>state good bro>laws good, don't even question them>your government cannot be wrongwhy was he so stupid? I feel like this greek stuff is just a meme
it was more about moral/ethic consistency. that he made the decision to live under their rules, so it's his problem. something like that. 'sound' but entirely idealistic-- but he states that's a big part of philosophy. if you aren't following, just assume you;ve never thought of anything that he hasn't already
>>24782356>muh took the pill like some bitch wanting to avoid kids>muh luv me yarvin>muh don't do dialectic and can't demonstrate>m-m-muh why doesn't anyone take me seriously?>m-m-muh it's all some meme fault bruhYeah bro you definitely don't have any truth that can't be handled. I didn't bother with Yarvin the way you didn't bother with the Greeks. You might be too retarded to have a conversation with. Hobbies left his country, I'm sure moldybread will entertain the notion at some point too.
>>24782356if you knew what you were reading, its an obvious self-serving fantasy for him. big dick, wise guy Plato gets to call the shots. many see this and just don't say the quiet part out loud, because it can be benefited from. its the feeble philosophy nerds who got duped, ironically.that's why he pumps it up so much. he wouldn't want to live under it any other way of course. its the same old trick:>well I've gotta be in charge, you see, because well there's these virtues and uh the forms and well basically god put me in charge so yea. give me ur shit now
>>24782356Which of the laws of his polis do you disagree with?
>>24782482 (me, meant to continue :p)its like, you write this big grand philosophical tract, you get the thoughtful nerd types on your side - they're really supposed to be inquiring and poking holes and what not - but you've got them sidetracked on this dystopic power fantasy, thinking big thunks all about ontology or what have you>oh, yes yes, what IS justice, hmm>surely we'll have this figured out in, say, the next 2000 years>meanwhile everything is fucked and will remain fucked in perpetuityand for the everyman, the myth takes over - gone is the old myth of the gods and all, that's one of the big moves of the socratic school, and in is your new myth. its a fine sea change.
>>24782356He talks constantly about the ills of tyranny and mob rule and the way in which states can become vice-addled and pathological.>Idealized descriptionIt says it is ideal because its point isn't to prescribe but to show why justice is good for the just, sought for its own sake and for other reasons.
>>24782356Ancient Greek philosophy shared fundamental worldviews with what we call Eastern traditions. The Greeks embraced cyclical time and cosmic cycles rather than linear progress, believed in reincarnation (metempsychosis) across Pythagorean, Orphic, and Platonic schools, and saw material reality as illusion or shadows of true reality (Plato's cave as maya). They understood human life as governed by fate (moira) that even gods couldn't escape, emphasized contemplative wisdom over material achievement, and developed non-dualistic metaphysics in Neoplatonism remarkably similar to Advaita Vedanta. The Greeks were culturally hybrid, absorbing influences from Egypt, Persia, and the Near East, making them far more "Eastern" in outlook than the modern Western narrative admits.The shift from ancient to modern Western thought occurred primarily through Christianity's adoption of Jewish theological frameworks. Jewish concepts—linear time moving from creation to redemption, free will and individual moral responsibility, a real material world imbued with meaning rather than illusion, good versus evil as cosmic struggle, and history as purposeful progression—fundamentally replaced Greek cyclical and fatalistic worldviews. What we call the "Western mind" today—individualistic, progress-oriented, morally dualistic, emphasizing agency and world-transformation over acceptance—derives not from Greek philosophy but from Jewish theology transmitted through Christianity, then secularized through the Enlightenment while retaining these underlying cosmological assumptions.
