/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12074288]

Let me explain why I'd recommend this book to everyone: Plato is stupid.

Seriously.

And it's important that you all understand that Western society is based on the fallacy-ridden ramblings of an idiot. Read this, understand that he is not joking, and understand that Plato is well and truly fucked in the head.

Every single one of his works goes like this:

SOCRATES: "Hello, I will now prove this theory!"
STRAWMAN: "Surely you are wrong!"
SOCRATES: "Nonsense. Listen, Strawman: can we agree to the following wildly presumptive statement that is at the core of my argument?" {Insert wildly presumptive statement here— this time, it's "There is such a thing as Perfect Justice" and "There is such a thing as Perfect Beauty", among others.}
STRAWMAN: "Yes, of course, that is obvious."
SOCRATES: "Good! Now that we have conveniently skipped over all of the logically-necessary debate, because my off-the-wall crazy ideas surely wouldn't stand up to any real scrutiny, let me tell you an intolerably long hypothetical story."
{Insert intolerably long hypothetical story.}
STRAWMAN: "My God, Socrates! You have completely won me over! That is brilliant! Your woefully simplistic theories should become the basis for future Western civilization! That would be great!"
SOCRATES: "Ha ha! My simple rhetorical device has duped them all! I will now go celebrate by drinking hemlock and scoring a cameo in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure!"

The moral of the story is: Plato is stupid.

[Anonymous No.12074292]

It was the very beginning.

[Anonymous No.12074293]

Ur stupid lol

[Anonymous No.12074298]

yeah if plato was born today he would be on his knees sucking my dick and telling me how smart and shit i am

[Anonymous No.12074310]

>>12074288
This is a G**dreads review, by the way.

[Anonymous No.12074311]

Shut up. On the off chance this isnt just bait, I agree with the general idea you're "presenting" here. But that doesn't mean Plato was dumb, or that his dialogues are unimportant. This is really elementary, dismissive critique that always feels more like laziness. I think Plato and the Greeks are wildly overrated and their assigned status as the founders of "Western Civilization" is an ideological meme, but it is a self fulfilling one that has reified itself and now we live in a world where it is necessary to read the Greeks to understand many of the origins of western thought. Even putting that aside, their artificial, historically arbitrary status as founders doesnt make them any less fascinating or the many insights and methods they did pioneer any less valuable. They should just be placed in the proper historical context. Offhandedly dismissing the Greeks as just "wrong" or "irrelevant" is even worse than worshipping them uncritically, because at least with that worship you might learn something here or there.

[Anonymous No.12074327]

Why are normalfags literally incapable of understanding the point of philosophy? They all seem to treat it either akin to self help or can't see past the content.

[Anonymous No.12074352]

>>12074288
okay, yeah, maybe that's simplistic and skipping some bits, that doesn't undermine legitimacy of what Plato did or did not say, it just tells you Plato would rather skip over bullshit pedantics you'd like to engage in all day long OP

[Anonymous No.12074437]

>he's still reading infinite jest six years on

Is Brendan the philosopher king that was spoken of by prophets?

[Anonymous No.12074449]

lol he uses the same nym elsewhere on the net that he uses on Goodreads (AwesomeBrainPowers). He has not changed one bit since that OP review over 10 years ago. He is active on reddit a few days ago with opinions you would imagine him to have. Imagine being the personification of reddit but never changing over a 10+ year period. It's like he has been frozen in 2007, then awoken a week ago and everyone he argues against is a Fox-watching Christian nazi.

[Anonymous No.12074458]

Plato is the greatest philosopher.

Plato wrote dialogues rather than essays because he wanted to lead his readers along gradually so they might open their minds for themselves and achieve a state of intellectual contemplation; rather than just reading an essay, thinking "I understand that", and either agreeing or disagreeing and moving on without achieving any higher mental state.

If you read Plato expecting another essayist then there's no doubt you'll think he's stupid or primitive. But if you realise that the arguments he presents are merely the surface of the dialogue, and that they're only a lens through which to see the higher intellectual realms he's unveiling beneath then you'll realise that there's basically never been another philosopher worthy of the name.

