/lit/ - Literature

>>16583813
filtered

>>16583813
>I just finished The Last Days of Socrates and I must say I am extremely unimpressed.
Wow, totally never heard this before.

I'll post what I wrote a while ago:

>Op, you will value it in the end if you focus and actually appreciate the ideas and poetic content, especially Phaedo, but the others are still great works(often you will come back to them after reading the other Plato's works and really enjoy them for what they are, this was the case for me, but I was modest and kept reading thinking that it was evidently on my side that I did not see him as the cornerstone), and here's something I wrote a few weeks ago for another anon:

>-Plato Five Dialogues(Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo which includes the trial and death of Socrates)
>-Laches
>-Ion
>-Protogoras
>-Gorgias(best possible explanation and condensing of all of Plato's typical philosophy and orientation)
>-Cratylus
>-some other smaller/earlier dialogues
>-Symposium
>-Republic
>That's a pretty good intro-to-middle list. As far "last dialogues", there are quite a few and the Republic isn't one of them. There's a radical change in late Plato from early Plato which is an even greater genius than what most people see, it's truly remarkable. How he was able to, as it were almost begin a new start in a philosophical orientation. Nevertheless such dialogues are:

>-Phaedrus(has the secret to the whole structuring of the dialogue, as well as the reason for Plato's use of it, and in the case of the dialogue, especially his late, Plato's poetic as well as philosophical genius comes into its greatest ability--; and Plato does nothing and puts nothing in the dialogue for no reason, it is all, working backwards to forwards or vice versa, structurally it is all there purposefully, even ideas one might first think are "silly"[I felt this much when I was younger and first read him] Plato is very self-aware of, that is a normal reaction or conception of them)
>-Philebus(continues from Gorgias, but I should say a lot of Plato's dialogues intersect with each other in very interesting ways where you have to keep in mind where something he previously arrived at is being rejected, or built upon or such)

>-Parmenides
>-Theaetetus
>-Sophist
>-Statesman
>-Timaeus
>-Critias
>-Laws

>>16583863
The first three dialogues -- Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito -- have nothing interesting to say, philosophically speaking. Euthyphro is a dialogue between Socrates and a stupid man who could not understand the question ‘Is something pious because it is loved by the gods or is it loved by the gods because it is pious?’ No conclusions were reached about the nature of piety or its epistemology. Same with the others. Now, I wasn't too worried about this. I had heard that the first three dialogues are more of an introduction to the character and history of Socrates as a philosophical/literary icon and that Phaedo is where the meat really starts.

So today I opened Phaedo and began reading through it. I got to the part where Socrates explains how death is agreeable to a philosopher because it entails a separation from the body. It seemed to be going well and I was genuinely excited for the first time while reading Plato. Then this happened:
>SOCRATES: If something smaller comes to be, it will come from something larger; something weaker from something stronger; swifter from slower; worse from better; juster from the more unjust.
>CEBES: Of course.
>SOCRATES: So we have sufficiently established that all things come to be in this way, opposites from opposites.
This was the first major blow. Socrates fallaciously argues that, because all things which become [insert comparative adjective] must necessarily come from a state where they possess [its opposite/antonym] to a greater degree, all things must come from their opposites. Of course something that BECAME lightER must have come from a state in which it was darkER, but this does not prove that something light necessarily comes from something dark, that something small necessarily comes from something big, that something just necessarily comes from something unjust, etc. This is so obvious yet Socrates can't see it.
Ok, I thought, its just a hiccup. Ill read on.
>SOCRATES: What comes to be from being alive?
>CEBES: Being dead.
>And what comes to be from being dead?
>One must agree that it is being alive.
>Then, Cebes, living creatures and things come to be from the dead?
>So it appears.
>Then our souls exist in the underworld.
It was at this point I dropped it.

Are you saying it gets better than this? Because right now I am not so hopeful, and I'm honestly sick of reading this author since he is so retarded on almost every page.

>>16583813
interesting because only after reading a lot about plato and platonism, philosophy, metaphysics, that i understood that there is no philosophy beyond plato and platonists, or that philosophy itself is platonism.
don't worry op, if you really inclined to philosophy you'll find yourself following the very dramatic setting of the platonic dialogues and will return to them seeing what you hadn't seen.

