Why is Platonic idealism wrong, exactly?
I understand the additions to the concept by the Neoplatonists were what a lot of people really had a problem with, but the original idea, as presented in the Republic and the other dialogues, seems to be an interesting alternative to materialism and nominalism. It solves the Problem of Universals better than any competing idea, at least.
All it really needs is a little organization. Secretary work, essentially, to classify and code the Forms.
See Diogenes's rebuttal.
>>793130
"To be attracted to the Platonic dialogue, this horribly self-satisfied and childish kind of dialectic, one must never have read good French writers — Fontenelle, for example. Plato is boring. In the end, my mistrust of Plato goes deep: he represents such an aberration from all the basic Greek instincts, is so moralistic, so pseudo-Christian (he already takes the concept of "the good" as the highest concept) that I would prefer the harsh phrase "higher swindle" or, if it sounds better, "idealism" for the whole phenomenon of Plato."
-nietzche
>>793185
This is just Nietzsche throwing a shit fit because some writer rubbed him the wrong way. As usual.
>>793220
Yes Nietzsche as usual never adresses let alone refutes any point, he only give his opinion. He is truly the father of postmodernity.
Ok I'm going to jump in.
Someone is eventually going to mention Aristotle.
Now how Aristotle's criticism does not apply to Aquinas' theory of participation as well? In that all beings have beings because they participate in God's being? Wasn't Aquinas an Aristotelian?
>>793265
Aquinas <3s Aristotle, BUT he is also a Christian, and Christianity is, by either coincidence or absorption, very Platonic in nature.
Nietzsche actually has the right idea here >>793185 . It's actually to the point that Augustine, at least, believed that Plato might have interacted with Moses at some point, or at least had some contact with some of the Hebrews. There IS something proto-Christian about Platonism.
Plato was not an idealist...
>>793220
Have you read Plato's dialogues? Self-satisfying is how you would describe it. Socrate's opponent's are pathetic straw-men that concede at the first rebutal of Socrates. And Nietzche is correct that Plato's morality is a huge shift from the standards of the Greeks. He doesn't even seem to understand that his own Greek religion is amoral when he is writing Euthyphro.
>>793130
Platonic Idealism requires for it's validity the proper form of platonic idealism.
Argument:
If there is no 'proper form' of Platonic idealism, then platonic idealism is not an idea accessible to the consciousness which can only manipulate 'proper forms'.
Any proper form that is incomplete fails as a form due to imperfection.
Platonic idealism must contain within itself at minimum itself and a perfect copy of itself containing a perfect copy of itself etc.
This is an infinite regress.
While one may claim that the truth of such is inaccessible to the minds of mere men which are flawed in their not-form-ness;
the mind of the platonic forms cannot access itself either. There will always be a preceding form that stands for the next form of proper form of all platonic forms.
As such the platonic form of platonic idealism cannot access itself for validity and distills down to an argument from ignorance.
'Neither we nor the forms themselves can know the forms therefore we must believe in specific facts concerning them' is not a compelling argument on any day of the week.
>TLDR:
'It's turtles all the way down.' is demonstrably and axiomatically false. QED
![[HorribleSubs] Hello!! Kiniro Mosaic - 05 [1080p].mkv_snapshot_16.26_[2015.05.03_17.54.27].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/6LDGHsG.jpg "[HorribleSubs] Hello!! Kiniro Mosaic - 05 [1080p].mkv_snapshot_16.26_[2015.05.03_17.54.27].jpg")
>>793427
>this is the level of Dunning-Kruger and self-unawareness /his/ operates on
>>793427
>Platonic idealism must contain within itself at minimum itself and a perfect copy of itself containing a perfect copy of itself etc.
>This is an infinite regress.
I like this post, but I'm not sure it's actually necessary to say it's turtles all the way down to refute it. If it can already be ascertained that platonic idealism must contain within itself at minimum itself, alongside the fact that there are other ideas which his also contains (idealism is not the only idea within idealism), can't you just point out that a set cannot contain itself plus a unique set (you can't hold your whole volume and then some)?
>>793488
>Dunning-Kruger effect
>a slightly more sophisticated sounding version of the "god works in mysterious ways" cop-out
It's not wrong. Platonism is the most dynamic and powerful philosophical system ever produced.
>>793130
It isn't.
>Why is Platonic idealism wrong, exactly?
