Socrates is just a glorified redditor.
The dialogues, the reasoning, the arguments are all laughably childish and naive. Why should anyone read this when even the average conversation here has more depth than this supposedly mind boggling book?

>>24553815 (OP)
You are right, of course, Socrates is said to have invented the upvote, a long chain of thought that terminates in algorithmic foam. His divine sign is nothing more than a hive mind gone mad and his dialectic is no better than circlejerking your way to the 'right answer'.

But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The Dialogues are indeed profound and timeless. But that's because they are not about finding the one truth, but about teaching you how to think - something Reddit could never do. In fact they usually run around and actually teach you how NOT to think.

So, in a way, yes - if you take them superficially, they could be seen as "laughably childish and naive." But then again, so can most anything else if you choose to - as Socrates would say - ἕνεκεν τοῦ λόγου.

>>24553815 (OP)
You went into it as an idiot with biases and came out an even bigger idiot. Stay away from Plato.

>>24553826
>teaching you how to think
So if one already knows how to think he doesn't need to read the dialogues?

>>24553831
>with biases
Not really, I went in completely blind, didn't know what to expect, and much to my surprise I'm left underwhelmed.

>>24553815 (OP)
He was ugly, much like a redditor.

>>24553815 (OP)
Why would you start with Socratic dialogues anyway?

>>24553901
> if you don't read the dialogues, you won't get laid

This is true because Socrates said that the unexamined life isn't worth living. So, in order to have an examined life, you need to read the dialogues (or at least pretend to have). That makes you more attractive to potential mates because you seem intelligent and thoughtful.

>>24553844
I'd be more concerned if you couldn't think deeply and creatively at all. In which case... If you don't read the dialogues, you won't get laid. But in all honesty, no. If you can think deeply, critically, and creatively without needing to be told how, then you probably don't need the dialogues. Feel free to skip over them.

>>24553815 (OP)
Well, what dialogue/s have you read?

There's another thread up discussing something like this in the Phaedo, >>24553056

>>24553815 (OP)
To any anons who have read this whole flowchart, what did you gain from it?

>i come off the acropolis to stop some pandemonium

>>24553815 (OP)
Socrates was indeed a liberal.
It's just that lately a bunch of lgbt troons adopted ancient Greek philosophy to justify their gayness.

> Why should anyone read this when even the average conversation here has more depth than this supposedly mind boggling book?
The Internet is a very recent discovery. People using it are far superior than those who weren't. Knowledge was not nearly as accessible as it is now.
Tbh Asian ancient philosophy is much superior.

I wish midwits just disappear from earth man

>>24553815 (OP)
Free
Gym
Membership

>>24553986
I gained a much stronger grasp on western culture, philosophy, and literature. With a much stronger base for logic and context for what's going on around us. If you're intelligent you'll get a lot out of these and be able to apply them in your life.

(Ignore the history ones though)

>>24553815 (OP)
Get out of this board nigger

>>24553815 (OP)
Reddit would call Socrates a racist mysoginist

>>24553986
This makes no sense.

>>24553986
it's shit, don't read this

>>24553815 (OP)
>the arguments are all laughably childish and naive
In what order did you read him? If you started in the middle dialogues, then you did not read the arguments or the logic, you only read the results of these. The middle dialogues being: Phaedo, Republic, Phaedrus, and Symposium.
There is also a slim chance you started with his late dialogues, like Parmenides, just because some retard recommended you the "Story chronological" order.

>>24553986
Read these with an annotated version:
Homer and Hesiod for poetry.
Apollodorus for greek mythology.
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes for theatre plays.
Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus for philosophy.
Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon for history.

There you go, a better list than that chart.

>>24555849
>If you started in the middle dialogues, then you did not read the arguments or the logic, you only read the results of these. The middle dialogues being: Phaedo, Republic, Phaedrus, and Symposium.
Are you saying the "early" dialogues are "the arguments or the logic"?

>>24555889
In the early dialogues he gives some arguments or some logics of the things he will later take for granted and won't be explained. Most of Plato ideas have something of true and something of crazy, and if you haven't read the logic behind his thinking he will look like an insane old man.
For example, let's take forms. In the early dialogues he is trying to find certain definitions like what is friendship, bravery, or beauty. Let's consider beauty since it's the example used in Hippias Major: A woman is beautiful, gold is beautiful, harmony is beautiful, but you can't define beauty with these things because they are completelly different from each other, yet they MUST have something in common for them all to be called "beautiful". The form then is the essence of the word or object to study: in reality, he is searching for the objective meaning of said word, what does "beauty" objectively mean? This is better defined in the early dialogue of "Meno". But if you skip to the middle dialogues you will see him refering to them as meta-dimentional physical beings that are eternal, so you won't get that he is talking about the objective meaning of a word but you will think that he is talking about schizophrenic shit.

