/lit/ - Literature

I dunno

>>7349469
no

>>7349469
no, he was just autistic

>>7349469
It reminds me of this video;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ohVhUM_o8Y

Irony is not satire

>>7349469
When I read it in college I assumed it was because what smart man can assume that other smart men essentially have all of the traits necessary to be absolute rulers. Now I think he was probably legit. Maybe seeing his teacher go to trial and die over bullshit motivated him.

>>7349469
There's a joke that answers this question quite easily. It goes as thus:

Person 1: "Was it Plato that wrote a satire?"

Person 2: "No, it was Donkey Kong who sat on a tire. Are you a fucking moron?"

I know I'm no professional quote maker but..... eh?

>>7349469
No. It was just meant to be thought-provoking and consistent with a little humor thrown in. Dude was a clever writer.

>>7349649
This.

The Republic is thoroughly *ironic* (that is, dissembling, dissimulating), and it may have some satirical elements (the "women's drama" section of the three waves is in part a parody of Aristophanes' "Assembly of Women"), but that doesn't make the work "satire".

But I'm supposing the question is also asking something like "did Plato believe that the city developed in the Republic could be set up?" The answer to that question is answered by the ironical elements of the work, which is a pretty firm "no" both to that city, and to utopianism/political idealism generally.

It wasn't necessarily a satire, but it wasn't meant to be taken literally

>>7350134
>>7350138
Basically what these two are saying.
It's not satire, but it's not literal. As with many of his dialogues, plato pushes the limits of his and his partner's thought, trying to reach a certain conclusion about (in this case) how a country should be built around virtue, and why is it necessary. He very clearly understands that the utopia he describes is impossible, and probably not perfectly imagined by him, but it's the general outlines that Plato portrays that matter. Concepts like a philosopher king, the cave, pedagogy, are all very interesting and influential.

are that matters*

>>7349699
I'm trying to understand what you were thinking when you posted this.

If this is bait, its psychological complexity is unprecedented.

Archived discussion of the same topic:

>>/lit/thread/S7271096

>>7350171
Obviously there is some thought behind it with the wordplay on 'a satire' versus 'sat on a tire', but the Donkey Kong part is what I don't get. Maybe there is some joke wrt 'Playdough'?

>>7349699
The intricacies of this bait are astounding.

>Plato was only pretending to be retarded, right guise?

sorry greek philosophy is just stupid deal with it

>>7350361
Irony in action is a beautiful thing.

>>7349699
another stellar /lit/ shitpost

it's as if thought can actually regress backwards, transform itself into a negative idiocy where each further plunge is as impressive as the sweeping claims of a genius.

>>7349699
nice dubs m8

buuuump

Would anyone be interested in doing a reading of it? It's been a while since I've read the damn thing, and it'd be nice to have people to bounce ideas back and forth with.

>>7351259
I'm still on Cratylus m8

>>7351259
Getting there, still need to read the Symposium and maybe Protagoras or any other dialogue before I want to delve into Plato's Magnum Opus

>>7351268
Oh shit, you're reading the Cratylus? How's that going?

>>7351293
What have you read so far?

>>7349469

Probably not, but I think it was degradated and modified by arab (and/or maybe christian) scholastics which would be why it reads so strangely compared to the rest of his works.

Still my least favorite dialog.

>>7351359
Basically following this trajectory https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y8_RRaZW5X3xwztjZ4p0XeRplqebYwpmuNNpaN_TkgM/edit?pli=1#..

As of now I have read: Gorgias, Meno, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Euthyphro, and halfway through the Symposium.

>>7351368
>Probably not, but I think it was degradated and modified by arab (and/or maybe christian) scholastics which would be why it reads so strangely compared to the rest of his works
"Reads so strangely" in what ways that mark it as different from other Platonic writings?

>>7351380

I didn't write " it reads so strangely as opposed to the rest of his works which are not strange ", I wrote " it reads so strangely COMPARED to the rest of his works ". For example, see how he wants the poets banned from the City when he himself quotes Homer every two lines in his other dialogs.

