice at 445c. It might be that from the broadest perspective that it's "good" for there to be vices, but they're not good in themselves.

>>22362557
>OP’s question is leading and irrelevant

It's one of the most debated questions about Plato's cosmology.

> it would by definition have to work alongside the Forms since the Forms are pure good and a God must be pure good too.

Now this is leading. It's clear that there are times when the forms are existing within the Deity (let's not use the scary word God since that triggers you) and there are times when the forms appear to subsist outside of the Deity. Furthermore, it doesn't seem like many of Plato's own students read the Timaeus to be more or less literal. Xenocrates, for example, takes the forms to be within the mind of God.

If you simply want to refuse to take a stand on something then go read Derrida.

>>22362620
> Furthermore, it doesn't seem like many of Plato's own students read the Timaeus to be more or less literal. Xenocrates, for example, takes the forms to be within the mind of God.

Socrates attacks divine command theory in the famous Euthyphro dialogue. It is entirely irrelevant what any “gods” feel about the forms and what you and the op are doing is a double handed attempt at reconciling Plato with Christian doctrine.

>>22362630
gods=/=God

>woo woo mumbo jumbo

>>22362630
Nta, but that's a silly claim to make when they're pointing to how a successor of Plato interpreted the latter's writings. Xenocrates may be mistaken (and I think he is, personally), but are you going to argue that Xenocrates was trying to harmonize Plato with Christianity 2-3 centuries before that was even a thing?

>>22361302
They are ideas thought by the gods.

>capital g God
Why does it keep getting translated like this? It's absurd. The most hilarious thing is reading Julian's orations and see him refer to "God". What are those translators even thinking? Just use "gods" or "divinity".

>>22361302
Neither. In platonism god transcends everything intelligible. This includes things like inside outside (forms are neither inside nor outside because god has no sides to be in or out nor does he not have sides to be in or out), ideas (god neither has nor doesn't have ideas, all ideas are ideas of him), mind (god neither has nor doesn't have mind, all mind is of him), being / existence (god neither exists nor doesn't exist, he transcends existence and facilitates it). This is why the platonists eventually gave up on trying to say what god is because anything you can think of, any general formalism you can come to, is caused by god and this can not exactly be god. So they came up with the via negativa trick, to try to conceptualize what god is by ruling out everything that he isn't (though I think it is a bit of a cop out since they themselves would argue that he neither is not isn't everything, including the concept of the unconceptualizable).

>>22363199
Zeus = Deus = God

>>22363824
Jupiter=Deus Pater=God the Father
God the Father in Heaven=Jupiter in the sky

>>22363823
meds now, we're talking about Plato not Plotinus

>>22363869
>monoglots mutts two millenia removed reading translations know plato better than his own direct lineage of students
Prottie logic

>>22363873
Xenocrates and Aristotle are direct students of Plato. Plotinus was far removed.

>>22363879
Aristotle started his own lycaeum cause he was too hylic for the academy.
>xenocrates
As a pythagorean and platonist he is more or less in agreement with Plotinus.

>>22363889
Yawn. The perennialist hermeneutic is trash.

>>22363890
The majority of ancients and medievals would beg to differ...
>perennialism
Not saying that. Just that Plato was indeed a mystic like (neo)platonists claim.