Because structure is organized bottom-up, not top-down
>>795818
What
>>793265
I would say yes. Participation is the weak point of Thomism, and Scotus and Ockham made a major improvement by moving away from it imo. Truth be told, I've never been able to find a text where Thomas goes into making how participation works clear, yet he uses it all over the place. It seems like it should some sort of causal notion- like the participator's property is an effect of a cause which has more of that property than it, but Aquinas never makes this clear that I've seen.
>>793300
I think it is the other way around honestly. Early Christianity was almost entirely Greek oriented, as Jews weren't interested. These early Christian Greeks were more or less Platonists since that what was in fashion philosophically at the time.
Also, Plato was pretty clear that forms are mind external- I'm not sure how we could call his doctrine "idealism".
>>793427
>Platonic Idealism requires for it's validity the proper form of platonic idealism
Right off the bat you've misused the word 'valid.' You mean 'sound;' validity is a function of argument form, not veracity. The theory of forms cannot be valid or invalid, only arguments for or against it can be, and those arguments alone can be sound or unsound.
>Platonic idealism must contain within itself at minimum itself and a perfect copy of itself containing a perfect copy of itself etc.
You'll have to explain why this 'must' be the case for an argument in favor of Platonic idealism to be sound.
>infinite regress
Why are you going in this direction? I don't see where you get infinite regress from, unless you're taking your notion that a perfect account of the theory of forms must contain within itself a perfect account of itself to imply something along those lines. I wonder why you equate the world of forms with the theory of forms. It seems important to distinguish between Plato's account of the Forms and the Forms themselves. You don't seem to do so adequately here. I'm not saying you're completely wrong, this argument just isn't convincing me.
I also don't think it's been stated in a valid form yet.
>>795819
As opposed to static and dogmatic. There have been many intriguing variations of idealism along Platonic lines since the 5th century B.C.
>>793130
Platonic idealism is not necessarily "wrong".
It's an extremely dynamic way of thinking that encourages mindfulness.
Though as anon did point out in his writings all his opponents are essentially weak little strawen conceived to re-enforce the ideals within the texts.
I would say plato's idea about morality are pretty spot on. Everyone reads The Republic but Phaedo and The Tower are valuable pieces of text i would recommend it anyone, i would hold them in higher regard than The Republic.
>>795896
>Though as anon did point out in his writings all his opponents are essentially weak little strawen conceived to re-enforce the ideals within the texts.
That's not the case. Often enough, Socrates looks like as much of a fool as the person he's arguing with. You're misreading Plato if you think this.
Plato's would-be critics make it transparent that they only know him through summaries and second hand quotations.
If they had read him they would know that he always speaks about the forms in a hypotetical, some times even light-hearted way, never in a dogmatic way.
It remains that Plato's theory of the forms is one of the best hypothesis to deal with the problem of universals. Everything else degenerates into nominalism, pragmatism and ultimate uncertainty about the possibility of knowlegde.
>>795840
I'm not the anon you're replying to but he has a few points he's just not doing very well at explaining them.
The recursive nature of plato's philosophy is one of it's greatest strengths as it pushes the reader to question the text itself not just the opponents texts. It's not an advanced concepts although it is useful.
>>795913
If I remember correctly socrates was simply arguing his morality vs the rule of law. He is painted as stubborn and unyielding but with a strong code of ethics. The idea of socrates was to embody plato's philosophy to an extreme; unwavering morality but accepting of the authoritarian nature of his surroundings.
For example in the tower Socrates had several chances for escape but he refused.
>>795954
>The idea of socrates was to embody plato's philosophy to an extreme
What makes you think this?
>>795913
This. In the Parmenides Socrates looks like a noob and the theory of forms gets destroyed.
B-but muh dogmatism!
Oh and btw Plato's dialogues are meant to be memory aids for students, not actual debates you morons.
>>795966
(con)
I hate stupid people man. You people here would be farmers and artisans in ancient Greece. And rightly so. Mass literacy was a mistake.
>>795954
>I'm not the anon you're replying to but he has a few points he's just not doing very well at explaining them.
Why don't you explain them?
>The recursive nature of plato's philosophy is one of it's greatest strengths as it pushes the reader to question the text itself not just the opponents texts. It's not an advanced concepts although it is useful.
Not sure why you think this is unique to Plato's self-referential artistic style. This is something that any decent work of philosophy will require of the reader.
