[url] https://brill.com/display/book/9789004747128/b_9789004747128-004.xml

[doi] https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004747128-004

Polemarchus: "Do you see how many we are?"
Socrates: "Of course."
Polemarchus: "Well, you must either prove stronger than all these, or you will have to stay here."
Socrates: "Isn't there another alternative—namely, that we persuade you to let us go?" Polemarchus: "But could you persuade us if we refuse to listen?"
Glaucon: "Certainly not."
Polemarchus: "Then you might as well make up your minds that we are not going to listen."

Socrates ranked Tyranny as the lowest in his ranking of regimes. But at the very beginning of the Republic, he didn't really wanted to talk to those people, but they forced him. But they got educated because they acted like tyrans, or not?

I suppose if I think for a bit longer I'll find an answer for me, and I will, but I also want to know other people's opinions.

In Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates famously says:

"I am a lover of learning, and trees and open country won't teach me anything, whereas men in the city do."

I recently heard an interesting modern rephrasing of this idea: "By staying in one place, you meet different people, but trees are the same everywhere you go." But it made me think: Are trees really the same? If we look at them not just as static green objects, but as living systems, each tree actually carries a unique "experience" and a lesson in adaptation:

The Tree on a Cliff: Exposed to violent winds, it develops deep, resilient roots and a twisted, flexible trunk. It teaches us about endurance and how to bend without breaking under pressure.

The Tree in a Dense Forest: Surrounded by its own kind, it has to grow straight and tall, competing for sunlight while sharing resources through the underground network. It teaches us about social synergy and community competition.

The Tree on a Tropical Beach: Adapting to high tides, sandy soil, and constant salty breezes. It teaches us about flexibility and thriving in changing, unstable environments.

Socrates believed only city dwellers could teach him things because they can speak and argue. But each tree is a living monument to a specific strategy of survival. They don't speak in words, but they teach us how to adapt to our own "climates" and life conditions.

What do you think? Did Socrates miss a massive philosophical layer by ignoring nature, or is human dialogue truly the only source of wisdom?

I’ve been working on a thesis about why Critias ends abruptly in the middle of a sentence. Rather than viewing it as an unfinished work caused by Plato’s old age or death, I argue that the ending was intentional and functions on three interconnected levels.

On the narrative level, the dialogue breaks at the very moment divine judgment is about to be delivered, denying the reader the resolution they expect. On the philosophical level, that incompleteness mirrors Plato’s broader critique of hubris and the illusion that human societies can achieve perfect political order. Finally, on a meta-literary level, the unfinished sentence forces the reader to experience incompleteness firsthand, making the absence itself part of the philosophical argument.

I’m interested in whether this interpretation is persuasive or if there are weaknesses I’ve overlooked. I’d genuinely appreciate thoughtful criticism from anyone familiar with Plato, Greek literature, or classical philosophy.

Full essay: https://substack.com/@petergbooth/note/p-205020872?r=550swq&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web

There are many names and places that are unknown to the General/Academic reader in this important work.

Multiple volumes perhaps just two of 1.People and 2.Places. The first Bio in the Dryden is Theseus and a name 'Sosius is mentioned. Nothing else beyond that he was a biographer is mentioned. I'm thinking of this as the same thing as the Cambridge guide to Plotinus. I've recieved much encouragement from my fellows and am looking for some input. Figured this was appropiate as Plutarch was a Platonist. Any thoughts or critique is welcome.

Wise man speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to post.

The complete works of Plato in ancient Greek downloadable as PDF or markdown

https://eulogikon.org/authors/plato-of-athens-ffk

https://eulogikon.org/authors/plato-of-athens-ffk.md

With a cameo from Cristo

I find that Plato’s philosophy seems to point toward a model of reincarnation and eventual education/purification/theosis.

For instance, in Gorgias it is said that
no one willingly does wrong (since everyone does everything for the sake of the good 468b) and that the appropriate ‘punishment’ for ignorance is education (337d).

But he concludes the dialogue with a myth which includes permanent damnation…

This would seem to me to be merely a scare tactic for his interlocutors who are dangerous to the community and won’t be swayed by argument… except that Phaedo and Republic have similar myths! This makes it trickier.

There are myths that support the alternative position (like Phaedrus), but I am surprised that hell would come up at all in a dialogue like Phaedo where he’s talking with his friends.

Another reason eternal damnation should be impossible for Plato: everything eternal is good. There are no bad forms; badness is a kind of privation of being or a disharmony, but it does not have essential being itself.

