/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12199206]

Can someone explain Plato's forms to me?

[Anonymous No.12199210]

Here we go again.

[Anonymous No.12199213]

>>12199210
What?

[Anonymous No.12199231]

>>12199206
Think about how awesome your ideas seem until you write them down and they sound like shit

[Anonymous No.12199242]

They are perfect representations of a concept or object from which all other existences of that object/concept are imperfect reflections. When Socrates asks "what is courage?" or "what is justice?" He is essentially trying to find the form of courage or justice--that is, the thing in-and-of-itself divorced from any real, and hence imperfect, representation. Plato believed these forms actually existed somewhere, and that to be able to divine them was the task of the philosopher. These forms represented absolute truth.
That's my interpretation anyway

[Anonymous No.12199253]

>>12199242
this is correct

[Anonymous No.12199254]

>>12199242
I like this post

[Anonymous No.12199257]

>>12199242
>someWHERE
Wrong. The Forms are aspatial (and atemporal for that matter. They do not have a place (or time).

[Anonymous No.12199260]

>>12199257
so where are they?

[Anonymous No.12199341]

>>12199260
I've already answered that question. Due to their immateriality, they're aspatial. They cannot, by definition, be predicated of a place. It's like asking "where is the number 1?".

[Anonymous No.12199554]

bump

[Anonymous No.12199642]

>>12199206
What needs to be explained? Plato is just Gnosticism for mundane retards that don't get it.

[Anonymous No.12199647]

>>12199206
The best explanation of the platonic ideal can be found in the NYT bestselling novel, "Death only knocks sometimes"

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L74B7Q3/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1544271710&sr=1-1&keywords=death+only+knocks+sometimes

[Anonymous No.12199670]

>>12199242
This is a nice post. It's nice to see something productive happen on this board once in a while. With that out the way thought I'd ask if someone can give me the rundown of Aristotle's categories. I think I've got the hang.

[Anonymous No.12199690]

>>12199242
Where are the forms? Would it theoretically be possible to invent a machine to enter their dimension and interact with them?

[Anonymous No.12199714]

Greeks are fucking retards and you're having problems understanding the concepts of abstract concepts, you might be autistic.

[Anonymous No.12199825]

>>12199206
gay

[Anonymous No.12199829]

>>12199714
Yeah I think any thread on the forms should be banned. Too pleb.

[Anonymous No.12200375]

>>12199242
How did he think he could attain the universal forms using methods confined in this imperfect structure, that is, apart from the things-in-themselves?

[Anonymous No.12200404]

Plato can.
Just read his works, my dude. If you don't completely understand something keep going, but re-read the book eventually.

[Anonymous No.12200412]

>>12200375
Logic and Maths. Seriously guys fucking read Plato. Such stupid questions.

Also stop using Kantian-Hegelian vocabulary to explain Plato to people who don't read Plato.

[Anonymous No.12200447]

>>12200412
What maths? Are you talking arithmetic or pure maths or applied maths? Just saying "study maths" is so vague.

[Anonymous No.12200453]

>>12200447
Geometry, sweaty. There wasn't much variety at the time of Plato, and I didn't tell anyone to study maths.

[Anonymous No.12200455]

>>12199206
Truth

[Anonymous No.12200484]

>>12200412
does he explain it in any of his dialogues?
i've read symposium, republic, phaedrus and the 4 trial dialogues

[Anonymous No.12200496]

>>12200484
Kind of in Phaedo. Immortality of soul is the hypothesis provided in order to explain how we come to know mathematical proofs.

[Anonymous No.12200645]

>>12200453
Would learning geometry help with philosophy in general or just understanding Plato? If not, what maths do you recommend one learn?

[Anonymous No.12200686]

>>12200645
Maths is rigorous pure thinking and hopefully any thinking will benefit from learning it.

I don't suggest you learn maths unless you are interested in maths but I do regret dropping it during A-levels. I also regret taking drugs as a youngin.

