/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6393381]

What's your favorite Plato dialogue?

[Anonymous No.6393405]

the one where he takes 400 pages to explain what justice is

[Anonymous No.6393433]

Why did they spell it Platon? Is that on purpose? His name is Plato.

[Anonymous No.6393464]

>>6393433
Its "Paoltn"

[Anonymous No.6393466]

>>6393433
his greek name is Πλατων which is literally, "Platon".

[Anonymous No.6393477]

>>6393433

[Anonymous No.6393557]

>>6393477
Fixed that for you.

[Anonymous No.6393625]

Apology

[Anonymous No.6393634]

>>6393433
In most languages is Platon, only in english they call him Plato.

[Anonymous No.6393675]

>>6393381

Parmenides, though Sophist and Statesman come pretty close.

[Anonymous No.6393683]

Phaedo

[Anonymous No.6393687]

>>6393433
fucking anglos man, when will they learn?

[Anonymous No.6394315]

>>6393675
So what's your interpretation of it ?

[Anonymous No.6394339]

>>6393381

PAO LTN

TAO LIN

[Anonymous No.6394541]

>>6393381
I think stylistically Symposium makes the best use of the dialogue format, but if it comes down to content, I like Meno.

[Anonymous No.6394553]

Has anyone here read Timaeus

[Anonymous No.6394615]

>>6394553
I have, but it's been a while and I'm not even sure if I finished it. I'll likely read it again soon. I remember some of it having some similarities with later alchemical ideas. I found it interesting that Plato divides the four elements into two sets, of fire and earth as the physical elements and water and air as the sort of spiritual bond.

[Anonymous No.6394700]

>>6394315

I'm still trying to work out a lot of it, so anything I offer is pretty tentative.

With that in mind, I've been trying to make sense of why there are certain political references sprinkled throughout a dialogue that is largely lacking any overt political considerations. It looks like at least part of the claim is that philosophy finds its ground in the city, insofar as the language used by the philosopher depends on the language of the city; it seems to become difficult, if not impossible, to speak about metaphysics without political implications (and I guess the opposite might be the case as well, that politics always presupposes how the world is).

It's still not clear to me what exactly is going on with the forms and ideas; I don't think the "theory of forms" is being either refute or refined. If that were the case, Plato could've reworked Phaedo to show Socrates or one of his friends make manifest the problems of the forms, instead of writing a dialogue that features his youngest depiction of Socrates. It seems significant that they tend to keep the critical discussion of the forms between Socrates and Parmenides vague, only in a few cases making reference to a particular form like Likeness; the difficulties with forms would present difficulties to the forms that Socrates seems to cherish the most in the dialogue, the Good, the Just, and the Beautiful. Problems with the forms present not just problems of how to know things, but present problems to forms that are the most important to the city.

The second half still confuses me, though it seems striking that the method of hypothesis might itself be founded upon something like political deliberation. The first two seem clear enough to me; the emphasis on the One seems to be arbitrary in a certain way (though it seems necessary for showing some other thing, but I'm still not sure what); if you replace the hypothesis "If One is" with "If Same is" or some such form, you could just as easily run into the same conclusion: "If Same is, it would be something other than what it is, namely, Sameness, and therefore it cannot be." The second hypothesis seems to suggesting more overtly something that appears in dialogues like Sophist-Statesman, and even in Meno (with the Shape-Color issue of coextensive or woven together forms). Not sure what to do with the instant though.

Still working it out! How about yourself?

[Anonymous No.6394926]

Favorite dialogue might be the Protagoras, at least partly because of how funny the whole thing is.

[Anonymous No.6395036]

plébéien

[Anonymous No.6395253]

>>6394700
Nowhere as deep

[Anonymous No.6395444]

>>6393405
No he doesn't, did you even read it m8

[Anonymous No.6395457]

>>6394553

Yeah, that one's really fucking weird. Critias, its sequel is apparently unfinished, but its unclear if that's just how things ended up, or if Plato ends it the way it does by intention. It's totally unclear what Hermocrates would speak on as the ostensive sequel to Critias. Figuring out how Timaeus is supposed to fit with Critias has been really hard for me to figure out.