>>22363873
Plotinus wasn't direct lineage, he was a student of a Platonist in Alexandria, not the Academy, which had been destroyed. Besides, using the argument "by lineage" doesn't entail anything necessary: the skeptical Academics were, after all, part of the direct lineage; Aristotle, Speussipus, and Xenocrates all knew Plato, and *all three* disagreed with Plato over the idea numbers (Aristotle disagreeing fundamentally, Speussipus and Xenocrates disagreeing more in favor of a Pythagoreanizing take on the idea numbers). Students, after all, don't perfectly follow after their teachers in understanding or deed (compare Plato, Xenophon, Aeschines, Antisthenes, Aristippus, Alcibiades, Charmides, Critias as students of Socrates; compare Aristotle, Speussipus, Theophrastus, Xenocrates, Dion, and Callippus as students of Plato; compare Porphyry with Plotinus over the Aristotelian Categories, or Iamblicus and Proclus with Plotinus and Porphyry over theurgy; compare Strato and Aristoxenus as students of Aristotle; compare Isocrates with his teacher Gorgias; modern analogues abound, like Wittgenstein with Russell and Frege, or Gadamer, Strauss, Klein, and Arendt with Heidegger, etc.). If Plato's seventh letter is genuine, don't any of his students who wrote something or other on the "unwritten doctrines" look ridiculous by Plato's own judgement?

>>22363199
The Jowett translation of Timaeus funny enough uses both God and gods interchangeably in the same story instead of something more understandable like Demiurge.

>>22364375
And sometimes "the Creator" and "the Deity." He's pretty inconsistent as far as translators go.

>>22364362
>foolish by Plato's own judgement?
So? Who died and made Plato God? I don't believe in secrets. Much less kept ones.

>>22364664
No one "made him God", but it's silly to argue from the authority of students if they don't even follow him on that point.

>>22364664
Not to mention, hylics seething over metaphysics in neoplatonism is imo precisely why twas esoteric originally but even if they were foolish to admit aloud as a latecomer to the scene I appreciate and believe the literature in broad strokes. Even Tubingen ain't far off from Neoplatonism.

>>22364709
I take it that the Neoplatonists are guilty of the other reason Plato wouldn't write his principles out, "it would unsuitably fill... others with lofty and empty hope as if they had learned awesome matters", which fits them to a T.

>>22364709
>as a latecomer to the scene I appreciate and believe the literature in broad strokes

cool so you like lazy skim reading

>>22364734
savage

>>22361435
What was marcus aurelius referring to when he wrote about God? Jupiter?

>>22364734
>>22364987p
The mysteries are preserved both through secrecy and constant revelation. Git gud fags
>but muh jewish atheist american hermeneutics say
Your horizon of being is smaller than your microdick, chode

>>22365079
Oh, okay, so Plato's own statement is less important than the at best, imprudent babbling, or at worst, distorted understanding, of his followers, got it.

>>but muh jewish atheist american hermeneutics say
>Your horizon of being is smaller than your microdick, chode
Lol really showed me

>>22365109
>imprudent babbling or distorted understanding
I must have forgot the part where Plato came down from Mount Olympus with 100% true metaphysical opinions which cannot be improved or clarified apparently in a letter possibly spurious which talks shit aboot the philosophical writings of which you promote autistic fidelity to.
>Plato's own statements
Plato's esotericism would tell us to deny his statements in favor of the spirit of the depths, no? Not autistically probe the surface without charity or grace.
>babblin on and on
Plato himself admits he does this. But so we do it anyway too. For the search, the nondual mystery of life, is ever more than theoretical masturbation and yet partakes of it nonetheless. Somehow theory helps us search. Informs praxis. Expands the world. Reading and writing is part of path for some. And others not. But influences history. Regardless, Plato is clearly a mystic and not a redditor atheist. I will never know his true secrets, but I feel confident speaking about his pythagorean influences which are likely from whence his secret doctrines derive or resemble. Just as I can speak of stoicism or epicureanism in broad strokes without getting caught up in the nitty gritty of particular thinkers and their diferences.

>>22365228
>I must have forgot the part where Plato came down from Mount Olympus with 100% true metaphysical opinions which cannot be improved or clarified apparently in a letter possibly spurious which talks shit aboot the philosophical writings of which you promote autistic fidelity to.
Just which position are you trying to defend, that his students and followers are reliable on him, or not? If you're trying to say they are, then they must also be judged as failing to actually understand the import of what they're doing, by Plato's own say, *in a letter the Neoplatonists all accepted as genuine.* One doesn't even need to just point there: Socrates' explicit refusal in the Republic to state his own opinion about the Good (504e-506e), the implication of his comment in the Symposium that the true speech he tells about Diotima will be beautified (198d-e), the Phaedrus where one of his criticisms of speeches is that they don't know who to speak to and who to remain silent to (275d-e).

