/lit/ - Literature

dianetics by l ron hubbard

>>10496895
Start with Plato

>>10496895

What kind of book are you looking for?

the bible

>>10496895

>has attained vision of the forms

Right, so apart from the Republic, which is a giant philosophical shitpost, and Symposion, where it's proclaimed by a priestess, where in the dialogues is it ever implied that perfect insight into the forms is possible?

Aristophanes - Clouds

>>10496981
Symposium you dilettante. Get the name right.

No The Republic is not a giant shitpost and it is in there that you will find your answer. Contemplating the forms is the highest of reasoning, and the closest to the incomprehensible 'Good' that exists but can never be directly comprehended.

>>10496971
Why would you begin with something that needed platonism and neoplatonism as a point of reference for its own system?

>>10497000

>No The Republic is not a giant shitpost

>criticizes mimesis in a book that is explicitly mimetic
>criticizes the destructive effects of dramatic characters right after Thrasymachus has been introduced, who clearly is written as a dramatic villain
>disparages eros from the beginning (Cephalos) until the end, claiming that eros will have to be culled in the perfectly just state, despite the fact that eros is praised to no end in the symposion (fuck off, it's what it's called in my native tongue) and the fact that eros is the reason there's philosophy in the first place
>oh yeah, humans as essentially characterized by eros also means that humans essentially are incapable of ever fulfilling the lack in their nature, which the philosopher kings somehow can in spite of their essentially eros-defined nature
>Justice is at one point stated "as everyone tending his own business without interfering in the business of others" - the conclusion to this is philosopher kings who rule all minutiae of daily life
>lies can be noble, coming from a man whose entire life work was pointing out the destructiveness of deception by the sophists
>literally claims that the city can be established "quickly and easily" by just sending everyone above the age of 10 away

This is off the top of my head. The Republic is complex, no doubt, but taking it at face value is retarded. It drips with irony on every single god damn page.

>>10497072
you only think it's irony because it was written 2,300 years ago.

>>10497087

I was expecting a counterargument.

No, I think it is irony because Socratic irony between characters is omnipresent in the dialogues. Taking literally the next baby step of that analysis and giving half a thought to the idea that Plato might be employing his own irony on the supposed reader of his text isn't a leap. If a thinker of Plato's magnitude is guilty of either extreme idiocy and self-contradictions that only the most basic of bitches wont see immediately or masterful irony, I'm inclined to believe the latter - especially since irony is the furthest thing from foreign to his work.

>>10497087
How would you explain the structure and tone of the republic otherwise?

>>10496895
Gadamer - The Idea of the Good

read Proclus' commentaries of Plato

Parminides so you can hear right from the horse's mouth how shit of a philosopher he is

>>10497575

Thinking that implies you're still stuck in orthodox reading of the theory of forms, a reading that there isn't much textual evidence for. It's the sort of reading that autists do - people who are completely incapable of understanding the significance of the fact that Plato wrote dialogues in a literary style rife with irony. Parmenides is a critique of platonism, yes, but Plato wasn't a platonist in the common use of the word. That's exactly what a deeper than surface level analysis of The Republic will show you. Platonism is found in Plato's commentators, not the dialogues. And Plato foresaw Platonism - that's why he wrote Parmenides. Stopping there and saying "well, he contradicts himself, what an idiot" is intellectually lazy and dishonest. Maybe he's trying to tell you that if that is the case, you missed the point - that platonism isn't what's at the heart of the dialogues.

Plato was proto-Heidegger (better, Heidegger was discount-Plato), and Heidegger seemingly realized this in his lectures on Phaedrus, yet still managed to have the shittiest reading of Plato of all time, something that has been pointed out ad nauseam by graduate students for the past quarter of a century. Whether it was because Heidegger wanted so desperately to be original that he ignored it, or that he simply did not realize the implications of his own understanding of Phaedrus is an open question.

Regardless, once you get past the idiocy of scholarly orthodoxy in Plato's reception, you'll come to realize he was perhaps the greatest thinker there ever was. But most people don't get that far. They read the dialogues as if they were manifestos, misinformed as they are by post-Cartesian philosophical standards.

>>10497690
Something that has been bothering me about Platonism is the heavy emphasis on transcendentalism – certainly, when reading through the works of Plotinus, Iamblichus and Proclus, one finds an almost exclusive occupation with metaphysics, theology and cosmology.