Plato not only proved the existence of the soul to me, he made me experience its existence through contemplation. No essayist has even provoked that kind of experience.

[Anonymous No.12074476]

>Every single one of his works goes like this:
Except, you know, various works were Socrates and his interlocutors don't reach a conclusion and separate in ambiguity. Starting with the Republic is a shitty idea when it produces plebs like you, go read the early works and gain an appreciation for the dialectical method of Socrates.

[Anonymous No.12074487]

his galaxy brain responses are amazing: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6763498

[Anonymous No.12074493]

>>12074487
>My goodness, lots of discussion on this review. Wish I'd been active on Goodreads while it was happening.

>Anyway, Zach: I'm not sure to whom your comment is addressed, but assuming you're talking to me, I do appreciate its importance, which is what makes me so angry.

>The Republic (and the rest of Plato's work, ) helped establish a pattern of overly-simplistic generalization, rhetoric disguised as dialectic, and false dichotomies parading as analysis.

>And you can make the claim that at the time it was the forefront of philosophical thought, but the few extant works by Heraclitus of Ephesus show that philosophers of the time (and of earlier times) were capable of not only grasping the notion of concurrent-but-contradictory truths, of constant flux--of uncertainty, to use a more contemporary term--but giving it a (relatively) thorough philosophical exploration.

>To give a specific example, the Allegory of the Cave infuriates me. Plato makes a considered, persuasive argument that we accept the reality that we are presented, that we can't trust our impressions--that things are not necessarily what they seem. I find it logically incongruous that the same person who makes that argument--someone who has clearly read Heraclitus and Cratylus--can then champion a philosophy that takes as its foundation the notion of True Forms, of Perfect Ideals. I also find it incredibly annoying that that very same person, who describes his own logical shortcomings (in his own argument!) without recognizing them, is considered one of the fathers of logical thought.

>That Plato's arguments are rife with these inconsistencies isn't my problem; that he uses the structure of a (strawman-heavy) dialogue to gloss over these glaring omissions is. So I do understand and appreciate Plato's importance to the history of ideas; I just see his as a largely negative influence, establishing a tone for future philosophical discussion of "there is only one True and Correct thing, let me show you why you are wrong", which can only be stultifying to the search for new and more interesting and revelatory ideas

[Anonymous No.12074495]

>>12074487
All of the respondents seem to be just as stupid as him.

[Anonymous No.12074498]

>>12074493

>You may point that out. And I may remind you that this is my review and thus in no way subject to your dominion of humorless self-seriousness. As far as what you prefer: Since this is, again, my review, I will write in accordance to my own preference. For example, my preference would be to never be forced to deal with the kind of pompous killjoy arrogance on display here. Or perhaps your brilliant satire. At the moment, I'm having more fun presuming the former, so let's run with that, shall we? (Hint: We shall.)

>"Antiquities" aren't holy things. They're old stuff. That's it. They're incredibly valuable because of what they tell us about our social development and collective history, but they are made of wood and leather and stone just like everything else. They are not comprised of some kind of Sacred Materia. In three thousand years, they will be digging up the half-destroyed carcasses of iPods and debating their uses just as we do Archimedes' Screw. They are just old stuff, and as such demand much learned study and consideration, but are in no way sullied by "slang".

>In the same way, Plato's argument here is facile at best. Most of his rhetorical methods wouldn't pass his own rigorous examination, hinging as they do on preposterous and obvious strawmen, and the work deserves to be honestly debated on its merits (and not solely on its age or historiographical value). To hold ancient writings to some vaunted standard simply because they are old does a discredit to you, a discredit to the works, and a discredit to the time in which they were written. It's Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc dressed up in bowties and tweed elbow-patched jackets, and it's elitist is the worst way--it undermines the discourse instead of elevating it.

>So: Lighten up. It was obviously a joke, and I chose the language that I did simply because I thought the sentence "Plato is retarded" was funny and made for a punchy tagline (given the traffic this review has gotten, I'd say I was right). Could I have written a very sober review of Plato's rhetorical shortcomings, full of pomp and buzzword-heavy self-aggrandizement? Sure. But that wouldn't have been as much fun.