>>24556585
Okay, I disagree in that case. What you call "middle" dialogues I don't take as simply conclusions being expounded upon and dependent on "early" dialogues for cogency. The Phaedo, Symposium, and Republic, for example, all build up to accounts of the Forms that don't presuppose the "early" dialogues (and they don't necessarily answer the questions in the "early" dialogues), and the Phaedrus' palinode, while not building up to an account the same way as those three, still explains the Forms in a way simple to grasp (and in another way, it complicates the Forms by saying that the Beautiful is the same "here" as it is among the hyperuranians).

I think this also does some disservice to the shorter, as you say, "early" dialogues by making them merely preparatory for something to be explained in a different dialogue. They give more weight to Socrates' "Delphic mission" as explained in the Apology, but that doesn't mean that the four "middle" dialogues you list aren't themselves full of perplexities similar to the more explicit aporias of the shorter dialogues (Socrates in both Phaedrus and the Republic speaks of some longer harder path to grasping the subjects under discussion, and that path is untaken in both dialogues, leaving one to wonder whether something is missing or distorted), nor do they uniformly lack attempts to account for things (Lysis' "neither-nor," Meno's recollection, Ion's lodestone image of divine inspiration, Euthyphro's account of piety as a part of the Form of justice, etc.). That's not to say that a reader won't be able to make discoveries by starting with a shorter dialogue (consider Critias' definition of moderation in the Charmides as minding one's own business with Socrates' definition of justice in the Republic as minding one's own business), but a shorter dialogue like Charmides is still more thoroughly about moderation than the Republic or Statesman are, and it might be a mistake to simply take, say, the definition of moderation in the Republic for granted.

>>24556854
Well I didn't meant to imply that the middle dialogues were conclusions from the early ones. They do have new arguments and new logic, of course.
What I tried to say is that you need the knowledge of the early dialogues or else they will appear schizophrenic.
To put one example: In the old testament they use goats as sacrifice to forgive sins (They put their sins in the goat and then killed it), in the new testament Jesus sacrifices himself to forgive every sin of humanity. You can't understand that if you haven't read the old testament first. In Plato it's similar. You can't understand what does he mean with "form" in the middle dialogues if you haven't read him explore what the essence of something is through debate in the early ones.
Also, a last thing, is that I'm not saying that you shouldn't read the middle dialogues. What I am saying is that you should read the early dialogues first and then the middle ones. The middle dialogues are the ones that shaped western philosophy after all.

>>24557462
>>24556854
Maybe my Bible example was more confusing than helping, but what I meant is that you will understand that Jesus forgave sins, but you will not understand why the sacrifice would forgive sins if you haven't read the OT. In the same way, you will understand that forms are the essence of objects of study, yet you will not understand what does he call a form if you haven't read him define it in Meno or try to explore a form in Hippias Major, for example.

>>24557462
>>24557466
I don't think that has to be the case, since plenty of readers of "early" dialogues like Ion or Meno already think Plato seems schizophrenic for offering recollection or the lodestone image of divine inspiration as accounts. Even the Parmenides offers a very clear set of examples in its first half of what the Forms aim to explain. Seeking a definition or what unifies many beings according to one Form isn't terribly difficult to pick up on, and I don't think it takes reading Alcibiades Major and Minor, Euthyphro, Ion, Menexenus, Lysis, Crito, Apology, Meno, Cleitophon, Hippias Major and Minor to pick up on. Those all have discrete subjects and lenses from which to investigate their topics worth studying on their own, not just so they can be stepping stones to the Republic.

And it may be that Plato thought some of his later dialogues could be profitably read before an earlier one, such as the Theaetetus which he frames as taking place right before the Euthyphro, or Sophist and Statesman being framed as taking place earlier on the day of the Apology. I think the only real standards for ordering are how capable and interested a potential reader might be; someone who's already capable of rigor might want the Parmenides, while someone unsure of whether philosophy is worthwhile at all might need to read the shorter dialogues simply because they're shorter, and perhaps some people who already expect philosophy to be beneficial and practicable would find the Laws appropriate. Plato seems to give a lot of leeway for how to organize one's education through his writings.

