Whoops. for the last general here's the archive version: https://archived.moe/lit/thread/24705276/#24705276

>>24751846
>Icebreaker: what are your favourite commentaries/secondary sources for understanding Plato?
Debra Nails's "The People of Plato": A prosopography of every historical figure mentioned in the authentic and dubious dialogues, with references to where they're mentioned in other ancient sources or archaeological discoveries. Also has two great detailed discussions of both the Alcibiades controversy, and all the Platonic interlocutors caught up in it, and the brief rule of the Thirty. A great reminder of things one can easily miss, e.g., that Socrates had a brother who may have been wealthy, that Polemarchus was murdered by the Thirty, that Callias had a position within the Mysteries, and that almost everyone present except for Aristophanes in the Symposium was either exiled from Athens or voluntarily fled in light of the accusations against Alcibiades.

J.S. Morrison's "Meno of Pharsalus, Polycrates, and Ismenias": Tries to answer the question, "what the hell is Meno of Thessaly doing in Athens?" and goes over a detailed history of Thessaly's rocky political situation. Tl;dr of it is, "the Thessalians didn't like the Spartans messing with them, and after the Athenians overthrew the Spartan installed Thirty, they sought Athens' help." Also helps to spell out how Meno ended up supporting Cyrus the Younger.

Jacub Filonik's "Athenian Impiety Trials: A Reappraisal": The most thorough study of impiety trials available, trying to get to the bottom of how common or otherwise they were, late ancient exaggerations (e.g., whether Protagoras was ever prosecuted), and how often they resulted in the death penalty or something else.

Kilian Fleischer's "Philodem, Geschichte der Akademie": A modern German translation and reconstruction of a history of the Academy that Philodemus was working on. If anyone recalls the stories coming out a year or two ago about Plato being sold into slavery by the Spartans or the story of his death (mocking a Thracian girl for being unable to keep rhythm playing a song the night before he succumbed to fever), it's from this. There's apparently plans for an English translation or edition, but I wouldn't expect it soon.

Matthew Farmer's "Playing the Philosopher: Plato in Fourth Century Comedy": An inspection of the known comic fragments mentioning Plato, one of which is a parody on the opening of the Republic. Neat stuff.

Myles Burnyeat's "First Words" in Explorations Vol. 2: Someone from the analytic tradition observing the relationship between the contents of the dialogues and the apparently unconnected opening lines. Very persuasive.

Athenaeus' Deipnosophists: Not really a secondary work as normally understood, but book 11 has a long section where one of the characters criticizes Plato, and in the process shares all sorts of ancient gossip and accusations.

>>24751979
>Debra Nails's "The People of Plato"
Wow that sounds crazy... I'll have to check it out ASAP

>J.S. Morrison's "Meno of Pharsalus, Polycrates, and Ismenias": Tries to answer the question, "what the hell is Meno of Thessaly doing in Athens?" and goes over a detailed history of Thessaly's rocky political situation. Tl;dr of it is, "the Thessalians didn't like the Spartans messing with them, and after the Athenians overthrew the Spartan installed Thirty, they sought Athens' help." Also helps to spell out how Meno ended up supporting Cyrus the Younger.

That's an interesting premise, to assume that the dialogue is proof that Meno actually spent time in Athens; I'd assumed that Plato was using him liberally as a representative for the aristocrat class. Still, I'll definitely check this one out too, in part because I'm a big fan of Anabasis and find Meno's involvement really fascinating as Xenophon basically describes him as some sort of sociopath.

>>24752043
>That's an interesting premise, to assume that the dialogue is proof that Meno actually spent time in Athens; I'd assumed that Plato was using him liberally as a representative for the aristocrat class. Still, I'll definitely check this one out too, in part because I'm a big fan of Anabasis and find Meno's involvement really fascinating as Xenophon basically describes him as some sort of sociopath.
The conversation depicted in the Meno is plainly a kind of fiction, as are most of the dialogues, but one of the things that comes through Nails's book is how often Plato gets historical details right (there are notable exceptions), so Meno coming to Athens right after the overthrow of the Thirty in order to request assistance from Anytus, who was in political ascent for doing battle with the Thirty, seems plausible.

I take Plato and Xenophon to both be accurate accounts of Meno’s character, but I should also point to Truesdell Brown's essay "Menon of Thessaly," which tries to push back against that depiction as much as can plausibly be accomplished, while also relating some interesting details from a ancient summary of the lost Persica of Ctesias.

>Prodicus was a well-known sophist who was especially keen on the exact meaning of words

So this guy was basically the 400BC version of Jordan Peterson, huh?

>>24752104
>ut I should also point to Truesdell Brown's essay "Menon of Thessaly," which tries to push back against that depiction as much as can plausibly be accomplished, while also relating some interesting details from a ancient summary of the lost Persica of Ctesias

Yeah, I sense that Xenophon was partial to slandering those who he took a disliking to and has a bad reputation for being impartial (Hellenica most notoriously), so I wouldn't be too surprised if he was painting a slightly dishonest portrait

>>24752755
I don't think he was being dishonest. He was there to deal with the repercussions of Meno’s betrayal of the Greek generals, after all, which was no small thing. It's just good to occasionally have essays like that of Brown's to check our impulses toward judgement and raise the question of whether such a man could be defensible.

>>24751846
Sell me on Plato.. I read The Republic and The last days of Socrates.. I really despised both. The last days of Socrates was a long time ago now but from what I remember it was my first exposure to the Socratic method and it made me want to gouge my eyes out with how difficult Socrates made even the simplest conversation. The Republic was that but for 200 pages. He just waxes poetic about shit and does logical leaps that his audience doesn't seem to catch because he's hypnotized them with the boredom of endless questions. They're proposing a utopian state which never came to be and never could have been. They make conclusions based on speculation on ideal behaivour from all participants based on their postulations. It's absolute trash for any modern man. Sure if I was born 3000 years ago my mind would probably explode from all of the wisdom.. But it has no value today... Oh you might say it influenced this and that... But as work on its own and not a historical document, what is the value of it for the modern man? The only greek philosophers of any worth are Aristotle and Epicurus.