>Plato's esotericism would tell us to deny his statements in favor of the spirit of the depths, no? Not autistically probe the surface without charity or grace.
Not by simple dismissal: "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.*" The "autism" you think you see is exactly that of paying attention to indications. But the Platonists almost as a whole, who you seem to be appealing to, would just as easily fall prey to your comment, since their doctrines are derived by interpreting the dialogues, including in an "autistic" way.

>Regardless, Plato is clearly a mystic and not a redditor atheist
And you know this how, pray tell? I don't say that he's an atheist, but I don't know what he is; sometimes he says this or that, sometimes he's more or less critical of traditional mythic piety. You can't just pick and choose passages, e.g.: Socrates in the Phaedo is compelled to make an argument for Recollection (he has to be prompted, 72e-73a) which argues for how we know the Forms, and then later (99d-100c) gives an account of how he came to the Forms as hypotheses he developed in his autobiographical account. The interpreter has to first determine whether these are compatible, and if discovering differences, has to explain what both are doing in the same piece of writing. You can't just grab the one and say "that's Plato's deal right there, see, he's an Orphic / Pythagorean", and while it's plausible that students or followers might know something or other, nothing prevents misunderstanding, both in favor or against him about what he meant.

>Just as I can speak of stoicism or epicureanism in broad strokes without getting caught up in the nitty gritty of particular thinkers and their diferences.
This is not something to brag about.

>>22365422
>what are you saying, no fidelity to text or fidelity to person?
Por que no los dos? His followers may be more reliable than the texts themselves honestly. Esotericism has a dual sense of deception.
>I say [...] I don't know who he is
Socratic ignorance, eh? Then why put down esoteric hermeneutic? They go hand in hand. And its a possible hermeneutic. Why bother with autistic detail if not staking claim? I feel confident gesturing toward mystic elements in Plato. From reading not only him but others. I suppose it's like God. Agnosticism is logical answer but sometimes ya just feel strongly one way or another. An intuition if you will. I actually feel agnosticism is somewhat mystical anyway too. That gnosis is an agnosis. Paradox>lnc>lem
>stuff about silence mentioned
Is not silence mystical? Keeping the mouth shut
>impiety
Plenty of mystics were thought impudent in their time until their works were better understood. Who says Socrates is portrayed accurately or was real? Textually Plato was also criticized by some greek cult initiates for revealing mysteries it is said.
>that's not a good thing
Better than being an anal autist ancient academic too pussy to take a stand while simultaneously taking the wrong stand.

>>22365548
>His followers may be more reliable than the texts themselves honestly.
You're assuming it without argument.

>Then why put down esoteric hermeneutic?
You aren't arguing for *any* hermeneutic, you're saying "heresay by others and my feels takes precedence over the 35 dialogues, don't think too hard."

>Why bother with autistic detail if not staking claim?
Stake a claim on what, whether Plato's an atheist? I said I don't know what he is, and much of that is due to the caginess of how the subject is treated. This is a man whose friend was executed for impiety and whose uncle and cousin were chased out of Athens for a time due to being implicated in Alcibiades' blaspheming the Mysteries and desecrating the Herms, he has reasons to be cagey, making it hard to tell if he's an atheist, an agnostic, or heterodox; he's certainly not a mystic, and he's blatantly critical of popular piety. Have to point out that it's baffling that someone who wants to argue for mysticism would demand stupid simplistic black and white positions.

>I feel confident gesturing toward mystic elements in Plato.
And? Is it because you focus on the passages that already appeal to you and ignore those that suggest anything otherwise?