>>24553826
>, of course,
You are misusing that phrase, retard. This phrase has got to be the biggest pseud indicator on this site. Stopped reading right there. Kys. Are you the same retarded pseud who made the Patrick Deneen thread?

>>24553815 (OP)
You're right, the Dialogues were not historically very important. If you were studying philosophy with someone like Iamblichus for example you would focus on Aristotle for three years then read only some of the dialogues alongside massive commentaries which went far beyond the letter of the dialogue itself. It's only in the modern era that people have decided that the Dialogues are "great philosophy". The ancients and medievals were smart enough to know that they were, at best, great jumping-off points for philosophy. They are merely popular works meant to lead people to think about philosophy and join the Academy, but there are people on reddit and 4chan who think they're like the Bible of Western philosophy, and spend months and years doing outlines and memorizing passages from these childish and trivial works. A sad waste of time. Just read Aristotle honestly, he'll say more in a paragraph than Plato says in 30 or 40 pages.

Now just wait, one of the Platopseuds here is going to start sperging out and probably quote the seventh letter at me. Fine fine I admit it I'm wrong, the Dialogues are literally a ladder to heaven and the vision of the Good, forgive me, they are chock full of brilliant insights and don't contain any sophistry at all. Nevermind OP, skip Aristotle, he's SO boring.

>>24558514
This is not wrong. Plotinus only occasionally quotes from the dialogues and only from like four or five of them. He never mentions or alludes to works like the Euthyphro or the Apology that are considered important today, though he would certainly have read them.

>>24556585
>But if you skip to the middle dialogues you will see him refering to them as meta-dimentional physical beings that are eternal, so you won't get that he is talking about the objective meaning of a word but you will think that he is talking about schizophrenic shit.
How could the objective meaning of a word be 'metadimentional physical being'? Or, to put it in terms of what Plato actually says rather than your imagination, how could the objective meaning of a word ground the 'appearance' of changing being? See, this is the sort of independent thinking that the Plato midwits reach by reading the dialogues. Then they'll look down on people like OP who points out that the emperor wears no clothes.
>>24556854
>Socrates in both Phaedrus and the Republic speaks of some longer harder path to grasping the subjects under discussion, and that path is untaken in both dialogues, leaving one to wonder whether something is missing or distorted
What's "missing or distorted" is the ostensibly more scientific mode of philosophizing which you would have found in the Academy. Most of this is lost but it appears to have been quasi-Pythagorean schizo bullshit.

>>24553986
>reading edith hamilton
lmao

>>24558568
What's the problem?

>>24558573
I dont remember anymore
I think she made a shitty translation of Plato but maybe I'm just confused

>>24558601
I mean, what's the problem with this book? I don't know any translation she made and it might not be good—she's a literary scholar, not the strongest curriculum when it comes to translating—but that book is staple in humanities to get a decent overview of mythology, especially now that fewer and fewer people learn about this in school. I am not aware of any major drawback, especially for a general readership.

>>24558514
>You're right, the Dialogues were not historically very important. If you were studying philosophy with someone like Iamblichus for example you would focus on Aristotle for three years then read only some of the dialogues alongside massive commentaries which went far beyond the letter of the dialogue itself. It's only in the modern era that people have decided that the Dialogues are "great philosophy".
This is simply false. Your example of Iamblicus works against you, since his educational arrangement was of twelve dialogues considered essential for what were taken to be doctrines within his school of Platonism. The skeptical form of the Academy emphasized the so-called aporetic dialogues. Cicero, Plutarch, Galen, and Numenius take it as a given in their own ways that something of what Plato wanted to convey was in the dialogues. And Aristotle, when he wishes to argue with Plato, very rarely brings up what appears to have been expressed in conversation (the "unwritten teachings" he only occasionally mentions) in favor of arguing with the dialogues, such as the Republic and Laws in the Politics, and the Timaeus in the Physics. As for medievals, this is certainly not how Al-Farabi viewed Platonic philosophy in his Philosophy of Plato and commentary on the Laws, nor Averroes in his commentary on the Republic.

