I’m having a really difficult time finding any concise reading on specifically Plato’s metaphysics and epistemology. I’m looking for something which essentially just outlines the academic consensus on his metaphysics/epistemology, as well as his various arguments and positions in both fields. Any recommendations? Thanks /lit/
>>24745236https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-metaphysics/#Bib
Why hasn't there been a Plato general recently someone should make one
>>24745236I'm not trying to be obscurantist, but you should know that you can't actually learn Plato this way. Ascent happens through dialectic. You need to struggle through understanding and engage in dialogue with yourself and others.
>>24745314Because a majority of people like to LARP as having read Plato, yet when you read Plato, and take a holistic approach, in which you should always do, assuming you actually wanting to learn from the perspective of the person.The secondary analysis of Plato is contaminated through the Marxist B/P lens. Such scholars, and laymen, will just pull snippets of the Republic, yet ignore everything else, making it impossible to understand Plato's writing, ultimately taking on it's own cosmology from the original work, resulting in a forever schism. Additionally, one should understand the Geo-political environment of the times.
>>24745338yup these midwits always have anachronistic interpretations but at the end of the day publish or die
>>24745338>Additionally, one should understand the Geo-political environment of the times.Qrd? I understand The general context but haven’t dived into how it influenced the thought of Plato and Co.
>>24745236just read plato
>>24745236if you dont want to just read plato, aristotle talks about his views in his stuff
>>24745350Plato's political and ethical theories have their origins in the constitution of Solon (his ancestor) and his struggle against Pisistratus, but they were ultimately formulated as a reaction to the Peloponnesian war from the Athenian perspective. Plato's definition of justice for example is a definition that contrasts strongly with the Athenians conception and application of justice in relation to the neutral or enemy city states of Greece and his opposition to democracy can be derived from the actions of Pisistratus as well as Pericles who he blamed for making the Athenians soft and compliant as well as his actions having a direct role in the loss of the war and the adoption of the tyrants.You should read Aristotle's Constitution of the Athenians and Thucydides Peloponnesian war for a better picture.
>>24745236>I’m looking for something which essentially just outlines the academic consensus on his metaphysics/epistemology, as well as his various arguments and positions in both fields.Going to disappoint you, but Plato is one of those authors about whom there isn't any academic consensus, but, rather, about a dozen different schools of thought concerning (and more if you include independent odd ducks like Holger Thesleff), such that depending on the secondary you read, you could go from a simple Theory of Forms modulated or developed from dialogue to dialogue, to a whole systematic science by harmonizing the dialogues, to a secret Pythagorean ontology, to even dogmatic and non-dogmatic skepticisms. Something like the Cambridge Companion is increasingly out of date and holding to what had been a short-lived Anglo-Analytic consensus for maybe half a century, while the Continuum/Bloomsbury Companion will show you really more how diverse and noisy the present situation is, with the Blackwell Companion being somewhat in-between.Have you read Theaetetus, Parmenides, Timaeus, or Sophist-Statesman? Those dialogues are probably what you ought to be trying to read and work something out from. I suppose if you really need a secondary, try the William Welton edited "Plato's Forms: Varieties of Interpretation," which has essays touching directly on the relation of epistemology and metaphysics in Plato representing most of the existing schools.
>>24745332>Ascent happens through dialectic. You need to struggle through understanding and engage in dialogue with yourself and others.Where do I find someone for this?
>>24745409Very interesting, thank you for such a thoughtful answer. Do you know how people in the ancient world studied Plato? Was there a greater orthodoxy then? Or was it just as splintered as it is now?
>>24745393Now this is some high quality shit right here, pointing people toward the right direction and giving us a sense of time and space as opposed to pure emotion. Thanks for this.
>>24745236Epistemology only really came into its own with Descartes. The categories of "epistemology" and "metaphysics" were intertwined until then.
