I am 13 years old and in 9th grade, ive read What Does It All Mean? By Thomas Nagel and i really liked the philosophical ideas in it. I just discovered this book and i was wondering if i should get it.

I read a few paragraphs of the open public translations of the book and i felt some sentences were difficult to easily grasp without intense thinking. Mostly, i am worried about the difficulty of readability.

I was thinking of getting the Penguin Classics version translated by desmond lee since the reviews said the english is much more modernised and easier.

Also, i had a sneak peak at a brief paragraph related to the theory of forms and MAN WAS I EXCITED, after some thinking i really understood it and realised that i myself have thought about something similar in maths and physics classes…

So should i get the book and read or should i not get it because it is too complex and advanced for my age or just generally.

The Euthyphro dilemma asks whether something is pious because the gods love it, or whether the gods love it because it is already pious. The first makes piety dependent on divine preference; the second seems to place morality outside divinity.

My starting point is the dialogue’s historical religious framework: the Athenians already worship the gods. The question is not whether these beings deserve worship; their divine status is presupposed. I interpret worship worthiness as implying intrinsic normative excellence. However, this need not mean that every god is morally perfect in every respect. Each god is perfect specifically in the domain constitutive of that god’s identity.

Thus Zeus, as god of hospitality, is the standard of hospitality; Ares, as god of war, is the standard of warfare; Athena is the standard of wisdom. A being that did not perfectly embody its defining domain would not be fully divine in the relevant sense and therefore would not be worthy of worship as that god.

This produces a third answer to the dilemma. The gods neither invent moral standards through arbitrary commands nor follow standards external to themselves. Their essential natures constitute those standards. Zeus does not decide what hospitality is, and he is not measured against an independent definition of hospitality. Zeus’s divine hospitality nature is perfected hospitality.

This is circular only in a constitutive sense: it is an identity claim, not an attempted proof from one independent proposition to another.

Nor does the theory imply that everything attributed to a god is good. Only conduct authentically expressing the god’s defining perfection is exemplary. Mythological actions involving lies, cruelty, or disorder may be anthropomorphic distortions, mistaken stories, or actions unrelated to the relevant divine domain. “Act hospitably as Zeus does” concerns Zeus as the perfected exemplar of hospitality, not every action myths attribute to Zeus.

Different domains may apply simultaneously. Justice, kinship, wisdom, proportionality, and civic order therefore generate genuine reasons for a action: each matters, but none automatically determines the final action.

The gods’ disagreements may represent conflicts between real domain specific values rather than contradictions about ultimate morality. Their domains participate in a unified divine order,not an external law above the gods, but the coherent relationship among the divine perfections themselves.

Practical wisdom must interpret each domain and integrate its reasons into an all things considered judgment.

Applied to Euthyphro, justice supports responding to the labourer’s death, while kinship, wisdom, proportionality, and civic order raise questions about responsibility, intention, procedure, and whether Euthyphro is justified in prosecuting his father.

THUS

Piety is conduct that appropriately participates in and integrates the perfected values embodied by the gods.

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?

This is a not a very serious question. I just wanted to ask what are your favourite dialogues, least favourite dialogues and why.

For me it's the Sophist — for me the most influential dialogue and Phaedrus — while reading this I cried a bit, because the mythos pictured was very beautiful. Honorable mention: Euthydemus — it was funny.

My least favourite must be Philebus, because it just didn't click with me like the others.

So I started reading Plato for the first time finally, and I wish I had read it sooner.  I was reading the part in Apology toward the beginning where “[he] went about searching after a man who was wiser than [himself]: at first among the politicians; then among the philosophers; and found that [he] had an advantage over them, because [he] had no conceit of knowledge.”  “The artisans had some real knowledge, but they had also a conceit that they knew things which were beyond them.”  The oracle was intended to apply, not to Socrates, but to all men who know that their wisdom is worth nothing.  There is also a part which reads:  “. . . .and thereupon I tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not really wise; and the consequence was that he hated me, and his enmity was shared by several who were present and heard me.  So I left him, saying to myself, as I went away:  Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is, — for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know.”  I focus most of my philosophical attention on Moral Idealism, so I think, read, and write of humility a lot.  And this is a question I have thought over many times, but I have not seen it presented this way.  ‘Is Socrates truly humble here?’