For philosophy, historically geometry was important for the Greeks, Descartes, Spinoza. Algebra as well for Descartes. I have no idea what is being done in contemporary logic but a lot of it takes knowledge of how mathematical proofs work for granted, and a lot of philosophy today takes knowledge of logic for granted.

Maybe those retards arguing about Kit Fine and Pierce in the justification thread can give better advice.

[Anonymous No.12200694]

>>12200686
Sorry I dont know how I forgot calculus. Even Deleuze makes use of it. Do you need to get it? Eh. You decide. But calc isnt important because of Leibniz alone but also because philosophy works hand in hand with the sciences and you need to get what these men are responding to.

[Anonymous No.12200698]

>>12200686
Oh, I recently fell in love with maths. I read a book on philosophy and was surprised to learn that Galileo and Newton as well as Einstein were philosophers and there was a deep connection between philosophy and mathematics.

Also, I don't wanna end up learning maths and not being able to translate it to philosophy. Got any books, articles or advice on how this is accomplished?

Also, can you recommend a intro to logic book?

[Anonymous No.12201365]

>>12199690
It is unclear where the forms reside, as it is like asking where Mount Olympus resides. The closest we get to a spacial description of the realm of forms is in Phaedrus, where Socrates tells a story of what happens after death. In this story he tells of the soul's trip in the after-world. If one had lived a life of contemplation—that is, the life of a philosopher or an especially virtuous person (though for Plato these two are one-and-the-same)—one's soul would gain wings and be able to sail the skies with ease. The less virtuous a life one lived, the more imperfect the wings one's soul would gain. At the end of this journey through the after-world, the soul would meet a steep mountain (this may have been Mount Olympus, i can't quite remember). Those souls who had not lived a life of contemplation and virtue, and as such had imperfect wings, would not have the strength or ability to fly to the peak of this mountain, and hence would finish their other worldly traversal here. But those who had lived a good life, who had perfect wings, would be able to fly closer to the peak, where they would be escorted by the Gods to the summit. There on the summit, they would gaze upwards with the Gods at the realm of forms. Though one shouldn't take a story like this so literally.

>>12200375
Plato seems to suggest that one can divine the forms of an object or concept by exposure to many different imperfect examples of that object/concept. Again, in Phaedrus, Socrates tells the titular Phaedrus that to discover the true form of love one must have experienced many kinds of love—yes, even the negative kinds such as losing oneself to obsession and of unrequited love. Through experiencing all these examples, viewing a great many imperfect representations, and through careful contemplation, one can find the core thing that such a concept or object is: the form of that concept/object. To Plato, the soul was immortal and what is learned is carried with you after death and reincarnation, so spending a great deal of time discovering just one form isn't a waste of a life but a necessary part of the souls journey. Thus, if we are to take Plato's ethics as a whole, he would be saying we should live a life of both experience and contemplation, with the purpose of discovering the core truths of the universe. There is a part near the end of Republic where Socrates seems to imply that, if one has gazed upon many forms though their souls journey, they will be even able to discern the form of forms—the form of the good, the cosmic nous, from which gazing upon will grant the philosopher noesis—true understanding.

[Anonymous No.12201368]

>>12200686
math doesn't seem to translate to other types of thinking at all, maybe because it's so abstract that there are just no equivalent forms in real life.

There are exceptions, like statistics and probabliity

[Anonymous No.12201407]

>>12199206
It's like if you put a chair in front of a cave on a sunny day. The shadow inside the cave isn't really the chair, but the cave is populated with a bunch of tards who get fooled really easily. Also all shadows are actually from one single chair that exists in another world which is much nicer place to live than the tard cave

[Anonymous No.12201416]

>>12199341
>number 1

Frankly, 'One' is probably the closest description we have to the ur-form of which everything we observe partakes.

