Do people just read the classics - Plato...

Do people just read the classics - Plato, for example - to feel smart or cultured or as though they're reading something significant? Or is it that even today, thousands of years later, the ideas conveyed by Plato still have something very important to teach us? I see so many pseudointellectuals prioritizing the Greeks, but tell me straight up Veeky Forums: is Plato still even relevant or useful to learn?

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Philosophy is worthless. take the redpill instead

Why read anything at all?

Just give up and study accounting or plumbing

I read the Prince, ever since then I stopped building large fortresses in my vassal city states and things are going much better desu

I read Plato for the same reason I read Game of Thrones: they interest me and I like seeing the story unfold.

He helped shape the modern education system. Why not learn what he has to say? The dude also spent most of his profession just thinking about shit, so he's probably something decent to say. I personally liked The Republic.

Yes, go ahead and learn Plato, whatever that means.

>before Plato: kissless virgin
>after Plato: neither of those
I think the benefits of Platonic wisdom are clear.

plato single handedly formed what we come to call knowledge in the west.

probably safe to skip him

Remember, virtue-signalling pseuds don't actually read. All their knowledge is second-hand.

>Thinking you can skip Plato

Kys

>study plumbing

a related question:

i was reading brodsky's poem "odysseus to telemachus," and he mentioned "palamedes' trick."

this was not in homer, but in apollodorus. the "start with the greeks" chart isn't complete, so what should one read to get a full sense of greek writings?

If you allow that metaphysics is possible or worthwhile, then yes. The basic idea that abstract entities exist, separate from physicality/space/time and the mind, is still very logically solid. Many philosophers of mathematics for example are Platonists in some form (no pun intended). This makes materialist cucks very uncomfortable.

>tfw no good arms
>tfw no good laws
>tfw hated
>tfw not feared
>tfw old royal family still alive
help. they going to lynch me

If you're asking this to try and cut down on the reading you think you have to do to be considered well-read or a relevant philosopher you're on track to fail.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Cycle

We will never truly be able to start with the Greeks, because most of the works regarded by them as their foundations have been lost.

You do know that most trades require you to go to schools and study to get the qualifications to legally do those jobs, right?

I read the greeks because I studied philosophy in college. We had a course solely dedicated to introduce the greeks up inside our ass.

The only greek literature I see referenced a lot and is mandatory reading imo is Iliad and Odyssey.

Nobody cares. Homer isn't good because of his subject matter; he's good because he's fucking Homer. It's possible if not likely that the poets who "completed" the epic cycle were shit.

Reading Plato has the same worth as reading anything, from a stop sign to a novel.

I imagine, The works worth is relative the subjective position an objective person's opinion can be based on. If you have a place in your mind wondering about conceptual 'universals' or the foundations of western philosophical tradition, it might be worth a youtube video,

If you enjoy the time spent reading about a subject you want to never fully understand but appreciate, then Plato is a great way to read [for the work's purpose, which is not to be judged as 'good' or 'bad'] on an afternoon.

you need to start with the greeks so you can shit on them afterwards

Just dont buy any Swiss Condottieri and youll be fine

You can say we don't have most of the works, which we don't, but judging based off of that image using books as length we have 48 out of 77 books of the whole cycle.
That's almost 2/3.
Though I think there is some debate about what the "epic cycle" actually contains.
Which, it's just a thing people made up, so there is probably no answer.

homer is irrelevant

Learn Plato well and you'll learn everything.

There are esoteric sides to his philosophy that people often ignores.

Plato is your initiation. You either meet the gods while reading it, or you stay godless and lonely until your next incarnation.

Sincerely yours,

All the intellectuals who took Platonism and Neoplatonism seriously (Holderlin, Goethe, Schiller, Schelling, Hegel, Coleridge, Emerson, Jung, Gebser, Goodwin, Proust, Pound, Eliot, Taylor, Phlilip K. Dick who's a funny guy and don't forget all those people with Neoplatonic mystical leanings who basically 'invented' modern science, like Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo - and I am not even quoting other people from the Renaissance or I'll end this post tomorrow - but yeah, you can 'skip' Plato if you want, good luck understanding western culture!)

I don't think you have any idea how complex things like plumbing and other construction type jobs are.
I took 4 semesters of masonry in high school, which included small courses on plumbing and such.
There is a shitload of math and technical knowledge to get down if you want to be legitimate. Not just some guy laying down bricks or unclogging toilets, but the real deal.
Shits hard famalam.

Lysis is basically Plato teaching pick-up.

Read Lysistrata. Try to pretend you're reading about world peace. Realise nobody reads the Greeks for that shit and you're missing out on a world of ass slapping goodness because you're a pretentious cunt.

>substituting values into equations you've been given
>math
t. failed Calc 101