>>24745433Well, similarly, in a kind of diversity of ways. Almost from the beginning, you have disagreements where Aristotle reads the Timaeus somewhat literally while Speusippus and Xenocrates read parts of it more figuratively. This is complicated further by the fact that we really don't know how the Academy worked; it's clear that people read the dialogues, but we don't know if Plato propounded from them or if what constituted his teaching was a dialectical approach appropriate to each learner, or if he taught the same things to everyone or what. The Epinomis was written by a student, Philip of Opus, and according to the Academicorum philosophorum index Herculanensis, a history of the Academy, the same Philip worked with Plato on editing the Laws, so the Epinomis may give you an idea of what someone working closely with Plato thought he might agree with. Additionally, if you believe a number of the dialogues doubted as being by Plato's hand (e.g., Rival Lovers, Theages, the Lettersetc.) are spurious, they nonetheless would otherwise seem to have their origin from the Academy, and those texts seem to make something of the relation between Socrates' daimon and Eros in the Symposium, the relationship between philosophy and politics, and the importance of coming to aporias. (And if the Seventh Letter isn't genuinely by his hand, then it's by someone in the Academy very familiar with the events described who was under the impression that Plato kept his beliefs tight-lipped).Within about a century after, the Academy voted in Arcesilaus, and from then until the Academy's physical destruction by Sulla, the Academy tended to be skeptical, sometimes aligning more with Pyrrhonist skepticism, sometimes less (Cicero was a student of the last head of the original physical Academy). During this period, there's a text preserved among the Oxyrhyncus papyri arguing that Plato uses his mouthpieces to hide his own views, but you also have an anonymous extant commentary on Theaetetus that wouldn't strike later Platonists as strange. You also have scholars of Plato outside the Academy starting to formulate the arrangements of the dialogues into trilogies and tetralogies.You really start to get a picture of Platonism as we recognize it with the writings of Philo of Alexandria, Plutarch, the anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy, Albinus/Alcinous, Apuleius, Numenius, Theon of Smyrna, all the way to Plotinus and the Platonic school of thought following him. But this truthfully took centuries.
>>24745393How did Plato react to Thucydies? And was Thucydies a reaction to Herodotus?
>>24745236>concise reading on specifically Plato’s metaphysics and epistemology
Thomas Taylor played a tight game
>>24745523Nta, but Plato never refers to Thucydides anywhere, but I agree with that anon that reading Thucydides can be instructive in seeing what kind of political situation Athens was undergoing when Socrates was philosophizing. Passages in Thucydides like those about the plague, about political faction, about the demagogues after Pericles, and especially about Alcibiades, are very relevant to the political dialogues. I think a good argument could be made that the Symposium is surprisingly clarified somewhat by reading Thucydides on Alcibiades and Athens' "eros", but that doesn't mean Plato read him. I think it's likely he did though, based on his fellow Socratic Xenophon's Hellenica presupposing that Thucydides' history was being read widely enough to be a continuation of it.Thucydides doesn't mention Herodotus by name, but he does say,>From the evidence I have presented, however, one would not go wrong in supposing that events were very much as I have set them out; and no one should prefer rather to believe the songs of the poets, who exaggerate things for artistic purposes, or the writings of the chroniclers, which are composed more to make good listening than to represent the truth, being impossible to check and having most of them won a place over time in the imaginary realm of fable. My findings, however, you can regard as derived from the clearest evidence available for material of this antiquity..>As to the events of the war themselves, however, I resolved not to rely in my writing on what I learned from chance sources or even on my own impressions, but both in the cases where I was present myself and in those where I depended on others I investigated every detail with the utmost concern for accuracy. This was a laborious process of research, because eyewitnesses at the various events reported the same things differently, depending on which side they favoured and on their powers of memory. Perhaps the absence of the element of fable in my work may make it seem less easy on the ear; but it will have served its purpose well enough if it is judged useful by those who want to have a clear view of what happened in the past and what – the human condition being what it is – can be expected to happen again some time in the future in similar or much the same ways. It is composed to be a possession for all time and not just a performance-piece for the moment.Which at least gives the impression he's intending to differentiate himself from Herodotus, among other contemporary historians.
