I bought the complete works of Plato and have spent the last few days reading his early works...

For you I'd say it's definitely a waste of time.

Haha, okay faggot; I'll stick to my medical textbooks that at least have real world value. You can stick to your superior philosophy that's so beyond my reach.

I've made my diagnosis of you based on nothing other than the symptoms exhibited. May Veeky Forums judge whether I have done so falsely.

kind of this, but...

rt it depends on your goals homie. why are you interested in philosophy? what do you hope to get out of it? how hard are you willing to work? if you really want whatever it is you want then my advice would be to sit your dumb ass down and read until you're not retarded anymore. I've read all of Plato and I can assure you it's worth it.

The OP is right

If he has the knowledge, albeit from n-tiary sources, why is it important he examines the primary source?

He's basically asking for "what of Plato do I not know already from having lived in Western civilization"

That's an honest question, and you're being a pseud dick

Honestly, I'm just wondering if it's worth the time. I can read brief essays from more modern philosophers and have a lot of "food for thought", but when I read lengthy dialogues from Plato, I leave with only one or two profound ideas in my head.

lol look at the knee-jerk reaction of the wounded ego that had to reassure itself so publicly.

it's only plato you asspained simple simon. try it again. you buy the complete collected hardback of all of his work and now you are not only ready to give up on plato but on philosophy as a whole because you are having momentary hassles.

figures.

That's not what he is asking, nor even what he insinuated. That question is what I posited for him because he's too stupid to have it even occur to him. Firstly I've gotta say it's interesting that you're supposing he "has the knowledge" in light of his posts in this thread. Secondly, you're assuming that any of us give a shit what he does. "Why is it important he examines the primary source." It isn't, and I said as much when I told him it would be a waste of his time, emphasis specifically on his. I'm actually hoping he burns his copy of Plato. Your making a defense of someone who just bragged about merely possessing "medical textbooks" and you're calling me the pseud. I know some people are inclined to white knight idiots when they're taking their beatings, but get a grip man.

>Your making a defense of someone who just bragged about merely possessing "medical textbooks" and you're calling me the pseud.

this.

he's a smug clown who is mad that he can't deal so he needs to pretend that he's above it all now. i admire people who study medicine as i'm sure it's not easy. i wouldn't say i'm above all of that simply because i flipped through a medical textbook and had trouble parsing the text.

burn the book and stop reading forever. or get the fuck over yourself and keep reading until you understand it. your call.

You dense fucks, how about you learn to comprehend simple sentences? I've already told you I understand the works I've read, and that they're boring as fuck. Do you think I'm supposed to be amazed at his basic ideas that a modern Western child could postulate?

Maybe you're projecting your own pathetic mental faculties on me because works like Apology were an epiphany for your dumbasses. Shut the fuck up.

>Can someone explain why is he considered philosophical canon?

This sounds like total b8, but I guess I will bite if not. Basically every branch of philosophy has its origins somewhere in his writings (except for logic). The pre-socratics were all over the fucking place, but Plato was clear and in a good standing as the head of the Academy.

Epistemology finds its backbone in chapters 6 and 7 (iirc) of Plato's Republic. Plato's Apology is the backbone for the justification for philosophy. Works like the Phaedo helped build metaphysics. If you read from page 1 to fuckever in that book, you will probably read a bunch of things that seem to not tie together very well. It is better to have more direction with Plato and stick to his core works (in particular, Republic and the trial/death of Socrates series (Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo). Other good ones are Protagoras, Phaedrus, and Symposium.

ALL of Western philosophy can pretty much be traced back to Plato's work. Just like how Newton's works are inseparable from the creation of modern science, so too are Plato's works inseparable from the creation of modern philosophy.

Just finished my Phil degree, and Plato is pretty much the starting point for the majority of classes.

Folks getting BTFO in this thread, downright vicious

OP you can't go in dry mate read some history of philosophy books or watch youtube videos, you need an interest first and a semblance of a framework my bruh

wew lad

you literally have no contextual understanding of the history of platonist thought at all. all of this because you've read one book. just one.

why am i even bothering with an asshole pseud like you. i actively want you to write off philosophy now. go ahead.