>Fine fine I admit it I'm wrong, the Dialogues are literally a ladder to heaven and the vision of the Good, forgive me, they are chock full of brilliant insights and don't contain any sophistry at all.
I've argued this point with you in the past and you always dip out instead of taking anything head on. Plato, unlike his student Aristotle, who could afford to be bolder with the Macedonians protecting him, recognized that philosophy could not safely be practiced in full openness in a world that put Socrates to death, but that the philosopher had to be cognizant of who they're speaking with, and under what circumstances. I'd have thought that someone proud of careful study of Aristotle would have grasped the appropriateness of this reserved, cautious, or circumstantially appropriate manner by study of the Rhetoric or recalling what Aristotle says about irony in the Nicomachean Ethics, but only the explicit arguments matter to you, like a modern analytic. If you had bothered to compare what the Seventh Letter says with the Phaedrus' latter half on speeches, rhetoric, and writing, you would've glimpsed an important suggestion for how to take the dialogues, and if you had bothered to actually read the Republic with the care you apparently expend on Aristotle, you would've seen how Plato there qualifies the seeming teaching about the Good and why he needs to present it to someone politically ambitious like Glaucon. But you have apparently no questions about human psychology or motivation, so it never occurs to you to notice that the Republic takes place in the house of a man murdered by the politically ambitious utopian Thirty Tyrants.

>>24558564
>What's "missing or distorted" is the ostensibly more scientific mode of philosophizing which you would have found in the Academy. Most of this is lost but it appears to have been quasi-Pythagorean schizo bullshit.
That sounds more like Speusippus and Xenocrates, who differed with Plato.

>>24558564
>How could the objective meaning of a word be 'metadimentional physical being'?
That's exactly what I'm saying, anon! If you skip the early dialogues and just go straight to the middle ones, a similar definition (Maybe I exaggerated my example) is what you will get.
From wikipedia:
>According to this theory, Forms—conventionally capitalized and also commonly translated as Ideas—are the timeless, absolute, non-physical, and unchangeable essences of all things, which objects and matter in the physical world merely participate in, imitate, or resemble.
If it's your first time reading Plato and you get this definitionof forms, eternal entities that objects in our dimention immitate, rather than the proto-forms theory given in Meno or Hippias Major, then you will not understand the origin of his thought and how he uses his idea of forms to seek truth.

>>24558618
>Your example of Iamblicus works against you, since his educational arrangement was of twelve dialogues considered essential for what were taken to be doctrines within his school of Platonism.
Yes, like I said, "only some of the dialogues" and "alongside massive commentaries which went far beyond the letter of the dialogue itself". This is exactly how Iamblichus treated them. Do you know how to read, or what?
>The skeptical form of the Academy emphasized the so-called aporetic dialogues. Cicero, Plutarch, Galen, and Numenius take it as a given in their own ways that something of what Plato wanted to convey was in the dialogues.
None of the people you cite matter. Seriously, Cicero and the skeptical Academy? Galen? Numenius mostly talks about the Timaeus and the Republic.
>And Aristotle, when he wishes to argue with Plato, very rarely brings up what appears to have been expressed in conversation (the "unwritten teachings" he only occasionally mentions)
You do realize that books 13 and 14 of the Metaphysics are entirely devoted to Plato's unwritten teachings, right? (+ his successors Speusippus and Xenocrates whose own views were riffs on/responses to Plato's original number theory). The unwritten teachings are actually all over the Metaphysics, such as for example what he says about the different sort of Number-forms in Meta 3. He also references them sporadically in the early works. You've said something demonstrably false because, like all Plato midwits here, you haven't really read much Aristotle/couldn't understand it.
>As for medievals, this is certainly not how Al-Farabi viewed Platonic philosophy in his Philosophy of Plato and commentary on the Laws
Al-Farabi had no access to the original dialogues. You obviously have not read his Philosophy of Plato, he gives summaries of the dialogues which are completely fantastical. Here see for yourself you little nigger, pretending to read things you have not actually read: https://www.muslimphilosophy.com/books/farabi-pl-aris.pdf (Philosophy of Plato starts on p. 31). Everyone come and look and see for yourself what a pseud the guy I'm arguing with is.
>Averroes in his commentary on the Republic.
Another pseud factoid. Yes Averroes wrote a commentary on the Republic because he didn't have access to Aristotle's Politics. But the question is not 'did people ever read the dialogues?', the question is 'did people read them the way midwits do today on /lit/?' The answer is no. Within the mainstream of the Platonic tradition, i.e. Plotinus -> Arab Aristetlians/neoplatonists; Latin Aristotelians/neoplatonists via Augustine and Dionysius, etc, the Dialogues were not particularly important. A great figure like Al-Farabi never read them, and Plotinus hardly engages with them except the Timaeus and the Parmenides.