>>16583813
>t. analytic
platos arguments are terrible but he's still right about everything. you'd rather someone blatantly lie to you with detailed arguments

>>16583813
any rationalism, being philosophy or science is just trying to turn fantasizing as non-fiction the made up categories and made up relations between those categories by intellectuals. This is a social construct, subject to time and geography. All relative.

math sis a subfield of philosophy restricted to first order logic. mathematicians seethe over intellectuals who do not restrict to FOL.
Anything after presocratics (who actually live as they taught, contrary toSocrates and plato, arsitotle and all those larpers) is just intellectuals larping more and more as truth tellers in monasteries and university, to get a comfy pay while contributing nothing to society, with the pinnacle being the academics in secular democracy.

if you come from the secular humanist movement where the bourgeois hype the idea to the plebs that the plebs should get a (mandatory) education (more or less for free) in order to be smarter to larp as the greeks, (and not the unofficial and very fact that people get educated to make better workers already knowing how to do a job (so the companies need not to train them) and tax payers ) then yes it is moral idea to disregard the value of the education system

>>16583932
No, I just can't stand reading the terrible arguments in these books (eg. the examples I provided here >>16583892). It repulses me to see such sophistry and stupidity. At least with the bit of analytic philosophy I've read I am able to rationally parse through the arguments and see where the author is coming from. But when Socrates says something like "Because something which has become smaller has to come from something bigger, all things come from their opposites" I literally cannot react to it in any meaningful way except to say it comes from someone with severely low IQ who isn't worth interacting with.

>>16583892
>>16583960
Phaedo is one of his best works. You really didn't understand anything from the dialogue and all your dismissing of his arguments is literally: ''i don't know how to respond to any of what he posed but i still think it is retarded somehow''.
What is something small? What is something big? What something is, is it what it is not? If it is what-it-is-not is it also what-it-is-not? Plato is the only philosopher, the only who has never been surpassed in his influence and a brainlet like you comes with the pretentiousness of dismissing him without even understanding what he posited. You are just another one, really, and Plato will keep another millenium being the most influential philosopher of all time. Go find another hobby.

>>16583957
>dies for what believes
>larper
Also, read Plato's epistles.

>>16583892
Firstly, you have to understand the metaphysical earnestness of Plato, and the Greeks on a whole-- Zeus is no idea, but a living being. Secondly you must understand the underlying and structurally interconnected poetic themes and meaning of the dialogue as well, it's not just a blatant treatise. There is a poetic genius in much of Plato, which is more subtle, and requires more than taking the dialogues as purely literal sources, which they evidently are not(to be clear, I'm not saying whether or not some or most or none of what he says is a metaphor or anything like that). Socrates is passing from the great divide of life to death, why do you think duality features so heavily in this dialogue? Partially to elucidate that, the true nature of it and a testament to the greatest of men Socrates, his friend; But this death also exists to explain the Theory of Forms, and theoretically explain it, placing it in the perfect organisation and context to do that; and there is a certain, undeniable actually, spiritual quality of presenting the Forms in the importance of death, in the life of man, and unnecessary to say: so touching and great a man and friend as Socrates. You must understand both, and it is your de-earnest neoliberal mind which is so opposed to what you perceive as what blatantly Plato is saying, but also the great depth of mind in it. I do not think you are de-earnest, you are young and vigorous, but modern people betray you here without explaining it, or so dreadfully and pitifully often as mocking it. And I do want to state more clearly, the theoretical and abstract ideas in it are very interesting and worth studying, for so many reasons I need not and could not say them all, from understanding those traditional conceptions of the divine which finds a defining origin in Plato, to particular ideas like that of duality, which even someone like Jung 2000 years later took as one of the first explanations of Enantiodromia, "Everything arises in this way, opposites from their opposites". Some have termed Phaedo the full development of the early conception of the Forms, which Plato would further radicalise in his later dialogues.

That is why I put so much emphasis on the poetic in Plato(where I explained the Phaedrus), we don't have Aristotle's dialogues so we know not exactly what he did with that, but even in those simpler and MUCH earlier dialogues as those three you mentioned, there is a good value. From laying some of the structural basis of the logic Aristotle would use, to explaining some of Plato's own and the Socratic dialogue/Socrates the man as you already said.

Modesty is a virtue anon, be slow, intelligent and very considering for when rejecting such staples of tradition-- All but where it cowers the youthly urge!

>>16583813
Anon.. you just fell for the Greeks meme. Philosophy starts with Nietzsche

>>16584012
>noooo my perfect philosopher is smart i swear!! that’s why he’s popular

Read Romano Guardini's The Death of Socrates if you want to understand it better.

>>16584268
That's a humiliating statement anon, considering Nietzsche didn't even start with Nietzsche.