>>24752818
On the one hand, I think ypur skepticism is good, since no decent reading of Plato can come from just nodding one's head. On the other hand, I'm not sure it sounds like you want to be sold on Plato. For example, you catch that the ideal city has never been and could not be, but you miss that Socrates says as much in book 5 (""Weren't we, as we assert, also making a pattern in speech of a good city?" "Certainly." "Do you suppose that what we say is any less good on account of our not being able to prove that it is possible to found a city the same as the one in speech?" "Surely not," he said. "Well, then, that's the truth of it," I said."). And, far from hypnotizing everyone into agreeing with mere assertions, Socrates is always working from the opinions of Glaucon and Adeimantus (in fact, the city that everyone recalls as the ideal city of the Republic is a result of Glaucon's direct interjection; he rejects the city that Socrates puts forward as a city of pigs). As for making conclusions based on ideal behavior, I don't think that's actually done, with the plausible exception of the philosopher, and I'm not sure you would actually reject the psychological behaviors of men described if you went through it more carefully.

But then Plato may not be for you, and Aristotle and the Epicurean corpus are worth reading too.

>>24752818
>it made me want to gouge my eyes out with how difficult Socrates made even the simplest conversation
>He just waxes poetic about shit and does logical leaps that his audience doesn't seem to catch because he's hypnotized them with the boredom of endless questions

This was my impression after reading a few dialogs. I do not see the appeal of Plato at all.

>>24752871
I'll concede that me being sold on Plato is highly unlikely. I guess more so my question is whether there is something I am missing?

It was a year ago that I read The Repbulic so my memory of it is a bit vague since I admitedly weren't entirely absorbed in what was said since the presentation made it incredibly dull to me.

The philosopher is who I had in mind as I think the assumption of them not falling to corruption is highly unlikely. I do recall there being some discussion with regards to avoiding corruption but it isn't sufficient to make me believe it as a possiblity. Then there's the rigid static nature of each persons role within the society, men are just cogs in the machine. Which sure we more or less are even in modern society. But the reliability of each cogs performance isn't as certain as it is made out to be in the book I feel.

I guess I reject their idealism. But they are trying to propose the good city so a utopia is what ought to be strived for I guess. I don't really see what I got out of reading it now that society has certainly had its time to absorb and implent whatever good that could be gained from this book. It feels redundant in that sense (for a modern audience).

As for the the implied manipulation or hypnosis I don't have a clear example but I remember there were some assertions that felt like leaps that weren't scrutinized as thouroughly as they ought to have been, so they get accepted as truthes even if I felt they weren't substantiated.

Of course here I am speaking my truth, unsubstantiated :-)

>>24752818
Could you provide examples of Socrates waxing poetic and making logical leaps that the audience doesn't catch?

>>24752910
Hmm, well, let me see if I can't go through the points to best of my memory. Since they're worth addressing.

>The philosopher is who I had in mind as I think the assumption of them not falling to corruption is highly unlikely. I do recall there being some discussion with regards to avoiding corruption but it isn't sufficient to make me believe it as a possiblity.
I don't think Plato discounts this. There's a passage in book 6 exactly on this subject, where he depicts Socrates laying out how the philosophic nature is "destroyed in *many*, while *a small number* escape." Now, he already acknowledges that philosophic natures are few, so he already admits that it's an even smaller number that might go uncorrupted. That they do spend a good chunk of books 6 and 7 going over the best case scenario and what would have to be required to prevent their corruption, I think, has to be understood in light of having already acknowledged that general implausibility. The philosopher who is incorruptible is an extreme case, by Plato's acknowledgement, the bearing of which is, "you're not going to have a philosopher-king rule over you for the good of society, and you shouldn't want just anyone who seems to be a philosopher, because they could easily be tempted into changing."

>Then there's the rigid static nature of each persons role within the society, men are just cogs in the machine. Which sure we more or less are even in modern society. But the reliability of each cogs performance isn't as certain as it is made out to be in the book I feel.
So, a couple of things. A big part of the Republic is trying to show you what would be required if you expected two things out of wisdom: 1) that it's precise, and 2) that it's the greatest benefit to politics. If wisdom were both precise and politically beneficial, then it would have to this kind of mechanical character to it, where everyone is sorted into castes according to a pass/fail education, where poetry has to prescribe only passages conducive to virtue, where marriages are decided by caste and children are kept in common until sorted into "families", where the best possible ruler has to go through an over 30-year education that includes subjects in mathematics that Socrates says there's barely any research on, and the rulers have to remember an intentionally ridiculous mathematical formula for figuring out when to have everyone breed where forgetting it results in the city just immediately starting to dissolve into something like Sparta. The other thing is that Plato has Socrates acknowledge that the caste system only holds if you get rid of everyone older than 10, and tell these kids that their life before was an illusion and teach them a noble lie about how their caste roles are natural. Plato even has Socrates acknowledge, "well, we all know that 'gold souls' in mating can produce dud 'bronze souls'", which is why they have to grant that the children are held in common until a certain age.

Cont.

>>24752969
ChatGPT:
1. Defining Justice by Analogy (the City–Soul analogy)

Leap: Socrates argues that since justice is hard to see in an individual, we should look at it in a larger thing — the city — and then "read it off" back into the soul.

Problem: Just because the structure of a city and the structure of an individual both involve "parts," it doesn’t follow that the same principle (justice = harmony) applies identically in both.

Why it works in the dialogue: His companions agree to the analogy and don’t demand proof that city/soul correspondence is valid.