>>24745410I suggest listening to the dialogues according to your interest (Meno, The Republic, Phaedrus are all good places to start). If you are highly visual and hate audio learning, try reading them out loud and then reflecting on them. You don't always have to do so, but it's how dialecticians would have engaged with the text, so it's a good starting point. Pay attention to the commonalities between the different works. Also consider the kinds of rhetorical devices Plato has Socrates use, and see if you can spot the kinds of mistakes the interlocutors make in everyday life. Practice Socratic questioning; don't be an annoying autist and stay humble though. Remember to keep intellectual humility in front of your mind. What I'm getting at is that dialectic wasn't just some doctrine, but a way of practicing and orienting life. Plato specifically warns against engaging with philosophy as detached rational doctrine; this is the real point behind his famous criticism of writing. Also, many of the deepest and most important points in the dialogue are esoteric: you can only get them on repeated engagement, and it's impossible to be spoon fed and 'objective' interpretation, that's the whole point. (For example, look for a correspondence between the City and the Soul in the Republic.)Finding other actual people to work with is the hardest part. Good luck.
>>24745523Well I didn't really mean it as Plato reacting to Thucydides, I meant it more as Plato reacting to Athenian and the wider Greek political and moral situation that Thucydides describes. >>24745653 puts it quite well.>>24745410You should try to find someone who you trust and who is preferably smarter than you. I introduced my smarter friend to Plato and have been conducting dialectic with him and its worked for me so far.
>>24745350The best texts by far to read is Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesion War and Aristotle's Athenian Constitution. Both are indispensible and near comprehensive texts for understanding the historical and geopolitical background of Athens at time, as >>24745393 says, and I'll vouch for his extremely good advice. When reading Plato, don't skip some of the underrated texts like Statesman and Laws where he elaborates on a lot of this and puts metaphysic to practice.
>>24745520Nta, but what source/ translations do you recommend? I've partially studied Theon of Smryna before reading Plato.
>>24745314Sorry bro, I've been busy. Maybe I'll make one this Friday (or, y'know, you could always make one...)
>>24745236Are you the same guy that made the Jung thread?> I like what I'm reading by him. Why isn't he as popular today as he was when he was still alive? Has anyone written a book that critically looks at Jung's ideas? If I want to go deeper into Jung, is it necessary to be familiar with epistemology and metaphysics? I know he's read Kant before and tried to straddle the line between appeasing the scientific community of his day without totally ignoring interior psychic reality.
>>24746419For translations:First Alcibiades - Carnes Lord, David Johnson Second Alcibiades - David JohnsonApology - Thomas & Grace West, Mark KremerCharmides - Thomas & Grace WestCleitophon - Clifford Orwin, Mark KremerCratylus - Joe SachsCritias - Diskin ClayCrito - Thomas & Grace WestEuthydemus - Joe Sachs, Gregory McBrayer & Mary NicholsEuthypho - Thomas & Grace WestGorgias - James Nichols, Joe SachsHipparchus - Steven FordeHippias Major - David Sweet, Joe SachsHippias Minor - James LeakeIon - Allan BloomLaches - James NicholsLaws - Thomas PangleLetters - Ariel HelferLysis - David BolotinMenexenus - Susan Collins & Devin StaufferMeno - Robert Bartlett, George Anastaplo & Laurence Berns, Brann/Kalkavage/SalemMinos - Thomas PangleParmenides - Keith WhitakerProtagoras - Robert Bartlett, Joe SachsPhaedo - Brann/Kalkavage/SalemPhaedrus - James Nichols, Stephen ScullyPhilebus - Seth BenardeteRepublic - Allan Bloom, Joe SachsRival Lovers - James LeakeSophist - Seth Benardete, Brann/Kalkavage/SalemStatesman - Seth Benardete, Brann/Kalkavage/SalemSymposium - Seth Benardete, Brann/Kalkavage/Salem, Avi SharonTheaetetus - Seth Benardete, Joe SachsTheages - Thomas PangleTimaeus - Peter KalkavageA bunch of those are collected in an edition The Roots of Political Philosophy, Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues. As for sources, do you mean secondary literature, or what do you have in mind?
>>24746813Thank you very much. Bless you. Although someone once recommended me Thomas Taylor's translations. He didnt really tell me why.
