What is the esoteric hidden meaning behind Plato's Republic.
 Thalidomide Vintage Ad Shirt $22.14 |
 Nothing Ever Happens Shirt $21.68 |
Thalidomide Vintage Ad Shirt $22.14 |
What is the esoteric hidden meaning behind Plato's Republic.
What is the esoteric hidden meaning behind Plato's Republic.
Thalidomide Vintage Ad Shirt $22.14 |
Nothing Ever Happens Shirt $21.68 |
Thalidomide Vintage Ad Shirt $22.14 |
it's a subtle hint to clean your room
You're a serf and I want to rule you.
plato's republic demonstrates the value and folly of logic. plato is able to effectively dismantle other peoples arguments using logic but when he tries to use these tactics to construct his own argument he ends up with a house of cards built on faulty assumptions.
This guy gets it. The perfect soul is as achievable as the perfect society which ends up being a totalitarian nightmare by the end of the book.
how did plato restrain himself by ending the book with
>Wait...never mind.
Just stay in the cave bro
The idyll or utopia of the Republic is not the imaginary society they create or its rules, but the conversation itself. A gathering of friends that respect each others perspectives, who don't try to derail the debate into quick gotchas, and share interesting ideas and anecdotes.
Plato's writing style is generally not considered esoteric in the sense of deliberately hiding or obscuring meanings to be understood only by a select few. However, there is a long-standing debate among scholars about whether Plato employed esoteric writing techniques. Some scholars and interpreters argue that Plato did use esotericism, suggesting that he concealed deeper, hidden meanings within his texts that were intended for a more select or initiated audience. Proponents of this view point to various elements in Plato's dialogues, such as the use of allegory, symbolism, and the apparent presence of unwritten doctrines. They argue that Plato may have used these devices to communicate certain ideas selectively or to protect sensitive teachings. On the other hand, many scholars reject the idea of Plato as an esoteric writer. They argue that the dialogues can be understood on their surface level and that any perceived complexity or hidden meanings arise from the nature of philosophical inquiry and the intricacies of the topics discussed rather than a deliberate attempt to obscure. The debate over whether Plato used esoteric writing techniques remains ongoing, and different scholars have different perspectives on this matter. As with many aspects of ancient philosophy, definitive conclusions are often challenging to reach due to the limited historical evidence available.
chatgpt post
>not generally considered esoteric
Socrates: It is not better, son of Alexidemus, but I am convinced that the other is, and I think you would agree, if you did not have to go away before the mysteries as you told me yesterday, but could remain and be initiated.
Meno: I would stay, Socrates, if you could tell me many things like these.
Socrates: I shall certainly not be lacking in eagerness to tell you such things, both for your sake and my own, but I may not be able to tell you many...
he did not present his own arguments in the demonstrative form but that of others in an easier medium (conversation) therefore esoteric. no need to get GPT to think for you but you are probably a moron.
By this logic, any author of fiction engages in esoteric writing.
Stop using ChatGPT you fricking moron.
Yeah... these human posts are the real deal, guys.
ChatGPT is the real esotericism.
EROS. Despite his teacher, he remained at his core Heraclitan. Nous: Cit [Egyptian]: Citta [Pali]. "Prometheus is the First Mask of Dionysus." Artemis-Hekate correspondence, Zeus/Apollo/Pan-Lycaeus [Wolven], Artemis [Ursine] shape shifting. Metis-Leto's son - brother to Athena -was not Achilles, rather ... recall Apollo sends Herakles to free Prometheus after asking Zeus to free him ... Ouranos-Osirus' member ensures there is still Free Will in the world.
Tubingen & Milan schools' taking the unwritten doctrine accounts at face value and attempting to sus them out was unduly sidelined by the outcome of the last World War and Anglo bimbofication of the non-Empiricist tradition(s). Strauss and his acolytes are less than ideal candidates for pursuing it.