>Is not silence mystical? Keeping the mouth shut
No, not by any necessity, you're forgetting basic prudence. If you're looking for mystical silence, switch from Plato to Heidegger.

>Plenty of mystics were thought impudent in their time until their works were better understood. Who says Socrates is portrayed accurately or was real? Textually Plato was also criticized by some greek cult initiates for revealing mysteries it is said.
Plenty of people who weren't mystics were thought impudent in their times too, and? I don't care per se whether Socrates is portrayed accurately; everyone who thinks about it knows Plato's dialogues aren't history.

>Better than being an anal autist ancient academic too pussy to take a stand while simultaneously taking the wrong stand.
Lol imagine thinking brashness was a virtue and ignorance out of laziness is praiseworthy.

>>22361302
By "subsistent" you seem to imply "placed under "God"". There is no need for that.

"Now I am well aware that none of these ideas can have come from me—I know my own ignorance. The only other possibility, I think, is that I was filled, like an empty jar, by the words of other people streaming in through my ears, though I’m so stupid that I’ve even forgotten where and from whom I heard them."

"Idea" is little more than seeing, as the word implies, i.e. the appearance of something to you inside your mind. Object of perception.

"And we say that their names are by no means fixed; there is no reason why what we call “circles” might not be called “straight lines,” and the straight lines “circles,” and their natures will be none the less fixed despite this exchange of names. Indeed the same thing is true of the definition: since it is a combination of nouns and verbs, there is nothing surely fixed about it. Much more might be said to show that each of these four instruments is unclear, but the most important point is what I said earlier: that of the two objects of search—the particular quality and the being of an object—the soul seeks to know not the quality but the essence, whereas each of these four instruments presents to the soul, in discourse and in examples, what she is not seeking"

The truths you ask about are little more than what Plato calls them, truths, according to him they dwell in your soul, be it that of hero, God or man. That should answer your question. Keep in mind though the soul is not the mind to Plato.
Why isn't the soul seeking the four instruments - term, definition, image, reason? Because they are not of the soul. The soul is the only part of man that is not an instrument. But it has to eat just like you, you know, to eat it must find.
Add to this the second term he names them by here - essences.

"Those who are listening sometimes do not realize that it is not the mind of the speaker or writer which is being refuted, but these four instruments mentioned, each of which is by nature defective."

Defective here means, partial, changing, finite, measurable.

>>22365914
"In short, neither quickness of learning nor a good memory can make a man see when his nature is not akin to the object, for this knowledge never takes root in an alien nature; so that no man who is not naturally inclined and akin to justice and all other forms of excellence, even though he may be quick at learning and remembering this and that and other things, nor any man who, though akin to justice, is slow at learning and forgetful, will ever attain the truth that is attainable about virtue."

Form is but a shape. Subject of perception. That said, neither form nor idea can be termed as what Plato is talking about. He is talking about something of the soul, that is of the same substance as the soul, nothing more nothing less. It is made of the same stuff. Hence the doctrine of anamnesis. Memory is just a wax tablet. It wanes. Real learning is discovering what you are learning within you.

"Only when all of these things—names, definitions, and visual and other perceptions—have been rubbed against one another and tested, pupil and teacher asking and answering questions in good will and without envy—only then, when reason and knowledge are at the very extremity of human effort, can they illuminate the nature of any object"

Second word he uses here is nature which means birthing. With the caveat that they are not puttable into words, we can for the sake of this little post call them - essences of the truths of nature.

"For this reason anyone who is seriously studying high matters will be the last to write about them and thus expose his thought to the envy and criticism of men. What I have said comes, in short, to this: whenever we see a book, whether the laws of a legislator or a composition on any other subject, we can be sure that if the author is really serious, this book does not contain his best thoughts; they are stored away with the fairest of his possessions. And if he has committed these serious thoughts to writing, it is because men, not the gods, “have taken his wits away."

