Platonist Thread

It is your punishment for having been a cuckold in a past life.

How is platonism not exactly like buddhism.

hey hows it going i believeyou-- really i do
but i dont know you know... i dont!
i dont know i dont know, i dont i dont i dont... and im sorry okay i am

you talk like a retard

nonetheless, Plato is the GOAT so let's keep this thread going

You can't prove the Forms AREN'T real.

Socrates was the Original Bantmaster

Terrible thread.
>redditors revelling in the opportunity to share their milquetoast memes
>desperate betas wanting gril
>attention whores

sorry man, I was treating a meme thread like a meme. I forgot this is Veeky Forums, where no fun is allowed.

Plato taught me that I have an immortal soul. Thanks, Plato.

u hab gril?

Garbage, why is this even allowed?

Can a form be deleted? Can new forms be created or where they formed all at once in the beginning?

THE POINT WITH FORMS IS THAT THEY ARE NOT SUBJECT TO CHANGE SO THEY ARE NOT CREATED NOR SUBSTITUTED NOR ANYTHING

NOW GET OUT THIS IS A PLATONIC THREAD AND IF YOU DON'T KNOW GEOMETRY AND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING AND BECOMING YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE

Sorry for my ignorance. I just wanted to know how change is possible if every form has already been thought of but you say forms can't change. Is their no third option between being and becoming? It seems a contradiction to say it is both at the same time.

I was thinking of nirvana and how you stop being reborn which made me think of a form being deleted.

Diotima? Is that you?

Do forms have forms? Checkmate backworlders.

Another question. Is it not possible that at the material level a new arrangement occurs first and then the form is created? Why do the forms have to be first? Was the form of this computer I'm using already in existence it just needed someone to remember it in order to create it?

>How is platonism not exactly like buddhism.
Platonism:
- psyche
- demiurge
- reason
- essences
- eros
Buddhism:
- no soul (anatta)
- indifferent towards a creator
- enlightenment
- no essences (anicca)
- dukkha
Forms for Plato are eternal, unchanging, perfect, unique.
>It seems a contradiction to say it is both at the same time.
You use the verb "to say", but language is not able to describe the tiny fluctuations of Becoming, we have a language that functions dfiferently. I can say "dog" or "chair", I do not have the cognitive or linguistic tools that are able to describe the changes in position and velocity of every electron in a dog or chair, and which electrons stop being part of a dog or chair, which replace them, and when, in real time. Language speaks of macroscopic, simple things and not microscopic, complex processes. Language essentializes, language eternalizes. The word horse, used by itself, is not able to describe any particular individual horse or how the species has changed throughout the years. Plato marries a sensible world of Becoming (Heraclitus) and an ideal world of Being (Parmenides). It's an uneven dualism that privileges the ideal and rational and unchanging, but without an outright denial of the sensual, the opinion and change.
No, just stop. Buddhists don't believe in souls. If you ask Buddhists in Japan and elsewhere around the world they don't even believe in Rebirth.
For Plato, every form is one, so at the top of the food chain there is The One.
>form is created
Stop.
>Was the form of this computer I'm using already in existence it just needed someone to remember it in order to create it
"I'm going to build a computer", the craftsman thought. The craftsman knew what a computer was, and assembled material objects according to the design of his mind, design which precedes the final result. Plato is always top-down, in fact he believes the same is true for the whole universe.

Forms are not ideas in the mind, for Plato, but separated universals which have exist independently from the mind. They are "being", which means they are always the same and never change. Since they are stable (unchanging), they are the only thing you can have actual knowledge of. The Forms are the cause of being and qualities possessed by things in the sensible world. They are the reason why we use the same predicate to describe different things e.g. things are beautiful because they all refer to the form of the beautiful. We use the predicate beautiful to describe multiple things because they all participate in the form of the beautiful.
Since they are unchanging - which is the only way in which something truly exist, by being always itself and never something else - they cannot change, nor being deleted: they always existed and will always exist.

Things in the sensible world, instead, are "becoming", in the sense that they are never the same and always change. It is said of them that they "are and are-not", which means they are once one thing and then another: they do not exist as fully as the forms and they acquire qualities because they are "shaped" by the forms - as water inside a channel.
Since they are always in flux, it is impossible to have knowledge of sensible things.

*perfects your philosophy*

>disrespecting Plotinus' one wish not to have an image made of him

or, shit, that's not plotinus don't make fun of me

How is it a punishment if it turns me on?

