Socrates intentionally gives faulty arguments in the Phaedo to show the importance of the dialectical method. His interlocutors do not do enough to question his arguments, thus leading them to eventual acceptance.

>>24553056 (OP)
>T-they're meant to be faulty.
Cope. Real philosophy worth reading doesn't really start till the analytic period, and the linguistic turn is when actual good philosophy begins. Plato is like 50% rhetoric, 50% ridiculous woo.

Dude literally thought that if we use the word "justice" there has to be some magical form of justice in fairy land to refer to.

Start with Wittgenstein, end with the Davidson and Kripke.

>>24553056 (OP)
I agree that he gives faulty arguments that he implies he knows are insufficient, but I'm not sure that it's to show the importance of dialectic. But I also don't really see a "dialectical method" in Plato's dialogues, just a kind of "art" of conversation. I think the more crucial thing the faulty arguments point to on occasion is how touchy the subject of personal immortality is, but, while both Cebes and Simmias seem to accept Socrates' final argument and concluding myth without question, I think it would be fair to point out that the succession of arguments in the Phaedo happen because one or the other of them objects.

>>24553088
>Socrates: bro you know how some people are tall? that's because there's this special entity called TALLNESS that all people who are tall are connected to. people are tall because they are in a relationship with TALLNESS.
>simmias and cebes: okay sounds reasonable
>Socrates: you know how we have air and water? well what if above our world there's like ANOTHER WORLD on top of our world and our air is like their WATER.
>Simmias and Cebes: yeah bro that makes sense

>>24553101
Cool, so you rushed through a reading of Phaedo one time and never noticed all the weird shit in it undermining the surface thread. Remind me, how does Socrates characterize his coming to the Forms in the Phaedo again?

>>24553114
When he was younger he heard this idea that the universe is made up of intelligence and liked the idea, while he did not like the ideas of the other "natural philosophers" of the time. He found cause-and-effect based explanations for why phenomena have the characteristics they do lacking, preferring to say that if 1 + 1 = 2, then it is not 2 because 1 + 1 = 2, but rather the thing that is 2 has an inherent relationship with dualness.

>>24553128
>“Now, it seemed to me after these things” said he, “since I had given up on examining the beings, that I must beware lest I might undergo the very thing which those ones undergo who behold and examine the sun during an eclipse. For, I suppose, some destroy their eyes, if they do not look at the likeness of it in water or in some such thing. I was thinking through that sort of thing, and I feared that the soul would be altogether blinded in looking at the thingswith the eyes and attempting to grasp them with each of the senses. Indeed, *it seemed to me necessary to flee into the speeches for refuge, and to examine those for the truth of the beings*. Now then, perhaps that to which I am likening it does not seem likely in any fashion. For *I don’t quite concede that the one who examines the beings in likenesses in speeches examines them more so than the one who does so in deeds*. But anyway, this is how I made a start—*hypothesizing at each time a speech which I judge
to be strongest*—on the one hand, the things which seem to me to be consonant to this *I posit* as being true,both about cause and about altogether all the rest. On the other hand, the things which are not consonant, *I posit* as not true. But I want to tell you more distinctly what I mean. For I imagine you don’t understand now.”

>“No, by Zeus,” Cebes said, “I really don’t.”

>“But,” said he, “I mean this—nothing novel—but the very things which I have not stopped talking about both always and at other times in the speech that just occurred. I am going to attempt to demonstrate to you the form of the cause which I have busied myself with, and I am going back to those things that are much-spoken-of and I am beginning from them, *hypothesizing* that something is beautiful itself by itself and good and big and all the rest. If you grant those things to me and concede them to be so, I hope to show you from them the cause and to discover that soul is something deathless.”

>“But really,” Cebes said, “take it as if it were given to you, so you can make haste to finish.”

Cont.