>>7351457
>see how he wants the poets banned from the City when he himself quotes Homer every two lines in his other dialogs.
Do you think that the banishment of the poets is unrelated to the broader argument of the Republic?

What of his contest with the poets in the Symposium? Doesn't that suggest some manner of consistency with the Republic, at least with respect to the more limited view that Poetry and Philosophy are rivals?

>>7351359
I'm going to start soon--I've only read the intro so far. I'll start once I'm done with 'The Nigger of the Narcissus' by Conrad; quite a good book btw.

From what I've seen of Cratylus it looks quite interesting, especially as one of the interlocutors holds a position similar to mine (that words gain their meanings from people; that they don't have pre-existing meaning).

I'm reading through all of Plato's works; It's going to take a while, but once I've sorted out my daily time I feel it shouldn't take too long. It's very fun tho.

>>7351457
It's important to remember that the idea's presented aren't necessarily Plato's ideas, and that they may not be intended to be taken on a literal level.

>>7351561
>tfw decided to shitpost tonight on 4chan instead of finishing the Symposium

It'll take quite some time before I even get to the Medieval period ;_;

sidenote: is it advised to read Epictetus before moving on to Aristotle after I've read the 'important' works of Plato?

>>7351608
Ah you just gotta balance ya time my man; make attempts to schedule it and have a time-table for the day, makes your day far more productive (you can slip back into procrastinating and shitposting desu baka)

From what I know Epictetus doesn't really *require* any other philosophers, I'm sure any references would be explained in the notes or introduction. Unless you're asking 'is he required reading for the canon?' I'd say read him if you want to, as with any author.

>>7351561
I haven't read that one by Conrad yet, but it's on my reading list. I've been meaning to spend more time with him and Melville.

If you'd like to discuss Cratylus at all, I'd be down if you started a topic when you've gotten into it some more. I helped lead a study group on it a few years ago, and discussion with others really helped make some sense of it, though I still have a lot of questions about it.

>>7351608
>is it advised to read Epictetus before moving on to Aristotle after I've read the 'important' works of Plato?
You could. There's at least nothing obvious stopping you. But I suppose one could also note that the Stoics by the time of Epictetus were very much influenced by elements in Aristotelian thought, especially his writings on logic and the divisions of the sciences. There's probably also something to say about elements of continuity in following up Plato with Aristotle, both in agreement and disagreement, since Aristotle engages directly with Plato's thought and dialogues.

>>7351570
That seems right. The context of the arguments about banning the poets from the city is grounded in a discussion of the education of the guardians, and the guardians were already established as the necessary ruling element of the city. And the city itself is ostensibly an analogy of the soul of the individual, used as an image in order to gain a clearer understanding of how Justice works in the soul by means of an example that displays Justice in large writ. All of that itself is determined by the subject of the conversation, what Justice itself is, and whether and how it's related to the good.

Justice being the determining and partial factor, one could ask whether the "Just city" is different from say, the "Moderate city", or the "Courageous city", or even the "Wise city". If the demand of the conversation is to see what the "Just city" looks like and what is involved in its makeup, then we've implicitly demanded to see the formulation of a city strictly ruled with Justice as the *primary* standard, and perhaps at the expense of looking at the formulation of cities guided strictly by the other virtues.

(One of the possible flaws of the "literal" interpretation you point to might be that it's not "literal" enough, that it's too partial towards certain passages over others. That reading ignores, for example, the doubts that Socrates casts on the possibility of such a city ever arising, as well as a passage late in the Republic where the following is said: "'But in heaven,' I said, 'perhaps, a pattern is laid up for the man who wants to see and found a city within himself on the basis of what he sees. It doesn't make any difference whether it is or will be somewhere. For he would mind the things of this city alone, and of no other.'")

bump

>>7349699
what the fuck

>>7351374
This is an excellent resource. Where did you find this? Is it in the wiki?