/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6945891]

should I take the leap and delve into plato complete works? or should I buy them separately? budget is an issue. Also, are both Aristotle's volumes worth purchasing?

[Anonymous No.6945894]

>>6945891

I think the complete works is a sexier buy. You may feel the pinch in buying it now, but in the long-run, you will be thankful you dropped the extra money to buy the complete works.

[Anonymous No.6945899]

Get complete works for Plato, Basic Works for Aristotle (Unless you really want to read his biology for whatever reason)

[Anonymous No.6945916]

>>6945891
>into plato complete works
this. It's always great to have the exclusive knowledge of some of his more obscure dialogues as well. What's more they're short

[Anonymous No.6945978]

>>6945891
I'm on the cusp of reaching Plato, so I snagged the ebook of the edition pictured just to get a feel for the length of his texts. Except for Republic, they're rarely more than 50 pages. Shouldn't be too bad.

[Anonymous No.6945983]

>>6945891
I bought it. Almost done with it. It's a good deal

[Anonymous No.6946006]

>>6945983
How long has it taken you to wrap up?

[Anonymous No.6946010]

>>6945891
The translations of that edition are alright; none of them are the best available, but the volume as a whole has a nice introduction detailing some of the scholarly arguments still going on about how to read Plato, and about the authenticity of certain works, and the completeness of the volume is nothing to complain about. Take it as a good introductory edition of Plato's works and worry about individual translations after you've gotten a sense of what interests you and of what you'd like to study further, if anything. Same goes for the Aristotle.

[Anonymous No.6946014]

>>6945983
how could you be done with it? how long does it take to read and fully grasp? Im still reading the poets and historians, and as far Im concerned in order to comprehend philosophical works, one needs to stress certain aspects. How different did you approach the philosophers? Does these change dramatically effort-wise compared to reading a tragedy? Are these really hard to understand, does these require full undivided attention throughout his entire works, or are these rather easily skimmable through certain parts?

[Anonymous No.6946021]

>>6945983
>>6945983
What's your favourite food? Whose your favourite interlocutor? Did Socrates make any funny jokes? What's the weather like where you live? What day is it?

[Anonymous No.6946023]

>>6946021
kek

[Anonymous No.6946029]

>>6946021

[Anonymous No.6946060]

>>6946014
Not the poster you're responding to, but having read almost all of Plato myself (and having read Homer, Hesiod, the historians, the playwrights, and the Pre-Socratics), I'd say it's taken me 7 years to get to a point where I'm actually grasping Plato, and this still tentative. I expect I'll still be working on him for a long while; if one is only interested in the history of philosophy, it takes much less, and one is better off not even bothering with introductions or companions but of seeing the claims made about his work in the writings of philosophers you *are* interested in (so looking at Hegel or Nietzsche's own comments, since they're suggesting outright how they're taking Plato).

One thing to note about the other Greek authors: they're much harder than they appear. It's certainly easier to read through a play or to swallow huge chunks of Herodotus, but that doesn't ever necessitate having understood any of them. Aristophanes, for example, is a very subtle judge of political thought, but that's easy to miss amidst the boner and shit jokes, and it's easier to generalize about his plays than to see what he actually thinks (So the Clouds is usually taken as a general play written against the sophists present in Athens, with Socrates being a stand-in for them, but then that reading misses the important detail of how Socrates never asks to be paid as the sophists would; the other reading, that the play is seriously against Socrates, ignores the critiques of traditional Athenian values as embodied by the protagonist and the Just Speech). Herodotus's Histories is full of philosophically interesting work about the conflict between nature and custom.

And at least for Plato, in order to understand why the poets are dealt with in the ways they are, one has to see what's meant by the phrase in the Republic "the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry", which takes its bearings from the fact that poetry didn't just amount to entertainment and storytelling, but also to claims of wisdom about man's place in the cosmos and political life.

There aren't really any passages worth skimming in Plato or Aristotle; in Aristotle, because his work is so dense that skimming means missing complex arguments that are compact in appearance; in Plato because the seemingly minor details that are brought up end up transforming, refining, or commenting on the arguments.

