Is Plato the biggest hack?

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It was advice. I don't argue with bots.

premise: you are acting retarded

premise: retards should fuck off

conclusion: you should fuck off

listen motherfucker, I'm willing to make an argument as soon as you do. I'll be here with this tab open. waiting...

You're unfairly comparing him to your contemporary perspective of philosophy and of what we know now.
Plato may have been trounced countless times by now, but that isn't to say he wasn't a building block of the entirety of western thinking, and western philosophy.
A sufficient understanding of Plato is essential for anyone concerned with the history of thought and literature.

>Plato is like the pseud who comes on Veeky Forums to samefag his own arguments and false flag his "opponents."
To clarify then, you don't like the style of writing so that makes him a hack. Okay then. Well I don't like your style of posting, so that makes you a faggot.

Newton got blown the fuck out too, that doesn't make him a hack.

>that doesn't make him a hack.
>STEMtards unironically believe this

Plato was the progenitor of logic in Western Society. He served his purpose within the constraints of Athenian society.

>succesfully integrates two metaphysical opposing worldviews, the dynamic dialectial of Heraclitian Logos with the inmutable trascendental Being of Parmenides, into a single coherent framework
>Writes some of the most beautiful dialogues in history, so much they are enjoyable to read regardless of the actual philosophy they contain
>Important enough for you to have an opinion about it
>A hack
You are not an intellectual, you just feel you are better than everyone else, including Plato, that loser

>self-described "intellectual" calling Plato a pseud

>I'm an intellectual
>capitalizing "Thought and Idea"
>BTFO, pseud
really hoping this is bait, i feel bad for people like you

Western philosophy is trash, so how isn't Plato trash?
Yes he is.
>"yes socrates you are very right"
>beautiful

Plato is how I finally gained self confidence and started speaking to girls. Have you ever had such an effect on a person, OP?

which of his books did you read for this? pls

How?

Naw I never waste my time with loosers like you

>calling others losers
>can't even spell loser

don't waste your time with this loser, Veeky Forums

fuck plato
i read the republic when i was 14 and that's it

guy fucked little boys. boycott his works.

Not a valid argument. Acting retarded does not necessarily mean one is a retard. The conclusion therefore does not logically follow from your premises.

What makes you think that? Book I is intentionally the ground for the entire rest of the Republic. The first three interlocutors (Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus) are all exaggerated prefigurations of the the three parts of the tripartite soul, the references to Hades that abound (Opening with a "katabasis", the wolf-like Thrasymachus functioning as a Cerberus, Cephalus being at the door of Hades), which are connected to considerations of the poets in both books II-III and X, as well as the afterlife myth in book X, the three notions of justice by the main interlocutors basically being driven through the whole rest of the book, Thrasymachus's notions of the "precise" and "artful" that dominate the class structure of the city-in-speech, the notion of both medicinal and noble lies being prefigured in Socrates's response to Cephalus, etc. etc. While it's a popular thesis for scholars who pay more attention to this idea that Plato may have developed in his writings than the philosophy contained in those writings, it's not borne out by the text itself.

>What makes you think that?
That's what all specialists say (that is, people who translate Plato, write essays and companions to Plato, etc.), but I also find it highly likely since the book I is very disappointing in terms of philosophy. It really resembles the earlier works like Hippias, Euthyphro, Laches etc. So, yeah, when reading the Republic, I was easily convinced that this thesis is true, and I don't think one can say it doesn't depend on the writings themselves.

>The first three interlocutors (Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus) are all exaggerated prefigurations of the the three parts of the tripartite soul
I had never thought about it and admit it's pretty interesting. But scholars don't even debate about it, right ? or do they ?

Not an argument.

>Arguments are good because i sed so

The story of the people who disliked each other but couldn't find a thing to argue about.

someone please PLEASE TELL ME what book?