>It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
t. some guy

maybe you should stick to fiction OP
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

>>16583892
>>16583960
I think your criticism is correct, although it doesn't mean the argument is wrong, merely that Plato's notion of opposites and their change in nature is not argued enough to make the argument correct. Here's the IEP on that argument :

"A main question that arises in regard to this argument is what Socrates means by “opposites.” We can see at least two different ways in which this term is used in reference to the opposed states he mentions. In a first sense, it is used for “comparatives” such as larger and smaller (and also the pairs weaker/stronger and swifter/slower at 71a), opposites which admit of various degrees and which even may be present in the same object at once (on this latter point, see 102b-c). However, Socrates also refers to “being alive” and “being dead” as opposites—but this pair is rather different from comparative states such as larger and smaller, since something can’t be deader, but only dead. Being alive and being dead are what logicians call “contraries” (as opposed to “contradictories,” such as “alive” and “not-alive,” which exclude any third possibility). With this terminology in mind, some contemporary commentators have maintained that the argument relies on covertly shifting between these different kinds of opposites.

Clever readers may notice other apparent difficulties as well. Does the principle about balance in (3), for instance, necessarily apply to living things? Couldn’t all life simply cease to exist at some point, without returning? Moreover, how does Plato account for adding new living souls to the human population? While these questions are perhaps not unanswerable from the point of view of the present argument, we should keep in mind that Socrates has several arguments remaining, and he later suggests that this first one should be seen as complementing the second (77c-d)."

>>16584615
Basically, Plato would have to show that all things not only come to be from their opposite states when they do come to be, but that their opposite state is bound to produce them ; that this extends to contraries ; and in some other way than relying on exemples where this is true, show that the principle extends to "my deathness" necessarily coming from "my livingness" and vice-versa. Assuming time is infinite, I guess the argument should work to make one believe in inescapable reincarnation. But I think that principe would have many absurd consequences, if taken seriously. It'd have to be corrected by limitations and I don't know where you'd draw the line. It's just a weird idea, I agree.

Aristotle is much better on contraries, change, etc. Read the Physics.

>>16583932
Theory of forms is nonsense

>>16584682
>imagine being a sophist

>>16584682
Not him but why? Please don't bring up the third man argument and self-predication, it's such a minor tweak to the theory to throw self-predication out.

>>16584674
read the Parmenides

>>16584722
Haven't read the late dialogues yet, but didn't Plato get over the third man argument?

>>16584741
What does Plato write in Parmenides that makes it meaningful to say that death and life, two contraries, come out of each other as predicates for one subject, and how does that not imply that, say, a man who's not a God must necessarily at some point given infinite time become a God and vice-versa, similar absurdities?

>>16584756
No, he makes it himself in Parmenides, so some analytics think he abandonned the theory of forms. But considering the context of the work, it's as probable (if not more, imo) that the work is meant to criticize a *bad kind* of theory of forms. Maybe that means that Plato abandonned self-predication, or maybe he reformulated it in such a way that the third man argument wasn't a problem, I don't remember what scholars say on that.

>>16584805
I have a faint memory of hearing that his introduction of the 'Instance' in the Parmenides overcame the third man argument, but I can't quite remember how.

>>16584756
>didn't Plato get over the third man argument?
Yes and no. Yes, because Plato was the one who introduced the third-man argument in the Parmenides and was thus surely aware of the problems it causes for his theory. We would have to be very uncharitable to Plato in assuming he wasn't able to overcome it or resolve it somehow.

But no, in the sense that he never explicitly resolves it. Yet this aporetic omission is a key feature in his dialogues, which a disconcerting number of people have overlooked or ignored. The dialogues are meant to end in aporia, without a definite conclusion. Why? Think on Socrates' criticism of writing in the Phaedrus: a text is inert, you can't engage it in dialogue and thus you can't practice philosophy through texts. But obviously, Plato having written that, he intended his dialogues to be something other than inert. Therefore, the only likely conclusion to which I've come is that Plato intended his audience to "take the reins" (as it were) of the arguments presented in the text and come to their own conclusions. Kierkegaard was surely aware of this feature when he discussed Socrates' mode of "indirect communication." Hell, the Parmenides just reeks of "this exercise is left for the reader."

>>16583892
You are like a wanderer in a wonderous forest that is upset over a tree that does not provide enough shade.
If all you get from Phaedo are the literal arguments stripped from any context then you are abusing Plato's dialogues.