2. Tripartite Division of the Soul

Leap: He infers three parts of the soul (reason, spirit, appetite) because people sometimes experience internal conflict, like being thirsty but refusing to drink.

Problem: From psychological conflict, it doesn’t strictly follow that there are literally three distinct "parts" of the soul. One could explain the conflict differently (e.g., competing desires of the same faculty).

Why it works: The reasoning feels intuitive, and the group accepts it quickly.

3. The Noble Lie (myth of metals)

Leap: Socrates proposes that society will function justly if people believe a myth about their natural roles (gold, silver, bronze souls).

Problem: There’s no real justification for why such a falsehood guarantees stability or fairness — he just asserts it as "necessary for harmony."

Why it works: Adeimantus and Glaucon don’t press him on the ethics of lying, so the assumption slides by.

4. Philosopher-Kings as the Only Rulers

Leap: He claims that since philosophers love truth and knowledge, only they can truly rule well.

Problem: Loving truth doesn’t obviously imply political competence. Also, Socrates assumes philosophers wouldn’t be corrupted by power — a big leap.

Why it works: The interlocutors admire the idea and let him idealize philosophers without addressing counterexamples.

5. Theory of Forms and the Form of the Good

Leap: He introduces the Forms (especially the Form of the Good) as the foundation of all knowledge and morality.

Problem: The dialogue never demonstrates the existence of Forms; Socrates uses metaphors (the Sun, the Divided Line, the Cave) instead of arguments. It’s persuasive imagery, not strict proof.

Why it works: The metaphors are powerful, and his audience accepts them rather than demanding a rigorous account.

6. Justice as “Each Part Doing Its Own Work”

Leap: After a long city-building exercise, Socrates concludes that justice = each part of the city (or soul) doing its proper work and not interfering with the others.

Problem: This is more a definitional stipulation than a deductive conclusion. Why should we accept that this is the definition of justice rather than a definition?

Why it works: By this point, the companions are drawn into his framework and don’t revisit alternative definitions from Book I (like Polemarchus’s or Thrasymachus’s)

>>24752969
Sorry for the chatGPT lad you brought it out of me. I can only talk about my memorys of the book in a general sense I don't have the energy to go through the book again just to respond to an internet post.

>>24752910
>I guess I reject their idealism.But they are trying to propose the good city so a utopia is what ought to be strived for I guess.
So, I don't think this is an unusual take. Many readers lean toward one of two extremes that both fall short, but which are both pretty natural: either a totally political reading, where the ideal city ruled by philosophers is the whole point, or a totally soul-focused reading, where all of the discussions about political life are extraneous. Both have to be put together, so that you learn something about the political yearning for perfect justice, as well as not lose sight of how the political discussions inform your understanding of your soul, or, if you prefer, how you carry yourself as a person. There are several points throughout the Republic where Socrates, pretty much always to Glaucon, has to remind him that they're not actually founding a city, and that they shouldn't be worried about feasibility, because they're trying to understand what living a just life among the unjust might require. As for idealism, there are also several passages where Socrates straight out says "certainty in any of this requires more investigation, don't get your hopes up, bud, lmao."

>>24753004
Going to bed so the response will have to be delayed. But I just remembered. Isn't it the case that the state will raise the children? I object to that quite vehemently. Better people = programmed people. It's dehumanizing, it takes the idea of chasing an ideal to a point where it is gross in my eyes.

>>24752979
>4. Philosopher-Kings as the Only Rulers
>Leap: He claims that since philosophers love truth and knowledge, only they can truly rule well.
>Problem: Loving truth doesn’t obviously imply political competence. Also, Socrates assumes philosophers wouldn’t be corrupted by power — a big leap.
What Socrates actually says in the dialogue:
>Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils.
Socrates posits that until philosopher kings who possess both politcal greatness (this negates the ChatGPT 'politcal competence' rebuttal by definition) and wisdom (this negates the ChatGPT 'corrupted by power' rebuttal by definition since being moral is wisdom according to Socrates' conception of wisdom), the world shall not know rest from their evils. I honestly don't know how this is waxing poetic or making logical leaps. It's basically a tautology since Socrates speaks about the philosopher king qua philosopher king and not merely a philospher king (i.e. the ideal ruler). ChatGPT lacks reading comprehension; and I would say you do as well, but you haven't actually responded to me. Also, what is the point then in participating in a discussion of Plato if you don't even want to read the works?

>>24753032
>But I just remembered. Isn't it the case that the state will raise the children? I object to that quite vehemently. Better people = programmed people. It's dehumanizing, it takes the idea of chasing an ideal to a point where it is gross in my eyes.
Yes, they would be under the care of the guardian ruler caste. But again, this is to show what would really be required in order to satisfy Glaucon's desire for perfect political justice. This is related to what I was getting at by saying,

>A big part of the Republic is trying to show you what would be required if you expected two things out of wisdom: 1) that it's precise, and 2) that it's the greatest benefit to politics.

So the need for a community of children reared by the guardians would be a requirement according to the kind of opinions of someone who wanted to see perfect justice in a community. Now, the real bearing of this for a reader isn't to be convinced that the state or government or what have you needs to be rearing children, but is supposed to appeal to you on the level of considering how you and I would rear our children, and on what grounds we would justify it. Is our end goal to produce children who are just, or is it to produce free and liberated children, or children who are more talented than most people, etc.? Are those all compatible ends, or do we have to make compromises such that we can live with having a talented kid who maybe ends up also being a prick when they grow up?

I should also observe that Socrates lays this out as one of the "three waves", where the "waves" are waves of laughter that Socrates expects, knowing how absurd and ridiculous these three particular proposals are.

>>24753058
Ehh, I wouldn't be so harsh on him, he's already said it's been a year or so since a one-off reading, but he seems earnest and a bit willing to hear out why someone might think otherwise about Plato.