Socrates (Plato) argued against pederasty in The Symposium. You're full of shit.

just read all of them you faggot

no

Aristotle > Socrates > Plato

Anyone who argues otherwise is wrong and retarded.

That's why you don't have a gf.
Too lazy to read some fucking books. Too lazy to go outside and talk to people.
You know what? FUCK you

dude the thing is that I don't want to read a whole bunch of books when someone could just tell me which one to read, what's the problem?

you're right i do need to go outside and talk to people but that's not the reason i don't have a gf, i don't even want one im just horny and i want to put my penis inside a mouth

To more mildly agree with this post... Those people who are looking for the right Plato book should read them all.

Specially Phaedrus.

>Socrates

Literally all anyone "knows" about him was shit Plato wrote

why not

What about the guys who actually met him?

>That's what all specialists say (that is, people who translate Plato, write essays and companions to Plato, etc.),
So let's grant that specialists say this; we can certainly ask of ourselves as students of Plato or of philosophy or of what have you, "Why do we accept what the specialists say?" In some cases, it might be that they have greater breadth of learning in Greek, or in philology, or in the writings and archaeological findings of the period in which Plato was writing. In those cases, it seems fine to defer to their authority. In the case of the issue of when Plato wrote which text and to what extent it's important to know that in order to know his thought, we only speculate, so that while we may be able to determine three broad categories of "writing style" seen in the dialogues, we'll have greater or less trouble determining which order any of the dialogues of a particular category were written in (e.g., it's easy to guess that Theaetetus was written before Sophist, and Sophist before Statesman, but hard to tell if Hippias Major was written before Ion, or if Phaedrus was written before Symposium, etc.). In this kind of case, the specialists may or may not be on to something, and in some cases they may be venturing off on their own to test a hunch, or to offer an experimental reading by applying some new technique of philology or logic or historical analysis. At best, we might discover something worth considering and being perhaps enlightened by (classicist Seth Benardete for example wrote a very interesting article analyzing how Plato used quotations and misquotations of Homer), but in some cases we end up only with a hypothesis that might win the day if the scholar is popular and charismatic enough, but which might not bear any fruit at all (Gregory Vlastos's very popular but dubitable attempt to establish what the historical Socrates was like from the early dialogues as compared to Plato's distinct mouthpiece use of Socrates in the middle dialogues and the inventions of strangers for some loosely explained reason in the late dialogues). This will bring me to my next point below, regarding what our standard for even judging scholarship should be.

(cont.)

>but I also find it highly likely since the book I is very disappointing in terms of philosophy.
Annoying but important non-rhetorical questions: 1) Do you know why Plato chose to write dialogues instead of treatises like his precursors in sophistry, rhetoric, and philosophy did, or instead of poetry, like his much older philosophic precursors? 2) Do you know what philosophy is for Plato, such that you might have an idea why it resembles or differs from a modern stance of what philosophy is? Both hard questions to answer, but both seem necessary to figure out what Plato's doing.

>It really resembles the earlier works like Hippias, Euthyphro, Laches etc.
Heh, that could go either way! On the one hand, I disagree with most scholarly assessments of those dialogues as being "less philosophical/philosophically interesting", and see them as much richer than the readings that ignore all of the dramatic action to focus on arguments that they're bound to find unsatisfying. In this way, I might agree that Republic book I resembles those dialogues, but I take it that you mean it the way the scholars do; that it ends with nothing resolved, and it's less philosophically "sophisticated". But again, as I pointed out at , there's a bunch of material in book I that sets the stage for later developments in the argument, such as whether it's just to lie, whether being just benefits the just person, what the relation between justice and the afterlife is, the importance of poetry in shaping our hopes and directing our passions, the peculiar relationship between the "precise" or artful and spiritedness or indignation, etc. etc., let alone how the opening line sets the stage for the cave passage in the middle of the dialogue (the verb used in "I went down to the Piraeus" is the famous verb kataben for underworld descents such as those of Odysseus, Orpheus, and Hades, and the descent of the philosopher back into the cave) which seems to suggest that the dialogue as a whole needs to be understood as partial and not fully philosophical because Socrates is speaking with cave dwellers. All of this, as far as I can see, points to deliberate artfulness on Plato's part, and such that book I is clearly meant to set up the rest of the Republic.