>>24558564
>How could the objective meaning of a word be 'metadimentional physical being'? Or, to put it in terms of what Plato actually says rather than your imagination, how could the objective meaning of a word ground the 'appearance' of changing being? See, this is the sort of independent thinking that the Plato midwits reach by reading the dialogues. Then they'll look down on people like OP who points out that the emperor wears no clothes.
There's nothing stopping you from reading the Parmenides, Phaedo, Republic, and Meno in conjuction to see how the Forms are actually hypotheses for the sake of dialogue. Parmenides all practically says as much in the dialogue by his name, and Socrates spells out in the Phaedo how he came to hypothesize the Forms and both Plato's own students and readers through the centuries will just glance over them.

>>24553826
thanks grok

>>24558636
>the Dialogues were not particularly important
Again though I mean important *simply as Dialogues*. They were jumping-off points for huge autism commentaries which go way beyond anything that's in the dialogue itself.
>>24558618
> Plato, unlike his student Aristotle, who could afford to be bolder with the Macedonians protecting him, recognized that philosophy could not safely be practiced in full openness in a world that put Socrates to death, but that the philosopher had to be cognizant of who they're speaking with, and under what circumstances. I'd have thought that someone proud of careful study of Aristotle would have grasped the appropriateness of this reserved, cautious, or circumstantially appropriate manner by study of the Rhetoric or recalling what Aristotle says about irony in the
Plato openly fantasizes about overthrowing the state in multiple places, so he was not particularly cautious. He criticizes democracy constantly. The real difference here is dialectic vs demonstration, not esoteric vs exoteric writing. So again you're weaving together half-truths into a simple narrative without thinking about what you're saying.
>but only the explicit arguments matter to you, like a modern analytic
Don't you ever call me a 'modern analytic' again. I do however care about arguments and what authors are actually saying, you are very muddle-minded, which is why you like the Dialogues so much. You're like Theodorus in the Theaetetus, who prefers the funny stories to the labor of the concept.
> If you had bothered to compare what the Seventh Letter says with the Phaedrus' latter half on speeches, rhetoric, and writing, you would've glimpsed an important suggestion for how to take the dialogues, and if you had bothered to actually read the Republic with the care you apparently expend on Aristotle, you would've seen how Plato there qualifies the seeming teaching about the Good and why he needs to present it to someone politically ambitious like Glaucon. But you have apparently no questions about human psychology or motivation, so it never occurs to you to notice that the Republic takes place in the house of a man murdered by the politically ambitious utopian Thirty Tyrants.
Case in point right here. I don't doubt for a second that Plato believed in/had actually experienced the Vision of the Good and that he thought philosophy could take you there. The problem is you people get so attached to this mystical lore that you're not really interested in the arguments - that's all window-dressing for the likes of you. So you're happy to stay in this shallow, literary/poetic analysis of these lovely Dialogues and you actively discourage people from studying scientific philosophers like Aristotle or even Plotinus because it's "boring", "autistic", "mere argumentation", and so on.

>>24558636
>Yes, like I said, "only some of the dialogues" and "alongside massive commentaries which went far beyond the letter of the dialogue itself". This is exactly how Iamblichus treated them. Do you know how to read, or what?
You know very well that you were saying the dialogues were only a small education in Iamblichus' system, as though the amount of time spent on them or the relevance of them to his dogma were irrelevant.

>None of the people you cite matter. Seriously, Cicero and the skeptical Academy? Galen? Numenius mostly talks about the Timaeus and the Republic.
So ancient figures are authorities except when you decide they aren't? Gotcha.

>You do realize that books 13 and 14 of the Metaphysics are entirely devoted to Plato's unwritten teachings, right? (+ his successors Speusippus and Xenocrates whose own views were riffs on/responses to Plato's original number theory). The unwritten teachings are actually all over the Metaphysics, such as for example what he says about the different sort of Number-forms in Meta 3. He also references them sporadically in the early works. You've said something demonstrably false because, like all Plato midwits here, you haven't really read much Aristotle/couldn't understand it.
You know the last two books of the Metaphysics don't make up all of Aristotle's engagements with Plato, right? Or that those books also distinguish between Plato, Speusippus, and Xenocrates, and treat them as different but related cases, right?

>Al-Farabi had no access to the original dialogues. You obviously have not read his Philosophy of Plato, he gives summaries of the dialogues which are completely fantastical. Here see for yourself you little nigger, pretending to read things you have not actually read:
So claim morons like Dimitri Gutas, who insist without evidence that his Laws commentary is just Galen's summary. I've actually read all the dialogues as well as Farabi's Philosophy of Plato, and his brief comments on each dialogue I've found to be perfectly relevant. By the by, you could always read his opening to his commentary on the Laws about Plato's manner of presentation and approval of such to see why he summarizes and emphasizes Plato differently than the Neoplatonists.

