/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12672079]

Is it enough to just read the classics? Isn't study of them required too?

[Anonymous No.12672156]

>>12672079
Its one thing to read Plato.
But understanding Plato is another thing altogether.

There is so much to learn from the things he didn't say, the so-called Unwritten Doctrines. This is the true secret to understanding history.

[Anonymous No.12672192]

>>12672156
>Unwritten Doctrines
Smells like Catholic "tradition", which just means whatever you the authorities decide that it means, since it isn't written anywhere and can't be verified.

[Anonymous No.12672198]

>>12672192
It is attested to by Aristotle.
A lot of study and debate has been done on the subject to formulate generally accepted basis for what exactly it was.

[Anonymous No.12672207]

>>12672198
And what are the benefits of figuring out what these unwritten things are?

[Anonymous No.12672209]

>>12672198
Everyone said shit that they didn't write down. It doesn't mean it's some mystic secret.

[Anonymous No.12672213]

>>12672207
>>12672209
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_unwritten_doctrines
It's the birth of esotericism in Western tradition

[Anonymous No.12672249]

>>12672213
>In the following Hellenistic Period (323–31 BCE) when a thorough-going skepticism came to dominate the Academy, the inheritance of Plato's unwritten doctrines could attract little interest (if they were known at all). This skepticism faded by the time of Middle Platonism and Neo-Platonism, but the philosophers of this period seem no better informed about the unwritten doctrines than modern scholars.
If I'm reading this article correctly then it would appear that none of this was actually passed down through time in a living manner, so no one actually knows and has been stuck trying to reconstruct it of what can be gleaned from Aristotle and some others.

[Anonymous No.12672265]

>>12672249
That's kind of the point of saying "debate has been done on the subject to formulate generally accepted basis"
It's important to remember that many neoplatonists possessed texts they referred to which we no longer have.

[Anonymous No.12672269]

>>12672265
If I'm reading the article correctly, there is no "generally accepted basis" and all of this is fairly controversial.

[Anonymous No.12672287]

>>12672269
>Schleiermacher's stark denial of any oral teaching was disputed from the beginning but his critics remained isolated. In 1808, August Boeckh, who later became a well-known Greek scholar, stated in an edition of Schleiermacher's Plato translations that he did not find the arguments against the unwritten doctrines persuasive. There was a great probability, he said, that Plato had an esoteric teaching never overtly expressed but only darkly hinted at: 'what he here [in the dialogues] did not carry out to the final point, he there in oral instruction placed the topmost capstone on.'[85] Christian August Brandis collected and commented upon the ancient sources for the unwritten doctrines.[86] Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg and Christian Hermann Weisse stressed the significance of the unwritten doctrines in their investigations.[87] Even Karl Friedrich Hermann, in an 1849 inquiry into Plato's literary motivations, turned against Schleiermacher's theses and proposed that Plato had only insinuated the deeper core of his philosophy in his writings and directly communicated it only orally.
>Many critics of the Tübingen School do not dispute the authenticity of the principles ascribed to Plato, but see them as a late notion of Plato's that was never worked out systematically and so was not integrated with the philosophy he developed beforehand. They maintain that the two principles theory was not the core of Plato's philosophy but rather a tentative concept discussed in the last phase of his philosophical activity. He introduced these concepts as a hypothesis but did not integrate them with the metaphysics that underlies the dialogues.
>The advocates of the Tübingen School have intensively examined the scattered evidence and testimony in the sources in order to reconstruct the principles of Plato's unwritten doctrines. They see in these teachings the core of Plato's philosophy and have reached a fairly settled picture of their fundamentals, though many important details remain unknown or controversial.
So, as you can see, fundamental parts of it are settled, even critics accept this, but some specific parts are still out for debate.

[Anonymous No.12672303]

Are there any works on Plato's philosophy which fully incorporate this stuff?

[Anonymous No.12672391]

>>12672303
Not really.
There's a lot that is important for reading. I'd recommend at least these
Plato's Republic, Parmenides, Timaeus, the Philebus and Meno.
Aristotle's Metaphysics
Theophrastus On First Principles
Cicero's De Naturo Deorum II
As well as works by Proclus, Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Porphyry.

If you want some of those teachings dumbed down I might recommend
Trivium: The Classical Liberal Arts of Grammar, Logic, & Rhetoric (Wooden Books)

Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology (Wooden Books)

As well as an understanding of Monism with dualistic aspects that was passed down through Pythagoras.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monism