/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16004726]

Another soul rises at one time and falls at another, and because its horses pull it violently in different directions, it sees some real things and misses others. The remaining souls are all eagerly straining to keep up, but are unable to rise; they are carried around below the surface, trampling and striking one another as each tries to get ahead of the others. The result is terribly noisy, verys weaty, and disorderly. Many souls are crippled by the incompetence of the drivers, and many wings break much of their plumage. After so much trouble, they all leave without having seen reality, uninitiated, and when they have gone they will depend on what they think is nourishment—their own opinions.

[sounds familiar No.16004792]

Next, one must reject the crude view [of divinity] by respecting the hierarchy and ascend by going as far as our nature allows us to go, and one ought to believe that there is a place beside god for the others, too, and not rank himself alone next after god – as if by some flight of fancy! – thereby depriving oneself of becoming a god even to the extent that this is possible for a human soul. And it is possible to the extent that Intellect leads it. But wanting to go beyond Intellect is already to have fallen outside Intellect.
Foolish people are sold on accounts such as these as soon as they hear ‘You will be superior not only to all human beings but even to the gods!’ For there is a great deal of arrogance in human beings. Even the man who was previously a humble and moderate private citizen is sold if he hears: ‘You are the son of god, but other men whom you used to admire are not sons of god and neither are the beings that they worship in accordance with the tradition of their fathers; you, however, are even greater than heaven without even having struggled to be so’, and then others join in the chorus.

[sounds familiar No.16004832]

What can it be, therefore, that has made the souls forget the god who is their father and be ignorant of themselves and him even though they are parts of the intelligible world and completely belong to it?
The starting point for their evil is, then, audacity, generation, primary difference, and their willing that they belong to themselves. Since they appeared actually to take pleasure in their autonomy, and to have made much use of their self-motion, running in the opposite direction and getting as far away from home as possible, they came not to know even that they themselves were from the intelligible world. They were like children who at birth are separated from their fathers and, being raised for a long time far away, are ignorant both of themselves and of their fathers. They can, then, no longer see their father or themselves, and they dishonour themselves, due to their ignorance of their lineage, honouring instead other things, in fact, everything more than themselves. They marvel at these things and are awestruck by them; they love them and are dependent on them; they severed themselves as much as possible from the things from which they turned away and which they dishonoured.

[Anonymous No.16004854]

It is our task as founders, then, to compel the best natures to reach the study we said before is the most important, namely, to make the ascent and see the good. But when they’ve made it and looked sufficiently, we mustn’t allow them to do what they’re allowed to do today.
What’s that?
To stay there and refuse to go down again to the prisoners in the cave and share their labors and honors, whether they are of less worth or of greater.
Then are we to do them an injustice by making them live a worse life when they could live a better one?
You are forgetting again that it isn’t the law’s concern to make any one e class in the city outstandingly happy but to contrive to spread happiness throughout the city by bringing the citizens into harmony with each other through persuasion or compulsion and by making them share with each other the benefits that each class can confer on the community. The law produces such people in the city, not in order to allow them to turn in whatever direction they want, but to make use of them to bind the city together.
That’s true, I had forgotten.

[Anonymous No.16004939]

What about when men who are unworthy of education approach philosophy and consort with her unworthily? What kinds of thoughts and opinions are we to say they beget? Won’t they truly be what are properly called sophisms, things that have no thing genuine about them or worthy of being called true wisdom?
That’s absolutely right.
Then there remains, Adeimantus, only a very small group who consort with philosophy in away that’s worthy of her: A noble and well brought-up character, for example, kept down by exile, who remains with philosophy according to his nature because there is no one to corrupt him, or a great soul living in a small city, who disdains the city’s affairs and looks beyond them. A very few might be drawn to philosophy from other crafts that they rightly despise because they have good natures. And some might be held back by the bridle that restrains our friend Theages—for he’s in every way qualified to be tempted away from philosophy, bu this physical illness restrains him by keeping him out of politics. Finally, my own case is hardly worth mentioning—my daemonic sign—because it has happened to no one before me, or to only a very few. Now, the members of this small group have tasted how sweet and blessed a possession philosophy is, and at the same time they’ve also seen the madness of the majority and realized, in a word, that hardly anyone acts sanely in public affairs and that there is no ally with whom they might go to the aid of justice and survive, that instead they’d perish before they could profit either their city or their friends and be useless both to themselves and to others, just like a man who has fallen among wild animals and is neither willing to join them in doing injustice nor sufficiently strong to oppose the general savagery alone. Taking all this into account, they lead a quiet life and do their own work. Thus, like someone who takes refuge under a little wall from a storm of dust or hail driven by the wind, the philosopher—seeing others filled with lawlessness—is satisfied if he can somehow lead his present life free from injustice and impious acts and depart from it with good hope, blameless and content.
Well, that’s no small thing for him to have accomplished before departing.
>But it isn’t the greatest either, since he didn’t chance upon a constitution that suits him. Under a suitable one, his own growth will be fuller, and he’ll save the community as well as himself.

[Anonymous No.16005974]

I'm making a plan of study on Platonism. Do you think it is interesting to read commentaries by platonists after reading their respective dialogues? And how to decide, for example, in the case of First Alcibiades, which was commented upon by Proclus and Olympiodorus? Read both? Spare them for later? Which to read first?
Also, I think it is utterly important that the novice must have in mind the initiatic and religious essence of the platonic writings, since Platonism and its productions are derived from the pious egyptians. I intend to extend this list to reach both egyptian and christian theology, since Platonism is a middle point between these two more complete mysteries.

[Anonymous No.16005993]

Yep. Based. I'm going up to the coast of labrador and smoking cigars and going to think about Platon the test of the summer.