[Anonymous No.6946074]

>>6946060
>>6946014
I'd personally reccomend reading about the Pre-Socratics and the Sophists. 1) Due to their historical importance 2) To see what they were really like (well atleast have a less bias view of them, not many primary sources survive), rather than how Plato and Aristotle represented them (Plato was quite critical of the Sophists, especially as he didn't want people to associate Socrates with them)

[Anonymous No.6946110]

>>6946060

Plato's Republic is my favorite work of political philosophy. when I started studying that stuff, I thought I could grasp it right away, but I was wrong. I have a decent understanding of the Republic, but even now I can pick it up again and learn even more from it.

[Anonymous No.6946124]

Spend at least 5 years reading through him, then start again. After doing this about 3 times you should be able to move onto Aristotle.

[Anonymous No.6947261]

[Anonymous No.6947553]

>>6946006
about a year and a half. I read it slowly

>>6946014
Haven't read the tragedians yet, only the pre-socratics. Most of the references to other Greek authors are explained in the footnotes. Some dialogues are more difficult than others. Some are total shit, others are profound and thought provoking. I did not and would not advise skimming anything, as there's always a purpose to what he writes, even if at times it can be a drag. Take notes.

>>6946021
>What's your favourite food?

I don't know

>Whose your favourite interlocutor?

Eleatic Stranger is pretty hardcore. Parmenides is delightfully cryptic. Simmias and Cebes are massive likable faggots.

>Did Socrates make any funny jokes?

yes

>What's the weather like where you live?

partly cloudy

>What day is it?

Saturday

[Anonymous No.6947566]

I read that translation in a bookstore. I disliked it. Before I had read Jowett's translation online, which are written in an old poetic style that brings out some of the poetry of Plato. THAT book is written in a very dry academic style. It seems to be consciously written in a robotic, "logical" way so as to spell out to students in an all-too-obvious manner what the argument is. It would fit more for Aristotle than for Plato.

The problem with these contemporary academics that translate Plato is that they don't even want to understand Plato. They just see him as a stepping stone in the history of "western philosophy" and so they only care about getting across his "ideas". The problem is that 99% of the beauty of the Dialogues is not the ideas themselves but the way they are conveyed to you in the dialectic. The Dialogues are not a treatise or essay like these academics are used to writing, they are a kind of ritual that you go through to condition your mind to think in a certain way. They don't seem to get that at all.

[Anonymous No.6947577]

>>6947566
A better way to explain what I am trying to say is this: look up the Neoplatonists like Plotinus. Their work is eminently a kind of mysticism. That mysticism is precisely what is missing in that "Complete Works". It's not surprising that the modern day Western academics who have been conditioned to hate mysticism through their empiricism and positivism produce such a demystified Plato.

[Anonymous No.6947582]

>>6947577
Here's what a man on amazon said about the translation:

>The opening words of the text are as follows: 'What's new, Socrates', which puts one almost simultaneously in Ancient Greece and an 80s sitcom. The other translations are not much better. Why translators of philosophy cannot, in my experience, write in a manner suitable to the nobility of their profession, I cannot understand.

>If the texts themselves are difficult and jarring to read in this way, then it is close to impossible to progress any further to the book's other qualities which, from these positive reviews which surround mine, I am led to believe are very good. I hope that my opinion on just the stylistic problems alone could be of value to some. Such a warning would have kept me from purchasing it.

[Anonymous No.6947587]

>>6947566
>>6947577
Heh, I believe we've argued over this matter before. ;^)

[Anonymous No.6947605]

>>6945891
In my opinion, yes. Having a copy of Plato's complete works is a lifelong investment. I can't speak for translations, because I don't have any knowledge of the original Greek and haven't done any comparative studies. But I do own that volume, and have read all of Plato's dialogues, except Laws, and all of the apocryphal dialogues, through, the ones that particularly interest me several times, and particular passages from them that intrigued me a dozen times or more.

What I am saying is, it's impossible not to find something that changes you in his works, and it keeps giving.

[Anonymous No.6947608]

How long should be spent on Playdo? Alot of you have spent years reading through; I was planning on spending a month lmao

[Anonymous No.6947611]

>>6947605
Also, it should go without saying that this:

>>6947582
Is the complaint of a fucking dilettante

[Anonymous No.6947644]

>>6947608
Like I said at >>6946060, if your goal is to *understand* Plato, it takes years. If you want just a basic and general familiarity, that'd probably take longer than a month (some basic dialogues being Meno, Gorgias, Republic, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophist, Timaeus, and Phaedrus). Expect maybe six months? That all depends on how quickly you can read the dialogues.

But make no mistake, understanding what he's doing and how he does takes much longer.