Thanking you for clearing some misconceptions of Buddhism I had. My next question is if Aristotle is incompatible with Plato when he says the form of a thing is in the thing as one of it's causes and doesn't exist in some other world.

Where do Platonists stand on the BAVI/BANTI dichotomy?

So becoming is possible because of being? Is it proper to say the end goal is contemplation of the unchanging forms? This I think is to be done without language.

I need to study more geometry before I read Plato again thank you for your detailed answer. I thought the forms where in the mind of the One. What exactly is the One is it a mind that exists independently from our minds?

I'm 100% on Nietzsche's side but Platonist chicks turn me on.

>implying there are Platonist chicks

Don't talk to me or my delusion ever again.

TITS or GTFO you dumb bitch! This is why this rule should be enforced, otherwise we get cringy, lame ass threads. It's fucking pathetic. Go get your kicks elsewhere you hag

>le i am above it all and i will make a post to tell them ;)

Wanna do some sex magick?

>if Aristotle is incompatible with Plato when he says the form of a thing is in the thing as one of it's causes and doesn't exist in some other world
Aristotle countered Plato’s ideas by saying that forms without matter could not be “something definite;” they could not actually, physically exist. Plato never claimed that forms were anything “definite,” though. In fact, he specifically said that forms reside in the “intelligible realm.” If we take Plato’s intelligible realm to be not some parallel universe that the perfect forms of everything reside in, but rather the realm of our own thoughts and ideas, then in a way both philosophers are correct. As Aristotle said, form cannot really exist without matter. There is no “house apart from bricks.” However, the ideas of things can be thought of and talked about because we have a mutual understanding of the forms of objects and ideas. This seems to be what Plato really meant when he described forms. Students of geometry can discuss squares with perfectly equal sides and right angles, even if they cannot draw a perfect square, because they all understand the form of a square.
>So becoming is possible because of being?
Yes.
>Is it proper to say the end goal is contemplation of the unchanging forms?
The end goal would be eudaimonia, the happiness that derives from a virtuous, rational life and an ordered, harmonious soul.
>This I think is to be done without language.
So would Plato. I brought language in the discussion to show that it is even difficult to talk about the microscopic minutiae of the world as current year physics understand it, and because of this and the relevance of language for thinking, it is difficult to get rid of Plato, forms, simple objects (instead of complex processes) and of eternalizing, categorizing thought even in our everyday conversation, let alone metaphysical, speculative meditation.

I meant the end goal of Plato being the contemplation of the forms. I agree with Aristotle's eudaimonia. I think Plato and Aristotle are compatible and aren't mutually exclusive opposites as they are often presented.

Is Christianity a type of Platonism?Also did Hegel complete Plato's dialectic logic or is sublimation already contained in Plato's thinking?

Also can we talk about irony? Does Plato ever have Socrates say things he doesn't actually believe are correct and how can you know when it is Socrates speaking or when Plato is speaking?

>Is Christianity a type of Platonism?
Heavily influenced by Middle Platonism and Hellenistic Jews such as Philo, that would interpret the Hebrew Bible through Greek ideas. Christian philosophers and theologians would continue to borrow from Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus to this very day.
>Also did Hegel complete Plato's dialectic logic or is sublimation already contained in Plato's thinking?
No. The first thing that needs pointing out is how different is epistemology for these two thinkers. For Plato, there is no progress. Exposed in the Meno, his theory of reminiscence is that we already know things, for example an illiterate slave already knows a geometrical theorem, the reason he can't use it is that he just forgot. This ties in with Plato's belief in metempsychosis and, as we said earlier, that Plato prioritizes Being over Becoming. The knowledge, the eternal truth is already there, it is not acquired or accumulated, it simply needs to be recalled. Hegel does the opposite, he is a process philosopher incessantly talking about development, the world and even God himself change in an interrelated web of dynamic dependencies, complexity piled on complexity.
For Plato's dialetic see here:
focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2231.html
For Hegel's dialectics see here:
empyreantrail.wordpress.com/2017/09/04/beginners-introduction-to-dialectics/
empyreantrail.wordpress.com/2016/09/12/dialectics-an-introduction/
Scholars of Plato debate endlessly over these topics. Nietzsche himself was among the first to point out the existence of unwritten doctrines of Plato. The works of Plato that we have do not interpret themselves hence the neverending discussion and philosophers re-reading them. Plato does not have a high opinion of writing (see Phaedrus, Republic), he privileges talking to people (dialectic) as a way for people to achieve understanding and excellence, and a text cannot defend itself. How exactly would the dialogues starring Socrates play their role in Plato's lessons at the Academy we cannot know. My understanding is that Socrates did indeed troll people, and enjoyed it, as both the historical figure and the character in the dialogues.