>All that assumes you were being serious. If you weren't, then your comment is hilariously dry. I decided to respond to it mostly because I found much of this comments section to be in desperate need of a little joviality, even if your particular comment was intended as the joke I hope it was

[Anonymous No.12074558]

>>12074288
What there’s countless times Plato has written dialogues that directly contradict what he actually believes. I know you think you’re a genius because you can’t conceive of what it would be like to live in like 5th century BC but seriously you are a god damn brainlet that either can’t read or skimmed hard on his works

I’d argue that the platonic form for the method of finding platonic forms is the scientific method

[Anonymous No.12074577]

>>12074288
my god, you've figured it out. Why were the greats before us spending so much time studying this obvious hack? Why weren't they as based as you and saw through Plato. Why people spend time studying this bluepilled cuck is beyond me.

[Anonymous No.12074666]

>>12074558
actually even more is that almost all of the popular arguments of old against Plato were made by Plato himself first

[Anonymous No.12074868]

>>12074558
This, plebs read philosophers in order to agree with them. Real giants like Plato write works to subtantiate contrary opinions and see how they hold up.

[Anonymous No.12074892]

>>12074449
>nearly all his posts are to /r/politics
so this is what memes look like

[Anonymous No.12074911]

imagine thinking that dialectic is strawmanning

this is what memorizing fallacies from wikipedia does to your brain

[Anonymous No.12074922]

>>12074892
>>12074911
this. picrelated

[Anonymous No.12075289]

can someone post the screencap that is this exact post but funnier? the one where the person Socrates talks to is called Sycophantocles

[Anonymous No.12075375]

>>12074458
Fuck yeah

[Anonymous No.12075415]

>>12074493
holy kek.
>being this butthurt and personally offended by someone who's been dead for millenia
he's one of those rare people who displays narcisstic traits, and has the autistic chops to parade them before the world and make a total fool of himself

[Anonymous No.12075418]

Entire Philosophy is just a comment of plato bibliography

[Anonymous No.12075448]

>>12074495
it makes me realize that, as despicable as it can be, this board is an island of sanity at times. I was researching solipsism and stumbled on a guardian page where readers posted their own "refutations" thereof.
https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-24820,00.html

[Anonymous No.12075517]

>>12074288
>OP: I love sucking dicks!
>EVERYONE: Yes, we know, OP.

[Anonymous No.12075569]

>>12074558
This. Plato is pretty based because he is actually self aware. Philosophy is there to expand the range of human thought. You can’t help though but feel that they are full of shit though when you read their works, such as Nietzhe, Ayn Rand, or Marx. I remember when reading Atlas Shrugged there is a scene where a train is about to crash filled with innocent people but she says that all of them aren’t actually innocent since they supported socialism, and she goes down the car listing each person and their misdeeds. One of them being a high school football coach who encouraged teamwork, which is (((collectivist))). Nietzsche was a severe opium addict desiring a world beyond good and evil where the weak fear the strong and Christian “slave morality” has been extinguished, most embodied by Nazi Germany. Yet he denounced German Nationalism, proving himself a hypocrite who wouldn’t want to live in such a depressing world. Look at
>pic related
Clearly many of these most esteemed philosophers are actually pretty retarded

[Anonymous No.12075570]

>>12074288
The most pedestrian reading of The Republic I have ever seen

[Anonymous No.12075603]

>>12075569
>>12075569
>woah fuck morality that is just for sheeple controlled by their society
>fat ass philosopher gets “Blood Meridian’ed” by wild raiders who also don’t care about morality

[Anonymous No.12075615]

>>12075569
>woah, society should be illiterate like the good old days

[Anonymous No.12075622]

>>12074288
Wow, a book that no one takes seriously in the political world is shit? Please tell us more.