[Anonymous No.12201447]

>>12201368
But abstraction is what a form is. Consider Plato's example in the Republic, say a table or a chair. The guy who made the chair has an idea of chairness, say a template, which he reproduces over and over. So the idea precedes the actual object and although there is one idea, namely the form of the chair, there are multiple chairs. This is how it is described. Now consider what Berkeley says about abstract terms: there is no abstract idea of a circle but there is each individual circle that is a matter of concern (Hume says smth similar). Hence Plato and Aristotle's ideas on forms are said to prefigure the rationalist empiricist debate.
>>12200698
I can't guarantee that you will be able to translate anything. Try Logic for Philosophy by Ted Sider. It should be online somewhere. Also read some Russell and Frege if youd like to know the connection between mathematics and phil of language (also secondary literature!! Living academics are doing valuable work so I don't get the widespread despair about not understanding an author here. Just Google until you find an explanation).

[Anonymous No.12201465]

>>12201407
Reread the allegory. The shadows are of objects held by puppeteers against a fire. And behind them is the exit from the cave, and there the real shadows and objects and the Sun.

[Anonymous No.12202609]

bump

[Anonymous No.12203415]

What works of Plato are generally recommended and in what order? There's no complete works book in my language.

[Anonymous No.12203426]

>>12203415
Start with the trial dialogues (euthyphro, apology, crito etc) then maybe symposium or republic, phaedo, phaedrus, ion. These are mostly short. Continue as you wish and as you read and explore secondary literature on different topics and dialogues.

[Anonymous No.12203449]

Literally concepts.
How is this hard.

[Anonymous No.12203489]

I think this is the simplest explanation possible:
>There's a form called Justice
>There are particulars which can be considered just
>All of these particulars share something which puts them under the form of Justice
>But they are not Justice itself, just have some kind of little piece of Justice in them
>The highest form is the form of Good, which is basically the Sun in the cave analogy
Socrates is trying to find out what the forms are through dialectic and observing particulars.

[Anonymous No.12203508]

>>12203489
Jesus Christ Plato was some bluepilled spooked fuck.

[Anonymous No.12203565]

>>12201407
no no no, the shadows in the cave are like he hiroshima shadows, imprints from a nuclear explosion. plato knew about nukes from ancient india obviously. the shadow of a chair burned into the wall of your cave is just a poetic expression of the feeling of profound loss of what you once had (plato's famed "theory of recollection") and introduces us to the central mystery of platonic realism which is "who stole my furniture?"

[Anonymous No.12203828]

>>12203565
Good parody of academic mental gymnastics to prove Greece was influenced by the ancient east.

[Anonymous No.12204777]

>>12199206
>The images are manifest to man, but the light in them remains concealed in the image of the light of the father. He will become manifest, but his image will remain concealed by his light

[Anonymous No.12204826]

>>12199206
Try to think the forms as the opposite of the warhammer warp. In the warp, ideas/forms and thoughts receive a pyshical form from the real world, and these warp manifestations are the reflections of the state of those thoughts in the reality

In Plato view, the "warp" is where everything, thoughts included, are found in their original and perfect forms, and the reality is where they manifest themselves in a finite and imperfect manner.

A computer dwelve would elaborate this thesis in this way: reality acts as an input device with the world of forms in the Warhammer's view, and as output device in Plato's view

[Anonymous No.12204844]

>>12199242
Thank you. I just got into Plato’s writings and after reading about the forms a few times you’ve cleared up most of the areas I didn’t understand.

[Anonymous No.12204864]

>>12200484
>>12200496
What this anon said. In Phaedo is the dialogue in which Plato most discusss the afterlife and the forms. I suggest reading any sort of reissue of “the trial and death” that involves a critical analysis because it makes understanding the context and materials at hand. Even modern philosophers struggle with understanding the concepts of the forms. Had I not read the deeper meaning analysis before I jumped into “trial and death” I would’ve been a little lost myself. Good luck!

[Anonymous No.12204869]

>>12201365
This is a good summary. Also that Plato picture is hilarious for just the teeth alone.

[Anonymous No.12204898]

>>12203415
>>12203426
Yep, what this anon said. Plus pic related.

[Anonymous No.12204915]

>>12203508
Well he did work with that one politician in Syracuse and got the fuck out of there because he realized political power and philosophy in that context wouldn’t work. Even though he (or Socrates, can’t remember) said that politics and philosophy should work hand in hand (with of course, enlightened philosophy coming first.)