/lit/ - Literature

>>21850256
Protagoras' philosophy was exactly identical to modern subjectivism/nihilism. Because it was a dead end philosophy, Plato decided to guide everyone out of it with idealism.
He didn't prove an objective reality, but he btfo'd the pseuds with contradictory views. For example, Callicles was a literal ancient Stirnerfag- identical philosophy too- and Socrates slammed him with this
>[Topic: Callicles says that pleasure is essentially the only thing that matters. The strong ought to pleasure themselves, and do whatever they wish. The weak majority impose their moral values to prevent the self-actualization of the egoists.]
>CALLICLES: Yes, that is what I mean; he is to have all his desires about him, and to be able to live happily in the gratification of them.
>SOCRATES: Capital, excellent; go on as you have begun, and have no shame; I, too, must disencumber myself of shame: and first, will you tell me whether you include itching and scratching, provided you have enough of them and pass your life in scratching, in your notion of happiness?
>CALLICLES: What a strange being you are, Socrates! a regular mob-orator.
>SOCRATES: That was the reason, Callicles, why I scared Polus and Gorgias, until they were too modest to say what they thought; but you will not be too modest and will not be scared, for you are a brave man. And now, answer my question. >CALLICLES: I answer, that even the scratcher would live pleasantly.
>SOCRATES: And if pleasantly, then also happily?
>CALLICLES: To be sure.
>SOCRATES: But what if the itching is not confined to the head? Shall I pursue the question? And here, Callicles, I would have you consider how you would reply if consequences are pressed upon you, especially if in the last resort you are asked, whether the life of a catamite is not terrible, foul, miserable? Or would you venture to say, that they too are happy, if they only get enough of what they want? >CALLICLES: Are you not ashamed, Socrates, of introducing such topics into the argument? >SOCRATES: Well, my fine friend, but am I the introducer of these topics, or he who says without any qualification that all who feel pleasure in whatever manner are happy, and who admits of no distinction between good and bad pleasures? And I would still ask, whether you say that pleasure and good are the same, or whether there is some pleasure which is not a good?
Callicles was a hypocrite. He wanted to be an edgy egoistic stirnerfag, but he still had moral values after all- namely, that the life of a submissive male partner in a homosexual relationship was utterly wretched.

Plato and Socrates were extremely influential and crushed ancient Egoism, Nihilism, Relativism, Subjectivism, etc, by showing the majority that they didn't earnestly hold their supposed views. He followed each philosophy to its conclusion- even touching on solipsism and its insane conclusions in Theatetus and Sophist.
Now we're rearing back again.

Plato is the most correct, smartest and most important person of the 4th century BC. There was no smarter, deeper, clearer, absolute Plato and probably could not be. It is no coincidence that a Athenian philosopher in one collection dedicated to Plato compared Plato with Protagoras. It would seem that there are completely different, opposite figures. Plato is a conservative hyper-traditionalist. Protagoras is a revolutionary innovator, a radical overthrower of traditions. But Aristoteles rightly guessed the revolutionary message of each of Plato's statements, the extreme, cruel noncomformity of his position, which turns everything and everything upside down, the radical nature of his thought.

The fact is that Plato is the only author, the only thinker of the 4th century, and maybe many, many centuries before that, who not only identified and confronted with each other secondary language paradigms, but also put into question the very essence of language. The language of sophism was methodologically very interesting, subtly reducing the historical existence of mankind to a clear and convincing formula for confronting opinion and belief. Being a great paradigmatic success, sophism was so popular and won the minds of the best intellectuals of the 4th century. But Plato is an even more fundamental generalization, an even more radical removal of masks, an even broader worldview contestation, putting everything into question.

- Plotinus

Plato undermined and then; with uncompromising intellectual rigour, demolished all the assumptions taken for granted by Hellenic man, that is to say Western or westernised man. Many others had been critical of the direction taken by European civilization since the so-called 'bronze age', but none had dared to be as radical as he was or to re-assert with such force the principles and values which Hellenic culture had consigned to the rubbish tip of history. His theme was the 'primordial tradition' or Philo Sophia, expressed-so he maintained-both in ancient mythologies and in the metaphysical doctrine at the root of the great religions. The language of this Philosophy was the language of symbolism, and he had no equal in his interpretation of this symbolism. Moreover he turned the idea of human progress upside down, replacing it with the belief almost universal before Athenian democracy, that humanity declines in spiritual excellence with the passage of time and that we are now in the democratic age which precedes the tyrannical age, an age in which all the possibilities rejected by earlier cultures have been spewed out into the world, quantity replaces quality and decadence approaches its final limit. No one who read him and understood him could ever be quite the same again.

