Plato Thread

[Anonymous No.15090703]

I've often seen people being very cynical about Plato's work. Claiming that he abuses Socrates as a vessel to propagate his own teachings as well as Socrates being dishonest and the dialogues using strawmen of his opponents to make Plato/Socrates look correct. I'd like to know what you think about this. The fact that Plato dedicated his entire work to him and only inserts himself in one or two dialogues as an unknown side character comes across to me like he really held Socrates in highest regards as genuine friend.

[Anonymous No.15090736]

>>15090703
you won't find serious responses to those questions here.
there is some decent literature about it made by teachers who have been teaching Plato and greek philosophy for decades.

[Anonymous No.15090765]

Bertrand Russel on Plato:
"Plato possessed the art to dress up illiberal suggestions in such a way that they deceived future ages, which admired the Republic without ever becoming aware of what was involved in its proposals. It has always been correct to praise Plato, but not to understand him. This is the common fate of great men. My object is the opposite. I wish to understand him, but to treat him with as little reverence as if he were a contemporary English or American advocate of totalitarianism."

[Anonymous No.15090794]

>>15090765
Don't like Russell but he's absolutely correct here.

[Anonymous No.15090836]

>>15090794
Beetroot Rapunzel is a flea in the shadow of Plato

[Anonymous No.15090888]

>>15090765
Russell comes across as a Redditor throughout that whole book. Dumped that shit for durants

[Anonymous No.15090924]

>>15090765
Russell is entirely correct in his view of Plato. Aristotle is far more interesting and humane.

[Anonymous No.15090965]

>>15090924
Except when it comes to women. Maybe try reading the people you are reading criticisms about

[Anonymous No.15090972]

>>15090965
He loved the ladies

[Anonymous No.15090980]

>>15090703
Lol at this thread about Plato becoming a thread about very bad readings of Plato.. genuinely though, nice try.

[Anonymous No.15091055]

>>15090703
1. What is Platoism?
2. How did Plato and Socrates differ?

[Anonymous No.15091057]

>Plato is dead, and dead is his devise, Which some thought witty, none thought ever wise.
- Joseph Hall (Bishop of Norwich): Virgidemarium, v, 1598

>Plato's works are logical exercises for the mind. Little that is positive is advanced in them. Socrates may be fairly represented by Plato in the more moral parts; but in all the metaphysical disquisitions it is Pythagoras.
- Coleridge: Table-Talk, 1824

>Fashion and authority apart, and bringing Plato to the test of reason, take from him his sophisms, futilities and incomprehensibilities and what remains of him? His foggy mind is forever presenting the semblance of objects which, while half seen through a mist, can be defined neither in form nor in terms of dimension.
Thomas Jefferson: Letter to John Adams, 1814

[Anonymous No.15091075]

>>15091055
>There are not in the world at any one time more than a dozen persons who read and understand Plato.
- R.W. Emerson: Representative Men, II, 1850

[Anonymous No.15091076]

>>15090765
The republic is a metaphor for the human soul, isn't it?

[Anonymous No.15091095]

>>15090980
>>15086874

[Anonymous No.15091101]

>Plato, in the book of his laws, which no city ever yet received, fed his fancy with making many edicts to his airy burton asters, which they who otherwise admire him, wish had been rather buried and excused in the genial cups of an academic night.
- John Milton, Areopagitica, 1644

[Anonymous No.15091109]

>>15091101
*fed many edicts to his airy burgomasters

[Anonymous No.15091194]

>Plato and Aristotle were well-bred men, and, like others, laughing with their friends: and when they diverted themselves in making their laws and politics they did it playfully. It was the least philosophic and least serious aspect of their lives. The most philosophic was living simply and tranquilly.
Blaise Pascal: Book VIII of Thoughts, 1670

[Anonymous No.15091245]

why do they call it Platonism if Socrates came up with it all lmao philosophers are so dumb

[Anonymous No.15091250]

>>15091194
Ancient Philosophy was like videogames to the Greeks, they would be horrified to see how seriously we take them today.

[Anonymous No.15091280]

>>15091076
Why would Plato choose as the object of his metaphor the polis if he did not believe it mirrored the human soul? Plato and Aristotle both considered humans to be political animals; what one prescribes for the individual they are prescribing for the collective.