>Another pseud factoid. Yes Averroes wrote a commentary on the Republic because he didn't have access to Aristotle's Politics. But the question is not 'did people ever read the dialogues?', the question is 'did people read them the way midwits do today on /lit/?' The answer is no.
He literally read it looking for philosophical content on politics you retard. You're a hopeless belligerent.

>>24558653
Plato openly fantasizes about overthrowing the state in multiple places, so he at not particularly cautious. He criticizes democracy constantly.
No he doesn't, not even in the Republic. Glaucon asks Socrates point blank in book 5 about the possibility of actually founding the Kallipolis and Socrates tells him both there and at the end of book 9 that he's missing the entire point. And that critique of democracy in book 8 is qualified with the offhand mention by Socrates that of the regimes they've been discussing, only in the democracy can they have the discussion that *makes up the Republic*. The difference is absolutely exoteric vs esoteric, if Plato were to have ever been brought to trial for one of his dialogues, his clearest means of getting off is saying "oh, but this is just what that dead man Socrates used to say." This is also plain in the Phaedrus' second half.

>Don't you ever call me a 'modern analytic' again. I do however care about arguments and what authors are actually saying, you are very muddle-minded, which is why you like the Dialogues so much. You're like Theodorus in the Theaetetus, who prefers the funny stories to the labor of the concept.
You miss the whole point of philosophizing, like a good analytic. On the contrary, you're Theodorus, impatient with the human things and about to walk into a well like Thales.

>Case in point right here. I don't doubt for a second that Plato believed in/had actually experienced the Vision of the Good
I doubt that wholly. The Republic implies there's no knowledge of the Good, Socrates expressly refrains from giving Glaucon his own opinion on it, so the discussion isn't even wholly what Socrates as depicted thinks.

>The problem is you people get so attached to this mystical lore that you're not really interested in the arguments - that's all window-dressing for the likes of you.
Making a lot of assumptions, the "mystic shit" is more than half the time undermined by other passages, such as the shockingly forward recognition that there may be no afterlife in the Phaedo at 91b. You, like the Neoplatonists, want Plato to be a certain way, they in pursuit of perhaps unsuupportable hopes, you in pursuit of an easy dunk for the sake of your autism.

What you fundamentally miss in Plato is the opportunity to do one's own rigorous thinking in favor of explicit arguments on the page. Of course you won't find Plato's unfiltered views, his teacher was fucking killed and his uncle and cousin were notorious tyrants, such a man looks over his shoulder when he write, and he writes aware of the risks of accidentally teaching an Alcibiades.

Bump

>>24558514
>>24558636
>>24558653
You just made a Hegel thread, so I know you're browsing. You'll hop into any Plato thread to shout about "Platopseuds," when you really mean Neoplatonists, and you'll screech at anyone who doesn't share your very particular reading of Aristotle, when your own reading of Plato is facile. You wanted to hop in and argue, then argue, put up or shut up.

I bet youre just reading some contemporary translation from some redditor and then making gay overblown complaints because he doesnt vibe with you

>>24553815 (OP)
Fuck the philisophers. Read the historians.

>>24553815 (OP)

That is the SECRET of the STIOCS...you'll know you've MASTERED PHILOSOPHY when they tell to be QUIET and LISTEN until you've had enough of their shit and SCREAM...FUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!

>>24559704
You’re hopeless dude. Anyone who knows can see how sophistical and shit your arguments are. “But.. but… Averroes *did* write about the Republic!” “But… but… the academic skeptics just ARE as important as Plotinus!” You think you’re an elite esoteric reader for applying 9th grade English class to the Doalogues, you think Philosophy of Plato contains great summaries (again, anyone can go see for itself), you think all of the Dialogues were translated into Arabic when it’s well known almost none of them were. You even insist that Plato doesn’t critique democracy. You’re hopeless man. Have you read the Statesman? Do you remember the purge of the state?

You will go your entire life thinking your awful, “literary” reading of the Dialogues means you’re doing philosophy. You are a fraud and a phony. Pretty sure you’re the same guy who insists the Republic doesn’t really talk about politics at all, it’s all a metaphor.