>>24753102
Seeing as my gripe is ephemeral and mostly to do with someone not wanting to read, I will cease my harangue. I am not a follower of Plato or am very much interested in actually building a community around Plato, but still, I don't desire to ruin anyone's hope for it. My apologies, and good luck.

is that nigga wearing a durag

>>24753298
Um they call it a δυραγ thank you thank you

>>24752818
I mean, like a lot of people on this board, I think I was first sold on Plato by the "Start With the Greeks" meme - the idea that to get into philosophy one should treat its history like an ongoing dialectic and thus, like any conversation, the easiest way to understand would be to start at the beginning. So, even if he no longer has inherent value, he is still, for instrumental purposes, worth reading.
Even if you don't rate his arguments that highly, do you not find that they're intellectually stimulating? That they raise interesting questions?

>>24752818
>>24752902
Out of curiosity, how old are you guys?
I read Plato originally in my early twenties (the Symposium and the Apologia) and didn't really find them interesting. I started re-reading Plato in my late 30s and I think they're some of the best books ever written.

>>24751846
The First Philosophers is an amazing secondary source for Plato and should probably be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to get in to the wider world of Greco-Roman philosophy. I do like how it dedicates a section to the sophists to contextualize their arguments as I feel like Plato does kind of misrepresent them unfavorably for dramatic effect in his dialogues. Apart from that I'd say the best secondary source on Plato would probably just be Plotinus.
>>24753089
>>24753102
I think the issue can be attributed to Plato's method of delivery rather than the actual substance behind Plato's writing. Plato tends to over complicate his writing for the sake of artistic and dramatic merit which leads to people losing track of the actual arguments being presented and how they are deduced. A lot of his thoughts could be told in fewer words but if he were to do that he would actually be making the logical leaps that people accuse him of making.

>>24755243
>Plato tends to over complicate his writing for the sake of artistic and dramatic merit which leads to people losing track of the actual arguments being presented and how they are deduced.
Do you have something specific in mind?

>>24755388
I don't really have any specifics in mind since this is just a general thing that exists due to Plato's style of conveying knowledge, though I'm not too happy with how I phrased my initial post and I'd like to clarify that I didn't mean that Plato himself overcomplicates his writing consciously, but that the way he writes with a separate goal of artistic merit leads to the impression of overcomplicating a thought as well as the impression that he makes logical leaps despite the verbosity when this really comes about though a non careful examination of the substance behind the writing. This is opposed to someone like Aristotle or Schopenhauer where they don't attempt at all to make their work have a dramatic or artistic merit and want to convey a thought or a message as simply and clearly as possible. I personally enjoy the dialogues and think Plato might be the best thinker out there but I can see how someone who is unfamilar with Greek literary traditions, which are heavily seeped in poetry and drama as they didn't grow up with it would look at Plato's work as unsatisfactory, illogical or unserious.

>>24751846
>Robin Waterfield's The First Philosophers is something I find myself going back to every time a really get into a dialogue. Even though Plato is never really the focus of the book at any point, its really good for contextualising his philosophy alongside what had gone before.
Based. You might also enjoy A Plato Reader: Eight Essential Dialogues by C.D.C. Reeve.

>>24756049
Hmm, why do you think Plato writes with "dramatic or artistic merit" in mind? I don't personally see any interest in aiming for literary merit, just a pointed interest in human psychology in its myriad appearances, and the way psychology and human types are related to the problems of the subjects brought up. Have you read Phaedrus?

>we built western civilization on the thoughts of some bald nigga

This is why we were destined to end up where we are today. Bald people lack virility and their brains are poisoned by the sun.

>>24756157
Because he was a poet and a dramatist for much of his youth and likely received an education on this art. If we are to consider his dialogues as apocryphal (which I do) he would have to employ the skills he learned in crafting a dialogue in order to suit its purpose, which leads to the goal of producing a work of artistic merit in order to get the attention of the reader. I have read the Phaedrus and what he has to say about the arts does tell me he wrote with artistic merit in mind, but with the goal of reconciling his skill with philosophy but that this ultimately did not come to pass which is why by the time he wrote the 7th letter where he solidified his belief that such things couldn't be taught though art because it led to the same outcomes that lead people now into misinterpretation and a general feeling of unseriousness towards the writer.

>>24756268
I'm hesitant to take Diogenes Laertius' account of Plato's youth too seriously, but, in any case, while I do agree that the dialogues are more or less fictions, the dramatic details are related to the substance of the dialogues, and in ways that aren't just literary decoration, but which point to the psychological phenomena being discussed. (An example would be in the Republic; the description of the soul as having three parts that vie for rule means you can evaluate the "characters" by that description, according to who's ruled by calculation, spiritedness, or appetite, and also Socrates' responses according to how he says you bring balance to those. Another example would the Phaedo, where the exit of Socrates' wife with their newborn son should make us ask whether Socrates' description of the philosopher, as someone who doesn't care for bodily things like sex, is what he really believes and if we shouldn't approach the subsequent accounts with more caution.)

Re: Phaedrus, that wasn't my take away from it, which I see as concerned with directing the appropriate speeches to the appropriate people. The talk of play there, if that's what you're thinking of, isn't about literary merit, for, as Socrates says about the man who plays with speeches about the just, the beautiful, and the good, "much more beautiful, I think, is the seriousness that comes into being about these things, when someone using the dialectical art, taking hold of a fitting soul, plants and sows with knowledge speeches that are competent to assist themselves and him who planted and are not barren but have seed, whence other speeches, naturally growing in other characters, are competent to pass this on, ever deathless, and make him who has it experience as much happiness as is possible for a human being." That sounds more like a concern with teaching while being mindful of different audiences.