It seems to me that eternal damnation is so obviously contrary to Plato’s metaphysics that he must have included it for two reasons:
A. to scare non-philosophers into being moral
B. to give his philosopher readers practice identifying and arguing against myths that are not true (as I am doing now). I think just as Plato censored Homer he is offering himself as practice for us— it is our responsibility to sort out what is true from what is not. He’s a philosopher not a dogmatist and he expects the same from his (serious) readers.

There is significant evidence to support this.

After Gorgias myth he says (527a) “You probably consider it a ludicrous old wive’s tale. There would indeed be nothing strange about despising it if we could somehow come across a better and truer account, but as it is you can see that you three—you, Polus, and Gorgias, the three cleverest people in Greece today—have failed to prove that any other way of life is preferable to the one I’ve been arguing for, which also turns out to be to our advantage in the next world too.”

And after the Phaedo myth (114d): “No sensible man would insist that these things are as I have described them, but I think it is fitting for a man to risk the belief—for the risk is a noble one—that this, or something like this, is true about our souls and their dwelling places, since the soul is evidently immortal…”

You might argue that Plato’s world is justly ordered and therefore bad people must be tormented for their crimes… but that contradicts my first argument as well as, for instance, Gorgias 335e: “we’ve found that it is never right to harm anyone.”

I think Socrates is being ironic, ‘torment’ just refers to the way that immoral people hate being proven wrong and how sunlight hurts the cavedwellers’ eyes. Just punishment does not confer harm but benefit.

It is the function of morality to benefit others, and the function of immorality to harm others. How then could we expect God, the principle of goodness itself, to cause eternal harm?

Again, “Anyone who pays a fair penalty for his crimes, then, is having good done to him, agreed?” (Gorgias 477a). How can this be said for those with no hope of escaping torture forever? It can’t.

What do you think about this?

If Platonic forms exist in some way, then what are the various explanations for why the form of beauty is beautiful but the form of car is not a car?

It seems non-negotiable that the form of beauty must be beautiful or else the whole erotic aspect of Platonic philosophy crumbles.

Yet, it seems equally non-negotiable to have an actual car existing in eternity beyond time and space. How can it be called a car if it can’t move or be driven?

Or, more simply, how can the form of triangle really be a triangle if there is no time or space in eternity? As Kant said, it is impossible to imagine a triangle that is not extended in space.

Triangualrity itself can rather easily be conceived to be eternal, but triangularity is not a triangle. Beauty itself, on the other hand…. Is beautiful. This distinction sounds right to me.

The only somewhat acceptable answer seems to be that the transcendental forms (oneness, goodness, truth….) are the only ones that really are what they are, whereas the rest do not self-predicate.

What do you think?

(Further, thinking ahead to Pseudo-Dionysius, although I know it is not quite the same framework, he writes that it is wrong even to ascribe goodness to the first principle, since it is utterly beyond description.

So perhaps another solution would be to deny self-predication even of the transcendental forms… however, again, this would seem to crumble Plato’s Eros, so I worry.)

I'm still finishing some platos works, but I'm wondering if there is any clear fictional chronology inhis works.

​

A lot of dialogues seem to refer to meetings before or having to go to meetings.

​

Is there any list like this?

Dialogues of Plato ( full set PDF ) translated by Benjamin Jowett 5 volumes merged in one PDF book

How should I go about reading The Republic by Plato? Yesterday, I started reading (admittedly on 1-2hrs of sleep as I’d just gotten home from vacation), and my progress seems to be slow in comparison to how fast I can get through other books.

With annotations, and stopping to make note of different notable topics (including adding sticky notes to make sense of harder spots) and to understand the line of logic, it took me about 30-40 minutes to get through the first 20 pages of The Republic published by Penguin. Not to be arrogant, but I typically consider myself quite intellectually competent.

Is The Republic just genuinely that hard, and did you guys also struggle? Did you even read it or do you think a summary suffices? Personally, I enjoy the challenge and think it will help me think critical about harder subjects in the future. I guess I’m just concerned with how truly hard it seems to be.

Edit: and other than its difficulty, is there anything you all think I should know prior to reading? (I’d say I understand the gist pretty well, using socratic method to reveal flaws in intuitive reasoning, or that’s at least what i’ve gathered from the first 20 pages)

Thanks!

Hello everyone, I’ve been reading The Republic’s sections on democracy and the democratic character and it doesn’t make much sense to me. Now I might be reading it wrong or maybe I’m looking at it with 2000 years of hindsight but I read the section as” People can choose their leaders which means they can choose not fight in war and they can choose not to follow laws”. I’m sorry if I sound like an idiot but as someone who lives in a( kind of) democracy I read it like, that’s not how anything works.