[Anonymous No.6947695]

>>6947644
Ooh shit lol. I planned on reading all the dialogues (about 30-50 pages a day), except the one's that are likely to not Plato's, and read essays on the important dialogues to see the scholary opinion and compare it with mine. I'm going on holiday to Rhodes soon and I'll be reading there once I'm done with the pre-socs, so hopefully Plato's spirit will inspire me with the virtue of understanding

[Anonymous No.6947713]

>>6947695
oy vey

[Anonymous No.6947733]

>>6947695
Heh, good luck.

What essays are you planning on looking at?

[Anonymous No.6947774]

>>6947733
(Well maybe I'll bump up my Plato reading time to 3 months and over haha) I'm planning on using the Stanford Encyclopedia's articles on specific dialogues and overall 'themes' like eudamonia etc. I'll also look at essays from other sources to get a nice mix. I don't plan on becoming a neo-platonist however, although I do plan on reading Plutarch and Plotinus; so I don't want to fully understand Plato, but I do want to get the 'gist' of the dialogues.

[Anonymous No.6947796]

>>6947774
Fair enough!

Maybe try looking over the Continuum Companion to Plato; it's pretty accessible, and it's much less narrow than the Stanford Encyclopedia with respect to what schools of interpretation to bring up.

http://www4.zippyshare.com/v/UHsYxCjj/file.html

[Anonymous No.6947843]

>>6947796
Cheers my man, I'll look into that :) How'd you find Aristotle? Many say he is quite dry, but from what I've read of him (I'm currently reading the Pre-Socs and the Sophists which uses testimonials from Aristotle) he seems far more to the point and clear than Parmenides (thankfully the version I have has a commentary which guides the reader through the fragments rather than leaving them with the bare-bones). I saw you spoke about Philosophy vs Poetry earlier, does that link in with Mythos vs Logos? The editor of the book I'm reading wrote about that and I found it quite interesting. Cheers for your replies tho fella

[Anonymous No.6947979]

Bumping for interest

[Anonymous No.6948075]

>>6947843
I'm actually reading Aristotle's Ethics right now! He can be somewhat dry; interest in him really seems to depend fiercely on a love of learning. His style of writing is very subtle, and there's a lot that can be missed in a reading of him, though for far different reasons than with Plato; it's very hard work sorting through his qualifications, and how carefully he phrases things.

For example, at the beginning of the Ethics, his first line is, "Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action as well as choice, is held to aim at some good." From the first line we have several important terms already presented to us, "art" (techne), "action" (praxis), "choice" (proairesis). We also have an interesting qualification to the line; he doesn't say that all of these *do* aim at some good, but that "they are held to" (dokein, which ordinarily means opinion or seeming). That qualification points to how tentative the work is, since he later makes a comment about how precise one can be about the subject matter of the Ethics. He also at some point reveals that his intended audience are the "cultivated and active" (also referred to as the "serious men"), and this itself ends up being important for why he orders the Ethics the way he does.

(In short, the "cultivated and active" already have been educated to appreciate virtue, and perhaps have some of the moral virtues already, so they're already in a position to be suspicious of identifying the human good with pleasure or wealth; but they do seem to identify the human good with honor, and that seems to determine why Aristotle spends so much time on the moral virtues only to conclude in Bk. 10 very briefly that contemplation is the human good; it's a strange rhetorical sleight of hand that works by careful arrangement. This is really all just to affirm again my comment about him being subtle; his arguments are tricky to follow from the perspective of viewing them as a whole.)

[Anonymous No.6948081]

>>6948075
About Philosophy vs. Poetry and Mythos vs. Logos; it seems to line up, in some ways, but not strictly? The dialogues contain a large number of myths, and that seems to make it more unclear what to make of the contention as a whole. The comment in the Republic about the ancient quarrel also seems like a little bit of playfulness in that way, since the composition of the Republic itself is in fact the unity of the two narrative styles discussed in Bk. 3, and so itself is poetic in that way (the fact that the poets write with certain rhythms doesn't seem important to Plato, or at least doesn't seem to be what properly distinguishes poetry and philosophy; poetry is much more often discussed with its root meaning in mind, "to make", which is why the metaphysical critique of poetry in Bk. 10 of the Republic addresses poetry on the basis of beings and appearances at all. It looks like sometimes it's suggested that philosophy has a poetic element to it, just as other dialogues seem to suggest that there are rhetorical and sophistical elements to it. But it's all really unclear to me, and hard to parse as a whole.)