[Anonymous No.12075629]

>>12074493
>>12074498
Yikes and cringepilled

[Anonymous No.12075654]

>>12075448
/lit/ is a shitty place to talk about western philosophy, but all others are way worse.
The occasional effortpost you find in this place is worth more than any dry analytic scholar on r/askphilosophy

[Anonymous No.12075689]

>>12074311
Western civ is not an ideological meme, its an attempt to trace our most fundamental values and their propagation. Its not a perfect story but an important one. Its a truism that all conceptual structurea have fuzzy boundaries, pomos abuse the fact that people don't walk around in constant awareness to undermine the narratives they politically oppose. Dont listen to them or be tricked

[Anonymous No.12075728]

>>12074288
>intolerably long hypothetical story
You know nothing about Plato or Socrates. They preferred brevity. And the vast majority of arguments are short. They may appear to stretch over several pages (in some instances even 10+), but that’s because the stories have literary value.

Plato and Socrates also weren’t trying to prove any theory. Socrates’ intention was to show the opponent that his reasoning was not well-founded, which then led to aphoria. Plato tried to do a similar thing, but with the reader. It’s entirely possible that he intentionally wrote faulty arguments in hope that it’d force the reader to think about what’s being said, find the errors, and perhaps try to improve the arguments. There are no greater truths in the platonic dialogues.

[Anonymous No.12075845]

>>12075654
No doubt.
do you think the anonymity of this board allows for more genuine, sincere discussion (under ideal circumstances, kek) of relevant issues without the pompous attention-whoring that might come with "identity" in the form of a username?

[Anonymous No.12075880]

>>12075845
Not that anon but imo attention whores are gonna attention whore. If ppl on leddit derive pleasure from the social recognition attached to a digital identity which they control, ppl around here derive pleasure from being able to do what they want recklessly with little to no social consequence. The differences between an identity based vs an anonymity based system aren't nearly enough to correct the ego-driven necessities of manchildren

[Anonymous No.12075892]

>>12075845
Different anon, but yes. People here are more interested in discussing abstract ideas than using a thesaurus to appear smart and gather a following for their username. The downside is that you can also spew low effort bullshit and call everyone faggots without blowback.

[Anonymous No.12075924]

>>12074288
The only problem with Plato is that he didn't explicitly condemn the demiurge.

[Anonymous No.12075958]

>>12075892
you fucking faggot, get out of here with your shit opinion

[Anonymous No.12076007]

>>12075924
He didn’t because he fears the Demiurge. A malicious God condemning him to hell for lack of syncophantic blind worship.

[Anonymous No.12076067]

>>12075892
I'll shamefully admit that I"ve taken advantage of the "no blowback" clause too many times to count..
It kind of blows my mind how I've had more meaningful discussions about niche philosophy of mind and language topics on here than I've had anywhere else, including irl.

[Anonymous No.12076105]

>>12076007
Which, let's face it, is eminently reasonable. Worth thinking about, at least

[Anonymous No.12076114]

So what Socrates was basically saying during his trial: Good people=good, bad people=bad?

[Anonymous No.12076118]

>>12076067
i’ve never really debated philosophy with anyone irl because I think nobody really listens to what you say. They just wait for their turn to speak so they can tell you what they think (and maybe try to impose their superiority). Or if there is response to what someone is saying, it’s very superficial.
I wish I had friends who would like to debate philosophy without getting bored after a few mins and who wouldn’t be the "all-knowing" retards.

[Anonymous No.12076122]

>>12074327
The only reason why people read books is so they can get closer to their ideal sex life or ideal financial situation.

[Anonymous No.12076128]

>>12076114
He apologised to the people of Athens for being a bad influence. That’s why it’s called the Apology.

[Anonymous No.12076153]

>>12076122
This is unfortunately the attitude of the vast majority of people today. The only things worth learning are things that directly get you sex or a better job

[Anonymous No.12076154]

>>12076118
fuuuu - i know. most people treat conversation as an opportunity to stroke their own egos. i probably used to do so as well.
has anyone ever started a /lit/ philosophy discord?

[Anonymous No.12076184]

>>12074487

It's startling that this cesspit is only vaguely bad and not totally so. Whereas women's sites like goodreads or metafilter, and "high level" sites full of "professionals" like quora are always awful.

[Anonymous No.12076204]

>>12076184
see >>12075845>>12075892

thank god for weeaboos forging a place on the internet to indulge in their degeneracy

[Anonymous No.12076894]

>>12075615
>>12075603
Based Nietzsche shitter

[Anonymous No.12077247]

Lol I remember seeing this faggot's review