>>24553128
>>24553175
>“Examine then,” he said, “whether what follows those things seems to you just it does to me. Since, it appears to me, if something else is beautiful except the beautiful itself, not even because of a single other thing is it beautiful than because it has a share of that, the beautiful. And I mean everything in exactly this way. Do you agree to such a cause?”

>“I agree,” he said.

>“Well then,” said he, “I don’t understand any longer, nor am I able to recognize the other causes—those wise ones. But if someone should say to me on account of what anything is beautiful, either because it has a blooming color or shape or anything other such thing, I say goodbye to the rest—for I’m thrown into confusion by all that—but simply, artlessly, and perhaps naively, I hold this close to myself, that no other thing makes something itself beautiful than the presence or communion with that beautiful—in whatever way or however it is addressed. So, I no longer confidently assert this, but instead, that by the beautiful all the beautiful things are beautiful, *since this seems to me to be safest, both to answer to myself and someone else*. And when I hold onto this I don’t believe I’ll ever fall, but *it is safe to answer me and anyone else whosoever* that by the beautiful the beautiful things are beautiful. Or doesn’t it seem so to you, too?”

The Forms, in truth, are hypotheses, suppositions, things posited, in order to deal with whatever may be intelligible about beings in speech, and Socrates resorts to them as answers because they're safe answers. Not easy answers, but safe ones, as in, the kind of answers he could get away with giving for maybe 50 of his 70 years alive before Athens finally sought to kill him. They're not "real" to Plato.

>>24553056 (OP)
>he was retarded on purpose
>even though the point is guiding people to the right answer
>despite his master hating the idea of writing anything down plato somehow both writes it down accurately and doesn’t bother to correct or comment on a mistake
>you were meant to realize the mistake it’s an exercise for the reader or maybe a secret teaching
This 5D chess level of cope is unbearable.

>>24553192
>>even though the point is guiding people to the right answer
Since when? Did you forget that Socrates openly promotes lying to moderate and restrain other people in the Republic?

>despite his master hating the idea of writing anything down plato somehow both writes it down accurately and doesn’t bother to correct or comment on a mistake
>>24553192
That's not what the Phaedrus says, there is no "Socrates hates writing"; he offers a critique of some weaknesses of writing *and then follows up by saying that those who know what they're doing when they're writing will treat it like a game and hide their truly serious thoughts*.

"Why would Plato treat his writing like some kinda game he hides his real beliefs in?"
You could always re-read the Phaedrus more carefully, but, by god, the text says that's what a good writer will do, like the biggest possible hint for how to approach the dialogues, and any given reader will skim right over it.

>>24553216
So does Plato truly believe in the immortality of the soul, or is he just dicking with us

>>24553223
He's not dicking with us, but the most he reveals is an undogmatic agnosticism for a bunch of reasons. I'm pretty confident he rejects the classic afterlife myths, and he probably didn't believe in personal immortality. Here's Socrates talking about the possibility that there's no life after death:

>For I am calculating, dear comrade—behold how greedily—if what I am saying happens to be true, being persuaded by it is beautiful. And if nothing exists for the one who has come to an end, well then, during this very time before my death I will be less unpleasant with lamenting to those present, and this mindlessness won’t continue to the end with me—for that would be bad—but a little later will perish. Prepared, then,” he said, “Simmias and Cebes, I come to the speech in this very way. You all, however, should you be persuaded by me, giving little thought to Socrates, and much more to truth, agree, if I seem to you all to say something true, but if not, strain against me with every speech, and be wary lest I should go away, under the influence of eagerness, and simultaneously deceive both myself and you, just as a bee that leaves behind its stinger.

>>24553255
Reincarnation is based

>>24553269
You have to be 18 to use this site. Go along, adults are trying to talk.

>>24553056 (OP)
Socrates deliberately engages in a pro-usury penis destroying anti-statue homosexual tyrannical movement of aristocrats in order to win a year's free gym membership.

They don't give him the gym membership so he rage quits.

He was a fat Ian Curtis like fuck to begin with.