Out of curiosity, what book are you referring to?

[Anonymous No.6948174]

>>6948081
Thanks again! It's fascinating how much more there is to the philosophers than what we directly percieve. The book I'm reading is 'The Pre-Socratics and the Sophists' trans. and edited by Robert Waterhouse published by Oxford. It's got a great introduction from what I recall. It begins by discussing what the Pre-Socratics were, like were they scientists or philosophers? Can we paint them all with one brush? Why the name pre-socratic? (he disagrees with the name I believe). It eventually moves onto Mythos 'vs' Logos and the Pre-Socratic 'revolution', but then goes onto say how the two can interlap and how mythos has its own logos. For example Socrates says 'I'm about to tell you a story, you may think it's a mythos, but to me it's a logos' and how mythos never really leaves us (some Pre-Socratics were mystics, we still act irrationally when we are overtaken by joy or want to murder someone). He also talks about the doxography on the Pre-Soc's, meaning we can never have a complete understanding of their ideas due to the bias of doxographers (eg Christian Scholars or anti-sophists) or the rarity of fragments. He then insists the reader to make their own decision on the evidence left, rather than relying on scholars. That being said, I find his commentary invaluable and informative. For example when he was going through the testimonials on Thales, he spoke of how Aristotle may have misinterpreted Thale's ideas on water by placing them into his own framework of causes and that Thales may have believed in a water creation myth. But yeah as you can tell I'm definitely enjoying this book haha

[Anonymous No.6948348]

>>6948174
Very nice! I'm unfamiliar with it, but I'll try and take a look at it if I get a chance!

The Socrates line you quote is a pretty good example of the difficulty in distinguishing between mythos and logos; another good example is in the Timaeus, where the Pythagorean title character gives a Pythagorean account of the cosmos. What seems strange is that he says that he's about to tell a "likely story (mythos)", which seems counter to the mathematico-scientific account he gives, and seems to suggest that we should wonder how complete of a logos of the cosmos we can actually give without having to resort to a made up (i.e. poetic) element.

Parmenides is another good example; most scholars treat him as a kind of logician, but that seems to ignore how his work is explicitly in the form of epic poetry, and how that might affect his account.

There are also some weird occasions where a Platonic dialogue as a whole seems to be something like a "philosophically true" version of a famous myth. The Phaedo is a retelling of the Theseus myth (there's a strange correspondence at the beginning of the dialogue between the 14 people present, and the legendary seven men and five women [and two men disguised as women] of the Theseus myth), wherein Socrates is Theseus, the people present are the virgins to be saved, and either misology (hatred of logos) or fear of death are the minotaur, with the particularly labyrinthine arguments forming the labyrinth. The Republic too seems to be a retelling of Hades accounts, either of Odysseus's descent, or of Heracles's descent (it looks more like the latter, but I think both, as well as the Orpheus myth, are supposed to be held in mind), where Socrates is an example of the true hero, the Piraeus (which means "beyond land", i.e. afterlife) is Hades (noted by the opening words that also point to the cave passage, "I went down..."), with Cephalus and Polemarchus acting as judges of Hades, and Thrasymachus is the Cerberus, with the rest of the work of dialogue being something like the labors of Heracles.

It's all very interesting, and makes those loveable Greek assholes way more confusing.

Re: Aristotle; that seems right. I can't tell though if it's a misinterpretation, or a polemic on his part though, but he certainly does judge his precursors on the basis of observations he makes but they don't.

[Anonymous No.6948410]

>>6948348
Cheers for the lengthy reply I'm quite tired now so I'll have to read it properly in the morning haha ;) but yeah the book is quite excellent. I'm currently reading about Pythagoras. I found it quite interesting that due to Plato being influenced by Pythagorus' ideas, it's made it quite hard for scholars to separate the Pythagoras from the Plato, while others say Pythagoreanism is a trend that Plato borrowed from, which makes the testimonials abit more reliable. I'm surprised how mystical Pythagoras was; for example he apparently believed in metempsychosis (reincarnation) and beleived he was the son of Hermes in a past life (I haven't reached any of his actual math or philosophy yet haha)

But anyway cheers for the replies man, they've given me a better perspective for when I tackle the big P.

[Anonymous No.6948501]

>>6948410
And cheers to you as well!

