/lit/ - Literature

Daily reminder:
>realism in unavoidable
>the only realism there is is "platonic" realism (which is the exact same as scolastic realism, Augustine didn't add anything to it)
>All realism must culminate in the One, which is an intellective nature beyond being, and Being itself, the True and the Good
>the One is present to Himself <=> oriented to himself, and as Perfection pre-contains all perfect things in an undifferatiented mode
>the Demiurge is not a "lower god"
>the Intellect is identical to forms (again, not a later innovation)
>forms are not self-predicative (Plato is speaking analogically, for instance, when he says that nothing is truer than the True, funny that people would have no trouble getting that if it were like Aquinas or something)
>Plato knew what to answer to both the TMA and Euthyphro, but wanted you to figure it out for yourself
>(weird Mandela effect thing that I have to mention): the TMA isn't Aristotle's devastating criticism of Plato, it's from Plato himself
>intelligibility and finality are not superimposed to things by "the surnatural" or what have you; to be is to be something and so to be intelligible/directed to perfection
>it doesn't matter that you don't understand the One or emanation
>"aristotelianism" is a semantic cope for people who are afraid they'll be made fun of for admitting all of the above, but still want to larp as realists. it's ok though, because they are either platonists with a weird vocabulary and penchant for useless distinctions, or plain wrong.
ok, good talk, see you ;-)

Alright /lit/ im doing some re-reading of plato, particularly phaedo, coming off the heels of a re read of kant and frege (frege reinterested me in platonism). My confusion is regarding platonic forms.

Platonic forms are not psychological, though the mind can discern them, they are a very real and true existence as a 'thing in themselves'. They exist in a higher realm and the objects of sense are effectively their imprint on the lower relams.

The essence of gold must be shared by all sensed gold, all people know gold objectively through knowledge of its essence. However, take two individuals, one is from the jungle and has no knowledge of electricity, the other is a modern man from the west.

The modern man will know gold has electrical properties, and he will likewise seen gold as inseperarable from those electrical/chemical properties. The 'essence' of gold for the western man includes alongside 'heavy' and 'shiny', 'conductive'.

The jungle man will see 'shiny' and 'heavy', but will not identify the essence as including conductiviity as he doesnt know it exists.

How then, is the forms seperate from the mind if the essence of something is so easily dictated by the concepts in the mind? To understand somethings essence is to understand it as innate within a thing, to gain true knowledge of a thing. But it appears to me that 'essence' is limited to whatever empirical observations are made of an object, and the concepts that are assigned to it. What do youse think?

I'm going to start with the Greeks and as for philosophy I'm going to finish it entirely once I read all of Plato's works. I won't miss out on anything important, right? It'll be enough.

How does he do it? How can a dead man from almost 2500 years ago still be so relevant to this day, even more now with all the blatant intellectual sophistry that plagues academia

ITT we discuss how to reincarnate the Platonic Academy and stick it to the plebs.

Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here.

Remember that every dialogue is it's own work.
Let's get all 30 on the list.

This is the OG spiritualism vs materialism isn't it.
"Particulars" is the acadmic word for physical reality. "Universals" are concepts.
Nominalist (materialists) believe "map isn't the territory". Concepts are just braincells arranging themselves to represent external reality.
Realists (closet /x/ fags) believe concepts are real objects in higher planes, and ultimately manifests the lower physical realities.
Thank god I frequent /x/. Almost all other students had the thousand yard stare when the prof start going off about these things.
Sneaky philosophers hiding behind sophisticated words so they don't get outted as schizos, very clever.

And why can't physicalist monists accept that Plato was right about everything?

Why is the Hackett edition always pushed here when the Jowett translation is the best?

551d-e
Claim:
Socrates: “[...] oligarchs probably aren’t able to fight a war, for they’d be compelled either to arm
and use the majority, and so have more to fear from them than the enemy, or not to use them and show up as true oligarchs—few in number—on the battlefield. At the same time, they’d be unwilling to pay mercenaries, because of their love of money.”