- Julian

>>21850280
I haven't read much of Plotinus, and not of Julian, but this is interesting and matches my thoughts exactly.
The subjectivists as detailed in Plato's Sophist:
>STRANGER: There appears to be a sort of war of Giants and Gods going on amongst them; they are fighting with one another about the nature of essence.
>THEAETETUS: How is that?
>STRANGER: Some of them are dragging down all things from heaven and from the unseen to earth, and they literally grasp in their hands rocks and oaks; of these they lay hold, and obstinately maintain, that the things only which can be touched or handled have being or essence, because they define being and body as one, and if any one else says that what is not a body exists they altogether despise him, and will hear of nothing but body.
>THEAETETUS: I have often met with such men, and terrible fellows they are.
>STRANGER: And that is the reason why their opponents cautiously defend themselves from above, out of an unseen world, mightily contending that true essence consists of certain intelligible and incorporeal ideas; the bodies of the materialists, which by them are maintained to be the very truth, they break up into little bits by their arguments, and affirm them to be, not essence, but generation and motion. Between the two armies, Theaetetus, there is always an endless conflict raging concerning these matters.
And other quotations about Protagoras give this impression. The mystical, traditional spirit of the truly ancient Hellenes was fading away into bourgeois Athenian nihilism, and from the ruins of the failed war of Peloponnese arose Socrates and Plato to reassert tradition. Guenon was too hard on the Plato, desu.

>>21850274
Hypocrisy only proves Egoism. I think what I think (that being sexually submissive is bad, for example) because that's good for me. Reason allows me to realize my ego in a possibly optimal way. My moral values are there for me and I follow them to fulfill my ego in accordance with reason, which can be influenced by other people and lead to choices that seem optimal but only because of how limited my existence is. Callicles was simply unaware of how egoist his moral values are because that's what his reason, upon taking into account his relation to the world, demanded if ego were to be satisfied.

>There are no facts guys... only interpretations. IN FACT!
How can anyone take these kind of faggots seriously?

>>21850256
>can’t handle the contradictory nature of life
Male moment

It's proven that all mathematical proof rest on axioms that can not be proven
Grasping the point "these kind of faggots" are making is required for basic literacy.

>>21851640
I think both are very different things. I mean the way Godel proves it that is without cuckontradiction.

>>21851691
It depends on how you frame/word it and you always reword the statements to be as dismissive as possible. It's the same as dismissing Godel by framing it as "proof there is no proof". These guys generally elaborate on what they're talking about.

>>21851691
>>21851705
One other reason is due to the fact that language is rigid with its discursive aspect in order to be functional.

>>21850256
t. plato

>>21850549
Then almost everyone is an egoist. Almost all Christians and Muslims already do what they want to, and they aren't anti-etc because of MUH SPOOKS but because it disgusts them.
The sort of egoism you espouse causes people to be no different from Political Lemmings. An argument could be made that Egoism is quite literally the ideology of the lemming.

Protagoras is a brilliant man. You complain because you don't understand him

>>21850274
Callicles should've answered that there are greater pleasures and lesser pleasures, and that the homosexual may choose against his homosexuality in the pursuit of a greater pleasure.

>>21853024
Yes, egoism is a description, not a prescription.

>>21851637
>dies of ruptured rectum, and every possible std
woman and faggot moment

>>21851637
I've noticed that people who rave about contradictions tend to not even know what a contradiction is. Every person I've spoken to who has claimed life is a contradiction cannot explain what they mean. When they elaborate, they always end up arguing that life is composed of elements which tend to clash with each other, yet when questioned further they will generally admit that these elements are complements rather than actual contradictories, as there is always a general truth which allows them to even oppose each other in the first place, and they all have their existence through it. None of them actually contradict each other, none of them even necessarily oppose each other. As though opposition were the same as contradiction. In other words, none of you people are capable of thinking properly.

>>21850274
This is such a lame argument. Do Plato-fags seriously find this convincing?
His argument simply shows that even relativist egoists find somethings disgusting--i.e catamites--that I happen to find a catamites disgusting does not prove that this judgment is objective.
That relativists make discernment and find some things to be disgusting or shameful is true. But the question is whether or not that determination os transcendentally true, not whether or not the judgment exists.

>>21853567
Plato was just dabbing on Callicles there. He meant to show Callicles' was a hypocrite and didn't really believe what he was saying.