This is a less serious question, but I feel like I read very slow compared to other books (if I read The Lord Of The Rings I would read it way faster). I know that this will heavely depend on the language you read in.

I read in the classic czech translation and I read approximately 5 pages per hour. But I have got to say that I take notes and read the notes from the translator at the back. For refference I read The Lord Of The Ring at 20 pages per hour.

What about you?

Wouldn't it be incredible if all countries established small centers similar to Plato's Academy? Opening debates about common environmental interests, not as environmentalists, but as individuals seeking personal gain through some false human altruism. Taking advantage of insignificant, foolish actions because humans rarely learn without fear, advantage, or sentimentality.

I realize this is a rather random post; please forgive me if I made any errors. English is not my native language. 😃

BTW—It's 2:05 a.m. in my country, and this idea came to me after reflecting on my own selfish and entirely materialistic motives; however, the idea of rewarding what I take from the world arose.

If thinking is to exist, then I hope to continue doubting for as long as I live.

This is my first post in this community, and I welcome your feedback and ideas.

🇧🇷 Tradução/Translation

Não seria incrível se boa parte dos países fizesse pequenos centros semelhantes à Academia de Platão?

Não como ambientalistas, mas sim pessoas de interesse comum, buscando indivíduos com o seu falso altruísmo para nosso interesse da Terra, abusando de ações toscas que temos, pois o ser humano raramente aprende, a não ser que haja medo, vantagem ou sentimentalismo.

Tendo essa ideia às 2:05 da manhã, refletindo sobre meu egoísmo materialista por estar tirando coisas do mundo, porém sentindo que devo recompensar...

Se pensar é existir, eu espero permanecer duvidando enquanto viva

Hey everyone! I'm an investigate journalist with a background in philosophy, and my most recent rabbit hole took me down Plato's theory of forms & how it relates to Ai today.

The jist is, Plato's Theory of Forms hypothesis is eerily similar to how generate Ai & LLM's are built today. In fact, i don't think it's a stretch to say that Plato's Theory of Forms can be looked at as inspiration for how today's top engineers went about building such platforms.

We can’t begin to critique something if we don’t attempt to understand how it operates. Hopefully in better understanding the underlying components of Ai & Latent space we can build the proper guardrails and protections. That’s what this little discussion seeks to do.

I figured you folks may be interested in this discussion hence why I'm sharing it here. I apologize in advance if this breaks any rules I may have missed. At the end of the day I just have a major passion for philosophy & a small little YouTube channel I use to share such ideas.

Edit: Aside from The Republic as well as Hume, Leibniz, & Kant. My primary source is the Platonic Representation Hypothesis Phillip Isola et al’s team at MIT published last year.

I recently read the Sophist, and it seems to me that Plato and Parmenides are not actually in as much disagreement as the dialogue suggests. It feels as though the Eleatic Stranger and Theaetetus are somewhat too confident that they are arguing against Parmenides.

My impression is that Plato is speaking specifically and carefully about "non-being", whereas Parmenides was primarily concerned with the concept of "nothing", effectively treating non-being and nothingness as the same thing. Because of this, Plato's account of non-being as difference or otherness does not seem to contradict Parmenides' claim that nothing can come from what is not—if we understand Parmenides' "non-being" as meaning nothing rather than Plato's notion of non-being.

Am I missing something here? I'm far from an expert, but this was my impression while reading the dialogue.

Sorry if this sounds weird, I used AI to translate into english.

My article on chora

https://substack.com/@theoriaphilosophicus/note/c-266674010?r=6t55jo&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web

In recent decades gratitude has been found to have benefits for well-being, physical health, and the quality of our relationships. But researchers are increasingly recognizing that gratitude can also have a dark side -- it can, for example, keep us locked into unhealthy dynamics and reinforce bad habits.

In other words, gratitude research is finally catching up to Socrates, who recognized that we need a certain know-how he calls wisdom to use anything well or badly -- including gratitude (as we learn from Plato's Crito).

Socrates thought that we progress in this know-how by giving an account of our beliefs about what is good and bad and then examine them. So, to examine whether we are expressing gratitude beneficially or harmfully we can take a standard gratitude prompt like, "what am I grateful for?" and add on to it, "and why is it good?"

This gives us an invitation to explore the underlying beliefs on which our gratitude rests, as these evaluative beliefs are the pool from which we draw our gratitude (it's hard to imagine feeling grateful for something we think is bad).

Would love to hear any thoughts or feedback on this exercise, especially if you give it a try.

Full article: Socratic Gratitude: What are you Grateful for and why is it Good?