Reflection:
History has surely proven this statement wrong: oligarchies have widely accomplished to control armed majorities of the poor and the acquisition of mercenaries has often been seen as profitable by the ruling class.

>>20760329
Good.

He was basically right about everything, wasn't he?

What do you think of Plato's unwritten doctrines? Do they exist or not?

Sorry but I just don't think a guy who lived in an unironic utopia has anything to offer modern people
>lived in a homogenous city-state
>ate fresh food sold at the market by the farmer who grew it
>no media (nope), no mass surveillance, no internet
>no plastic, no endocrine disruptors, pesticides
>lived to 80

Nietzsche was just extremely butthurt that Plato had him figured out thousands of years before he was even born. All his attacks on Plato sound like petulant whining. In reality, Plato knew that men like Nietzsche have always been around, men who think might makes right and strength is itself a virtue. That's the sort of man the Republic was written to refute.

In Gorgias from 488b-491d Callicles struggles to define the stronger/superior/better. Here an accurate definition of the stronger/superior/better that conforms with Callicles view could be: Those who are naturally the most powerful, that is those that have the greatest ability to influence outside all forms of nomos. What do you think of this definition? How would Socrates object to this definition?

There is at least some level of contradiction in Socrates’ concept of the ‘social contract’. He claims that every citizen is free to leave the polis, if he disagrees with how the polis functions, including how the laws are constructed. But later Socrates points out that other “well-governed” city states such as Thebes or Magara would look upon an emigrating citizen from Athens as a “enemy to the government” and a “destroyer of the laws”, if it was known he broke a law in Athens (53b). It seems your options are relatively limited if you are discontent with the law; you are not capable of changing the law, if you break a law in any one polis, then you are effectively banished from all poleis, and lastly laws doesn’t really seem to differ much from polis to polis, at least they ought not to in the view of Socrates/Plato.

Is it possible to write philosophy like Plato did ?

Do forms exist ? Do poets know ? When something is knowledge and when is it not ?

If someone is mainly interested in Plato's metaphysics, what are the best dialogues to start with?

Plato said that the ownership of objects advances one’s character, while Aristotle said that ownership of objects is detrimental to one’s character. Sartre said that ownership extends beyond the tangible. For example, if you learn a skill, you technically “own” that knowledge. What is your definition of ownership? What is your definition of self-identity? What is the relationship between these two ideas, in your opinion?

What's the best way to start with Plato ?

Democracy itself, as I see it, arrives once the poor become victorious, killing some of the opposite party and exiling others, and sharing the civic organization and its offices on equal footing with those that remain, the choice of officers now done by drawing lots, for the most part.
“This is truly the policy that establishes democracy, whether it is instituted by arms or only out of fear, the other party escaping into exile.”
Then what is the turn of the civic management that these men adopt? How, that is, does the character of this regime differ from the others?Already it is clear that the man who corresponds to the regime will turn out to be of a democratic sort.
“Yes, it is clear.”
So, first of all they will become free: the city will come to be full of freedom and candor, and a latitude or license will arise in it to do whatever one wishes.
“This is what is said about democracy.”
But wherever there is latitude each person would clearly design his own life according to his own private preferences.
“Clearly.”
So a veritable kaleidoscope of human types would arise under such a regime as this.
“Nothing to prevent that.”
This one might just be the most beautiful of the regimes. Like a robe decked out with the dyes of many flowers, this city, bedecked with a rainbow of character-types, might seem the prettiest. Think of the way children and women feel when they contemplate highly decorated things: the majority very well3979 might judge this regime to be the most beautiful.
“Could well be.”
And it really would just the place, my dazzling friend, to look for a regime.
“Just what do you mean by that?”
Just that it includes all the types of regime because of its licentiousness: indeed, a person who has a mind to design a city, as we ourselves were doing, might himself do well to visit a democratized city, to choose whichever style of city pleases him, as though he were visiting a showroom of regimes, and having chosen it to move on to its realization.