As for the seventh letter, I have to correct that impression, but he doesn't say that; he says, rather:

>If it seemed to me that these matters could adequately be put down in writing for the many or be said, what could be nobler for us to have done in our lifetime than this, to write what is a great benefit for human beings and to lead nature forth into the light for all? But I do not think such an undertaking concerning these matters would be a good for human beings, ***unless for some few, those who are themselves able to discover them through a small indication***; of the rest, it would unsuitably fill some of them with a mistaken contempt, and others with lofty and empty hope as if they had learned awesome matters.

That sounds to me like a repetition of the point in Phaedrus, just put more bluntly.

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>>24754438
Not them but I agree and am 23. I find the dialogs to be really boring at best, pure sophistry at worst.

>>24752969
Pic related. I'm reading this and it feels like Socrates is using "logic" to make things more complicated than they really are.

>It is quite illogical to be courageous due to terror and cowardice.
I would argue one can only be courageous in the face of terror. IIRC Aristotle made that argument somewhere too.

>They are, in a way, sound-minded due to lack of restraint.
I don't think this entire paragraph is an accurate representation of how sound-mindedness works for those who aren't "philosophers." In my experience, you're either impulsive or you aren't, the "pleasure" that controls you just happens to be the one life put in your way.

It feels like Socrates necessarily wants things to be this way to later further his argument.

>>24756349
I went and skimmed through Phaedrus and I do like your interpretation better as it sounds more consistent with the wider Plato teachings. I'm gonna reread it properly as Plato has always been a philosopher I've had to read twice over to extract some understanding, which is what I did with last days, Republic, Meno, Protagoras, Gorgias and Symposium. I still think there is artistic merit in his dialogues and that this format is what puts certain people off from Plato as its unfamiliar, and I think that Diogenes Laertius account does seem correct based on what I have felt reading Plato but perhaps the artistic merit is more of a side effect as he uses the dialogue to express different psychological states as well as the dialectic approach to the highest ideal
I'll try to do better next time around in this general.

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>>24756684
Also as a general criticism of Plato, I don't like his obsession with the Forms. I agree they exist in theory, but 1) he overestimates our capacity to grasp them and apply them to society, and 2) he underestimates the fact that reality may be the way it is for a reason. Reality itself may be a better representation of the Forms (especially considering it has been subjected to time/evolution/progress for centuries) than whatever explanation our limited reasoning may come up with.

I'll admit I haven't gotten around to reading the Republic, so maybe I've got the wrong idea of its objective, but every society that has been rationalized and planned top-down (i.e., gone from theory/Forms to practice) has been an utter disaster when compared to societies that have grown organically.

>>24754438
>the Apologia
I have to say, that's probably the least interesting dialogue, philosophically speaking, that Plato wrote. It's rather misrepresentative of what Plato's works are like so its a shame that for many people its one of the first dialogues they read.

>>24755243
>The First Philosophers is an amazing secondary source for Plato and should probably be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to get in to the wider world of Greco-Roman philosophy. I do like how it dedicates a section to the sophists to contextualize their arguments as I feel like Plato does kind of misrepresent them unfavorably for dramatic effect in his dialogues

Agreed. I think its useful when you're getting into Plato for the first time to have an alternative source that treats the sophists seriously. If one reads the dialogues by themselves without any accompaniments, as most people do, its easy to simply dismiss the sophists as mere grifters - as reflected by their reputation to this day.

>>24756052
>You might also enjoy A Plato Reader: Eight Essential Dialogues
Even if I'm already familiar with all the dialogues?

>>24756684
>>24756708
>They are, in a way, sound-minded due to lack of restraint.
The argument is about being governed by pleasure. Let's say that somebody really likes spending time with goth girls down at the goth bar every Saturday night. Because he really likes this, he goes on to work tirelessly every day, be courageous, strong, and act according to other virtues. Still, he is doing all these because of a lack of restraint regarding the pleasure he gets from the goth girls.

>Regarding forms
It's nothing overtly complex. The argument made in the Republic is that what we are able to perceive with our senses are projections of the real. Like what we see from a distance when looking at a car, which is a two dimensional image of it. Using our intellect we are able to make hypotheses about representations closer to the real and as we move up this intellectual ladder we get closer to it. The real is what he call the ideal form.
This not only applies to physical things like a car of a vase, but intellectual ones too like courage.

Apuleius (author of The Golden Ass) wrote an epitome of platonic philosophy. I have never seen a translation of it, only Latin editions. I wonder why, since the text seemed not as complicated as the Golden ass.

>>24756776
Eh, that was the book that got me back into Plato. The main idea of knowing what you know and being able to know what others know is very important. Having read Xenophon's Socratic works, it seems that it was central in Socrates' thinking. Plato makes an excellent introductory presentation of it.
The fact that people don't know that they don't know is very pervasive.

>>24757011
There are translations of it, but it's like it's an overlooked text.

>>24756688
To be clear, I don't disagree that there are strong literary qualities to the dialogues, I just don't see them as being for the sake of writing something literary. If you do get to reading Phaedrus again, a few things you might want to observe:

- The second half at various points acts as a commentary on the first half. For example, Socrates, who has earlier spoken the long palinode as a correction of his first speech, now reveals that they were both one speech, in fact. (The first speech is an example of what the lover in the second speech, guided by the white horse, would say.)

- Pretty close to the start of the palinode, Socrates says that what follows is really a kind of shortcut to understanding the soul, and that there's a longer account (he says this in the Republic as well). This leaves the matter of the longer account of soul an open question, and what about that account would be different or if something is left out or needs expanding upon.

- There's a description of unifying experiences into an Idea in the palinode, there called Recollection, and it comes back up in the second half at least twice in a more rational description.