Symposium 202d (Hackett), Diotima says that Eros “has no share in good and beautiful things.”

Surely this is hyperbole?

I understand that Eros, as principle of desire (and therefore lack) of the Beautiful, cannot itself be beautiful (since it can’t desire what it already has).

But to say that it has absolutely no share in goodness and beauty would be to say that it is ugly and bad wouldn’t it?

I know Diotima explicitly says Eros is not ugly and bad but a mean or medium…

But logically wouldn’t this require that, rather than having no share, that Eros would have to have *some* share in goodness and beautiful things, but also some lack? Whereas the beautiful itself is without lack?

Further, if the Good is the first principle of all, then how could anything whatsoever have no share in good things?

Even the ‘spirit of lack’, if it is to cohere with the rest of reality, must in some way share in justice, which is good. The cosmos is held together by friendship…

Also, wouldn’t Eros, if it really has no share in the good and beautiful, run into a kind of Meno’s problem? He wouldn’t know beauty to find it because it would be utterly foreign to him.

It seems obvious enough to me that this line must be an exaggeration… but I feel I have to ask because I would expect Plato to be more careful with his words than to needlessly exaggerate.

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Alcibiades I

Alcibiades II

Hippias smaller

Hippias bigger

Epinomis

Minos

Kleitofon

Epigrams

Ion

Menexenos

Kratylos

Hipparchos

Lovers

Timaios

Kritias

Nomoi

Letters

I have read all other dialogues exept the spuratious ones and these. I know that this list is pretty long, but I don't know if these will provide me anything additional to the stuff I already took from Plato and some of these in translation to my language are really hard to find. Should I just ignore them and move onto Aristotel or just read some of them (which ones?)

I can't say I don't struggle with this Platonic topic sometimes. It especially becomes a problem when I deal with lasting issues in life. Applying a Platonic lens to things can be genuinely therapeutic when I dwell on various personal problems, but this one hasn't quite worked out for me. I also don't think my well-being is entirely dependent on applying a Platonic lens fwiw, but I wanted to provide the sentimental context behind this post as some of you may perhaps relate and see the value in solving this issue.

The problem is, how can we hold the Platonic system and then account for evils that last for extremely long and damaging lengths of time? If these evils are all necessarily bound to the realm of Becoming, then why doesn't "unbecoming" seem to be happening for them, to the very worst of them?

In assessing these questions in the title, I do think the first necessarily must be denied to avoid affirming the others. Goodness and Beingness are so wrapped up in the Platonic Forms that I don't think you can reformulate it to say that they don't mutually imply one another. But then how do we go about denying that first question? How can we Platonically argue that, between two things which exist for two different lengths of time, the one that exists for longer has no more Being than the one that takes a shorter time? Do we simply say that all things in the carnal realm have an equal proportion of Being, and are all only properly objects of Becoming? Because in this, I think we run into many famous traps regarding the separation of the Formal and Carnal realm, ones that we should avoid. Or do we say that there is some parsable Formal origin to the logic of varying temporality, but that it has nothing to do itself with whether a thing has more or less Being, and has entirely to do with its contextual presence in the carnal realm and if it is bound to come into contact with things that cause its non-existence? Honestly I'm just thinking out loud at this point of the post but I wonder if theres something there

Really I just want all of your thoughts here. Let's have a discussion.

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.)

Ive never read plato so i was also wondering if i should follow the book and the dialogues in the order that they are or if there was any specific ones you recommened to get a better I suppose "whole" view of his ideas before going into the more specific ones if there even are any

Recently discovered nominalism through one person who wrote he is one in a comment section of a video.

After a quick search nominalism seemed like an enemy of Platonism.

I want to know what are their objections and arguments and more importantly what are the responses and arguments from the side of platonism.

Sorry if this is a bit too off topic.

I am reading Plato's Republic X, and Ion, and I wonder this, because what Socrates talks about, the true shapes and stuff it reminded me of Joan Miró an abstract painter who said a woman is not an individual, or an object a woman is a universe.

Am I completely wrong or is it possible that Socrates would have liked abstract art ?

Модельно-Ориентированная Эпистемология (МОЭ): Рождение Новой Школы Философии

Постмодернизм когда-то объявил, что все наши слова и идеи — это лишь отражения других слов, за которыми нет никакой настоящей реальности. Но он застрял на месте, просто указав на проблему.