Ok Jorjani
nailed it
What do you guys think about the part in the ending about reincarnation? I never quite understood it. The idea that being just gives you rewards in your next life (and punishment if you dont) seems to be in contradiction with the previous idea of justice being a good in itself
Because it’s Socrates acknowledging subtly that he is full of shit so he makes up the myth of er to scare him.
Kys
homies be wilding out
Just fyi, Mr mutt man jorjani isn't esoteric.
aristocracy = good
that's it
Plato was a disgusting authoritarian scumbag, akin to George Soros or Klaus Schwab, who want to social engineer based on their own subjective view of "what should be done." People like this need to be rounded up and swiftly dealt with before they can inflict further damage on humanity. Karl Popper was unironically right about everything.
Yeah, no, get out.
You showed with, your post, that you didn't even understand plato, if you are saying that karl popper was right about everything.
You are a moron.
I'm not wrong though. Any philosopher that bases their philosophy on ethics or "Here is what I think is the correct way to live" is almost always moronic or even worse, evil. Stop being childish and read the analytics, it's big boy philosophy. Essentially all philosophy before 1880 is illegitimate, except for maybe Plotinus and Hume.
You calling a thinker, like plato, "evil" is what's actually childish, moron.
Explain how having the state rip your child away from you at birth is somehow not objectively evil.
Reductive statement.
You know that's not what plato meant with that.
>writing a work of utopian political world building
>h-he didn't mean that literally, it's just a metaphor
But he meant it in a utopian way, and you are intentionally misinterpretating him as "evil", that's what i don't get.
But that's the issue with all of ethical philosophy and only leads to problems. It's the idea that one person gets to speculate on what the utopia should entail based on their subjective view of the world.
If I was a great philosopher and said that one of the rules in my utopia is that every morning, every citizen must get at the crack of dawn and crow like a rooster, you understandably and quite logically would think I am insane and tell me to frick off. But when Plato, a "great philosopher," says something equally moronic, the thought somehow shifts into becoming something deep, mystical and profound.
You guys really need to get beyond this cult of personality worship. Philosophers are the biggest fricking losers of all time, and unless their day job was a mathematician or scientist, their philosophy can go directly into the trash can. They're all just armchair daydreamers and "idea men" and have only contributed more pain and suffering to humanity than otherwise was there to begin with. Nothing good has ever come from some guy "getting an idea." This revelation is what made me stop giving a shit about philosophy and the humanities and shift to STEM.
so how should we live?
The whole question of ethics and "how to live" is intrinsically tied to politics, no matter how much people try to divorce the two. Ethics only makes sense in a political context of a society. In a utopia, a true utopia, governments would almost certainly be obsolete, and the need for rules would disappear. When humanity returns to the state of nature and small communes or city-states (which it will), the idea of ethics and how to live will be obsolete. If you are living in a small clan or tribe that you identify with ideologically, there is no need for a centralized authority figure to coerce you into following the rules, because you already agree with what your "nation" is doing, and thus would have no need of the iron fist of rules. This is true utopian thinking, and it is far more natural than whatever "you vill eat ze bugs" nonsense Plato can come up with.
Your answer is dumber than I thought it could have been.
>But when Plato, a "great philosopher," says something equally moronic, the thought somehow shifts into becoming something deep, mystical and profound.
Source:
you.
You just did what you clearly claimed plato did.
No dude, you don't get it. That anon is clearly smarter than Platon therefore we should take him at his word.
What is my contradiction in your eyes?
You did the same as plato was (acording to you) bad for doing.
Thank you for providing examples.
>When humanity returns to the state of nature and small communes or city-states (which it will), the idea of ethics and how to live will be obsolete. If you are living in a small clan or tribe that you identify with ideologically, there is no need for a centralized authority figure to coerce you into following the rules, because you already agree with what your "nation" is doing, and thus would have no need of the iron fist of rules. This is true utopian thinking,
Did you get this with evidence or with your subjective experiences?
That's all so self-evidently true, I shouldn't even have to explain it, and the fact that you don't see it as obvious only shows that the average person has been brainrotted so hard into believing they need daddy government, otherwise the world would be a post-apocalyptic hellscape with it.