I went in dry in highschool with Plato's Republic. I think what really gave me guidance was Steven Hawking's "A Brief History of Time", which referenced a bunch of philosophers amidst the scientists. Even Mr. "Philosophy is Dead" (most likely not a serious jab at the subject, but a poor reference to Nietzsche) had to cite philosophers due to the scientific method being an epistemological method and how metaphysics has hindered science every step of the way.

This was like 2008 though, so Youtube didn't have quite as much educational stuff on it. I imagine it might be very useful now, but I am not sure if it can give direction (but ample guidance on certain philosophers and works).

>Do you think I'm supposed to be amazed at his basic ideas that a modern Western child could postulate?

Literally the ONLY reason a modern Western child can postulate these is because they were injected into our modern memetics over the centuries... thanks to a philosopher who figured it out. That is like how an average high school student could tell you more about electricity than Isaac Newton ever knew. That is because it is already invented, already thought, already understood.

If Plato didn't exist, it might have taken decades or centuries before some of these ideas came forward. Just like how Newton might have advanced our civilization by decades or centuries, even though his basics are simple enough to be understood by an elementary school student.

If these ideas are so simple, I challenge you to be the next Plato and take the next step forward. I imagine in five hundred years, the revolutionary philosophical ideas of our generation will appear obvious enough for a child to come up with.

Thanks for the only genuine answer in this thread. I've read 5 works so far, all of which feature Socrates, and I enjoy seeing how the beliefs that spring up all tie together. I think I'll read the other books in the Socrates series you mentioned, then reread them all in a set to fully appreciate them. Afterwards, I'll tackle republic and the other 3 you mentioned.

Cheers, mate.

I started with the Republic and it was a pleasure to read. When a passage didn't quite make sense to me, Plato, in the character of Socrates, made it clear by applying the concepts to the next part of discussion. You can always mark a passage and come back to it. Keep reading on and you may discern what Plato meant as the dialogue unfolds.

>I've read 5 works so far, all of which feature Socrates

Plato uses dialectics in the form of a play most of the time. Socrates is basically his main character (in fact, there have been doubts raised as to whether or not he was even a real person. However two individuals wrote two different accounts of his death, so it seems highly likely).

Part of the biggest annoyance to Plato because of this is that it is hard to decipher what Plato believes and what Socrates believes. For introductory purposes, take the arguments at face value IMO.

>I think I'll read the other books in the Socrates series you mentioned, then reread them all in a set to fully appreciate them.

Not a bad plan, since the Apology is among them. As a side note, the Phaedo is a lot longer than the other three and the suicide isn't until the last page. It is mostly arguments for the existence of the soul/afterlife.

>I'll tackle republic and the other 3 you mentioned.

There are other good ones, but those are the biggest ones. If you read everything I listed, you will have pretty much covered undergrad Plato completely. The difficulty, however, is the subtleties that you might miss without guidance from a professional. Examples of these are stressing the importance of the allegory of the cave in Republic B7 (iirc) and the gadfly in Apology. Youtube might be useful in this respect.

>Thanks for the only genuine answer in this thread.

NP m8. Philosophy is a tough subject to get into, but it can show you reality behind the veil of shadows of our reality (when you read the allegory of the cave, you will see what I mean).

>form of a play

I should correct this to note that I don't mean that the scene is literally supposed to be a play. When I read books I tend to think of any scene in a non-fiction work that involves characters to be a play. That is just me and my mind.

>Gorgias, which I just finished, was my favorite, as I think it can be related to modern politics.
>applicable
get a load of this guy

>I understand the works
yeah but did you really

What are Plato's most important dialogues? Is it really necessary to read all of them?

Torrent lectures from the Teaching Company if you can't grasp Plato. There is one solely on the Republic which has about 24 lectures in them, and one by Sagrue (iirc) which deals with about one dialogue per lecture.

This will greatly enhance the way you view and read Plato who is a marvelous man

I'd say the first dialogues, Euthyphro, Crito, Apology, Phaedo are great and a relatively easy and fast read. Now you have some insights into basic Plato philosophy

If you could read one book by Plato however it should be The Republic because it deals with so many topics and is extremely dense for 250 or so pages. It basically caters out the entirety of Platonic thought, or most of it.