Reminder that if you say platonism is dualist, you're a brainlet

The thing is that Platonism is generally already accepted as the primary moral system most of the world operates under so what’s the point of talking about it? Also op is probably fat

So tell me Veeky Forums, what is a man?

Are the dialogue's teaching tools by which through the back and forth between the participants a state of not knowing is achieved? Many of the questions Socrates asks are about defining a term and showing that people use them without knowing the meaning of them. Were some of the unwritten teachings of Plato later written down by the neo-platonists?
Thank you for all of the links I will read them carefully philosophy isn't possible without discussing it with others, you can't just sit down and read books they have to be talked about.

The übermensch is tied to living in the city?

Is it even him?

As for the one in Plato and the following Platonic tradition, it is very difficult to define it.
In Plato there is almost no explicit mention of it - most of the things we know about his doctrine of the One and the Dyad comes from Aristotle's summaries of these doctrines in his works.

Apparently, for Plato, the One was the Form of Good, and it was the principle of being of things. He claimed that nothing can exist without being a unity - i.e. that to say that a thing is something, we must say that it is "one" thing, that is, we must conceive it as a unity.
As for why this was also the same as the Good, it is not clear.

The One is not a mind, as well as the forms: they are the objects that a faculty of the mind/soul (intellect) can ultimately grasp as true, because they are unchanging.

The one that believes that Forms are also minds is Plotinus, but that is a little more complex.

>Are the dialogue's teaching tools by which through the back and forth between the participants a state of not knowing is achieved? Many of the questions Socrates asks are about defining a term and showing that people use them without knowing the meaning of them.
I think we should draw the line between a historical Socrates, whose "Socratic method" is indeed largely skeptic, and Plato's character that does introduce the positive teachings that became what we call Platonism. Both cases require two participants in a form of guided rational inquiry (maieutic). Both cases achieve a state of knowing. Even for the proto-skeptic, historical Socrates you do discover knowledge: specifically YOU KNOW that you do not know, you come to the conclusion that your supposed knowledge wasn't examined that well and doesn't really count as knowledge. The Academic Skeptics were a bunch of people in the Hellenistic period in charge of Plato's Academy that were not really Platonists, they were skeptics because they imitated "this" Socrates (or this interpretation of the character of Socrates in the Dialogues).
>Were some of the unwritten teachings of Plato later written down by the neo-platonists?
The following sources are most frequently used for reconstructing Plato's unwritten doctrines:

Aristotle's Metaphysics (books Α, Μ and N) and Physics (book Δ)
Fragments of Aristotle's lost treatises 'On the Good' and 'On Philosophy'
The Metaphysics of Theophrastus, a student of Aristotle
Two fragments of the lost treatise On Plato by Plato's student Hermodorus of Syracuse
A fragment from a lost work of Plato's student Speusippus
The treatise Against Mathematicians of Sextus Empiricus (10 books). Sextus does not there explicitly ascribe the doctrines to Plato but describes them as Pythagorean. Modern scholars have assembled evidence, however, that Plato was in fact their author.
Plato's Republic and Parmenides. The principles ascribed to Plato in the indirect tradition make many of the statements and trains of thought in these two dialogues appear in a different light. Interpreted accordingly, they contribute to sharpening the contours of our image of the unwritten doctrines. The debates in other dialogues, for example, the Timaeus and the Philebus, can then be understood in new ways and incorporated into the Tübingen reconstruction. Allusions to the unwritten doctrines can even be found, it is argued, in Plato's early dialogues.

Please fuck off during bear market, Jezebel.

first qualityu thread in all of Veeky Forums

I remember reading some where speculation that Plato got his teachings while in Egypt. Is there reason to believe this is true?

Also where can philosophy go if Plato is correct? Is it just having to remember? Are there any concerns Plato didn't talk about? Is the Republic about building a model or is it just about trying to answer the question what is justice? Also is there enough evidence to support the existence of Atlanteans I don't see why they would just be made up? Thank you for answering my questions.