- There's a passage in the second half where they start reading Lysias' speech again, and Socrates complains that it lacks what he calls "speech-making necessity" or "logographic necessity"; the specific complaint is that it lacks any necessary order (however that's to be understood), and he gives an example of a poem on a statue where any of the lines could be placed in any order indifferently, with no effect on the meaning. This seems to me to be where Plato lays out a standard by which we may want to read the dialogues, looking for not just a formal arrangement (intro, discussion, conclusion), but also for reasons for the order (take Symposium, which calls attention to the order of speeches by putting off Aristophanes' speech by his hiccuping until after Eryximachus, so that the last three speeches are by the two poets and Socrates).

>>24756684
>>24756708
If you're looking at the Phaedo, I suggest spending time looking at 95e-100e very carefully, where he lays out his experience with Pre-Socratic philosophy, and shows what he's actually trying to do with the Forms. There, he suggests the Forms are very tentative as explanations in the face of certain problems.

>>24752818
>how difficult Socrates made even the simplest conversation.
2 digits IQ

>>24751979
>Myles Burnyeat's "First Words" in Explorations Vol. 2: Someone from the analytic tradition observing the relationship between the contents of the dialogues and the apparently unconnected opening lines. Very persuasive.
That reminds me of one of the first Yale lecture on The Republic where the lecturer said that Heidegger could spend an entire lecture on the first line alone. I'll look into this one, thanks.

>>24757665
I'm not the same anon you responded to but I do think that there is a lot of truth to his essential point, that decisions made by Plato over the direction of his dialogues were done primarily with dramatic interest in mind and sometimes to the detriment of philosophical clarity. It's why, as >>24745409 implies, its not at all easy, even after reading a lot of his works, to get a solid grasp over Plato's overall philosophy. I agree with you that the decisions many a time are done with the intention of elucidating the points made in the dialogue, or perhaps to cast doubt, but I'd still side with >>24755243
and say its not unusual for them have the opposite effects. For instance, a more fundamental decision: his insistence on using Socrates as his protagonist for the majority of his dialogues rather than himself obfuscates the line between Socratic and Platonic thought. I'd also agree with what >>24756049 implies: his philosophy would probably have been more accessible had he written in a more direct and stripped-back format like Aristotle used, rather than attempt to communicate ideas through artistic devices.

>>24760727
A very thoughtful post.

>decisions made by Plato over the direction of his dialogues were done primarily with dramatic interest in mind and sometimes to the detriment of philosophical clarity
I'd like to clarify what I think the relevance of the dramatic details amounts. To borrow Aristotle's terms, I think we're supposed to see the universals through the particulars. Socrates is a stand in for a kind of philosopher (I hesitate to say philosophers in general, he appears to acknowledge such diversity by using Parmenides, Zeno, Timaeus, and the Strangers), but this goes for the other characters, where they're stand-ins for certain types of people, where our expectations and understanding of what's going on have to be adjusted accordingly. So you could raise the question that sometimes comes up about strawmen arguments or fallacies Socrates uses in this way: would someone like Cephalus be able to follow a longer and more precise account of anything? Would he be able to do so without getting upset if his longstanding opinions were wholly replaced by a philosophical understanding (i.e., could such a person live, if not happily in the fullest sense, at least well enough if it were to turn out that some of his deeply held hopes were dashed)? And this seems to arise out of Plato's reflection on his experiences, that human types will differ in both their estimation of what philosophy is and does, but also in how they come to philosophy. So I think the dramatic elements of character and circumstance re ment to be, on the one hand, merely engaging and harmless reading to someone who's not or not yet taken by philosophy, and on the other hand, as case studies of the manifold of phenomena to attend to if one must philosophize. I have a related point for my last comment.

>It's why, as >>24745409 implies,
Lol das me

>his philosophy would probably have been more accessible had he written in a more direct and stripped-back format like Aristotle used, rather than attempt to communicate ideas through artistic devices.
I agree it would be more accessible, but I think Plato doesn't want it to be so accessible; people like Alcibiades, and Plato's own corrupt relatives, Charmides and Critias, are never far from his mind. And, his mentor having been put to death, out of suspicion that his questioning was politically motivated, seems to mean that Plato doesn't share our modern prejudice that one may more or less speak freely about all things as though the broader circumstances arpumd oneself are irrelevant. Aristotle, for his part, seems to have satisfied himself by keeping his treatises internal to his school, instead of publishing them.

Again, some very thoughtful pushback.

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I target read bits of this recently to better understand classical natural right and it’s cosmological origins and greatly enjoyed it. Overall, think The Republic and Timaeus should be read as one piece, with an eye towards Plato being a mystical-cosmological realist after all.

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>>24756169
>t.

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If I read this, the Parmenides dialogue will suddenly become easy as piss to understand, right /pg/?

>>24762024
That's a course on the fragments of Parmenides (AND Heraclitus; it's mistitled, if I recall). There is apparently some bit from some course in the early 30s where Heidegger discussed the dialogue, but it's not translated as far as I can tell.

>>24762074
Are the contents of the fragments though similar enough to the dialogue in order for it to still be of some use?

>>24762084
Not really, and especially not with how Heidegger discusses the fragments. It's an interesting course, but it doesn't touch much of anything that could relate to the dialogue. Were you looking for a secondary on the Parmenides?

>>24752818
I agree with you. I'm on Book VII now, and so far, I'm not convinced on the Theory of Forms. I've heard from others that the Neoplatonists really start to systematize and provide more rational arguments for the Forms and the Soul, but I can't say since I haven't read any of them. I'm going to start reading Aristotle's Organon and Lucretius's De Rerum Natura soonish, so I'll see what Aristotelianism and Epicureanism is about.

>>24762094
yeah, it would be cool to know what's out there if you have anything

>>24762177
There's a bunch, but most of them are just treat plato like an analytic philosopher who was incapable. But the best three I'm aware of (check Anna's Archive) are Proclus's commentary, Robert Brumbaugh's study, "Plato on the One", and Alex Priou's more recent study, "Becoming Socrates". (And Brumbaugh is a very little read scholar who deserves more attention; he did great work on mathematics in Plato and on the manuscript tradition.)