>>16583813
Most of philosophy in general is a circle jerk over "paradoxes" that only exist because of human language or the fact that what is being debated has not been defined properly. It's a complete and utter waste of time.

If you want to learn about the world then open a math or physics textbook, everything else is garbage.

>>16584786
I have no idea what you mean with this whole reference to time being infinite (when it is indefinite and not infinite), but in Parmenides it literally deals with the One being and not being and the relation of the contraries. It is a critique of the naive view of some disciples of Plato about the forms being them in themselves, independent, separate from others.

>>16584722
I just read up on the third man argument and it seems similiar to what I had in mind, how is it not a good argument?

>>16584853
Most of philosophy is not about paradoxes at all.
Most philosophers try to define everything as clearly as possible.
Maths and physics only treat of a very restrained

>>16584873
>indefinite and not infinite
We use infinite to also mean indefinite in French. But time would have to be either infinite or indefinite, to make the distinction, the argument would work in both cases. Time could be an actual infinite you know, if you're an eternalist and you think it has no begining nor end.
>in Parmenides it literally deals with the One being and not being and the relation of the contraries.
I know, I don't see how that answers my question. Can you use your own words to explain how it solves the problems mentionned above with Plato's cyclical argument for immortality?

>>16584012
You could at least give an argument to rebuke it instead of relying on Plato's reputation only.

>>16584883
It's a good argument, I personally just think you can throw self-predication out. You can still keep contemplation, even. You don't contemplate the beauty of the form of Beauty, but the caracter of the form of Beauty of being the arkhè of all beauty. Doesn't seem that theoretically costly to me.

>>16584847
I donnu, I honestly think you're reading the character of Socrates into Plato too much. Plato was most certainly a doctrinal thinker, and believed directly in a philosophical truth, though I don't mean he's a simple thinker in any sense whatsoever-- He is still affirming more of his OWN philosophy than you say he is asking in general.

>>16584931
From what I gathered, a table would be the ideal form of all kinds and styles of tables
So what about a hypothetical when there are objects that have so many variations that they eventually become completely different objects
Like A1, A2, A3, A4........... eventually becoming B
Who decides if A58 comes from the form of A or from the form of B, or that there's only 2 ideal forms from that whole collection of objects?

>>16584947
On the one hand, you're right: the Socratic question is perhaps unanswerable. But given Plato's appreciation of dialectic (all his surviving works are dialogues!), I don't think that Plato believed that his doctrines could be directly communicated to an audience. Without doing the spiritual/intellectual "heavy-lifting," I think Plato realized his philosophy was indeed quite inert. Thus the unwritten doctrines, etc.

Moreover, one has to appreciate that, while Socrates was certainly his greatest influence in philosophy, Plato's biggest literary influences were Old Comedy (e.g. Aristophanes) and the Sicilian mimes (e.g. Sophron). Old Comedy, because of its central 'agon' section that very much mirrors Socratic debate (plus that bit from Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae which resembles the govt. system Plato sets up for the guardians in his Republic). These comedies (and thus also the debates) are judged at the end. The Sicilian mimes, because Aristotle and others had remarked upon their similarity. One anecdote has it that Plato slept with Sophron's mimes under his pillow. Given their description, these mimes can be said to have influenced dialogues like the Symposium and the Republic, which are framed as realistic gatherings of friends discussing philosophy in their leisure. The most important thing that Plato probably learned from the mimes, however, was to speak "in aliena persona." There are countless other reasons why I think Plato had such a value on indirect communication, but those are a few.

>>16584981
I don't understand your argument.
Do you assume here that everything has a corresponding form? I don't think that's Plato's theory ; it's not clear how close to the particular the forms go.
But in your exemple, you say an object change so much that it loses what's essential to it being a table, and becomes something else than a table, right? Then it just participates of a different form. I don't see the problem. Although I can't say I exactly understand how Plato thought of change in general, I don't see the problem there.
If you don't mean change in time but just a collection of different object, well, the question stays the same : do they participate of the form or not? If at some point in the series the objects don't have what makes an object a table anymore, they don't. If they at some point they have properties that make them something else than a table, then they participate with that. Sure, something can be a "better or worse table", or even "more or less hot", but something either has tableness, or hotness, or doesn't, right? Unless someone corrects me there, I'm pretty sure that's how participation works.

>>16584918
where is op's argument that is not his whining about he assumes the dialogue to be? can you really see no difference?

>>16585108
It's pretty self-evident why that argument alone is silly as a proof for transmigration of souls, as others have noted.