I believe the thought of Ancient Egyptians to have two main lines, one is the wisdom literature or sebayt, which is largely ethical and practical and unconcerned with metaphysical speculation, circulating among the literate and those that can afford scribes to read things to them (i.e. royalty and possibly aristocrats), and another concerning the priests with their religious teachings on the gods, afterlife, cosmos, soul and magic. Plato's Phaedrus mentions a "myth of Theuth" where king Thamus tells the god Theuth (Thot) that inventing writing was a mistake. I think this would be nothing short of blasphemous to the ears of an Ancient Egyptian. The story you refer to claims Plato, after the death of Socrates, studied for 13 years in Egypt under the priest of Horus Sechnuphis, in the city of Heliopolis. This story comes from 2nd century Christian philosopher and theologian Clement of Alexandria. I, for one, do not believe this story. One thing is to claim there cultural and philosophical influences from the East were coming to Athens, another is to say Egyptian (or Persian or even Jewish, etc.) thought is present in Plato. It's much easier for me to believe Presocratic philosophers were influenced by this East, for example Heraclitus lived, taught and died in Persian soil, others in colonies where the circulation of people, goods, languges and ideas would flourish.
>Also where can philosophy go if Plato is correct?
We would have to strive to live excellently, without an evil to blame (there is simply the absence of Good for Plato) all there is to do is to do good.
>Is it just having to remember?
I guess, lol.
>Are there any concerns Plato didn't talk about?
Look around you. There are many things happening in our world that he couldn't even imagine.
>Is the Republic about building a model or is it just about trying to answer the question what is justice?
It talks far more about education, and the point of the book is a conversation on the soul.
>is there enough evidence to support the existence of Atlanteans
I don't think so, no.

I have to leave my computer now but thank you for answering all of my questions.

>We would have to strive to live excellently
Most Righteous, user-dude!

Get a trip.

How goes it, fellow Platonians?

Yo dawg, with regard to the unwritten doctrines: I haven’t seen much of an effort on scholars’ parts to reconstruct the platonic initiation process into the system that they must have viewed it as up until the end of the good religions with the Christian takeover. I have been finding a lot of great stuff in damascius, Olympiodorus, proclus, Philo, Iamblichus, and others for the purpose of defining a sort of chronology of the initiation by using images employed, along with the associated philosophical concepts, as signposts. Socrates was an image maker first and foremost after all. The type of images I’m talking about are: shepherd, politician, husbandman, wax, various stages of cave and line, division, union, and some 30 other ideas or images that are associated with certain philosophical concepts that correspond to certain points in the philosophical ascent/initiation. Can you possibly point me in the direction of resources that I would find useful? And do you think such a systematization is possible or do you think the stages are too fluid to define absolutely? (And come on, you know clement wasn’t the only person claiming ties to Egypt)

>Wizards only
This is a meme.

>On the seeker’s path, wise men and fools are one.
>In His love, brothers and strangers are one.
>Go on! Drink the wine of the Beloved!
>In that faith, Muslims and pagans are one.

Not everybody is right about everything. But it would be foolishness to ignore them completely.

>do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law
BEGONE THOT

academia.edu/35815607/Some_remarks_on_the_meaning_of_esotericism_and_on_Plato_s_unwritten_doctrines

The many and the particular are dreary and tyrannical. A recursive nightmare where the promise of sportive cadential processes, intoxicating spectra, and complementary playfulness reveals itself to be incidental to its recursion and actually becomes vaguer and more distant the more one recurs. They are not only evil relative to the one and the universal, but evil relative to each other and to themselves.

The circle not only illustrates the reconciliation of freedom and equality, but illustrates that the dichotomy is illusory and that freedom is only free inasmuch as is it equal and equality is only equal inasmuch as it is free.

What is the connection between our minds and the forms? How are we able to think about them? We are using words to talk about things that can't be fully described using words. Is it just something you experienced?

Also does the One have a tripartite division the way our minds do according to Plato? Or is the One indivisible into parts?

Is music the work of art closest to contemplation of the forms?

The one is indivisible

It pains me when Veeky Forums tried to get into Mysticism or the occult.
You're all mouth-breathing mongoloids. Read a fucking book for once lmao

So the trinity is not compatible with Plato's one? Also wasn't Nietzsche's project to overcome nihilism through the creation of new values? I don't think recognizing nihilism is to be a nihilist.

Just read the fucking Hermeticum, the synthesis of the trinity, and proceed on from there.