Ἀγεωμέτρητος μηδεὶς εἰσίτω
>>24746836Taylor's usually recommended out of both what's taken to be his understanding of the texts (a combination of spirituality and science in its older meaning), and out of appreciation for his kind of old English. By all means read him, but I think people overstate his grasp of Greek, and he tends to approach every word, in his Plato translations, anyway, as if they were only technical terminology, so a word that means "alteration" or "change" becomes "alliation", and a word that means "locomotion" becomes "lation" in his translations.
>>24745332I have never encountered a Platonist who would engage in dialectics. They’ll write paragraphs upon paragraphs whenever many Platonists are circle jerking, but with the slightest push back or criticism, the conversation ends with “go read x, y author addresses that point.” But they can never arriculate how, or what the argument was. All they can do is appeal to authority, because Platonism is nothing more than an intellectual fashion, and has no substance.
>>24745236Wordy nigga posting earlier is seemingly smart so listen a lil but doubt too cause but prolly a Straussian. Just read stuff from Tubingen School if want the real meat of metaphysics and epistemology
>>24746864Why is that? These dudes never engage in dialetic, but are always on the ready to explicate on personal theories. I am trying to recall if any other ideological votary is like that, but I can't honestly compare or indeed find anyone with their idiosyncrasy.
>>24746855I see. Thank you nonetheless. Bless you and have a good day :)
>>24746864What questions have you asked people? What are you confused about?
>>24746883Are there many Platonists on this sub? What does it even mean to be a Platonist, save the modern view which deals only with the existence of abstract objects? What with all the various schools of interpretation, how does one even know whether or not the scholar they are reading is conveying actual "Platonism?"
>>24746813What is your opinion on the Jowett translations in general?
>>24746977"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."-- Alfred WhiteheadYeah, there are many different interpretations and you aren't going to find some kind of confessional document that tells you exactly what it means to be a Platonist. That is partially because of what Platonism itself is. But can we really define what it means to be of any school in the way you seem to be asking? Could we determine what an existentialist or a pragmatist is this way? I would argue: clearly not.
>>24746849ἀληθῆ λέγεις, ὦ Σώκρατες
>>24746978I think he's a legitimately great stylist, but I don't really have any use for his translations, he takes a lot of liberties that obscure smaller points that add up to bigger misunderstandings. For example, is speaking justly the same thing as speaking truly? It's no small difference, especially when you read the Republic which appears to make a claim that falsehoods can sometimes be beneficial and serve just purposes, but Jowett runs across a passage in the Apology where Socrates says "consider this very thing and apply your mind to this, whether the things I say are just or not," and renders it, "but think only of the truth of my words." He'll also render straightforward assertions as rhetorical questions, drop words out, and sometimes even translate words by their opposite (at one point he translates "dikaion", "just", as "unfair"), without rhyme or reason.
>>24747003Just to expand, if you just need a translation to serve as an introduction in the broadest way, Jowett is a decent map, as long as you don't confuse him with the territory.
>>24747003Thank you, really interesting points. I'm just starting to become aware that I'm relying a bit too much on Jowett simply because he's most available. Gunna order your Pangle book.
>>24745410ironically unironically chatgbt
>>24747003I liked Jowett's essays before the dialogues, the essay on On the Nature and Limits of Psychology before the Theatetus status is an interesting insight into how the first generation of psychologists thought and operated. The essay on language theory before the cratylus was also good, for the same reason. >>24747017Pangle's translation of laws is free without login or download on archive.org, you could read his translators note and some off the text/footnotes before committing to a purchase
>>24745236Allan Silverman's Dialectic of Essence is a very good systematic treating of Plato's thought. You can get it for free on Internet Archive too.
>>24746449I've been busy too so I was hoping someone else would make one. If you don't get around to doing it on Friday ill do it but this thread seems to fill that void at least for now.
>>24747033nice dubs but gpt says your wrong. if you dont know i sold my brain :3
>>24747205I sense its best to do it over the weekend as I notice that's when there's most activity (maybe there are less NEET's on this board than I first thought...)
>>24747120Is Bollingen complete works Jowett? Is Hackett edition better?