>>24560804
Paragraph 3.81. In the context of the conflict of oligarchy vs people in Corcyra.
>[3] Revolution thus ran its course from city to city, and the places which it arrived at last, from having heard what had been done before, carried to a still greater excess the refinement of their inventions, as manifested in the cunning of their enterprises and the atrocity of their reprisals.
>[4] Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal supporter; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question incapacity to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting a justifiable means of self-defense.
>[5] The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries. In short, to forestall an intending criminal, or to suggest the idea of a crime where it was lacking was equally commended,
>[6] until even blood became a weaker tie than party, from the superior readiness of those united by the latter to dare everything without reserve; for such associations sought not the blessings derivable from established institutions but were formed by ambition to overthrow them; and the confidence of their members in each other rested less on any religious sanction than upon complicity in crime.
>[7] The fair proposals of an adversary were met with jealous precautions by the stronger of the two, and not with a generous confidence. Revenge also was held of more account than self-preservation.

>>24560834
(Continuing) let me point this out too - you say the Republic doesn’t really criticize democracy because there’s a point where he mentions democracy without openly criticizing it. Even though he devotes an entire book to attacking it. “You’re just a literalist man.” No, you are legitimately not smart enough for philosophy. Nice attempt to reverse my “Theodorus” line btw, must have stung a bit. I do not have time to respond to everything, you’re just an absolute bullshitter with a bogus reading of the Dislogues.

>>24553986
Haven't read all of these, but have read some of them
>Iliad and Odyssey of Homer
Great fun, form the backbone of the greeks constant references to their mythology. I haven't read Hamilton's Mythology book but I assume it's about the greek myths, I myself read Apollodorus' Bibliotheca and Hesiod for that.
>Plays of Sophocles,
I think you should include in here all the rest of the Greek Playwrights, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, and maybe even Aristophanes, though he is much different in style. The greek plays along with the epics of Homer tell the many myths and legends of the greeks, they give you an idea of their philosophies of life and morality.
>The first philosophers
I also haven't read this but I have read Lives of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius which is also about the presocratics. This is alot of fun, it gives you a good idea of what philosophy was like prior to Plato. The anecdotes about Diogenes the cynic in particular are very amusing
>Herodotus and Thucydides
If you're going to read these, get a map. The former is very entertaining, telling about the various cultures of many lands surrounding Greece, while the former takes a deeper dive into the political and military decisions of the later Peloponnesian wars.
>Plato and Aristotle
I've read all of Plato, I fully recommend it, it's very easy to read outside of maybe Parmenides and a couple others. Do not read Republic first, you won't get it, all of its topics are explained before the Republic and reading them prepares you the best.
Aristotle is much harder, I haven't read all of him, you 100% must take notes of everything he explains, it's more akin to a maths textbook than the theatre like style of Plato

>>24560845
This is the beautiful thing about classical history. It's a comprehensive primer for history in general.

>>24558718
I have time for one more. You point out that there’s no knowledge of the Good - of course not. Then Plato spends a fair chunk of the Republic talking about how the guardians need to have a vision of the good, but you ignore that. In the Phaedo, you ignore most of the dialogue especially the ending. Here, as always really, in every discussion I’ve had with you, you grab onto one line and insist it’s what’s important and ignore everything else. I’m frankly starting to feel guilty, like I’ve been bullying a slow person. You my friend are a living, breathing example of why you should not obsess over the Dialogues but should read other, scientific philosophers who will teach you to think such that you can actually appreciate what is there in Plato.

>>24560834
Sophistical? You contended that the dialogues weren't considered important for their philosophical content, when Averroes studied it for just that reason, and the Academic skeptics, who, unlike Plotinus, studied the dialogues at the original Academy under an actual lineage of scholarchs, considered those contents sufficient to make up philosophy in showing the difficulties in asserting any position. You bitch about sophistry, but you'll pick and choose what's relevant while arbitrarily dismissing examples when they doesn't suit your case.

>you think all of the Dialogues were translated into Arabic when it’s well known almost none of them were.
That's entirely untrue, the translations, both partials and full, into Syriac and Arabic aren't extant, and Farabi very evidently doesn't rely on Neoplatonic summaries, this is talking out of your ass.