Symposoium and Phaedrus are also great if you want to know more about Love.

Ion if you want to get dat boypussy.

Plato is just great but if the essentials are probably the first four dialogues I mentioned and The Republic

Ion is about poetic inspiration, what's it have to do with boypussy?

Was Plato degenerate?

You're so obviously insecure.

For starters, Plato's theory of forms influenced a whole range of later Western mathematicians like Leibniz by postulating an advanced rationalist model of the universe. A lot of that area is heavily involved and inspired by the Greek thinkers like Pythagoras, who actually started a maths cult and claimed "All is number". Why is this important? Because by rejecting sense experience as flawed, he opens up a whole realm of new abstract ideas to be studied and learnt from.

But, of course, you clearly understand Plato, and you clearly understand you could come up with all these groundbreaking ideas yourself, and not at all from the hindsight of two millennias of scientific and metaphysical discoveries from his peers.

I'm the exact same as you OP. I could've figured out 90 % of shit just by saying "Forms are just definitions, there's no objective morality"

Of course the pseuds on lit won't admit a single bit of fallibility in any famous philosophical figure because their identity is bound up in their worship of famous literary or philosophical figures

>By rejecting sense and experience as flawed, he...

But any commoner could've figured this out. They all did. If course very few of them wrapped it up in unfalsifiable assertions that play to the tastes of academic institutions.

You're one of those pseuds who talks as if Hume was the first person to figure out that morality was subjective.

Am I the only one here that reads this shit in Greek? Saying Phaedro is easy just made me have a mini-aneurysm.

It's all unfalsifiable. Socrates could've claimed that we all could be cows in the afterlife and he'd still be just as "right".

If you want to pretend it's all hugely complicated then go ahead and tell us why. Though I doubt you'll give us much more than a half assed unfalsifiable and obscurantist literary analysis interpretation of things. Or more likely you'll say "B-but he's famous!"

>"unfalsifiable" twice within 3 sentences.

kys.
Just because you're an idiot doesn't render everything you don't understand "obscurantist."
It's called speculative philosophy.
Let me know when you can numerically quantify how much of a faggot you are and then we'll talk.

Socrates was a master ironist. The method of his dialectics is the important thing. How the fuck do you not enjoy the republic?

sorry meant Lysis

Didn't find Phaedro to be particularly difficult compared to, let's say, Parmenides which is just a complete clusterfuck but wonderful nonetheless.

I want to study astrophysics but I don't know what 2+2 is

Read an introduction first you presumptuous idiot, don't start with fucking Plato, Aristotle or anyone else

>That is, other than to decipher ambiguous sentences and definitions.

That's a pretty powerful skill user; Wittgenstein is in the same general mould of what you're learning with Plato. Sooner or later it'll hit you when you notice two clueless people arguing over one word defined two different ways.

Top kek. You can start with an unfalsifiable premise and then make logical deductions from it.

Can you say anything substantive?

You're missing the point entirely.

It's how Socrates made his arguments and reached those conclusions that's most important. Philosophy is a method of thought, and Plato is teaching you that method through exemplary dialogues between Socrates and his peers.

>forms are just definitions

You clearly have no idea what forms are

Fucking idiot, can you give the works to me? I'll give them a better use.

He made his arguments through usually rigorous deductions. Of course he made a lot of unfalsifiable assertions and laughable analogies and had prior assumptions as well, but if you mention that then you get abused. You may only worship famous philosophical figures.

Just because philosophy* is rigorous it does not mean that it has a monopoly over it. Is that too hard to understand?

*Although philosophy is farcically defined as literally anything

>I've heard he is part of an essential groundwork of philosophy, but I'm not seeing it.
How would you specifically even see it? What the fuck do you know about philosophy?

>>forms are just definitions
>You clearly have no idea what forms are
In fact it's explicitly stated that definitions are not forms, and this is why people should stop fasting about and either leave or actually read the Greeks if they want to talk about this shit.