(cont.)

>So, yeah, when reading the Republic, I was easily convinced that this thesis is true, and I don't think one can say it doesn't depend on the writings themselves.
As per above, I disagree; the specialists would too, since they're starting from looking superficially at book I on its own, instead of seeing how it fits into the rest of the dialogue. It would be akin to ending the Gorgias at the point where Gorgias is refuted, and not seeing how and why the rest of the dialogue continues on, but insisting the rest was added on because Plato was unsatisfied or some other baseless speculation.

>I had never thought about it and admit it's pretty interesting. But scholars don't even debate about it, right ? or do they ?
Most scholars note that there seems to be something like a relationship between these interlocutors and the parts of the soul, but those arguing about Plato's development never really put it together that it's intended nor that it's in any other way significant or connected to the larger argument of the Republic. That school, for what it's worth, is slowly but very steadily dying out and being replaced by a bunch of schools that focus on dramatic readings (i.e., readings where questions are asked of and observations are made about the dramatic actions of the dialogues; e.g., what does it mean in the Republic if we encounter a critique of the form of poetry that combines imitation with narrative, and we realize that the style of the Republic itself is in fact that combination that's criticized?) There a bunch of different scholars who discuss the Republic in some of the ways I noted above, some of the most prominent being Eva Brann, John Sallis, Leo Strauss, Seth Benardete, Stanley Rosen, G.R.F. Ferrari, and so on.

Aristophanes's play, The Clouds, was written before anything we have by Plato. Further, we have the writings of at least two other friends/followers, Xenophon and fragments of the dialogues of Aeschines.

biggest pseud on Veeky Forums right now, and that's saying something

Not sure. Let's see.

>"Why do we accept what the specialists say?"
Starts pretty bad.
>Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman etc.
Agree, and about Vlastos too.

Yeah I'm aware af all that, and I admit easily that "disappointing in terms of philosophy" is not a well-chosen phrase. What I meant is that book I, just like many early dialogues, cannot be summed up with a list of "theses" or propositions that would tell what Plato "thinks" or believes. I'm not saying it's useless. The point of the early dialogues is not to display a set of propositions being "Plato's philosophy". I just meant that, in terms of purpose, book I is closer to early dialogues than to the later books of the Republic.
>much richer than the readings that ignore all of the dramatic action to focus on arguments that they're bound to find unsatisfying.
That's interesting and for sure it would be dumb to "translate" the early dialogues in "philosophical propositions". Attention must be paid to "dramatic action" etc.

>they're starting from looking superficially at book I on its own
Come on, do you think that scholars follow a more superficial approach than you do ? I honestly don't think so, and you could certainly find dozens of scholars' articles specifically aimed at understanding the date, purpose, etc., of book I itself. Any honest scholar would agree that you must get rid of preconceived ideas when you study a specific work or book. Knowledge comes after study, not before ; decent scholars don't forget this.

> dying out and being replaced by a bunch of schools that focus on dramatic readings
Yeah and I agree that it's a good thing.

>Aristophanes
Aristophanes and Plato even happen to mention the same greek baker ! the relationship between these two is part of the interesting things that are worth studying.

Now, when it comes to book I specifically, I'll try to read it again these days, but things may be simple and I'm not sure we disagree here. If book I was, at first, written early, then of course it's been revised later in order to fit in the Republic as some kind of long prologue. This could explain most of the things you point out.

Also, if I remember well, there's an "Apocryph" dialogue that seems to imitate book I (I couldn't tell which one but it struck me when I read it) ; dunno if it's significant, but it would be worth verifying if the Apocrypha usually copy early dialogues or not (I don't think they try to imitate the later works).