When under study he calls them "high matters" and "serious thoughts", don't let that fool you, it's just another "object of perception" the profane but into writing, implying reverence.

>>22365921
"To anyone who has followed this discourse and digression it will be clear that if Dionysius or anyone else—whether more or less able than he—has written concerning the first and highest principles of nature, he has not properly heard or understood anything of what he has written about; otherwise he would have respected these principles as I do, and would not have dared to give them this discordant and unseemly publicity. Nor can he have written them down for the sake of remembrance; for there is no danger of their being forgotten if the soul has once grasped them, since they are contained in the briefest of formulas. If he wrote them, it was from unworthy ambition, either to have them regarded as his own ideas, or to show that he had participated in an education of which he was unworthy if he loved only the reputation that would come from having shared in it." - indeed the error of many on these forums.

These truths are preverbal. Language is a disgrace to them. Filthy. Profane. See the movie Pi, notably the ending. These truths are unspeakable by nature. That is because the world itself, including its languages, are just a veil between your soul, and these essences of the truths of nature. However, those are actually you and you are them. So in a similar image to the allegory of the cave, you are looking beyond a veil consisting of a whole world of objects and subjects of perception, and your four instruments into what is essentially your soul, regardless of whether you are looking within or without. That is why just like your senses evolved to perceive the world, your world evolved to be perceived by your senses. It instantly changes when your soul changes and vice versa. They are one. The observer effect. The total number of minds in the universe is...

>>22365929
Regarding what a soul is - immortal self mover (self-reflecting, self-changing):
"“Every soul is immortal. That is because whatever is always in motion is immortal, while what moves, and is moved by, something else stops living when it stops moving. So it is only what moves itself that never desists from motion, since it does not leave off being itself. In fact, this self-mover is also the source and spring of motion in everything else that moves; and a source has no beginning. That is because anything that has a beginning comes from some source, but there is no source for this, since a source that got its start from something else would no longer be the source. And since it cannot have a beginning, then necessarily it cannot be destroyed. That is because if a source were destroyed it could never get started again from anything else and nothing else could get started from it—that is, if everything gets started from a source. This then is why a self-mover is a source of motion. And that is incapable of being destroyed or starting up; otherwise all heaven and everything that has been started up would collapse, come to a stop, and never have cause to start moving again. But since we have found that a self-mover is immortal, we should have no qualms about declaring that this is the very essence and principle of a soul, for every bodily object that is moved from outside has no soul, while a body whose motion comes from within, from itself, does have a soul, that being the nature of a soul; and if this is so—that whatever moves itself is essentially a soul—then it follows necessarily that soul should have neither birth nor death."

And finally for the bitchslap by broad-shouldered-and-broadly-writing-Plato's elegant, essential and far more truthful granddaddy:
"To the soul, belongs the self-multiplying Logos"
Logos is not a Word. Don't be fooled. Logos is nothing else but a gathering. What is your brain? What are all the cells in your body? What is your mind? What do you call all the souls?
Why the veil? Can you multiply/create without division?
https://pastebin.com/AzF9W2Ku

>>22365846
Every hermeneutics is based on feels. All you have said so far is Plotinus is possibly not a reputable source for Platonic exegesis because other hermeneutics also exist. Ok? What have you contributed here? Stands are inevitable. You act sourpuss. Prudence is a virtue. Virtue is mystical. No one cares about your knowledge to pinpoint lines in the platonic cinematic universe. Some people memorize the bible but doesn't make em wise or virtuous necessarily either.

gump

>>22361302
>God
There are only gods plural in Platonism. The monad is not a god.

>>22366226
The monad is identical to the first mover and the abrahamic God

>>22365914
I don't care about your wall of text, just what Plato believed.

>>22366208
>Prudence is a virtue. Virtue is mystical.
I appluad you for actually sharing an argument in the form of a syllogism; even an invalid one is still an argument, technically.

>No one cares about your knowledge to pinpoint lines in the platonic cinematic universe.
No one cares about your vague feefees over texts and authors you don't have the patience to read.