>>16585005
>I don't think that Plato believed that his doctrines could be directly communicated to an audience. Without doing the spiritual/intellectual "heavy-lifting,"
This is somewhat true, yes. He says as much in his dialogues, from memory in the Republic and in the Phaedrus. But it is also true of any great philosophy.

>I think Plato realized his philosophy was indeed quite inert. Thus the unwritten doctrines, etc.
Now I think that is a HORRIBLE characterisation for the reason of Plato's unwritten doctrines(if real) and focus on the revelation of philosophy in personal and un-read life.

You go on to talk about the nature and reason for the dialogue which is very interesting, but I do also think you are undervaluing Plato's structurality. Read his Phaedrus, he gives a direct reason for writing with the dialogue, and for why it's the best to write with. It ties into much greater reasoning and thought.

Also I'll link some threads that somewhat talk about that structurality here:

>>/lit/thread/S16078623
>>/lit/thread/S16089063

One followed the other, and I found them very helpful.

>>16583813
>the Eutyphro Dilemma is trivial

How would you solve it then? Notice that it can be applied to the normative status of moral predicaments too (which means that saying "there is no God/there are no Gods!" does not solve the dilemma).

>>16584615
I think Kant actually argued for a spectrum of consciousness between life and death

>>16583813
A very thorough refutation
Based scholar

>>16584847
The first hypothesis in Parmenides can serve two purposes: 1) it offers a conceptual scheme concerning what is truly trascendent (which is why it has been used so much to build up theologies, i.e. Plotinus, Proclus) and 2), and this is what is relevant for our case, it presents both a) the substratum of Ideas (what they would be in total absence of participation), while also b) positing this substratum as fallacious when it is used to refer to specific Ideas (as in: when we deal with Ideas with discoursive reason, it is fallacious to use them in the sense of a), since discursive reason, as it is explained in Sophist, requires the presence of participative relations between Ideas).
Whzt is relevant in this distinction, is that the essence of any Idea (ehich is obtained through participations with other Ideas) is not a predicate of the Ideal substratum. This means that Ideas are not auto-predicatory, and if Ideas are not so, then the whole TMA fails.

>>16585191
I have read lots of Kant and I have no idea what you're talking about

>>16583863
motherfucker, you keep posting this and I'm going to go off it in a couple months. If I'm not enlightened at the end of it, I'm coming after you

>>16585150
well if you think that anything in plato is self-evident you have never read plato or misunderstands him profoundly, as others have noted. but did op expose how the argument is silly?

>>16585322
Not him but he wrote
>Socrates fallaciously argues that, because all things which become [insert comparative adjective] must necessarily come from a state where they possess [its opposite/antonym] to a greater degree, all things must come from their opposites.
>Of course something that BECAME lightER must have come from a state in which it was darkER, but this does not prove that something light necessarily comes from something dark
That's enough to kill the argument. Even admitting life can only come from non-life, and non-life from life, that's only *if it does*. Why *must it*? Why can't I just stay dead? Indeed if I came to be alive again, that'd be life from death. But there is no reason to think I must change. Further arguments are needed.
Maybe you could use the fact that there necessarily is change in the sensitive world for Plato, but since I'm dead, I'm not bodily anymore, so I don't think it applies.

>>16585322
Ehh, I would say there is a difference between a proof that appears to make some sense at face value versus one that is very off at first glance. As >>16584674 explains, death and life are compared using a relation of things like 'bigger and smaller' to prove that death must come from life and vice versa. Anyone who reads this will probably believe this link is tenuous at best. It's true we shouldn't accept Plato's assertions at face value but of course some will be better arguments than others.

>>16585277
You better be fuckin enlightened faggot, if you're not you never understood Socrates or Plato. Also here are some resources for understanding Socrates.

>Heidegger identifies Socrates as the “purest thinker of the West” (Heidegger 1968: 17), and it is this classification as a “pure thinker” that we are committed to unpacking as it relates to Socrates’ understanding and practice of his dialectic method, his view of “truth,” and his understanding of philosophy (or thinking) as a process of original learning (paideia). Socrates, in his ever-renewed quest for truth, observes Heidegger, is courageously “drawn to what withdraws,” and when this happens to a thinker in the process of authentically thinking, he is drawn into “the enigmatic and herefore mutable nearness of its appeal,” despite being “far away from what withdraws” and even though “the withdrawal may remain as veiled as ever” (Heidegger 1968, 17). This, as we explain constitutes or instantiates for Heidegger the “living context” of thinking, a context facilitating the “draft” of the dynamic counter-striving of lighting and concealing, and Socrates, according to Heidegger, did “nothing else than place himself into this draft, this current, and maintain himself in it,” and this is why, according to Heidegger he was the purest thinker of the West (Heidegger 1968: 17).