[Anonymous No.15091298]

>>15091250
Source? And why did it get passed down and studied over the centuries then?

[Anonymous No.15091314]

>>15091194
This frog doesn't even know what he is talking about. Why tf did Plato and Aristotle create academies then?

[Anonymous No.15091377]

>>15091314
In the Greek world there were many students eager to learn the art of speaking and they would pay handsomely for it.

>>15091298
The symposia were drinking parties bro, not conference calls. Sophistry is far closer to juggling at a circus than any kind of reasoned argument. And it didn't really get passed down through the centuries in the West... I mean it did through Augustine, but Augustine was basically Egyptian in culture, so he preferred Plato who never recorded his mistakes to someone like Aristotle who was constantly admitting that he had various thoughts and that they weren't particularly important in the grand scheme of things.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/41047594/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/vino-veritas-wine-cups-tell-history-athenian-life/

[Anonymous No.15091387]

>>15091377
Augustine's misappropriation of Greek philosophy is really a product of his displaced environment

[Anonymous No.15091397]

>>15091377
and Plato BTFOd sophists who only teach empty rhetoric to fit in whatever argument you want. His and Aristotle's was about wisdom.

[Anonymous No.15091403]

>>15090888
Brainlet detected. The Durants didn't understand philosophy.

[Anonymous No.15091424]

>>15091397
Ostensibly, but considered in the context of its own culture... there's no such thing as strictness of conscience in Greek thought, it's almost entirely a shitty lol-so-random larpfest with huge doses of irony. Only a brainlet would prefer Plato to goddamn Pascal.

[Anonymous No.15091425]

>>15091377
> And it didn't really get passed down through the centuries in the West...

It got studied before St. Augustine, it's where the arrangement into tetralogies comes from:

http://n1.intelibility.com/ime/lyceum/?p=lemma&id=880&lang=2

That's more than 500 years of being passed down.

[Anonymous No.15091440]

>>15091425
Sure, but we must consider the Greco-Roman culture technically separate from the West, which was fully formed around 1000 AD.

[Anonymous No.15091445]

>>15091424
Yeah and Plato wasn't dropping the secret wisdom of the Eleusinian Mysteries throughout the dialogues. Hylic.

[Anonymous No.15091467]

>>15090765
>>15090924
>plato meanie

[Anonymous No.15091474]

>>15091280
>>15091076
Both of these things are true

[Anonymous No.15091494]

>>15090703
>Socrates being dishonest and the dialogues using strawmen of his opponents to make Plato/Socrates look correct
there are plenty of moments when reading his dialogues that a premise is accepted without debate when it should definitely be debated more, i often find myself having to underline sections and thinking they were purposely not elaborated on

[Anonymous No.15092946]

>>15090765
>Bertrand Russel on
Stopped reading there.

[Anonymous No.15093063]

Socrates was such a well known character, there's basically no way that Plato could have gotten away with completely distorting his views. But the Socratic question is still an issue, and most people generally agree that Socrates is best represented in the early dialogues, whereas the middle dialogues (where Soc. starts to claim positive knowledge about things) are more of Plato's invention. Plato owes a large debt to the Sicilian mimes of Sophron, where characters spoke realistically about philosophical issues, with a touch of drama or humor. In both these mimes and in Old Comedy plays, the author adopts an alien persona to engage with debates. So, there's precedent in Plato using Socrates as a mouthpiece for his views. The Socratic dialogue was also an insanely popular genre in its day, though we only have extant ones from two authors. Socrates was very clearly a friend and mentor of Plato, who blamed his death on the failings of democracy (which is why, in addition to his own aristocratic status, he rails against it so much).

The extent to which Plato fights against strawmen is completely overblown by people who have never seriously read him. The Symposium has several beautiful speeches in it, and only one of them is completely retarded (another one is some of the most beautiful Greek poetry we have, but is without any intellectual merit). Protagoras, someone who is extremely ideologically opposed to Plato/Socrates, is given a fair hearing in his eponymous dialogue, and it ends without any obvious victor. In the Parmenides, young Socrates is retroactively refuted, showing that he simply cannot contend with the Eleatic doctrine. I can give many other examples.