Thats what happens when rich frog posters try to get into philosophy.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_universals

Look at idealism. Hegel and Kant agree with me. Now that I've pointed to famous philosophers will you stop dissembling and talk properly? Probably not.

Any other assumption is to flail about in the infinitely large space of unfalsifiable ideas. Not that I dislike anyone who does this. I'm simply saying that you only deem unfalsifiable ideas acceptable if previously espoused by famous people. I'm not saying anything more than that.

>He made his arguments through usually rigorous deductions.
Give an example. I wouldn't necessarily call them rigorous. I'm not the other guy either btw, but he's quite right that it's showing a certain way of talking and thinking rather than telling you certain values or methodologies even.

With Socrates you have a way of talking that brings abstract notions and conceptions to life. It's the "philosopher as midwife" idea, Socrates is there to help others give birth to (more) fully formed ideas instead of superstition or assumption or something like those. It brings more rigour to the table for sure, but I still wouldn't call it "rigorous deduction" if you see what I mean, that's more Aristotle's bag.

>I'm simply saying that you only deem unfalsifiable ideas acceptable if previously espoused by famous people.

What is your evidence for this?

>Idealists, such as Kant and Hegel, posit that universals are not real, but are ideas in the mind of rational beings
>and Hegel

Hegel vehemently disagrees with this, fuck off Wikipedia:

"We have not to represent the good or the end in so one-sided a manner that we think of it existing as such in the perceiving mind, and in opposition to what is; but set free from this form, we must take it in its essence as the Idea of all existence. The nature of things must be recognized in accordance with the Notion, which is the independent, unfettered consideration of things; and because it is that which things are in and for themselves, it controls the relationship of natural causes. This Notion is the end, the true cause, but that which recedes into itself; it is the implicitly existent first from which movement proceeds and which becomes result; it is not only an end present in the imagination before its actuality exists, but is also present in reality. Becoming is the movement through which a reality or totality becomes; in the animal or plant its essence as universal genus, is that which begins its movement and brings it forth. But this whole is not the product of something foreign, but its own product, what is already present as, germ or seed; thus it is called end, the self-producing, that which in its Becoming is already implicitly existent..."

>Hegel and Kant agree with me.
Unless I'm totally mistaken and you've built your own philosophy independently, surely you agree with Hegel and Kant.

Plus universals strictly belong to Parmenides (who also recognised the paradox), Plato if anything marries Parmenides with Heraclitus with the ol cave analogy.

The world of forms is a solution to universals in lieu of rejecting definitions btw. There's the old parable of Plato's chair where defining a chair turns out to be useless (and so therefore it turns out to be necessary to talk about chairness in the world of forms).

I really do hate wikipedia most of the time.

>thinking kids can come up with anything Plato talked about

Invalidated your entire thread tbhfamily

>Hume
no that was Spinoza

who told you falsifiability is a normative category for rationality?

>I must say that I don't think I've learned a lot.
>I've heard he is part of an essential groundwork of philosophy, but I'm not seeing it. Can someone explain why is he considered philosophical canon?

How is it even possible that you've read some of his dialogues and this wasn't immediately obvious to you? Plato lived circa 400 BC. That's hundreds of years before Jesus (think about that for a moment, and think about the similarities between the teachings of Jesus and those of the Platonic Socrates). If his thought doesn't seem "groundbreaking" it's because you are already completely steeped in Platonic thought. It's pretty much impossible to understate his influence.

The fact that you need someone to explain why Plato is "philosophical canon" indicates to me that you have never read any other philosophy. The fact that you "don't think you've learned a lot" means that you are not approaching Plato seriously.

>I've heard he is part of an essential groundwork of philosophy, but I'm not seeing it. Can someone explain why is he considered philosophical canon?

This is some of the best bait I've seen all year.

If it's not bait, then lad you're a comic character.

Um just because I'm obviously too smart for Plato (I seriously don't get why you guys find him so great), doesn't mean I'm not reading seriously.

>he bought the eBook
>reads it on a computer
No wonder lmao

>ambiguous
He isnt ambiguous at all moron.
He tries very hard to set clear terms for his theories and definitions.
Dropp him, you are too retarded to understand him anyway.