>>22361302
>Does Plato believe that the forms are subsistent outside of God or are they ideas within the mind of God?
the loser christian god doesn't even enter the ring here, just the chad greek gods loser, take your wimpy cuck of a god out back where he belongs.

>>22366468

>>22366468
So you haven't read Plato. Got it.

>>22361362
>the idea of couch, or the couch in nature, is guessed to be made by a god, but this isn't argued out (note Socrates' and Glaucon's "I suppose").
This perspective on the forms is also half-debunked in Parmenides. See Parmenides's general criticism of the greater forms, Socrates's skepticism over the minor forms (of hair and such), and Parmenides's delicate warning over failing to consider even the little things like "hair."

>>22361483
>kataphatic
what is kataphatic? what is it in opposition to?

>>22361435
> arguably not Abrahamic God
I find these artificial boundaries don’t serve anything, a Christian and a Hindu both in modern day would say that they both worship God in different ways, and in ancient days Christians and neo-platonists talked about worshiping the same God

>>22361504
Answer me, OP. Do you honestly think Plato knew God at all?

>>22366457
NTA but Plato has been considered a mystic for most of the last two millenia. Also philosophy always involves feefees.

>>22367599
It is said that Plato read the Septuagint and found it inspirational.

>>22361302
obviously, they would have to be. the entire point was that they arent physical things, they are concepts, ideas. Ideas and concepts can only occur in minds

>>22367882
Source? And what would that prove?

>>22367965
Plato is but the Greek Moses helping pave way for Christ.

>>22368038
But neither Moses nor Plato, assuming >>22367882 is true, would have known God the Father, would they? Are you saying all this through a jewish lens?

>>22365921
>"For this reason anyone who is seriously studying high matters will be the last to write about them and thus expose his thought to the envy and criticism of men. What I have said comes, in short, to this: whenever we see a book, whether the laws of a legislator or a composition on any other subject, we can be sure that if the author is really serious, this book does not contain his best thoughts; they are stored away with the fairest of his possessions. And if he has committed these serious thoughts to writing, it is because men, not the gods, “have taken his wits away."
just sounds like the writings of a covert narcissist lol.
>oh no I'm being criticized!
If you had divine knowledge, you wouldn't care because you knew you were correct.

>>22365937
But can't a soul stop moving? i.e. death?

>>22368045
Is not God the Father the God of the Jews? YHVH? God of gods... The prisca theologia, common to all mn, is both intuition into existence of spiritual realities and the logical inference of a supreme deity in charge and maintenance and source. It is not unique to Christianity nor even just Abrahamic religions but the world over tho ofc Judaism and Christianity have a privileged position within the revelation of God insofar as Christ was Jewish and fulfilled their laws. But the messianic mimetic mindfuck also allows him to complete the mythic problematics of Greeks and Romans and Egyptians as well as logical problematics of folx like Plato and Aristotle. Hence his triumph over paganism of Europe as well as near Eastern Zorastrian systems and the like.

>>22368271
If Jews recognize the Father, then who is the descendent of God in Judaism? We all know who it is in Christianity (Jesus Christ), so tell us.

>>22368286
Adam?

Idk. I'm not a jew. I believe they are still waiting. Been a few claimants but most been silly occult schizos. Truth of Christianity however allowed for its global triumph to the present age.

>>22368312
>Adam?
You sure the Jews believe Adam is the Son of God? I'll need a source on that AND Plato knowing the Septuagint.

>>22368320
>adam
See Genesis 1&2
>platonic mosaic
>>Aristobulus, a Jew, claims that Plato followed the institutes of the Jews carefully, and this is repeated by Clement and Eusebius. All make the same claim about Pythagoras. Tertullian claims in his Apology that all poets and sophists draw from prophets.
>>Pagan philosophers say the same. Hermippus of Smyrna, who write life of Pythagoras, says that he ‘transferred many things out of the Jewish Institutions into his own philosophy’ and calls him ‘imitator of Jewish Dogmas.’ Gale takes from Grotius the notion that Pythagoras lived among Jews. Numenius is reputed to have said, ‘What is Plato but Moses Atticizing?’”