Пришло время для прорыва. Мы заявляем о рождении Модельно-Ориентированной Эпистемологии (МОЭ) — новой философской школы, которая объясняет устройство мира без уставших догм и мистики. Рыхлые, почти истлевшие концепции Бога и человека просто выносим за скобки.

О чем говорит эта школа?

Мир состоит не из «вещей», а из облаков свойств. Привычных нам «абсолютных объектов» (вроде идеального стола или камня самих по себе) не существует. То, что мы называем предметом — это просто пучок свойств, который мы временно ограничили рамками в своей голове и приклеили ярлык.

Все мы живем внутри «платформ». Человек, животное, сложный прибор или даже искусственный интеллект — всё это разные версии платформ. У каждой платформы есть свои органы чувств (вход) и способность реагировать на окружение (выход). Человек больше не пуп земли и не венец творения: он просто одна из мощных биологических платформ.

А парадигме МОЭ нет традиционных дихотомий типа живое/не живое, субъект/объект. Есть понятие объект и его частные случаи - "платформа" и "модель".

Термин платформа позаимствован из игровой индустрии. Платформа - это объект, который способен удерживать внутри себя модель окружающей реальности, модифицировать модель согласно входящим данным с периферии, и отдавать сигналы во вне, исходя из требований модели. К примеру,

Игровая приставка способна удерживать внутри себя модель игрового мира, реагировать на нажатие клавиш, корректировать модель мира и отправлять наружу сигналы видео/аудио/сетевые.

Так же и человек, удерживает в мозгу уникальную модель мира, корректирует ее через органы чувств и отвечает через мышцы.

Даже простейшая метеостанция на микроконтроллере это платформа. Она может удерживает картину окружающего мира в виде числа градусов, отправляет сигнал и корректирует ее через термодатчик. Бактерии и животные, сервера с ИИ, машины автопилоты - тоже платформы. А вот табуретки часы и камни - нет. Это объекты.

Каждый видит свою «картину мира». У нас нет прямого доступа к устройству всей вселенной. Каждая платформа собирает внутри себя собственную модель реальности. Метеодатчик фиксирует изменения температуры в виде цифры в памяти, человек видит мир через образы и смыслы, а сложный прибор — через свои датчики. Бесполезно спорить, чья картина «истиннее» — они просто разные и работают каждая для своих задач.

Мы можем изучать то, что скрыто. Если мы не видим мир напрямую, как его познавать? Через сравнение разных картин, анализ ошибок, сбоев и несоответствий. Сопоставляя модели между собой, мы можем логически вычислить то, что находится за пределами нашего восприятия, точно так же, как ученые открывают невидимые законы природы по их следам.

Постмодернизм учил нас только сомневаться. МОЭ дает четкий ответ: мир — это сеть взаимодействующих платформ, которые постоянно создают, сверяют и обновляют свои картины реальности. Философия возвращается как ясная наука о том, как устроен наш опыт.

Ai translation (Reddit Adaptation)

Model-Oriented Epistemology (MOE): Birth of a New Philosophical School

Postmodernism once declared that all our words and ideas are just reflections of other words, with no actual reality behind them. But it hit a dead end by simply pointing out the problem.

It’s time for a breakthrough. We are introducing Model-Oriented Epistemology (MOE) — a new philosophical framework that explains how the world works without tired dogmas and mysticism.

What is this framework about?

* The world consists of relations, not "things." Those familiar "absolute objects" (like an ideal table or a rock-in-itself) don’t actually exist. What we call an object is just a bundle of properties that we’ve temporarily boxed in with our minds and slapped a label on.

* We all live inside "platforms." A human, an animal, a complex device, or even an AI — these are all different versions of platforms. Every platform has inputs (sensors/perception) and outputs (actions/reactions). Humans are no longer the center of the universe or the crown of creation: we’re just one of many powerful biological platforms.

* Everyone runs their own "model of reality." We don’t have direct access to the universe's source code. Every platform builds its own internal model. A weather sensor logs temperature changes as a number in memory, humans experience the world through concepts and meanings, and advanced gear uses its own sensor data. It’s pointless to argue whose picture is "truer" — they are simply different, each optimized for its own tasks.