There is nothing natural about government. It's a brief experiment done by a species called humans and it's been around for a few thousand years, but it's a blip on the biological timeline. People just have it so engrained into thinking that it is "natural" because it's been around for so long, but it's all artificial, it's made up, it's coercive, it's illegitimate. Their is almost zero incentive for people to engage in it and while engaging in it, there is almost zero benefit obtained from it. The mere fact that proves I'm right is the existence of rules. If government and the current make up of society was preferable to the average person, laws, rules and ethics would not exist. These are the norms in place to make sure you are a good citizen and play by the rules. All conflict and tension you see is a result of people subconsciously (or consciously in some cases) knowing that the rules do not conform to their natural biological needs as a human.
This logic is different from Plato because he is dictating how you should live in the context of an unnatural bureaucratic government, and I am simply stating how people WOULD live if that shit didn't exist. So there's no contradiction there.
I can easily elaborate on this further, but that should suffice. And if it doesn't, I don't know what to tell you. I have no interest in proving myself to 18 year olds who just got into philosophy yesterday and are only reading it so they can get to Nietzsche. You all worship the authority of the past and can't think for yourself, and if you are still in that mindset of thinking that other people have more profound thoughts than your own subjective thoughts, then you will forever be spiritually buckbroken and demoralized. This revelation that your thoughts matter and are important is what de-legitimizes all other peoples' utopian visions, and what causes the facade of hierarchical thinking to crumble, and when people realize this most profound insight about people, that everyones' thoughts simultaneously both matter and don't matter at the same time, only then can we reach the next stage of humanity. Until then, we are just bickering apes in suits fooling each other that we are engaging in "civilization."
You actually think humanity can survive without states, laws, and governments???
And, live in pure anarchy??
And you call that "utopia"??
And you say plato was bad, when he was more reasonable than whatever the hell you are proposing here???
Man, you are more deluded than i thought you were...
>That's all so self-evidently true
If it was so self-evidently true, then why didn't plato, write that instead of what he wrote???
It's probably because it's actually not "self-evidently true" and you are a deluded man, with a big ego and a moronic idea.
>>When humanity returns to the state of nature and small communes or city-states (which it will), the idea of ethics and how to live will be obsolete.
Since you're speaking of a "return", then whence came "the idea of ethics"? How would this not result in a cycle of return to nature -> civic ethics -> return to nature etc.? Further, we have lots of good information on ancient city states and their reliance on laws. Does empirical evidence not partly refute this "self-evidently true" proposition?
>If you are living in a small clan or tribe that you identify with ideologically, there is no need for a centralized authority figure to coerce you into following the rules, because you already agree with what your "nation" is doing, and thus would have no need of the iron fist of rules.
Okay, and how do you settle on the proper size of a clan or tribe? If clan = family, is not the father or elder the "central authority figure"? How well does such a clan or tribe live, which brings me to ask the corollary question: why did clans/tribes merge into cities? (This is in fact answered in bk. 2 of the Republic)
>This is true utopian thinking,
Maybe in the original sense of "no-place" (ou-topos).
Didn't mean to address
, but
Also your whole response was formed by your own subjective experiences, you are clearly dictating everyone else should follow.
You are doing the same thing as you said plato was bad for doing, and you don't even realize.
Lol.
I'm not though. I would be happy to address any problem you have with my logic.
>STEM
You lost me there.
It's clear that you don't respect, what philosophers have given you, so you can live in the modern world we live.
Your incistence, on calling plato "evil" says more about you, than it says about plato.
You don't actually disagree with the thrust of Plato's belief, that knowledge of what's good and bad should direct life, since that's the only ground on which you can even reject Plato. If you in fact actually took moral/ethical subjectivism seriously, then it would be a matter of either indifference to you what anyone does, since no one's actions would be anything but subjectively better or worse than anyone else's, or you would have an existential breakdown out of uncertainty. But you want to dictate a moral standard for everyone, hence you're not any different than Plato in that respect. (He just has better reasoning about why.)