>>22368329
Any relevant single passage from Genesis? Anything other than hearsay about Plato?

>>22368344
Ngmi

>>22367965
It's a line from Clement of Alexandria. I wouldn't be surprised if he's just inferring from Philo of Alexandria's harmonization between Plato and the bible.

>>22368348
I rest my case.

>>22368355
Jesus is son of god and son of man. Many sons of god. Many sons of man. But only one who changed the course of history. Nothing else compares. Jews reinterpreted their entire religion post Christ and temple destruction because too proud to admit that they were no longer speshul ppl.

>>22368091
uhhhh Platosisters... what do we do

>>22369442
nothing, my Platonic troon. we simply rot and die. it's over

>>22361396
No, he's asking about whichever conception of "God" that Plato had.

The one is both one and not one =! Le Christian god is 3 persons

>>22370295
how

>>22370597
What do you mean how?

>>22370620
you made a claim. I want to know how

>>22367882
Said by pious idiots, since Plato died like a hundred years before the translation started.

>>22361302
Neither, Plato lived centuries before Judaism was invented. Some Forms are "within" some Gods, but the Gods don't really have minds separate from their bodies like we do.

>>22371808
Yet there are dialogues where Plato pretty much says the forms are within God, yet the Timaeus makes it seem like they are external. On top of this it appears none of his students took the Timaeus literally to mean that the Demiurge uses forms that subsist independently from him.

>>22372296
demiurge/deities=/=God/Good

>>22368091
you... you bastard

>>22371549
There is nothing within the platonic corpus that identifies The One, as a divinity with three persons. Now you explain to me why you think otherwise and provide your source.

>>22373573
Dude, re-read what they said:

>The one is both one and not one =! Le Christian god is 3 persons

The =! means "is not the same as".

>>22372296
>Yet there are dialogues where Plato pretty much says the forms are within God
Right, some of the Forms are within one of the infinite number of Gods. Well, no, that's correct, numbers are AFTER the Gods, so there's not an infinite number of Gods, there's just infinite deities and you can't count them because you can't apply counting to them.

>Yet the Timaeus makes it seem like they are external
Right, because the Gods are undying and eternal. They exist in the Realm of the Forms where time doesn't work like it does here.

>None of his students [believed that] the Demiurge uses forms that subsist independently from him.
Literally every single one does. Some of them can exist within him, but due to how Emanation works that means that they do exist separately from him, or some other deity. You can't access them without also accessing everything above that given Form, however, and you can't access a Form without getting to it via some pathway, which requires going up a chain of Gods.

>>22368320
>>22368312
In Judaism "son(s) of God" (בְנֵי־הָאֱלֹהִים) refers to the descendants of Seth ("the sons [of Seth who are] of Yahweh", as in they are the sons who are faithful to the divine), angels (this particularly comes into place with the Watchers), or to the deified kings of various non-Jewish Semitic citystates (they are the "sons of Yahweh", meaning that they are not his equals as they are just mortal men).

The term "son of man" (בן–אדם) just means "human" as the word "man" is actually "adam", the name of the first human, which just means "man", so "son of man" literally means "son of Adam" (the progenitor of all humans).

>>22373932
>Literally every single one does.

No, Xenocrates is proof against this. Stop using 'literally' like a retard.

>>22373932
>so there's not an infinite number of Gods, there's just infinite deities
I don't understand the distinction you're trying to draw, are you trying to distinguish between theoi and daimoniai, or between God as the demiourgos and the Olympians, or between God as the Jewish/Christian highest being and deities as the pagan Greek highest beings?