Give Zuckert's Postmodern Platos to every continental fag online

>>24756349
>>24760858
How did you get to know Plato so well anon?

(I'm assuming I'm correctly recognising the style of one guy; thank you for your posts.)

>>24762518
Thank you, that's very kind of you to say (and you're spot on in recognizing me).

I think just being unbalanced enough to have a strong interest, and being willing to read broadly helps. I actually hated Plato when I first read him, I either hated or was bored by everything I read by him (which was a lot), with the sole exception of the Gorgias. And, actually, I was strongly analytic leaning at that point, with an interest in Vlastos's 'historical Socrates' studies. But I read an interesting dramatic interpretation of the Gorgias, thought it was bullshit but interesting, and that turned into reading pretty widely and being surprised by the plurality of readings, which spiralled into reading more of or about any ancient interpretations of him. Also, at some point I committed myself to reading Heidegger and Hegel in order to refute them (lol, lmao), and found myself realizing they were both actually intelligible, contra every analytic leaning book or person I knew, so I also learned quickly to keep an open mind to different schools of interpretation than I would have otherwise, and to be wary of my prejudices.

An old friend from college and I also, some years back, ended up talking every weekend for 3-5 hours, reading and interpreting Rival Lovers, Lysis, Symposium, Phaedrus, Theages, Apology (+ Xenophon's Apology), Hipparchus, and Ion line-by-line. Slowing down, forcing ourselves not to skim, and actively trying to work out counterfactuals and so on really helped us immensely.

I don't care for Plato. There's a lot of dancing around so everything is overlong and convoluted, and if you look at the arguments themselves, it's almost always a crude sophism or breezy dialectic. Plato was not scientific, he was not particularly interesting either as a thinker except as a stepping stone to Aristotle. I cannot imagine spending years reading the Dialogues over and over again. Philosophy is a science, it proceeds discursively and argumentatively. In its pure form, it can say more in a paragraph than Plato will say in dozens of pages. But Plato is just playing games and dicking around, for the most part, as, I fear, are most of his readers.

>>24762947
I'm very unread when it comes to Greek philosophy so I'm curious, what do you think of Aristotelianism?

>>24762934
That's interesting. Plato seems like one of the only topics here that gets good threads (or good contributions to threads) and I'm always glad there are still people using /lit/ with some kind of wisdom to dispense, so to speak.

>An old friend from college and I also, some years back, ended up talking every weekend for 3-5 hours, reading and interpreting Rival Lovers, Lysis, Symposium, Phaedrus, Theages, Apology (+ Xenophon's Apology), Hipparchus, and Ion line-by-line. Slowing down, forcing ourselves not to skim, and actively trying to work out counterfactuals and so on really helped us immensely.
That sounds ideal really doesn't it. Was your friend very into philosophy as well or did you manage to rope him into it just for the discussion?

>>24763127
>That's interesting. Plato seems like one of the only topics here that gets good threads (or good contributions to threads) and I'm always glad there are still people using /lit/ with some kind of wisdom to dispense, so to speak.
Well, I'm glad you're digging the thread. My experience is that Plato threads have been pretty miserable the last few years, this one's been an outlier so far.

>That sounds ideal really doesn't it. Was your friend very into philosophy as well or did you manage to rope him into it just for the discussion?
He actually called me up out of the blue, kinda drunk, read a letter from Nietzsche to his sister from the 1860s about the pursuit of truth, and then blurted out, "Wanna do a weekly study group on Plato?" So he roped me in with my full consent. For his part, he wrote a senior thesis on Phaedrus, and he adored that dialogue as a mystical mythopoetic presentation of philosophy; funny enough, while we finished Rival Lovers, Lysis, and Symposium at a pretty good clip (about two months for those three), Phaedrus took us practically a year, and he let go of his mystical take. I think the moment he broke, in my estimation, is when we read the "soul becoming winged" section of the palinode, where I supplied a philological comment that "winged" (pteros, in Greek) was Athenian slang for "boner," and then we broke into hysterics over Socrates clearly describing the soul like a boner while following up with, "Phaedrus, don't laugh."

We had a lot of material to reflect on, arguments to unpack or compare with other dialogues, but slowing down also showed us how funny and even mischevious Plato is. I recall the Apology surprising us with some howlers beyond the "Punish me by feeding me like an Olympic champion" passage. (One example that comes to mind: during the account of the Delphic Oracle, Socrates acknowledges some doubtfulness about his testimony, so he first calls as witness--the God! Well, this doesn't really work, no one's going to put the trial on hold to send someone to Delphi to check, it's totally risible. So then he offers, "I call as witness my friend who asked, a fellow member of your party, Chaerophon!" But Chaerophon's *been dead* for some time, so finally, Socrates settles for, "Okay, okay...just ask Chaerophon's brother, he'll tell you this shit." But Chaerophon and his brother, according to Xenophon, HATED each other. And he does this almost throughout the whole Apology.)

Hello, newfriend here. Just finished reading Plato and starting Aristotle. Does anyone have any recommendations on how to approach Aristotle coming from Plato?

>>24763301
More or less just start as you would with Aristotle in general, with the Organon. If you're looking for a point that "connects" more, maybe the Ethics-Politics, since a lot of positions discussed can be recognized from the dialogues, as either points Aristotle disputes, agrees with, or argrees with after qualification. But he engages with Plato pretty much all over the corpus.

>>24763325
Thank anon. Do you have any opinion on the differences between Plato and Aristotle?

>>24763301
I disagree with the Organon recommendation unless you are interested in fields like formal logic.
Take a list of Aristotle's works and pick those closer to your interests.

