/lit/ - Literature

>>11692230
gOOd

>>11666729
>not understanding it immediately
never gonna make it, son

Some of Plato's dialogues

>>11527510
Not at all

>>11508008
Uninstall yourself, failure.

Start with the Greeks. read:
- The Complete Works of Plato
- The Organon, Politics, Nicomachean Ethics, Metaphysics, Rhetoric – Aristotle
What is so important about these works isn't necessarily the answers you'll find in them, but the development of rational thinking which reading Plato and Aristotle provide. No matter what field of Philosophy you intend to study, you should pay special attention to your foundations. Plato is entirely about challenging and interrogating your preconceptions on certain subjects; as long as you properly and earnestly engage in his work you will come out the better. Aristotle teaches you a different kind of reasoning, which is much more structural and precise than the flowing allegories of Plato. After reading this you can go on and read the great works of Political Philosophy (actually, you'll have already read two of the best by reading Politics and The Republic!).

>>11456439
>You played yourself!

>>11433286
Unironically pick up a complete works of Plato and read through his early dialogues on ethics (Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Philebus, Symposium, Phaedrus, Alcibiades, Charmides, Laches, Lysis, Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno, Menexenus) It should get you thinking about and challenging some of your values, and considering what it means to be a moral person.It is great at awakening a self-awareness about the assumed-but-unsubstantiated positions one takes for granted, and is the gateway to further reading in philosophy.

>>11422557
nice try, fbi

>pic related

Who here would enjoy a novel about an inspiring Platonist who insists on building his own forms, and the struggles it entails for him?

>mfw this entire thread

>>11285117

>wrong about everything

I will start with a fallacious argument from authority just to press the boot of reason on your illiterate face. Renowned quantum physics pioneer Werner Heisenberg disagrees with you:
>“I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.”

Since Plato would not be happy with me showing you the light through authoritative statements, so here are some useful links where you can read long, articulated opinions on Plato and think for yourself if they are right or wrong:

Maybe check this: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism/

Or this: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/

Or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innatism#Scientific_evidence_for_innateness

I would also suggest that you read Plato, but since the fact that you opened this thread shows that you have no intention to do that to begin with, I thought it's better you read something shorter and more suitable to your reduced attention span. I know SEP articles can be difficult sometimes, maybe try reading them over three/four days and you'll get something out of them.

Also

>ruined western philosophy

Last time I checked it was "ruined" it's not how you spell "founded."

>>11271673

More like this guy

>>11264867

Don't go for openly political things. If he already has an antipathy for this it will only make things worse. Sneak the ideas in with subtlety. Great texts to do this are the classics: Plato in particular can work wonders. But don't go for the Republic immediately, start with some beautiful work first (Apology, Phaedrus, Phaedo, Symposium ecc.) and then throw the Republic in. In general, everything from the Platonic tradition up until the Renaissance can be used to your aim. If he has the slightest interest in religion or even a new age tendency toward spirituality, maybe try some Eliade (first) or Guenon (second), if you manage to get the guy interested in ancient religion. Don't go for Evola, it's a meme and people dislike him a lot.
As for novels, again, classics are good. Melville is great to stir conservative tendencies. Junger is a bit problematic, but Der Waldanger (and maybe Der Arbeiter) can be sneaked in as "that edgy rightwing guy who clearly agrees with leftwing ideologies". German Romanticism can also be useful and even Nietzsche can be used to this aim (avoid every French interpretation of it, though). German philosophers (Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Heidegger) can all have that purpose. Point him toward Hegel with the excuse that he needs it to understand Marx. He won't recover.
He'll probably never confess that he has become a reactionary, but once you put him in the critical mindset of a reactionary person he will be unable to cope with the lack of depth and superficial materialism of leftwing thought. You shall never say to him what he has become, nor that you made him like this. You must deceive him for his own good, like a good philosopher-king would.

>>11221143

Complete Works of Plato. Then Complete Works of Aristotle.
Then maybe you can go on. And you should have started with Plato anyway.

I suggest you try whatever from Calvino, then if you find his works appeal to your tastes, give Eco a chance.

As for Pirandello, try "il fu mattia pascal" or " uno, nessuno e centomila", they're probably his best works.

If you're looking for something less modern, I'd say Dante or Machiavelli. Once you've read even bits of them, you'll know where you want to go

The unexamined life is not worth living

>>11065038
There's one edited by Edith Hamilton (the mythology chica) and Huntington Cairns, for the Bollingen Press. The paper is thin, and the translations are dated — but in some areas, more accurate than the Hackett translations (the Symposium leaps to mind).

Generally, the Hackett translations do a better job at making the more WTF-passages (such as Parmenides) comprehensible, but the Bollingen translations are more faithful to the letter of the Greek. If you want EZ-Plato, buy the Hackett. If you're a more autistic scholar, get Bollingen.

Plato's Republic.
remember, no flutes

>ctrl+f "Plato"
>0 results
Really? You only put the "Republic" on there? Not, say, the "Meno" — which introduced still-unsolved problems of epistemology — or the "Symposium" — the foundational text on the philosophy of love — or the "Phaedo" — which anticipated Kant's 'synthetic a priori' issue by MILLENNIA — or etc., etc.

I can't even look at a chart that begins with such plebeianism. Get a fucking grip, man.

Sorry but you're never gonna make it.
...
...
well...
maybe... JUST maybe you could make it if...
you...
START WITH THE GREEKS

>>10754291

>wisdom is not pleasure

How about you read the Philebus and then come back?

>>10698809
I'm with you until you say:
>the Platonic forms ... cannot be directly perceived, they can only be conceived ...
Whether you mean it or not, 'conceived' denotes a product of the imagination or else a Lockean 'Idea' derived from the thing-itself. Plato clearly states that the Forms can be directly perceived (although you're correct in saying that this is unsustainable; thus the cruel joke of philosophy is that only the philosopher knows how ignorant they will be). See Sym. 210e6-211a2, 211a7-b3:
>all of a sudden he will catch sight of something wonderfully beautiful in its nature ... it always is and neither comes to be nor passes away, neither waxes nor wanes ... Nor will the beautiful appear to him in the guise of a face or hands or anything else that belongs to the body. It will not appear to him as one idea or one kind of knowledge. It is not anywhere in another thing, as in an animal, or in earth, or in heaven, or in anything else, but itself by itself with itself, it is always one in form.
and then, in 211e1-212a1:
>if someone got to see the Beautiful itself, absolute, pure, unmixed, not polluted by human flesh or colors or any other great nonsense of mortality, but if he could see the divine Beauty itself in its one form?
There's also the analogy in Phaedrus about the charioteer who glimpses the gods (Forms), but struggles to stay aloft; anamnesis in the Meno; the clusterfuck of the Same and Different in Timaeus, etc.

There is one thing that jumps to mind in your defense: Socrates, being strung along, admits to Parmenides that nothing that exists can perceive the Forms. I have serious qualms, however, that Plato fully endorses the self-critique of Forms in the Parmenides — for one, the arguments against Socrates are very specious, which leads me to believe that the point of the dialogue is a type of philosophical exercise left to the reader. [Pierre Hadot puts forth this view convincingly, though his musings can be batshit.] The narrative frame of young Socrates doesn't seem unimportant either.