[Anonymous No.6395463]

who is Platon?

[Anonymous No.6395530]

>>6395463
see
>>6393466

[Anonymous No.6395634]

I've always had a certain fondness for Symposium. Aristophanes' speech speaks especially well to the human condition.

[Anonymous No.6395947]

>>6393381

Theaetetus, as one of the foundational works inaugurating epistemology as a philosophic concern.

[Anonymous No.6396447]

any without forms

[Anonymous No.6398564]

>>6393381
Rearrange some of those letters and add an I.
It's Tao Lin.

[Anonymous No.6398683]

>>6398564
ptaolin?

[Anonymous No.6398720]

>>6398564
tao plin

[Anonymous No.6398757]

>>6395457
Its expected that he would talk about "Athens" in war with Atlantis; which of course would follow the others chronologically but im no historian so idk

[Anonymous No.6398762]

>>6396447
whats wrong with the Forms?
I love the Forms personally.

[Anonymous No.6398781]

>>6398564
pao nilt

[Anonymous No.6399218]

>>6393683
What's so great about Pheado?

[Anonymous No.6399243]

>>6399218
Then I heard some one reading, as he said, from a book of Anaxagoras, that mind was the disposer and cause of all, and I was delighted at this notion, which appeared quite admirable, and I said to myself: If mind is the disposer, mind will dispose all for the best, and put each particular in the best place; and I argued that if any one desired to find out the cause of the generation or destruction or existence of anything, he must find out what state of being or doing or suffering was best for that thing, and therefore a man had only to consider the best for himself and others, and then he would also know the worse, since the same science comprehended both. And I rejoiced to think that I had found in Anaxagoras a teacher of the causes of existence such as I desired, and I imagined that he would tell me first whether the earth is flat or round; and whichever was true, he would proceed to explain the cause and the necessity of this being so, and then he would teach me the nature of the best and show that this was best; and if he said that the earth was in the centre, he would further explain that this position was the best, and I should be satisfied with the explanation given, and not want any other sort of cause. And I thought that I would then go on and ask him about the sun and moon and stars, and that he would explain to me their comparative swiftness, and their returnings and various states, active and passive, and how all of them were for the best. For I could not imagine that when he spoke of mind as the disposer of them, he would give any other account of their being as they are, except that this was best; and I thought that when he had explained to me in detail the cause of each and the cause of all, he would go on to explain to me what was best for each and what was good for all. These hopes I would not have sold for a large sum of money, and I seized the books and read them as fast as I could in my eagerness to know the better and the worse.

[Anonymous No.6399248]

>>6399243
What expectations I had formed, and how grievously was I disappointed! As I proceeded, I found my philosopher altogether forsaking mind or any other principle of order, but having recourse to air, and ether, and water, and other eccentricities. I might compare him to a person who began by maintaining generally that mind is the cause of the actions of Socrates, but who, when he endeavoured to explain the causes of my several actions in detail, went on to show that I sit here because my body is made up of bones and muscles; and the bones, as he would say, are hard and have joints which divide them, and the muscles are elastic, and they cover the bones, which have also a covering or environment of flesh and skin which contains them; and as the bones are lifted at their joints by the contraction or relaxation of the muscles, I am able to bend my limbs, and this is why I am sitting here in a curved posture—that is what he would say, and he would have a similar explanation of my talking to you, which he would attribute to sound, and air, and hearing, and he would assign ten thousand other causes of the same sort, forgetting to mention the true cause, which is, that the Athenians have thought fit to condemn me, and accordingly I have thought it better and more right to remain here and undergo my sentence; for I am inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off long ago to Megara or Boeotia—by the dog they would, if they had been moved only by their own idea of what was best, and if I had not chosen the better and nobler part, instead of playing truant and running away, of enduring any punishment which the state inflicts.