>>24782482>>24782503Book 5, 471c-473a>"Let it be given," he said. "And this and what went before are fine. But, Socrates, I think that if one were to allow you to speak about this sort of thing, you would never remember what you previously set aside in order to say all this. *Is it possible for this regime to come into being, and how is it ever possible? I see that, if it should come into being, everything would be good for the city in which it came into being.* And I can tell things that you leave out-namely, that they would be best at fighting their enemies too because they would least desert one another, these men who recognize each other as brothers, fathers, and sons and who call upon each other using these names. And if the females join in the campaign too, either stationed in the line itself, or in the rear, to frighten the enemies and in case there should ever be any need of help--l know that with all this they would be unbeatable. And I see all the good things that they would have at home and are left out in your account. Take it that I agree that there would be all these things and countless others if this regime should come into being, and don't talk any more about it; rather, let's now only try to persuade ourselves that it is possible and how it is possible, dismissing all the rest.">"All of a sudden," I said, "you have, as it were, assaulted my argument, and you have no sympathy for me and my loitering. Perhaps you don't know that when I've hardly escaped the two waves you're now bringing the biggest and most difficult, the third wave. When you see and hear it, you'll be quite sympathetic, recognizing that it was, after all, fitting for me to hesitate and be afraid to speak and undertake to consider so paradoxical an argument.">"The more you say such things,'" he said, *"the less we'll let you off from telling how it is possible for this regime to come into being.* So speak, and don't waste time.">"Then," I said, "first it should be recalled that we got to this point while seeking what justice and injustice are like.">"Yes, it should," he said. "But what of it?">"Nothing. But if we find out what justice is like, will we also insist that the just man must not differ at all from justice itself but in every way be such as it is? *Or will we be content if he is nearest to it and participates in it more than the others?"*>"We'll be content with that," he said.(Cont.)
>>24782997>*"It was, therefore, for the sake of a pattern," I said, "that we were seeking both for what justice by itself is like, and for the perfectly just man, if he should come into being, and what he would be like once come into being;* and, in their turns, for injustice and the most unjust man. Thus, looking off at what their relationships to happiness and its opposite appear to us to be, we would also be compelled to agree in our own cases that the man who is most like them will have the portion most like theirs. *We were not seeking them for the sake of proving that it's possible for these things to come into being."*>"What you say is true," he said.>"Do you suppose a painter is any less good who draws a pattern of what the fairest human being would be like and renders everything in the picture adequately, but can't prove that it's also possible that such a man come into being?">"No, by Zeus, I don't," he said.>"Then, what about this? *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. "But if then to gratify you I must also strive to prove how and under what condition it would be most possible, grant me the same points again for this proof.">"What points? .>"Can anything be done as it is said? Or is it the nature of acting to attain to less truth than speaking, even if someone doesn't think so? Do you agree that it's so or not.>"I do agree," he said.>*"Then don't compel me necessarily to present it as coming into being in every way in deed as we described it in speech. But if we are able to find that a city could be governed in a way most closely approximating what has been said: say that we've found the possibility of these things coming into being on which you insist.* Or won't you be content if it turns out this way? I, for my part, would be content."
>>24782356Yes. Read any pre-modern book and they almost universally say that having some law in itself is better than no laws at all because they were much closer to the realities and ills of real anarchy. Its only with the advent of the idealized primitive, from places of comfortable and firm rule of law, which presupposed some primitive laissez faire law, was this at all disputed.
Case in point
>>24782482The Republic is the power fantasy but Statesman and Laws are much more reasonable. The power fantasy is still based though because it would work if Plato was in charge, he would just have to establish a hereditary monarchy of Platonist fanatics. And it would be perfect.
>>24783722Perhaps for the Athenians understood in general, but I don't see how that's a case in point with respect to the Republic.Book 4, 443c-44a:>"But in truth justice was, as it seems, something of this sort; however, not with respect to a man's minding his external business, but with respect to what is within, with respect to what truly concerns him and his own. He doesn't let each part in him mind other people's business or the three classes in the soul meddle with each other, but really sets his own house in good order and rules himself; he arranges himself, becomes his own friend, and harmonizes the three parts, exactly like three notes in a harmonic scale, lowest, highest and middle. And if there are some other parts in between, he binds them together and becomes entirely one from many, moderate and harmonized. Then, and only then, he acts, if he does act in some way-either concerning the acquisition of money, or the care of the body, or something political, or concerning private contracts. In all these actions he believes and names a just and fine action one that preserves and helps to produce this condition, and wisdom the knowledge that supervises this action; while he believes and names an unjust action one that undoes this condition; and lack of learning, in its turn, the opinion that supervises this action."To emphasize, the whole conversation depicted in the Republic is already fundamentally putting into question both the Athenian regime and the ordinary moral attitudes of the Athenians. And, further, the passage just before this has Socrates calling the justice of even this hypothesized "ideal" city a *phantom* of true justice, which pertains to the soul of an individual, so even within this account of an "ideal city", it's recognized that there's a difference between the justice of "the citizen" (which is only to remain in one's position in the class hierarchy) and full justice.
