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/lit/ - Literature

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17347129 No.17347129 [Reply] [Original]

What did he say that was so profound?
Everyone always talks about him but never about his actual ideas. Is his name just a status signal?

>> No.17347133

Uh, did you know that if you tie up some people in a cave and show them shadow puppets, they won't know what you look like.

>> No.17347183

>>17347129
He invented idealism, dialectics and a sort of prototype phenomenology.

>> No.17347199

>>17347183
>He invented idealism
And why is that a good thing?

>> No.17347221

>>17347183
All three are cringe

>> No.17347227

>>17347199
It's the infrastructure of mathematics and thus of most of the natural sciences and it's also the infrastructure of serious philosophy. Eventually you'll come to realised that non-meme non-platonist philosophers are just reactions to Plato.

>> No.17347243

>>17347129
Please, please, please stop posting on this board if you don't read.

>> No.17347266

>>17347243
But I do read, just not Plato.

>> No.17347279

>>17347266
Do not post about things you have no knowledge of then.

>> No.17347320

>>17347133
I didn't believe it at first, but I tested this theory and it checks out.

>> No.17347782

>>17347129
>What did he say that was so profound?
The allegory of the cave can be quite profound and is still relevant to this day. (Assuming he came up with it and not Socrates)

>Everyone always talks about him but never about his actual ideas. Is his name just a status signal?
Nearly his entire body of work has survived to the present. Historically, that is quite impressive and it gives us a window into what previous thinky types came up with. Most his work consists of awful ideas. However, him proposing those awful ideas prompted other thinky types into reacting and offering better (or at least less awful) ideas as alternatives. You don't always have to get everything right on your first try to make a major contribution, or even a revolutionary one. Sometimes you can contribute just by starting a conversation and getting the ball rolling

>Interesting side note
He did make major contributions to the field of geometry though I wouldn't quite call mathematical contributions profound in the emotional sense

>> No.17347984

>>17347782
>Most his work consists of awful ideas.
not really. Platonic Metaphysics still holds up as the gold standard. He's musings on ethics and epistemology are still applicable to human life.

>> No.17348165

>>17347984
>Platonic Metaphysics still holds up as the gold standard.
Agree

>He's musings on...epistemology are still applicable to human life.
Partially agree

>ethics
Hard disagree. To be fair, the only text of his I've read on ethics is Republic but that book in particular is what I had in mind when I said "mostly awful ideas". There are a *few* poigniant things within it but the other 95% of it has so many horrendously terrible ideas that cannot be overlooked

>> No.17348464
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17348464

>>17347129
Other people discussed ideas very similar to his own long before he was around--that's not to say that he didn't have some landmark original thoughts of his own, but I do feel like a lot of people who read Plato seem to go in thinking this guy was the, like, FIRST Greek philosopher. There's a lot of history in the craft that preceded him, and it's important to read at least some if it to understand where he fit in.

That being said--I'd make the case that he's known as he is because he was a great writer AND a great philosopher. His Dialogues are actually fun to read once you can get into them, and the way he meshes philosophical discourse with a kind of narrative and almost rudimentary character-work of sorts is pretty impressive. They feel like plays, but they don't seem to sacrifice any kind of philosophical/argumentative integrity under the narrative scope.

A lot of other philosophers around his time--Aristotle, for example--wrote with way more technical specificity, but this means they are much more difficult to read than one of Plato's Socratic Dialogues. Neither method of delivery is objectively better than the other in my opinion, because they both serve different purposes--but Plato's work, while it can be convoluted at times, manages to maintain very concentrated threads of thought that can often become obscure in a denser style and different form, like Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.

If you haven't yet, I'd suggest checking out the Euthyphro. It's one of my all-time favorite works of literature, and it's a shorter Dialogue that's pretty well-known and discussed, so it shouldn't just be a quicker read than others, but there should be more discussion about it online than some of the more obscure Dialogues.

>> No.17348763

>>17348165
t. did not read the republic correctly. check out alan blooms interpretive essay if you want a good take

>> No.17348772

>>17347266
Why are you in a Plato thread then?

>> No.17349420

>>17348763
I have read republic twice. I also discussed it in my class at uni and watched Gregory Sadler's lectures on it a few times.

It is a book mostly full of terrible ideas. Get over it

>> No.17349756

>>17347782
>Most his work consists of awful ideas
Plato is the greatest genius that ever lived. I think it's your understanding that's the problem

>> No.17349833

>>17349756
Proceed to enlighten me

>> No.17349878

>>17349420
The Republic is about cybernetics.