>>22361302
Timaeus is to be taken metaphorically. The Demiurge doesn't look to forms subsisting apart from him, but just to the forms that exist within him or that he emanates.

>>22362723
Okay, I will grant you that but I just do not see why the OP’s question is even important. By Socrates’ own words, the opinions of any deity or god do not matter so it shouldn’t matter to the form of justice whether it exists dependent on or independent of god. Is that not the entire point of the Euthyphro?

>>22361302
Both, because here's the hierarchy of Being.

One -> Forms -> Soul -> Body

The forms exist outside of the one in the sense that they are not the one, but are unified by it and owe their causal origin to it. Yet they are each distinct and separate forms. However if something is the cause of an effect, the cause must contain within itself the totality of the effect, how absurd it would be to say that the greater proceeds from the lesser, when in it is within reason to assert that all that is lesser necessarily proceeds from that which is greater. And due to this fact, the forms exist both outside and inside the One.

Perhaps to make it clearer we can borrow the nature of light to demonstrate this metaphysical relationship. First is it not observed that all the manifold colors of the world perceptible to the eye, owe to their origin the color white? For in the color white contains within itself the totality of every color, as is apparent in the natural phenomenon of the rainbow. Then you could say that the cause of each color outside of the color white is necessarily the color white itself? Therefore, you could say that all the manifold of colors, both exist inside and outside the color white. Much like how the Forms both exist inside and outside the One. And the same is true of each degree in the hierarchy with that which is greater than it.

>>22374428
Euthyphro doesn't have a "point." And OP's questions is important, because like every since Plato who has asked this question, there's an apparent contradiction between the forms subsisting in God in the Republic and the Demiurge looking to the forms in the Timaeus. Where and how the forms subsist has implications for everything that follows.

>>22374464
But the forms aren’t some kind of coherent monolith anyways. If there are forms of vice and forms of justice then they aren’t of the same nature. It’s nitpicking.

>>22374455
I suppose to tie the knot of this dilemma, it would be accurate to say that from the perspective of the One, all things are unified in him. However from the perspective of the Forms, they all exist outside of him. So, while both are true, this seemingly paradoxical statement is resolved by putting each degree in their rightful place, which is why the hierarchical classification is necessary to remove ambiguity and resolve paradoxes.

>>22374428
I agree with you that that's a consequence of the Euthyphro, but the plain surface of the dialogues differ almost from dialogue to dialogue, and figuring out why, what's harmonizable, what's not, seems to be the task of an interpreter. So on the one hand, Euthyphro presents the Forms as a standard independent of the gods, but Republic bk. X has an argument that requires the gods be responsible for the Ideas. Now, there does seem to be more support for the Ideas and Forms being separate, both by the palinode of the Phaedrus, and in the demiurge's being dependent on them making things in the Timaeus (and possibly implicitly in the Parmenides; nothing is really said one way or the other about whether the god brought up is responsible for the Forms, but insofar as they're discussed as objects the god knows, they at least seem separate). So the weight leans moreso in one direction over the other, but it stil leaves the Republic passage to be explained, and if the predominant message leans more in one direction, it's still not clear that those other accounts are necessarily harmonizable otherwise (mixing the Phaedrus and Timaeus accounts, for example, since there's so many thorny details).

As a similar example of different accounts, consider Justice: is it "making others perplexed" like at the end of the Gorgias? Is it a class which includes Piety as per the Euthyphro? Is it art of knowing how to use things, as per the Cleitophon? Or is it "minding one's own business" as per the Republic? I'm just saying that, wherever I stand in answering OP's question, I think it's a reasonable one to ask, and it's a little unfair to dismiss it totally.

>>22361302
The forms are the unfolding of the One that leads to Being.

bump

>>22370295
You’ve never read Plato or Plotinus

>>22375475
You've never read Proclus Elements. You've never read against the Christian's by Thomas Taylor.

>>22365028
Likely as the ultimate Form of the Good since he was into the philosophers.