I'm actually in University. Sorry, not sorry.

I really wanna buy that thing, but it's 40 fucking dollars. Other books that big only cost 4 dollars on amazon. 3.99 for the shipping and .01 dollars for the book itself, at least that's how much the norton anthology of poetry costs. This one costs 4 fucking dollars, what the god damn fuck.

What kind of shitposting is this?

The social sciences in general are just a game of ambiguous and interchangeable terminology that can apply loosely to anything and directly to nothing, thrown at unquantifiable topics.

Don't think of it as "learning something" but more as becoming versed in the history of certain lines of thinking.

you can find a pdf on Google for $free.99 homey

dude fuck that, I want the actual book.

Nu wave

>be a poorfag
>want physical copies of everything

I used to be you. one of these days you'll have to make a decision.

Dude wtf??? I want to feel the book in my hand

Not that guy but why waste your time trying to upset strangers on the internet? You think of yourself as some degree of intelligent right? So shut the fuck up. If this is you idea of fun you should genuinely kill yourself.

To be honest I have the epub, mobi, pdf file of it and whatever other book I want, but I refuse to read them unless I have the physical copy in my hand. Reading isn't just you download the book and then you have it on your little device. It's an experience, and you get to have that book on your shelf, your personal book. Not some apparition of a book that disappears into nothing when you delete it, but a real, physical book with wear on it that is distinct to your copy, with a history which is uniquely yours, and sometimes the past owners. And yeah, not only that but actually holding a book, a real physical book, that's not something I want to die out. I don't want to have that little tiny kindle thing in my hands when I could be holding an actual fucking book, like everyone else thousands of years before me has been doing, it's a sacred experience. Yeah I've got a kindle, but I would only use it when I go on a trip or something. I also got an everyman's library hardcover edition of lolita I just cracked open to read today, with it's crisp vanilla pages and silk book mark strip built into the spine, that's fucking class, you'll never, I repeat, NEVER get that when you have a kindle.

I've always loved physical copies of things, I buy physical copies of CDs or Vinyl records instead of getting the MP3, when I was a kid I would buy the fucking NES instead of playing an emulator, because you can't beat the feel of the real thing. You don't understand tactile beauty.

>subjective morality
>Plato
wut

It wasn't even Hume.
Hume advised for traditional English liberal values in his system.
Badly, but he did.

heh? I was being totally serious: I used to feel the same way as that guy. then I ebayed an ereader for like $20, started hunting down pdfs, and life is great. I've saved idek how much on books.

I just meant you'll either have to do that^ or adjust your budget somehow so you can afford what you want to read.

i think you don't like history

Oldfag here. You will be mocked and/or accused of being a hipster, but I am still pleased at the idea that there still exist younger people who sincerely think this way.

Also: books still work when the power goes out.

>lol look at the knee-jerk reaction of the wounded ego that had to reassure itself so publicly.

What a sentence, very accurately represents a lot of the posts I encounter.

Heavily underrated post in general

>I was expecting to have my entire view of life changed
...Why?
>as I think it can be related to modern politics
You have skewed priorities. Modern politics is mostly irrelevant.
Jesus Christ, they would.
>I'll stick to my medical textbooks that at least have real world value
Why do you think they have value?

Newfag.

I honestly have more important things to do than rub my dick on "crisp vanilla pages".

Like reading.

Pleb

you can't read in the dark, dummy

>I want the actual book.
There is no actual book, there is merely a shadow dancing on the library shelf. Whether you remember the bookness of a book from a """"real"""" """"book"""" or from a """"virtual"""" """"text"""" is immaterial.

Everything is dark, all the time, and there's no such thing as candles.

Set fire to another book idiot.

It's important to know where you come from.

e-readers still work when the power goes out.

They work better than normal books, in fact. As long as they've got backlights.

I will own a fucking copy of that book in the picture some day.

big dreams

> owning the book
> not the ideas

If you're going to Stirnermeme, do it correctly.

It's already his property.

God I fucking hate women.

You are nought but a dog sniffing at memes.

Bad boy. Bad.

There is no point to read Plato in 2016, better spend your time by reading Lacan.