>Kiekegaard said ”The knowledge that he knew nothing is not at all the pure, empty nothing one usually takes it to be, but the nothingness of the determinate content of the world as it is. The knowledge of the negativity of all finite content is his wisdom, through which he is drawn into himself, and he expresses this exploration of his own inwardness as his absolute goal, as the beginning of infinite knowledge, yet merely the beginning since this consciousness has nowise been consummated but IS only the negation of everything established in a finite sense”. Also Kierkegaard wrote, “He admittedly freed the single individual from every presupposition, freed him as he himself was free”.
>“Instead of speculatively setting his negativity to rest, he set it far more to rest in the eternal unrest in which he repeated the same process with each single individual. In all this, however, that which makes him into a personality is precisely irony… Naturally this [Socrates’ claim of knowing nothing] conceals a polemic and dismays anyone who has found his repose in one or another finite relation to the divine”.

https://medium.com/@edwardliguori/kierkegaards-view-on-socrates-and-its-relevance-to-modernity-403bb3c1a66
https://philosophy.tabrizu.ac.ir/article_9433_cd416ca3cda1374115faa0a437a0729c.pdf

>>16583813
>The Last Days of Socrates
what the fuck is that title lmao
also op try to stop being a retard for once

>>16585356
>Why can't I just stay dead?
Why couldn't you just not-be?

>>16585365
based
These are actually really good resources for where I am right now.

>>16585441
What an absurd answer. What a brainlet you are. I am, so I can safely assume there is a reason for it. Plato admits I will be dead at some point. There's a reason for that too. Now he is asserting I will come back from the dead. What's the reason for *that*? Since it hasn't happened, he needs to provide it.
I shouldn't have to spell this out.

>>16585490
You were not, you are and you will return to not being. Can you use your brain a little more?

>>16585533
Yes, that's all happened. I know I was not at some point, I know I am, I see that everyone dies. I've never seen anyone come back from the dead. I need to be argued into believing it.
Why do you think Plato is attempting to *prove it*, exactly, retard?

>>16585618
Because, as I said before, it is not this (ceaseless reincarnation, coming-into-being-and-returning-to-not-being) he is trying to prove, retard. Cebes and Simmias were Pythagoreans and, as the ancients used to say, Socrates method is like painless medications. This is how Plato is, you have to think in order to understand what he is at.

>>16585468
I'm happy I could help anon, I found it helped me immensely too so I'm happy it helped you so much as well. Some advice, Existentialism on a whole has only been birthed out of the relationship with the most highly metaphysical, and cannot exist without it-- if it attempts to one finds only the typical finite emotions, such as self-pitying, and total shallowness of truth and the human being. Even Sartre could only come from a Heidegger, but in the end he spectacularly fails and is not an existentialism at all, at least in my humble opinion.

Kierkegaard and Heidegger in general helped me a lot.

>>16585649
The argument is literally about why souls come back from death. Why would it matter that his interlocutors are doctrinally committed to transmigration of souls already? Quote me the text if you want to show this isn't what the argument is about, because that's the common understanding.

>>16585188
Not OP but the gods love the pious because it's pious.
Think of all elders past. Everything they sincerely loved and fought for and now we want something else. We'll also pursue what we think it's good but at the end the good outlast us all.

>>16585683
Is it the common understanding that the arguments there are dumb and the dialogue therefore dumb, too? I'm not at home now.

>>16585712
What I heard in university or talking to people was that this one argument is at least unclear or incomplete, yeah. But it's not the only one ; I took a look at the IEP page a minute ago to answer OP and they, at least, have more to say about the other arguments.

>>16585365
How does Heidegger know what Socrates thought or believed if the only sources we have for Socrates (as far as I know) stem from Plato, Xenophon, or Aristophanes (in satire)?

>>16583813
I don't know why people get so mad when OP posts stuff like this. Plato was incredibly smart and started our tradition of philosophy but frankly a lot of his arguments are fallacious, make plenty of assumptions, and are frankly bad when looked upon with hindsight. Now we of course have time on our side and it isn't really fair to judge him without thinking how far philosophy has progressed. I'd of course still recommend people to read Plato as you can still gain a lot of insight.