Most exemplary of this is Iamblichus, the most influental Platonist par excellence, who praised Thales of Miletus for contemplating the heavens so intensely to the point of being oblivious to his surroundings, thus falling into a well.

Plato's works do lend themselfes in such a transcendental direction, but in a sense, such a reading seems rather one sided considering his monumental scope.

What I mean is, Plato seems to concern himself both with the worldly and the transcendental, whereas the Neoplatonists downplayed the former in favor of the latter, no doubt due to the Seventh Letter and Aristotle's remarks about the Unwritten Doctrines. I suspect there is a certain sense of irony at play here, but I would like to hear your take on this.

>>10497072
>>10497104
>>10497690
Yesssssssss

>>10497690
thanks for a rare good post

>>10497104
>>10497148
Maybe Plato is just a retard, and the text is just poor. You wouldn't know of it if it weren't shilled and fapped over in western intellectual society. Popularity and influence doesn't eliminate this possibility.

>>10497072
I do take it on face value because its descriptions of an ideal society are inherently beautiful and less to do with laws and more to do with cultural norms and values.

The reasoning being Plato's stance on Laws. You might want to read Laws to understand why The Republic was so great. Essentially, Plato stating that most elements of society could be remedied by not even really applying too many legal changes or adaptations is important because for the many people who take legal elements of society far too seriously they lose grasp of what makes society really important: how members just interact with each other generally speaking. Also how they behave and perceive a debate, and The Republic all the while discussing these things shows how a proper debate/logical sequence should proceed through the Socratic method.

There is a face value. And you can take it at face value. And it's valid.

There is a symbolic or allegorical value to this city. You can take it symbolically, to mean a healthy body (like Hobbes, who says that Hobbes wasn't influenced by The Republic), or you could even take it symbolically to understand the development of a singular life's perception applied to everyone. How if one person, like a philosopher king, were to behave like everyone were his family, then everyone else would soon follow.

It's all metaphorical, and prophetic, if we are to achieve a utopia eventually.

Ya fags need to read Colli's The birth of philosophy

>>10498527
>butthurt that we haven't read an italian book with no english translation

>>10497928
i have no fucking idea who those people are but hobbes was wrong so i guess this image is right

>>10496981
>>10497072
This guy’s right
>>10497000
You’re not. Also the Greek is ΣΥΜΠΟΣΙΟΝ (symposion)

More seriously, you’re only doing yourself a disservice if you take Plato’s dialogues at face value. Plato did not write treatises. In the Phaedrus, Plato’s Socrates describes the drawbacks of writing: a scroll reveals itself indiscriminately to all, cannot answer questions, and cannot defend itself. Plato solves these problems by writing in the form of a dramatic dialogue. Good philosophic writing must reveal different things to different men (plain things to plain men and many-colored things to many-colored men). To probe a Platonic dialogue to its depths, the reader must take into account every detail Plato gives—this means reading his characters’ words in light of the dramatic details. Plato is a genius, and his dialogues are written with the greatest possible care. They are rich in contradictions. Read and interpret accordingly. I say all this for your own benefit

(btw this holds true for every great writer)

>>10498523
The "face value" is merely edifying. You're presented with a perfectly just city, a city with room only for a thoroughly regulated Eros, and not the Eros of Socrates. Meanwhile Socrates has already pointed to the "city in truth", the city Glaucon derides as "the city of pigs". The Just city is not for those with philosophical Eros, but for those ruled by Thumos (spiritedness, indignance).

The moral virtues are merely "demotic", i.e., are only opinions, and Justice from the philosophic vantage point is revealed to be nothing but Wisdom, i.e., the proper ordering of the philosopher's soul.

>>10498588
No english translation? What the fuck are you doing anglos.
Brb making one.

Platonism is cancer. Truth does not exist.
>>10497690
Imagine being this seduced by a cult of personality around a bad philosopher.

>>10496895
The gospels (Platonism for the masses)

>>10497690
>putting words in my mouth level x6000
>hurr dure autism
The filthy fucking irony

>>10497690
Also,
>Plato wasent a Platonist
You cant make this shit up my dudes

>>10497690
>plato is greatest of all time
Someone hasen't read their Neatcheese

>>10498479
You idiots are impressed by anyone who has spent more than a semester thinking/reading through something.

>>10498747
>>10500314
>>10500322
>>10500325
samefag