>If I remember correctly socrates was simply arguing his morality vs the rule of law.
What do you mean by this? I don't think he talks about the rule of law much, he talks about the law but not exactly in the sense that he opposes 'his morality' to it. In fact, his morality incorporates respect for the law and legal institutions on a very basic level. I'm not sure how you missed that, or if you didn't why you think Plato (who Socrates agrees totally with, apparently???) is arguing against something he explicitly defends in the Crito. I assume you're talking about the Crito, I don't know what you mean by 'the tower.'
>He is painted as stubborn and unyielding but with a strong code of ethics. The idea of socrates was to embody plato's philosophy to an extreme; unwavering morality but accepting of the authoritarian nature of his surroundings.
Uhh what? I doubt Plato actually thought of his surroundings as totalitarian. There's nothing to indicate that he did. In fact, there's more to indicate that Plato was a proto-totalitarian than to indicate that he opposed totalitarianism. Of course, there's just as much to indicate that he *wasn't* a proto-totalitarian, but this is almost beside the point.
>For example in the tower Socrates had several chances for escape but he refused.
Why do you think he refused?
>>795960
It's my opinion. I'm willing to consider other options.
But I'm going by the idea that Socrates was just a vassal for Plato's philosophy. Just a way to embody Plato's philosophy in the form of a man. Just to bring it down to earth instead of his ideas lingering un-applied. Men are fallible, some thoughts are flawed, but they can still be great. Socrates is the embodiment of an ethical, logical, fallible, realist of a man.
>>795997
>It's my opinion
What evidence do you have to support it?
>>795980
>Why don't you explain them?
Because they aren't my thoughts. I'm not going to be speak for anon. I just wanted to comment on recursive thought.
>Not sure why you think this is unique to Plato's self-referential artistic style
It's not and i tried to explain that it's not anything special but a useful way to think.
>What do you mean by this?
Socrates tries to argue he did nothing wrong. He has respect for the law but initially doesn't believe he violated it. He accepts his conviction while honorably defending his integrity and morality.
>Uhh what? I doubt Plato actually thought of his surroundings as totalitarian
I said authoritarian on not totalitarian. There's a bit of a difference. In plato's eyes the courts and justice system were a representation of the common moral values of all citizens. Their actions in the end seemed unjust but for the republic to keep it's integrity intact the system must be right. That's authoritarian, although obviously flawed.
>Why do you think he refused?
For the republic.
>>796003
I don't and i won't pretend I do. I see you're laying the burden of proof on me.
It doesn't matter if socrates was a real person or not, scholars of searched and searched and in the end it makes no difference.
>>796040
>Socrates tries to argue he did nothing wrong. He has respect for the law but initially doesn't believe he violated it
So 'doing nothing wrong' (doing no harm) is the same as 'not violating the law' for Socrates?
>He accepts his conviction while honorably defending his integrity and morality.
>Uhh what? I doubt Plato actually thought of his surroundings as totalitarian
Really, not much about his behavior in the Apology is honorable. He's grasping at straws the entire time and hoping the jury buys his claims about a god telling him to cause trouble around Athens. They don't buy it.
>In plato's eyes the courts and justice system were a representation of the common moral values of all citizens
Could you provide some evidence to support this claim?
>For the republic.
What republic are you talking about?
>>796058
> Anonymous 03/06/16(Sun)15:45:12 No.796058 ▶
>>796003 (You)
I don't and i won't pretend I do. I see you're laying the burden of proof on me.
It doesn't matter if socrates was a real person or not, scholars of searched and searched and in the end it makes no difference.
...that isn't my point, my point is that a basic question in Plato scholarship regards the difficulty of figuring out the relationship between Plato's and Socrates' philosophies. I just want you to back up your claims. I don't need you to prove Socrates existed. I see no great reason to doubt he did.
Excuse me guys it's been years since i've read plato's complete works and after this i will probably have to reread them. I'm surely making some errors here.
>>796062
>So 'doing nothing wrong' (doing no harm) is the same as 'not violating the law' for Socrates?
That's the moral dilemma, that is the major question implied throughout the saga of Socrates. Socrates says he was simply educating people and making them question things. The courts say he was corrupting athenian youth. Socrates accepts his conviction for the greater good. Make of that what you want.
>Really, not much about his behavior in the Apology is honorable. He's grasping at straws the entire time and hoping the jury buys his claims about a god telling him to cause trouble around Athens. They don't buy it.