[Anonymous No.6948536]

New reader, im starting my first library at home ina couple of weeks. Gonna buy one book at a time so that I can see how much Ive read and have a neat little library of thins I have read.

Any recommendations for my first book?

[Anonymous No.6948775]

>>6948536
Maybe the Meno? Here are two good translations to consider:


George Anastaplo/Laurence Berns
http://www.amazon.com/Plato-Meno-Focus-Philosophical-Library/dp/0941051714

Robert Bartlett (paired with the Protagoras)
http://www.amazon.com/Protagoras-Meno-Agora-Editions/dp/0801488656/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1439080654&sr=1-2&keywords=meno+protagoras

[Anonymous No.6948957]

>>6948536
There's always the Hackett series to check out. The five dialogues set is a pretty good introduction to Plato.

[Anonymous No.6949306]

>>6947577
it's funny you should say that what with the lack of that kind of mysticism in the academy for quite a few centuries before the neoplatonists decided to just make shit up

[Anonymous No.6949508]

A nice speech by Robert Bartlett on the figure Protagoras as discussed in the Protagoras and Theaetetus, for anyone interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZX0dp5nDuA

[Anonymous No.6950595]

>>6948348
>The Republic too seems to be a retelling of Hades accounts

I'm not denying the influence of myth (especially since The Republic discusses the role of poetry) but that seems like a stretch.

[Anonymous No.6950700]

>>6948410
Skip anything you read about Pythagoras' philosophy. There is no credible account of who he was or what he believed in.

[Anonymous No.6950718]

>>6950700
>He hasn't read A Pythagorean Sourcebook by Guthrie

Shiggy

[Anonymous No.6950736]

>>6950700
I know that, it says in the book I'm reading all that remains are testimonials; it's still fairly interesting to read about the pythagorean tradition and the more mystical side of it. For all of the Pre-Soc's it's important to remember that testimonials and fragments don't always paint an accurate picture.

[Anonymous No.6951150]

>>6945891
>budget is an issue
Then download it. It's not even stealing at this point.

You're going to end up hating it for it's size and bulk. Why not get the flimsy dollar paperbacks so you can read them more easily and not mark up a collection piece? You're going to take so many notes that you'll end up buying a second copy just for cleanliness.

[Anonymous No.6951191]

>>6951150
Gotta disagree I'm afraid. The Hackett publication is very easy to read from and hold

[Anonymous No.6951316]

>>6950595
It certainly seems like it, but there are a bizarre number of details about Hades and Heracles throughout the Republic that point to it being at the very least the structure upon which the Republic is modeled off of. The account that I'm informed by is Eva Brann's in her essay "The Music of the Republic," which you can read here (relevant pdf pages are 14-19 on the Hades-Heracles references):

http://www.sjc.edu/files/4413/9657/8568/sjc_review_vol39_no1-2_1989-1990.pdf

I'm less sure about her interpretation of the it, but I'm well persuaded that the references are there, are structurally important, and are intended. A brief set of examples from her essay would be the use of kataben as the first word (lit. "I went down" which is used in Odysseus's account of his descent to Hades), the peculiar way the Piraeus is mentioned (in the Greek it's without the article, so literally "I went down yesterday to Piraeus", which wouldn't seem strange except that Cephalus refers to "the Piraeus" as does Thucydides), and the meaning of Piraeus as "beyond-land", pointing to Hades narratives. Further, the goddess whose event they're attending is Bendis, associated with Hecate by the Greeks, the guardian of Hades. But you can read more about these sorts of details in the essay linked above.

[Anonymous No.6951320]

>>6951191
Seconded; while the translations aren't the best, they're very serviceable, and it's nice to have an edition with all of the texts.

[Anonymous No.6951713]

>>6950700
No credible account of Pythagoras himself doesn't mean no credible account of Pythagoreanism, which is what's ultimately more crucial.

[Anonymous No.6951895]

>>6945891
No, it's a necessary corruption of the forms

[Anonymous No.6952110]

>>6951895
wat

[Anonymous No.6953394]

>>6945899
Seconding Basic Works for Aristotle. The other stuff by him is cool but there's no pressing need to read them.

[Anonymous No.6953775]

>>6951316

I still don't think it was a retelling, more like it was structured around that myth.

but ffs, no matter how many times I dig through the Republic, there's still more there. it's one of those books that will put your hubris in check.