Aristotle at least proved the Earth was round.

u mad bro

>Yeah I'm aware af all that, and I admit easily that "disappointing in terms of philosophy" is not a well-chosen phrase. What I meant is that book I, just like many early dialogues, cannot be summed up with a list of "theses" or propositions that would tell what Plato "thinks" or believes. I'm not saying it's useless. The point of the early dialogues is not to display a set of propositions being "Plato's philosophy". I just meant that, in terms of purpose, book I is closer to early dialogues than to the later books of the Republic.
That seems clear, and on that difference between book I and the rest of the Republic I think we agree.

>Come on, do you think that scholars follow a more superficial approach than you do ? I honestly don't think so, and you could certainly find dozens of scholars' articles specifically aimed at understanding the date, purpose, etc., of book I itself. Any honest scholar would agree that you must get rid of preconceived ideas when you study a specific work or book. Knowledge comes after study, not before ; decent scholars don't forget this.
I both agree with your last sentence but note that my charge against quite a number of the scholars who take book I to have been originally written as an aporetic dialogue like the early ones are very often following a paradigm set forth before them without thoughtfulness as to whether it's an appropriate paradigm to use in the way they use it; I have to run to work here, so I'll have to save a better articulation with my specific issues for later tonight, but my primary example would be the set of these Vlastos lays out in "Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher" (pgs. 46-49 for his guiding "ten theses", 248-251 for how those theses support his claims about book I of the Republic). His book is up on bookzz for download, if you'd like to check his claims for yourself; in short, my claim is that he makes inadequate distinctions between the "early" exclusively moral Socrates and the "later" metaphysician.

>Now, when it comes to book I specifically, I'll try to read it again these days, but things may be simple and I'm not sure we disagree here. If book I was, at first, written early, then of course it's been revised later in order to fit in the Republic as some kind of long prologue. This could explain most of the things you point out.
That seems right; at least I'm persuaded that it fits the rest of the Republic very well. I'll explain later if this thread is still around, but my own big presumptions on how to read the dialogues are based on the passages about "logographic necessity" in Phaedrus.

Maybe "On Justice"? I was just looking at "On Virtue" this past week, and noting some of the differences between it and Meno. You're right that the apocryphal dialogues don't ever seem to attempt to do anything on the scale of the later longer dialogues.

>thread full of pseuds

lol, go to college

molyneux pls go

>I'm an intellectual and well-versed in the history of Western Thought and Idea

Plato was honest and genuinely interested in the investigation of philosophical problems. you're not, and that's why you don't understand him.

Stop being a theatrical homo, Stefan.

I am no expert, but I value Plato not for his answers, but for the questions he made. Those questions are what most philosophers until today have been trying to answer.

>when are we going to collectively stop focusing our philosophical efforts on BTFOing the non-entity that is Plato

the fact that you have to ask means he's enormously important

i teach plato, and i gotta say, i don't think you're reading him very accurately, given the things you've written. what do you take him to be saying, exactly? what of his materials have you covered?

i'm not convinced that plato is being consumed on the subway, as you suggest--but, even if this were true, why would a work's popular reception denigrate its inherent value?

i'll engage you on a substantive level if you're willing to do so.

I love Plato to bits, but that still today there is the belief that body and mind are two separate things is his fault.

...

?

Read Lysis

It's not so much that Plato is being consumed on the subway, but the fact that people read about the allegory of the cave on Imgur and suddenly think they've unlocked the foundations of Western philosophy.

>irony manifest
Top kek

>mfw I made that meme 3 years ago
>respect Plato but have no problem ripping on shit I like
>now it's being used by stupid people to prove a point
The life trajectory of a meme I suppose

youre the subway guy? lol

this

/thread

I made the original top pic in a read/expect/got thread a few years ago.

Nice to meet you again.

The meme has a will to life of its own now. I feel like a parent.

well done user