Read any works of Plato?

Kyriakos

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I probably will be presenting a small "seminar" (it is way less formal than that; more of a synopsis) on a few works by Plato, next month...

Currently am reading some other ones, eg Phaedo. Up to now i had mostly presented Parmenides, Theaetetos and one of the books of the Republic (the one with the cave allegory).

I thought of asking which works by Plato other posters here have read :)

My favourite is the Parmenides, given it includes more of a detailed account of dialectic thinking, while most other works just have bits here and there, and focus more on a theatrical narrative and general presentation (which is why Dostoevsky had termed Plato as the first novelist).
 
Only the Menon dialogue, really

the geometry bit was kinda stupid
 
I have read Phaedrus (actually read it twice because of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance") and Alcibiades, but that is all. I would love however if we had a CFC reading group for dense texts like these. I always seem to enjoy this kind of intellectual pursuit more in groups than Han Solo.

Really, it's like watching one of the more philsoophical episodes of Dr. Who. It's just much better if you have someone to bs with, talking to yourself gets old.. After some time.
 
I'm pretty sure I read atleast a bit of the Republic for some course, but I'd love to read Timaeus some day.
 
In Phaido(n), which is a relatively shorter dialogue, the focus is more on the imminent death of Socrates, given the dialogue ends with Socrates drinking the conium and dieing. However it has some brief moments of interest, particularly a theory (either literal or metaphorical presentation) according to which "our earth is the hollow of a larger earth". That said, it doesn't stand alone as a dialogue, given the discussion on what may happen after death (if anything survives) rests on the archetypes/eide which are taken as a basis in what Socrates says there, and there is also some issue with a type of parallelism between groups of traits for numbers, and traits of human life. Other than that, Anaxagoras is mentioned very briefly.
So i would not recommend this dialogue to people who haven't read much of Plato, though it does have a dramatic presentation of the final moments of Socrates, walking a bit to trigger the poison to act and then standing down, and noting that they have to sacrifice a rooster to Asclepius (god of medicine) because dieing is really an improvement of health, life being an illness ;)
 
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Plato basically believed in an authoritarian society controlled by a few "intellectual" oligarchs at the top who would make all of the decisions and lie to the masses through propaganda if necessary. He also believed in eugenics and that these "intellectuals" should be the ones who decide who can bear children and who cannot. This was his idea of utopia.
 
^That isn't true, though. The Republic is popularly summarized in such ways, but if one reads Plato they can see that he wasn't in favour of political power. Eg in the Republic the main argument is to show to people who like philosophy that they should not just be away from political life, as they naturally tend to out of disgust.

A similar attitude may be found - possibly; i haven't read any of his political works - in Aristotle, who claimed that "if you shun taking part in political life you are bound to be ruled by people worse than you". Which is nice as a comment, but still, most people who are into thinking tend to dislike politics, as they did in Plato's time and before it.
 
^That isn't true, though. The Republic is popularly summarized in such ways, but if one reads Plato they can see that he wasn't in favour of political power. Eg in the Republic the main argument is to show to people who like philosophy that they should not just be away from political life, as they naturally tend to out of disgust.

Just because he refers to these oligarchs as "Philosopher Kings" doesn't make it untrue.
 
^That isn't why it is untrue. Plato literally in all his works claims that any will to power on material things is a trait of an unexamined self, of a non-philosophical person.

I can agree that oligarch was the incorrect term to use, however the rest of what I said is accurate.
 
^That obviously isn't true, so why even post it? ^_^

For starters, Zalmoxis is a quite well known name, and according to Herodotus he was (likely) once a slave/servant of Pythagoras himself.

I suppose there would be some slaves/servants in comedies by Aristophanes too. At any rate your assumption can't be correct :)

Another note is that even the spartans had legislation in place to make (at least) perioikoi (non-slave, but lower than spartan homoioi) out of helots, in case the helots were used in war (ie when Sparta needed them in war, as in Plataeae) and they did well as fighters. So loads of ex-slaves would be listed.
 
I have read some dialogues, Apology, and Republic. My conclusion is that Plato is over-rated. The dialogues and Apology are interesting because they challenge prevailing cultural views on things that show them to be nonsense when examined by reason. Republic, however, is a travesty, in that it encourages what is essentially totalitarianism disguised as a just and moral state.
 
Only the Menon dialogue, really

the geometry bit was kinda stupid

Well, Menon is not a very core dialogue; that said:

the geometry part was just something to show if the non-math-trained servant would identify himself the relation between size of the diagonal to size of the square surface. Though i do not agree with Socrates' claim about this being due to an anamnesis of the kind that "we have knowledge prior to birth, so this knowledge gets remembered during our life", cause he bases this on apparent lack of any learning to the ability itself to learn something (the servant doesn't know math, but he can understand in the end about the diagonal etc). Socrates argues that the notions the servant identifies have to be innate/pre-existent, yet he doesn't examine at all whether those notions aren't tied to something stable, ie the servant has the capacity to form them, yet he likely forms them in an individual way and thus does not have to be tied to archetypes/eide.

Socrates is very much against the idea that we have no tie to anything stable (a position often attributed by him to Protagoras). I have to say that it doesn't really follow from much, though. Anyway, if one is interested in the eide/archetypes, they should rather read the Theaetetos, or the Parmenides.
 
Yes

It was dreadful. And affirmed all the silly stereo-types I had.
Ancient philosophy sucks, substance-wise. Like really really sucks. Sure, some good was said. But you are way better on when having a sane contemporary source and filter for that very few stuff. What it got is A TON of form. So academics love it, Especially since they would have no reliable structure whatsoever without them.
 
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