>You will go your entire life thinking your awful, “literary” reading of the Dialogues means you’re doing philosophy. You are a fraud and a phony. Pretty sure you’re the same guy who insists the Republic doesn’t really talk about politics at all, it’s all a metaphor.
1) Your view that "real philosophy" is in the arguments makes you a mathematician, not a philosopher; making Aristotle's "system" intelligible to yourself isn't philosophizing, it's just purchasing the results of Aristotle's philosophizing. Philosophy as the seeking of wisdom doesn't just get started by arguments but by the interrogation of opinions, and not just the interrogation of those esteemed wise, since that instinct as an opinion goes up against the wall too. Plato’s dialogues interrogate the opinions of the political community that any would-be philosopher will encounter, as well as all the types of people contending they know, and in Plato's case it was done at a safe remove in a dialogue format to give him plausible deniability, test prospective students, defend philosophy as beneficial, and instruct those who could take up hints and suggestions and move beyond the depicted interlocutors. When you live in an illiberal democracy, embedded with beliefs about the significance of trees and birds as connected to gods that act and reward and punish, you don't get to just start freely doubting without consequences. 2) Nice strawman, I've never argued the Republic isn't about politics, but of course, you go even further to ignore every suggestion through the whole work that the point isn't to found an ideal city but come to an understanding of the public and private good through the lens of justice. Let me suggest, as you suggest in every thread about Aristotle: you've never read Plato or the Republic.

>>24553815 (OP)
>I tried reading the Greeks (plural)
>has only read one Greek (Plato)
Boggles the noggin. Try reading Heraclitus' fragments or Parmenides' Poem, it's a short read.

>>24560846
>let me point this out too - you say the Republic doesn’t really criticize democracy
I never said that, learn to read.

>Even though he devotes an entire book to attacking it.
Lol no he doesn't. Book 8 of the Republic discusses *four* regimes, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. Democracy gets critiqued harshly, absolutely, but he never, as *you put it*, "openly fantasizes about overthrowing the state"; the democracy is the *only* one of the four that gives room to political philosophizing of the sort the entire Republic is about, but you think "lots of criticisms? = there's NOTHING redeeming about it", because, I dunno, you're enough of a simpleton that you need it straight. Socrates lived for 70 years before going to trial, he wasn't going to better off in Sparta or Crete or Thebes. You don't understand how a philosopher could see their native regime as lacking but still find it better than the alternatives at the basic level of whether philosophizing is possible.

>“You’re just a literalist man.”
No, you're more prone to letting the literal escape you, which is why you think the Republic is only about politics and ignore every instance of Socrates saying founding an actual city isn't the point. You're such a poor "literalist" that when Socrates distinguishes the knowable from unknowable at 477a, distinguishes knowledge and opinion with respect to being at 478a-c, says outright we have no adequate knowledge of the Good at 504d-505c, refuses to share his own opinion of the Good at 506b-e, only utters *something* about it the Good after being compelled at 509b-c and then says it's beyond being, and that perhaps only a god knows if this discussion is true at 517b-c, *you* read all of that and conclude Plato believes in knowledge of the Idea of the Good, even though he just told you that if it's "beyond being" it can't be known, even though he just told you that Socrates doesn't know it and won't even share his opinion. At no point do you ever stop to wonder why it's being expounded to Glaucon, an erotic and politically ambitious young man, at no point do you ever wonder whether or for what purposes a man who defended beneficial lying at the very start of the Republic in the conversation with Cephalus might be telling a fib to set an ambitious man's heart on something and then say it can only be reached through an improbable long education in gymnastics, music, poetry, mathematics, and dialectic. You don't notice anything because you never wonder about anything.

>you’re just an absolute bullshitter with a bogus reading of the Dislogues.
You have *no* reading of the dialogues. Your first experience was to be puzzled that it didn't conform to your expectations and desires, and so you didn't bother.

>>24560887
>You point out that there’s no knowledge of the Good - of course not. Then Plato spends a fair chunk of the Republic talking about how the guardians need to have a vision of the good, but you ignore that
Just covered, no.

>In the Phaedo, you ignore most of the dialogue especially the ending.
One line? When Socrates says there might be an afterlife, but at least pretending there were will make him less obnoxious to others, you don't think that has any bearing on the rest of the dialogue with the two young Pythagoreans who think Socrates' death means the end of philosophizing? You don't think there's some connection with what Socrates says about having charm away their childish fear of death at 77a-78b? You don't think there's some connection with Socrates' discussion of his start with natural philosophy at 95e-100e and his turn to Forms as *safe hypotheses*? You really don't notice anything.

>>24561057
>When Socrates says there might be an afterlife,
*might NOT be*

>>24553815 (OP)
You sound like even more of a Redditor than Socrates desu

>>24553815 (OP)
Tried reading the greeks
>read Plato and gave up
You gave it quite the attempt