Why is there even a thread on here about this? It's just some drunk idiot needing attention.
You all say absolutely nothing in your circular statements.
>hurr muh ouroboros real insightful ye guys? illusions whoaoaohoahaoha buddhism hwahaohwo

Why don't you explain what "synthesis of the trinity" means?

Hermes was the first to bring forth that idea. Light, heat, inundating the Earth with life. It's all sun worship. Heckaroni. Even Native American Lore is far more straight forward with its unashamed Nature worship, even delivering metaphor clearer than anyone else.
Even the OP of this thread set it up for nothing but complete retards to come in and LARP.
" Nietzsches get stietzsches"
What the fuck does that even mean? Does she seriously think, if it's not a well-tuned shitpost, that he was the "nihilist" she thinks he was?

This thread sucked my life out of me.

>retard tumblr speak
>faggot Thelemites saying "hurr do as thou wilt, man"
>the republic was like, a conversation of the soul, man

Please get out of here. All of you. You're all retards. Go back to Veeky Forums or /mu/. Go back to listening to Mac Demarco and Death Grips (or Coil or Burzum, same hipster shit). Big Boy Words aren't meant for your tiny brains!

Did you even read the thread? Why don't you want actual discussion on a literature board what else is this place for?

Because this is material that is taught to ninth graders at private schools in upstate New York. Just fucking read and stop jerking each other off on your completely off-basis interpretations.

A thread died for this bullshit.

Thanks, I enjoyed it. A nice little dance around all the resources I treasure most. But I guess he addresses the point I’m trying to solve on p. 24 when he says it is a fatal flaw to view plato’s Work as expounding both esotericism and protology of entities. And then a page or so later when he tries to say it is impossible to align stages of the process with developments in Plato’s thought: Plato’s thought didn’t develope. The teachings that are appropriate for people at different stages of the mystical process change. Plato’s understanding of the soul doesn’t change from when he started writing the the republic (tripartite soul) to when he was 2/3rds of the way through (unified soul), but the initiates are supposed to conceive of their soul as tripartite in the beginning, and unified later. Likewise, protology is an essential aspect of the esoteric doctrine. Discursive thought is essential for the reasoning that sets the soul in order for the purpose of enabling post-dialectic experiences. A roadmap that directs us through the chronology of the mystical process, as Plato understood it, by using the images that characterize the philosophical stages as signposts will show us the manner in which these two (esotericism and discursive thought) have a relationship. Cool paper though, thanks. Pretty please post any more that might illuminate my ignorance on these matters (and I’m not claiming to be correct in what I write above, just spitballing)

I know a guy that that image perfectly describes. It's funny how true it is.

>mfw this image doesn't describe me at all
I'm getting closer and closer to making it.

>implying it doesn't describe a previous permutation of you, and you're in essence, just this character learning new tricks, disguising itself repeatedly

Plato’s one is actually the only reasonable explanation of the trinity. The one exists as a unity beyond being (the possibility) and a trinity lower down in the hypostases. The Christian explanation is chock full of apologetics trying to reconcile Christian doctrine with Christian doctrine. No real concern for metaphysics.

it doesn't describe any precedent version of me that I can see or that I saw. I'm safe.

Projectimus maximus

Is there anything you find worth critiquing in Plato's account?

youtube.com/watch?v=UQfRdl3GTw4

The most brilliant aspect of plato’s account is that he sets it up in a nearly unobjectionable way. How does one object to a question? And a lot of the points are analogies or formed from images which just try to describe a situation, and these are also almost entirely unobjectionable. Short answer: no I can’t find anything in plato’s account that I disagree with. People object to his arguments because they are insecure. And can’t come to terms with the fact that someone had it all figured out before he/she was ever born.

Alright lads if I am indeed to "follow the advice of Plato and start with Mathematics", where should I start?

you're still probably a fag anyway

Can we please have a constant Platonism general? Isn’t it sort of insulting that sci-fi gets one but Platonism doesn’t? I feel like people’s interested in Plato don’t start threads as much as they would like to contribute to threads, and all of the threads recently have been complete shit, so I just stopped coming. But if we always had a general to come to there would always be a conversation happening that would be worth reading. We need more people that know what they are talking about.

AND there is a nice bunch of page stuff attributed to Iamblichus called the theology of arithmetic which is pretty awesome. And Euclid himself if you would like to.

And

>The Manual of Harmonics
L. E. L.

That is obviously the worst of the two Nichomachus texts that are extant. Pic related is the best one.

What is the best way to contemplate the forms is it a type of mediation, is it through dialogues, or just thinking in general?