[Anonymous No.6399273]

>>6396447

I'm with >>6398762, explain yourself.

[Anonymous No.6399393]

>>6399243
>>6399248

What do you mean to be pointing to in particular in these passages? I think they're very fascinating for what they suggest about Socrates' turn to human things, but I'm not sure what you wanted the poster asking about Phaedo to see in them.

[Anonymous No.6400414]

>>6399273
Not that anon but I found Aristotle explanation that what we believe are forms are just ideas or concepts we form after seeing multiple horses/tables/people ect.

Likewise the idea that we do not learn so much as remember doesn't seem very convincing. Especially when you consider how important the external world is when it comes to this remembering

[Anonymous No.6400983]

>>6400414

I'm not sure Plato believes in recollection *as such*, to be honest. Both of the times it appears, it seems to have a rhetorical element. For Meno, after the Meno paradox is put forth, and Meno seems to be threatening to leave the conversation, Socrates appeals to his love of authority and the mysteries (he had met Socrates the day before, but had ben too busy with matters concerning the mysteries to have a real conversation with him), by starting off the account with a reference to something that priests and soothsayers had spoken of. Of course, by the end of the demonstration with the slaveboy, it comes out from Socrates that all the demonstration has shown is that you can have opinions about things.

In the discussion in the Phaedo, recollection is brought up by either Simmias or Cebes (I forget which), by means of a typical shitty Plato joke ("Didn't Socrates used to tell us about recollection? But I don't remember how it went..."). Part of what's up with the presentation there is that recollection was also a Pythagorean doctrine, and several of the people present are Pythagoreans. A number of the arguments in the Phaedo are really just attempts to get these Pythagoreans to keep believing in what they already take as Pythagorean doctrine, but which they might give up in the face of Socrates' execution (and it also seems noteworthy that Apollodorus, who's crying throughout, is not a Pythagorean, and so simply isn't comforted at any of the doctrines put forward).

Aristotle's account might not disagree with Plato's; the character of the Eleatic Stranger in the dialogues Sophist and Statesman discusses forms in a way very akin to that, especially in the Statesman.

[Anonymous No.6401296]

>>6400983

If Plato didn't believe in recollection, then why did he bring it up in the first place?

[Anonymous No.6401311]

>>6400983
Even if I concede that the idea recollection, how do you see the theory of forms as being convincing?

[Anonymous No.6401488]

>>6401311

Oh, I don't think I was responding to that concern, tbh. The forms have some really confusing things going on with them that make it hard to articulate what's going on with them at all in any way whatsoever, since there's always some account in a Platonic dialogue to throw a complete wrench into an understanding of them, by intention I think. About as close as I've come to understanding them is as either stand-ins for the Fundamental Problems, and so perhaps only present as they are to draw attention to specific issues as problems, and/or as surrogate gods for readers who aren't philosophical enough.

[Anonymous No.6401586]

>>6401296

I'll admit outright that I'm not sure, but there's a lot in the dialogues that one would be hard pressed to say Plato believed. At least one possibility that fits with Meno specifically could be that recollection offers a third alternative to Meno's two options of either completely knowing a thing or being completely ignorant of a thing. Recollection would suggest that forgetfulness is a possibility to consider seriously. It might also function as a larger kind of playful joke on the kind of person Meno is, namely, someone who memorizes the speeches of others (like Gorgias), but whose memory apparently doesn't benefit him with respect to how inquiring works.

[Anonymous No.6401698]

>>6401586

I guess that sounds like it works. How about in Phaedo tho?

[Anonymous No.6403646]

>>6401488

So what about the theory of forms in the Republic? Plus, Plato could have always changed his mind later, which is why they work different in some dialogues, since he was still figuring it all out.

[Anonymous No.6403672]

>>6393433
lel Google

[Anonymous No.6403704]

>>6393634
This is the correct answer - OP's pic is French, he's Platon in German too