/lit/ - Literature

To be quite sure, this is not to say that COVID Dictatorship is preferable either (although it is perhaps preferable to doing nothing), consider the following from the Laws:
> The Athienian: And is our legislator to have no preface to his laws, but to say at once Do this, avoid that-and then holding the penalty in terrorem to go on to another law; offering never a word of advice or exhortation to those for whom he is legislating, after the manner of some doctors? For of doctors, as I may remind you, some have a gentler, others a ruder method of cure; and as children ask the doctor to be gentle with them, so we will ask the legislator to cure our disorders with the gentlest remedies.
Plato is quite right to make a distinction between the healer who is rough and the one who is gentle. We do not want to exacerbate the situation by being too hard on the non-compliant—however selfish they may be—and in this sense, I say we should be less like China and more like Austria; still, it is better to be like Australia than it is to be like America, and Plato agrees that even the gentle doctor must offer rewards as well as punishments as is necessary. His perfect legislator chooses the double way
> And yet legislators never appear to have considered that they have two instruments which they might use in legislation-persuasion and force; for in dealing with the rude and uneducated multitude, they use the one only as far as they can; they do not mingle persuasion with coercion, but employ force pure and simple.
It is troubling to note that Plato said that democracy often gives way to tranny—that is, a state of excess freedoms gives way to a state of excess subjugation—and as we are still in the democratic phase, I wonder if it is not at all possible that a reactionary movement might flare up and establish such kind a tyrannical government as Plato warned about. It certainly seems possible, but to end on an optimistic note, there does appear to still be some light of hope in the global initiatives to "build back better"; hopefully instead of a state of tyranny we shall all endeavour to choose to be ruled over by an educated guardian class as Plato would have wanted.
Stay safe :)

Plato is quite right to make a distinction between the healer who is rough and the one who is gentle. We do not want to exacerbate the situation by being too hard on the non-compliant—however selfish they may be—and in this sense, I say we should be less like China and more like Austria; still, it is better to be like Australia than it is to be like America, and Plato agrees that even the gentle doctor must offer rewards as well as punishments as is necessary. His perfect legislator chooses the double way
> And yet legislators never appear to have considered that they have two instruments which they might use in legislation-persuasion and force; for in dealing with the rude and uneducated multitude, they use the one only as far as they can; they do not mingle persuasion with coercion, but employ force pure and simple.
It is troubling to note that Plato said that democracy often gives way to tranny—that is, a state of excess freedoms gives way to a state of excess subjugation—and as we are still in the democratic phase, I wonder if it is not at all possible that a reactionary movement might flare up and establish such kind a tyrannical government as Plato warned about. It certainly seems possible, but to end on an optimistic note, there does appear to still be some light of hope in the global initiatives to "build back better"; hopefully instead of a state of tyranny we shall all endeavour to choose to be ruled over by an educated guardian class as Plato would have wanted.
Stay safe :)

What would Plato think about Sissy Hypno?

I will literally conspire to kidnap you from your parents and brainwash them to share you after they're not allowed to say they are your parents anymore.

Which Ancient Greek philosopher was the best at performing sexual acts with another person?

This man was a philosopher, a professor, a polymath, a wrestler and an Olympian.

He could rip any modern philosophy professor in half with his bare hands, where did philosophy go wrong?

"Excessive emphasis on athletics produces an excessively uncivilised type, while a purely literary training leaves men indecently soft.' - Plato

So, what's the ideal balance?

I know a lot of his later dialogues were written long after the death of Socrates. But was Apology written during the court preceding? Apology just reads differently from the rest of the dialogues, even through translation. Socrates comes off as much more of a smart ass. It feels like Plato was actually writing while the trial was occurring. Any source on this?

What Essence(s) are there, if any, and your justification for them.

This thread will also concern consequences of Metaphysics

>Metaphysics:
the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, identity, time, and space.

>Threadly Discussion:
Is there a ‘God’?

I've been interested in getting into Deleuze and other contemporary philosophers yet I've never read philosophy consistently. What are some good books on the history of philosophy for begginers that want to get into contemporary stuff?

I'm going to start with the Greeks, which of Plato's dialogues are the most essential ones? Besides the 5 Dialogues and the Republic?

>learn ancient Greek
Okay but until then what translations or edition of Plato is best for studying?

So I fell for the meme and started with the Greeks. I've read Plato and Aristotle. What comes next? What's the roadmap? Do I just jump to the middle ages and Descartes and similar? I feel as though I will miss much stuff.