>>15090765
>he didn't catch Socrates' throwaway line that Kallipolis is a fevered city
>not reading the Laws to understand Plato's favored non-ideal political model
Russell was an apex pseud who couldn't go toe-to-toe with real mathematicians and obviously didn't understand Kant. It's no surprise that he can't unravel Plato's several layers of irony and wit.

[Anonymous No.15093077]

>>15091494
I know what you mean, but 9 times out of 10, it is taken as given because of the cultural context in which the dialogue was held. So, in fairness, it would have seemed obvious and unworthy of further consideration to them.

[Anonymous No.15093329]

kind of off-topic, but are there any good secondary literature on Plato? I am currently reading through his works, and would be nice to have a book which has a collection of all his ideas. Could be from a neoplatonic perspective or what ever.

[Anonymous No.15093440]

>>15093329
>a collection of all his ideas
No such thing, other than his complete works. All secondary lit is (and should be) arguable, so there's no "one way" to read Plato. Still, the Oxford Readings in Philosophy series on Plato (edited by Gail Fine) is a fair place to start: a lot of the stuff is outdated (esp. Vlastos) and I'm convinced that some of the most well known Plato scholars from the 1950s were retards (esp. Vlastos). The Cambridge Guide to Plato is also a fairly standard place to begin. Schopenhauer on Plato is great, but you have to read Kant first, which means you have to read Hume, Berkeley, Locke, Leibniz, and Descartes (in reverse order). Not sure if the Oxford Handbook on Plato is any good, but it's a good series. If you have interest in a specific dialogue or topic, just check the category on PhilPapers for articles there.

[Anonymous No.15093464]

>>15093329
>>15093440
One last thing: though he gets pretty weird as the book goes on, the first couple chapters in Pierre Hadot's "What is Ancient Philosophy?" is a great introduction to the cultural background of Plato. Highly recommend it if you're new to Greek philosophy, because he lays out a clear roadmap of Plato's influences and context. Of course, you can download every book or article on Libgen.

[Anonymous No.15093482]

>>15091474
Right, I think the final pill is realizing something technically applicable can be metaphorical as well, which was sort of the point of The Republic.

[Anonymous No.15093711]

>>15093440
>>15093464
Thansk based platonanon

[Anonymous No.15093731]

>>15090703
First of all, Socrates was almost dead by the time Plato was born and they hardly knew each other. Secondly, many of Socrates' arguments are just stretches. "God and divine inspiration are real because you only have one interest or hobby" doesn't really follow.

[Anonymous No.15093754]

>>15091377
In Greek, the word "Sophist" just means thinker.

[Anonymous No.15093842]

>>15093731
Dude, this is retarded in so many ways. Plato was named as a witness at Socrates' trial. You are just strawmanning Socrates, but in the dumbest manner possible.

>>15093754
No, "sophist" meant "teacher of rhetoric" and had clear negative connotations by Plato's time. Read the exchange between Socrates and Hippocrates at the beginning of the Protagoras. Gorgias, perhaps the richest sophist, was grating on everyone's ears with his singsongy Lucas-tier pottery. Socrates was killed under suspicions of being a sophist, since they (esp. Gorgias) taught atheism/impiety.

[Anonymous No.15094058]

>>15093842
That wasn't a strawman, it was his claim. Another example is the Hippias dialogue. If Hippias had just conceded that Odysseus was smart and cunning, he could have then turned it around to say he was also immoral. Odysseus was good at speaking and lying and with a great knowledge of what is just but that doesn't make him just if he fails to follow it.

[Anonymous No.15094070]

>>15090703
Plato was already destroyed by the greatest living philosopher, Sargon of Akkad.

https://youtu.be/GrZFZxyfvx8

[Anonymous No.15094086]

>>15093842
Also the book on Plato I have says Socrates died when Plato was young. It's the Barnes and Nobles book.

[Anonymous No.15094217]

Laws is one of his best and highly underrated.

[Anonymous No.15094222]

>>15093329
Lloyd P. Gerson and John Dillon

[Anonymous No.15094341]

>>15093329
Gregory Sadler

[Anonymous No.15094447]

>>15090765
>>15091057
>>15094070

All Anglos. Coincidence?