My recommendations would be:
Politics
Physics (how the physical world works)
Nicomachean Ethics (how to live your life)

>>24763341
Well, the key difference between them is that Aristotle thinks wisdom is available, not merely philosophy in the Platonic sense (seeking wisdom), whereas Plato either thinks philosophy can only hope to be seeking for wisdom or that if there is wisdom, it's still not good to write too openly about it. (The qualifier that I mention above in the thread is that Aristotle's treatises, the ones we have, were meant only for his school; Plato's dialogues were available, but guarded, precisely to counter the civic prejudices that got Socrates killed.). Aristotle's criticisms of the Republic in the Politics are reasonable, as are his criticisms about the Good in the Ethics, but, as per >>24752871 and >>24752975, it's not as if these criticisms are unknown to Plato or not made by him (the Third Man that Aristotle references in the Metaphysics shows up twice in Plato's dialogue Parmenides). The difference over the availability of wisdom is crucial. One could probably see the whole difference by comparing the Analytics and Theaetetus.

>>24763461
Thanks also. I have read the Nicomachean Ethics and I had the impression that Plato mocked Aristotle in the Protagoras, through the figure of Prodicus, especially because the latter makes almost unnecessary distinctions similar to those Aristotle makes regarding ethical virtues such as liberality or magnanimity. I have the opinion that there is a desire to contradict Plato just for the sake of doing so.

>>24751846
>chicken boy
Diogenes owns this fucking nerd

>>24763697
>I have the opinion that there is a desire to contradict Plato just for the sake of doing so.
Nta, but that's hard to tell. Aristotle can sometimes be such an oddbird, like apparently taking Heraclitus' obviously metaphorical use of fire literally. I think we should read him with charity, but it can make things puzzling sometimes.

>>24754438
on the contrary, I started reading Plato at 18 and was immediately infatuated; over the six years since, my love has waned gradually (although I still have a strong desire to read all his works). Like others have said elsewhere in this thread (e.g.,>>24762947), I'm often unimpressed by his arguments (before, I think I was more impressionable and less critical). Nonetheless, I still retain a fondness for his artistry - especially in the middle dialogues.

I realised the other day I have a gap, possibly just in memory, of my description of the form of the Good. I can't really remember if Plato (Socrates) provides some sort of explicit reasoning of why it's the form of the Good, specifically, that's at the top of the sort of hierarchy of forms described in the middle of the Republic.

I can think of a sort of justification on my own but it's to do with how knowledge can be cultural and I think it's from somewhere else I got that. Anything else I try to come up with is the sort of scholastic "it's good that things exist therefore that by which things have existence is the most good" - obviously this is contentious since bad things exist. I suppose the same idea makes it very obvious the form of the Good is the "most good" thing since it is that through which anything else is good, and it is good that things are good (good good good good good no longer a real word!) so it could go at the top of a hierarchy of worth, but why couldn't it be created by, or emanate from, a less good form (i.e. that which also creates bad things which one could reasonably say is worse, for making bad things)? Lots more to write about good, bad and their origin but that's enough speculation, I just wanted to ask if someone can narrate the explanation in the Republic.

>>24765023
For me it's usually this passage from book VI of the Republic:
>In like manner the Good may be said to be not only the author of knowledge to all things known, but of their being and essence, and yet the good is not essence, but far exceeds essence in dignity and power.

>>24765043
This was from the Jowett translation.
Here's the one from the Davis 1854 version, which I find better:
>We may say, therefore, as to things cognizable by the intellect, that they become cognizable not only from the good, by which they are known, but likewise that their being and essence are thence derived, while the good itself is not essence, but beyond essence, and superior to both in dignity and power.

>>24765043
>>24765060
But is there some kind of justification attached to this? I may just go and read through book vi again.

>>24765091
Try thinking for yourself. What good is an intelligible thing that's unintelligible? What good is a non-existent being? What good is error?

>>24765109
Well I was specifically wondering about Plato's idea of it not if there is in general a justification for it.

As to what you said obviously there are bad things that are intelligible and bad things that exist, also. We can get around that by saying well that's just our imperfect idea of "bad" and "good" and actually yeah it is all good; which I agree with but seems to work backwards - one must assume or presuppose somewhere the conclusion that the good creates all things, in order to get to the point of accepting that all things are actually good in the truest sense.

>>24765192
>I was specifically wondering about Plato's idea of it not if there is in general a justification for it.
Sapere aude

>>24765023
>>24765091
>>24765192
The overall argument stretches all the way back to book V, beginning with Socrates' introduction of the third and biggest wave (of laughter) of the three proposals he makes in that book, that "Unless the philosophers rule as kings or those now called kings and chiefs genuinely and adequately philosophize...there is no rest from ills for the cities...or for human kind..." So everything that follows all the way to book VII is for the sake of trying to show what would be necessary for the improvement of political life. That framing is ultimately why it culminates in the Good, as opposed to, say, the Beautiful, like in Symposium. As for evils, there's two ways to understand them: 1) political evil, which is meddling between the classes, not strictly adhering to your one art, since the meddling encourages desire for more beyond need, and 2) and individual evil, which is implied to just be having a disordered soul. But the first kind of evil is a phantom of true evil, corresponding to political justice being a phantom of true justice, the real deal (apparently) being justice or ignorance in the soul. I haven't really paid attention to see how something like natural disasters understood as evils or bad things might be discussed. If you look back at the theology of Book II, though, there's a passage where, in the midst of trying to say only good things come from the gods, they admit that bad things might still happen to people, but that one would have to explain it as a just punishment of the gods. But that theology itself is framed entirely by political concerns, "what would have to be said about the gods, *so that* people respect the laws?" That can be taken as Plato's awareness of pious fraud as a phenomenon; the Republic opens with the Thracian goddess Bendis being introduced to Athens for political reasons.