How is one to interpret Socrates vis-à-vis Plato? I have been working through the "early" dialogues and keep wondering about the meaning of Plato placing these thoughts in the mind of Socrates. Thus far Socrates comes off as both playful and precise, nearly always leading his interlocutors into simple contradictions that they are always none-the-wiser to, until the great reveal at the end of the dialogue when they are found to be staunchly refuted. How much of this is Plato attempting to truthfully capture Socrates vs. Plato arguing his own ideas through the mouth of Socrates? I have heard in later dialogues Socrates is sometimes left in a more ambiguous light, or even conveyed as having lost an argument, but I have yet to read those.
Philosophy is about understanding reality not specific figures retard. People even of their lifetimes have views that change and contradict themselves there is no fact of the matter about if it's accurate or not because people themselves can't even accurately convey themselves consistently throughout their lives. Just read it, try to understand what they are talking about and see if it actually corresponds to reality and your life. Academics/scholarship ruined philosophy.
>>24937295Ideas are never divorced from the psyche that created them. All philosophy has to be understood as fundamentally being emotional, and a product of someone's life.
>>24937297>t. academic who puts 18 year olds in debt to do social engineering work for the powers that be as our society is completely destroyedThe idea you can extract that independently and then subject emotions to dissection and analysis in the text is absurd, you aren't a greek from that era you simply have no access. You can entertain them as perspectives to help understand maybe but it's just contrary to the actual goal, which is actual contemplation of reality. If you have a massive academic complex where you are trying to justify your existence as a spiritless midwit doing some taxonomy of interpretations is just a mask for genuine intellectual activity. The fundamental thing is an incorrect view of who plato is, and who socrates was in relation, and how that manifests in the dialog is just as likely to lead to insight as the "correct" view (which is just the best guess as determined by our current scholarly methods/models).It doesn't matter. The point of philosophy is fundamentally contemplation of the good as who you are in your own life and what bears upon your access to it, and for that end an totally ahistorical "false" reading of plato, perhaps even multiple contradictory ones, are frankly more likely to get you to actual understanding than LARPing like you can access the emotional and mental life of multiple greeks from 2500 years ago, one of which never even wrote anything.
>>24937291The only other real source for Socrates is Xenophon who apparently presents him similarly to how he is presented in the 'early socratic dialogues' dialogues. I think it's quite noticeable when Plato departs from just writing about Socrates' ideas because he goes from trying to establish abstract concepts and principles of logical argument to discussing much more airy metaphysical topics like the eternal soul, the platonic forms etc. If you read something like Phaedo or Symposium or Phaedrus next you will see the difference.
>>24937308Last time I said something similar people called me a pseud, I'm still not completely sure why.
>>24937291Plato is a seething totalitarian transhumanist. Maybe socrates shouldn't have been hanging out with enemies of the polis
>>24937291Well, consider the most basic facts: Socrates was put to death, and that matter was tied up with the reputation philosophy had as a corruptive and acidic influence on the political health of Athens. And, apparently, Plato and several other members of the Socratic circle fled Athens afterwards for a time, uncertain if they would be pursued next. So, when Plato decided to devite himself fully to philosophy and thought to write on it, he seems to have considered some of the following thoughts.That it would be safer for him not to put his own thoughts down, or, *at least*, not present *himself* as saying these things (plausible deniability if trouble ever rears its head again). That Socrates needed to be rehabilitated by showing his questioning could only be judged as corruptive by very petty puffed up people. And that such questioning can be clothed in an edifying appearance that defends philosophy in pursuing the truth about the most important things (i.e., if the opinions about Courage in the Laches are found wanting, you're still left with the opinion that Courage *is*, whatever it may be, and that it's important to find out what it is).Now, did Socrates in fact say any of these things, or is it all in the spirit of him? There's plenty to suggest the latter, and that even the "Platonic" "middle and late" dialogues are still adhering to it. The historical question is very involved, in part because our tendency is to side with a certain reading of Xenophon against Plato, but the remains of Aeschines of Sphetus' dialogues resemble Plato more than Xenophon, and Xenophon tends to play down philosophy to make Socrates look like a decent beneficial man, a judgement he elsewhere considers a vulgar judgement ("The majority, as it seems, define as good men those who are their benefactors"), and there are places in the Memorabilia and Oeconomicus that share a resemblance with Plato's depiction beyond just the practice of elenchic questioning, such as inquiry into nature and the beings. But, as I said, this gets very involved. I wouldn't worry about it to much.
>>24937291Read Xenophon's Socratic works and extrapolate. Start with Memorabilia.
>>24937297go back to your psychology class retard
>>24937316>t. karl popper
>>24937297>blocks you are path
>>24937295>>24937303>philosophy is *retarded contrarian definition of philosophy that opposes the entire history of western thought*impressively retarded