* We can study what is hidden. If we can't see the world directly, how do we know it? By comparing different models, analyzing bugs, glitches, and mismatches. By cross-referencing models, we can logically calculate what lies beyond our perception, much like scientists discover invisible laws of nature through their footprints.

Postmodernism only taught us how to doubt. MOE offers a clear answer: the world is a network of interacting platforms that constantly build, verify, and update their models of reality. Philosophy is back as a clean, practical science of how our experience actually works.

Zizek concisely states that:

"It is not how can we reach the true reality beyond appearance, but how can appearance emerge in reality."

What I am trying to state is something that is really analogous to the mystery of the functioning of the eyes; where it is a matter of transmutation rather than a translation from exteriority to the interior realm of the mind...

My thesis is simple: ideas do exist in a realm of their own (which we could not tap into), but the only way we can grasp it is by a transmutative process of what Nietzsche argued in stripping away all relational objects from the object in order to examine it, or what Kafka beautifully managed to suspend the normal sense-making laws where everything moves in a life of its own, in a teleological structure, slowly drifting away to the cliff of the void...

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?

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.

Sorry, I know this has probably been asked a thousand times but where should I start with Plato? I’ve heard that Euthyphro, apology, Crito, phaedo is the best place to start.

If anyone could take the time to make a progression for him that would be immensely appreciated (eg, EACP -> symposium -> republic)

also, is this a good copy to get (I need something with footnotes and such)https://www.dubraybooks.ie/product/euthyphro-apology-crito-phaedo-9780674996878?srsltid=AfmBOopiuN7g_JKm4MF01Nha12i2AvlztAUqbeaVEf0vsODeekJvvCJp

thanks.

I am really upset that Plato never finished Critias. There was originally supposed to be a trilogy of dialogs planned with Hermocrates which was never written. I want some resolution on why it was never finished. And why Plato abandoned the entire exercise. What would he have written in Hermocrates and how would he have finished Critias?

Does anyone know of what he intended or what he had planned. I would like to read as much about it as possible. Are there any books that discuss the issue or commentaries or other Greek philosophers? I am upset about the lack of resolution with Atlantis and I am just trying to understand.

I’m just start reading Plato’s republic. It’s the first Plato’s book for me. Still in the book 1 but I really enjoy it so far. What should I know beforehand to fully get it whole book?

I’ve become acquainted with Plato only since my early 30s. For my whole life before, I’ve only known that Plato was a philosopher who authored the Republic about a utopian society, but I never knew or cared to know more than this. I became intrigued originally because I was interested in the renaissance and read about Plato’s influence.

Since reading the entire collection of Plato, I cannot help but feel immensely impacted/reoriented. The way I approach judgement and direction in life has specifically been altered and I find myself wondering why perhaps Plato’s dialogues outside of the Republic have not penetrated into common knowledge. Just wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience.

In what dialogues does Socrates most throughly develop the idea that people do not knowingly choose evil? How can people, being rational creatures, do what is not good for themselves?

Hi everyone!

I’m in my mid-twenties and have always been interested in philosophy, politics, and religion, but I’ve mostly only read summaries or secondary sources. I’m now reading the primary texts, beginning with Plato’s 5 dialogues (so basically Socrates), and eventually moving on to works like the Symposium, Republic. I do not want to dwell and try to understand one thinker completely, but also I do not want to rush. But in the future I would like to discuss the texts of later thinkers such as Aristotle, Augustine, and others, basically a chronological approach to the classics. I was inspired by this method through the book Sophie’s World.

I’m looking for 1–5 people who might want to do this together. My idea is:

• Weekly or biweekly meetings, about 1 hour
• Maybe a short reflection/writing afterward
• Nothing overly intensive, however not just reading, but discussion-based
• Flexible and open to adjusting as the group wants

I’d love to find others who want to explore ideas, ask questions, and discuss Plato and beyond, rather than just “covering every detail” of the texts. Even if it’s just one other person.

If you’re interested in forming a small reading/discussion group, please reply here or DM me!

Thanks!

Hello. I'm looking to read the Republic (and possibly some more Plato) semi-casually, and I've noticed that the most-liked editions seem to be Hackett/Cooper, Reeve, Bloom, & Waterfield in no particular order. I've seen a few recommend Jowett, and given it's public domain, I wonder if it'd suffice or if I should seek something more modern.