Correct. He appeals to everything but logic. He broke the law, he's asking to be excused.
>Could you provide some evidence to support this claim?
I'm sorry that's too much work. I'm not being a very good conversationalist i know.
>What republic are you talking about?
I meant to uphold the integrity of the law.
I'm grasping at really old memories of plato's work here. It's been about 8 years since i've read them in their entirety, Please excuse my vagueness i know i'm not being productive because i'm not citing my opinions within text.
>>796112
>That's the moral dilemma, that is the major question implied throughout the saga of Socrates.
Why do you think this? Because it seems like you're telling me that Socrates, an honorable and virtuous man who lived up to his own standards of honor and virtue, believed that violating the law was the same as doing harm. He also believed that not doing harm was a moral goal people should strive after above all others. And yet you want me to accept that this Platocrates you believe in was willing to defend his actions (which you say were honorable and virtuous even though they went against the laws of Socrates' state) even though he knew he had violated the law and thought that violating the law was wrong and dishonorable? I don't think this is a coherent position.
You really should reread those dialogues.
>>796129
I will reread my plato this week because i'm failing to illustrate my thoughts.
But the answer is yes. It was a major moral dilemma and your post actually explains why I think plato created socrates.
It's because reality isn't binary, men are fallible. Someone with strong integrity and an agreeable moral compass can fuck up. In court it is Boolean; innocent, guilty; true false. In reality however it isn't. There's an ambiguity to in Socrates, there's a moral dilemma.
They teach law students Plato for this reason I think. Excuse my ramblings i need to reread plato
>>796168
>created
Hol' up.
So you're telling me you actually think Socrates is a fiction?
Yeah, now you're going to have to do more than provide textual evidence. I want you to explain why you don't think Socrates was a real person, and I want you to actually provide scholarly sources to back it up.
>Someone with strong integrity and an agreeable moral compass can fuck up
I actually don't think this is the point at all. I think Socrates was much less of a legalist than you interpret him to be. It seems to me that he didn't blindly accept execution just because a legal body told him to die. He had more nuanced reasons than legalism, which is probably the least commendable ethical stance I can think of. The punishment certainly doesn't seem to match the crime in his case.
>Oh man, this guy sure is annoying--let's execute him with an overzealous interpretation of primitive libel laws and trumped up charges of atheism
Socrates cared about the people of Athens, not the laws they followed. He cared about the laws only insofar as they maintained social order. The law =/= Justice.
>>796168
>I think plato created socrates
but socrates appeared in plenty of other people's work, even works prior to plato's
>>796322
Not him, but I think he meant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clouds
>The play also, however, remains notorious for its caricature of Socrates, and is mentioned in Plato's Apology as a contributor to the philosopher's trial and execution.
Also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pupils_of_Socrates
I so rarely get a chance to post this in a relevant thread.
>>793138
Nonexistent.
>lol what is the form of emptiness XD XD
He had some good things to say about simple living and humility, and he was a funny guy, but he wasn't a mastermind.
>>793185
nietzche was a massive fag
>>793330
>Socrate's opponent's are pathetic straw-men that concede at the first rebuttal of Socrates.
lol no Thrasymachus never folded on his concept of Justice and Socrates never definitively schooled him either, just worked off the assumption that Thrasymachus' idea seeming wrong is reason enough to continue the discussion on the opposite assumption.
>>795818
Got it, feet tell the head what to do.
>>796112
>He broke the law, he's asking to be excused.
Nah he actually asked Athens to pay him for the trouble, the absolute madman. And then they decide to kill him.
He explains in Crito why his conception of Duty and citizenship does not permit him to unlawfully escape the punishment legislated by his equals.
>>796322
Someone else has already pointed to Aristophanes's writings, but there's also (at least) Xenophon and Aeschines, both of whom wrote Socratic dialogues.
>>793130
Learning is totally unintelligible- it's a revealing of what is already there but if that is the case why is all knowledge not analytic, also the existence of objective truth is required but not established
>>796696
>Nah he actually asked Athens to pay him for the trouble, the absolute madman.
More than that, he asked to be housed in a section of the city reserved for great soldiers and statesmen as he was doing Athens such a service. I've always read it as he knew he was going to die so he was just trolling them by that point
>>800493
It's related to his theory about the state/community. According to Crito every citizen owes a life dept to the state/community since it raised them and so when the state sentences them to death the descion must be accepted.