>start reading the Greeks
>suddenly get much better at doing mathematics
Why did none of you told me about it? Reading the Greeks should be obligatory in school

>the guardians won't have families
How come no one mentioned this part before?

Hey guys, I am interested in studying the philosophical foundations of Western culture.

I recently have been reading a lot of books that reference Enlightenment philosophies as well as humanism and Greek and Roman thought.

I took a course of metaphysics and epistemology in undergrad as well as a course on Nietzsche, so I'm somewhat familiar with philosophy and how it's written. However, I am lost when they reference Kant or Plato, Socrates, etc. because I am only familiar with them by name from studying history and basic summaries. I am interested in learning about Heidegger as well.

I was wondering which books can give me a good basis with this stuff. Thanks.

If conciousness is something metaphysical that interacts with a causal universe, is the ability to form question statements the definition of being?

Was Plato an immoralist?

after defeating him, you get to finally play the game on nightmare mode.
so far, nobody has been able to beat level 1

Four main paths to studying philosophy:

1) Bergson + Spinoza + Leibniz + Hume + Nietzsche + Wittgenstein + Deleuze
2) de Saussure + Levi-Strauss + Freud + Lacan + Marx + Bataille + Althusser + Foucault + Deleuze
3) Descartes + Kant + Hegel + Kojeve + Kierkegaard + Husserl + Heidegger + Derrida
4) Plato + Aristotle + Machiavelli + Hobbes + Locke + Rousseau + Schmitt + Arendt + Strauss + Rawls + Nozick + MackIntyre

Am I missing something important?

>>14484094
based
>>14484145
ENLIGHTENED AND BASED

reminder that contemporary abstract """mathematics""" is just autistic posturing and mere sophistry

actual Mathematics with a capital M consists of
>arithmetic
>Euclidean geometry studied extensively and exhaustively, today's """mathematicians""" wouldn't be able to solve a basic geometry problem
>basic number theory (none of the """analytical""" bullshit)
>basic algebra and analytic geometry including elements of linear algebra
>basic analysis without the delta-epsilon crap and instead defined using fluxions
>elementary combinatorics and probability theory
everything that's not included in this list is sophistry and is therefore redundant. if you want to learn mathematics don't read Lang, Bishop, Spivak or Tao - read Plato's dialogues, complete works of Aristotle, complete works of Archimedes, Elements of Euclid with extensive excercises, Diophantus' Arithmetica, complete works of al-Khwarizmi, Viete's Opera Mathematica, Descartes' Geometry, complete works of Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Barrow and Isaac Newton, complete works of Euler and Gauss' Disquisitiones Arithmeticae

Brainlet here.

Does it even make sense to have a philosophical argument? That is, is it possible that a philosophical current ever "wins" an argument against a competing philosophical current? In mathematics where the formal rules seem to be more or less agreed upon (correct me if I'm wrong, as mentioned I'm a brainlet) one can show that someone is clearly wrong or correct, but when you have an adaptive language like philosophical reasoning, a philosophical language can simply mutate to avoid whatever refutations its premises might suffer. so when we talk and debate philosophy, politics etc. is the debate about someone being correct or incorrect or is it about simply making a more convincing rhetorical performance within the philosophical language one uses, one could even call it propaganda? so it would seem, assuming this debate has public observers, that it is moreso a social mechanism for influencing the dominant ideology rather than a question of truth, as it would appear at the surface level. I am inclined to think that philosophy is not a question of truth but moreso a conglomerate of rational thought and artistic creativity, the result of which is a subjective interpretation of being. For this reason, I don't understand why such a large number of philosophers act in a way where it seems that they are convinced certain philosophical positions are true and others wrong, when it appears quite obvious that philosophical positions are either under-worked (when "false") or under-challenged (when "true"). So it doesn't appear that philosophy is the love of wisdom, philosophy is an act done by rational intellect resulting in an artistic creation that is imbued with some sense of rationality. Of course, I don't think mathematics falls that far away from this definition either, but it appears that mathematics due to its formalization at least possesses in localized occasions a sense of finality and validity or falseness, whereas philosophical argumentation is eternally mutable and infinite not just on a global level but on local occasions as well. Yet you still have philosophers passionately defending or attacking certain positions fully convinced they are arguing for truth?

is the republic something i can just read? i've not read any ancient greek before and i'm wondering if there's an agreed upon reading order or if i can just peck around as i please

i intend to read all so either way works, but republic is what i currently own a copy of