He makes a compromise between his reputation and his subserviance to the state by first proving he is innocent and every charge against him is false. Than he pissess of the jurry so he dies anyway.
At least that's how Plato portrays it, and Plato really doesn't seem trustworthy. He basically turns Socrates into a proto-type for Jesus and all his opponents into straw men.
>ctrl f
>no third man argument
>>802568
>He basically turns Socrates into a proto-type for Jesus and all his opponents into straw men.
I'll give you that Socrates is in a sense a prototype for Jesus, but that could only be because God inspired Plato, not because Plato was trying to found Christianity.
The second half of this sentence is false. You're reading Plato wrong if you actually think that every word out of Socrates' mouth is meant to be true.
>>802581
Plato didn't intend to found Christianity, he had no idea that hundreds of years later his ideas would be borrowed by a radical Jewish sect.
The emphasis on 'the good' as the ultimate goal, the supreme God who is synonymous with good itself, the marytr didn't-do-nuffin of Socrates, Plato's influence on Christianity is comparable to Jesus's (although Paul is arguable more importaint than either of them because of how much he changed the religion).
>You're reading Plato wrong if you actually think that every word out of Socrates' mouth is meant to be true.
Plato wants us to believe this is a representation of what really happened. Obviously it's not a word for word copy, for one thing Socrate's apology speech would take 3 hours to recite orally. But Plato wants us to believe the general themes of Socrates being innocent, his accusers being misguided and foolish, and Socrates being genuinely a lover of the 'good' to be true.
I believe everything about Plato's world is a lie. Socrates was his friend, Plato was an optimist, and so this is reflected in his writing. The general understanding by the rest of society was that Socrates was a corrupting agent and was in fact a type of sophist himself. Aristophane's play being very popular with the public confirms this.
>>802692
>I believe everything about Plato's world is a lie.
Do you have evidence? Again, I think you're just misreading him.
>what really happened
You're specifically tallking about the Apology and the death cycle here, right? What about the Parmenides, where Parmenides makes Socrates look like a fool? Or do you claim that the Parmenides is meant to be nothing but an accurate account of an encounter between the young Socrates and two of his idols?
>If you disagree with Plato you're just misreading him
This is the Form of Shitposting.
>>802717
Did read the fucking post. If you want to beleive that Plato's understanding of Socrates is the most accurate one than it is up to YOU to provide a reason for it.
It's clear most of his peers thought he was cancer. If you actually read my post you will see I gave the reasoning for this.
>>802741
>disagree
If you think Socrates is literally a mouthpiece for Plato to BTFO other philosophers with, you're misreading Plato.
If you think Socrates is literally such a mouthpiece and you don't feel like making an argument to support your view, why are you posting in a Plato thread?
>>802746
>Plato's understanding of Socrates is the most accurate one
That isn't anything like what I said. My claim is that Plato used the dialogue form as a whole, and not just Socrates, to examine the ideas of other philosophers. Honestly, I don't care about how accurate the dialogues are, and I don't think they're useful as historical documents. Yes, he was memorializing his mentor in some of the dialogues, but this is no reason to think that Socrates is always a mouthpiece for Platonism.
>>802692
>>You're reading Plato wrong if you actually think that every word out of Socrates' mouth is meant to be true.
>Plato wants us to believe this is a representation of what really happened.
Dude, I really have never had that impression- especially as in Ion especially Socrates is vastly different from in the Republic. I think the early dialogues were indeed some representation of Socrates but the entire structure of Elenchus starts to change by about halfway through, Plato begins to use Socrates as a mouthpiece- in the same way we have Shakespeare using the fool in King Lear.
>>796676
Try setting up the roof before anything else.
>>805117
>in the same way we have Shakespeare using the fool in King Lear.
Jumping into this thread just now, I'm not so sure that helps to make your point? Isn't the difficulty still plainly that, whatever the scholars might say, there's noting in the text to overtly alert you that "yep, this is Shakespeare's mouthpiece"?
Now, that seems different in Plato, but even then, the matter is made more obscure by the fact that Socrates is ironical (dissembling), such that his supposed "lecturing" in the Republic kinda ignores how often Glaucon and Adeimantus dictate the terms of the discussion, and why he might be speaking to them (who he seems to know better than Ion, for example) in the way he does as compared with Ion.