Open society, free thought, and democracy are so counter to human flourishing that humans can't even breed new generations any longer. Even importing third worlders to western democracies doesn't work because they stop having kids within one generation of encountering our toxic civilization.
I agree, democracy is on the other end of the moronation spectrum. I never said Popper was right in that regard, but his analysis of Plato's faults is spot on.
Reading the Republic as a psychological allegory is one very interesting lens. Early in the Republic, we have Plato’s tripartite division of the soul: the appetitive/bodily, the emotional, and the intellectual parts of the soul, or aspects of the human being. In Plato’s definition of the just man, or what justice is, he defines it as the intellectual/reasoning/logical part of the soul ruling over and properly dictating the appetitive and emotional (emotional == also sometimes translated as “spirited”) parts of the soul. He likens this to the ideal state in which his ideal caste system is fully and properly functioning: the intellectual class (philosopher-kings, analogous to Brahmins) properly ruling over the military caste and caste of ordinary citizens (likened to the emotional and bodily/appetitive aspects of the soul respectively).
Justice is also put as the harmony of all these parts, whereas injustice is a disharmony between these aspects — them warring with each other, having different desires which pull the soul in different directions, the bodily/appetitive or emotional centers overriding the intellect, and so forth. Discord instead of concord.
So to become a “just man” is to undergo a sort of spiritual self-disciplining, moving from a chaotic internal plurality of the different parts of one’s soul tugging one in different directions, to something like an ideal philosopher-king-ruled benevolent despotism where the intellect reigns supreme and properly guides the emotions and appetitive body. You can also clearly see the analogies to different political systems he touches on and discards to this spiritual-psychological allegory — democracy could be the body and emotions overruling the intellect since they form the “2/3rds majority”, and other systems like anarchy, tyranny, oligarchy, etc., all possibly analogous to the state of the soul in discord.
This allegory of state = soul is also strangely present in other early foundational philosophical and religious systems. The caste system enjoined in the Bhagavad Gita, for instance, could also be read as an internal spiritual allegory regarding the causal, subtle, and physical bodies of the human being — which strangely match up almost perfectly with Plato’s tripartite division of the soul. (The causal body as the deeper inner intellect, the subtle body as the seat of emotions, imagination, and dreaming, and the physical body as the physical body). Pretty similarly to the Republic, the Bhagavad Gita has Krishna saying he has enjoined a caste of Brahmins (intellectuals and priests like Plato’s philosopher-kings) ruling over the Kshatriyas (warrior class) and Vaishyas and Shudras (merchant/agricultural caste and lower-class peasant bulk of the population, who for convenience’s sake can be lumped into one and as representing the “bodily-appetitive” class).
The Bhagavad Gita and Hindu exegesis make pretty clear that a spiritual/psychological/internal allegorical reading is another entirely way of reading such texts, even while the literal interpretation of them can still hold (working on multiple levels, like Christian scriptures have been held to be interpretable). E.g. Arjuna’s involvement in the war has also been interpreted by some as simultaneously standing as an allegory of the “internal war”, internal struggle, conflict within oneself, the fight for self-mastery, the fight between good and evil within oneself.
Of course, Plato’s allegory of the chariot, charioteer and horse(s) for the tripartite soul (in the Phaedrus, not the Republic) also strangely shows up in almost exactly similar form in the Katha Upanishad, inspiring similar allegories in the Bhagavad Gita and in the Dhammapada of Buddha.
>He who has the understanding of the driver of the chariot and controls the rein of his mind, he reaches the end of the journey, that supreme abode of the all–pervading
—Katha Upanishad 1.3.10–1
There’s an implication, for one, from one angle, that what we take to be “singular and unified” in ourselves is not actually so — our very own soul, self, personhood or consciousness is split up into different, potentially warring parts in the unregenerate state of the average human being who has not progressed the path towards Sophia, Wisdom, or love of Her. Yet there’s implied to be a sort of initiation or spiritual journey possible which makes one into the “just man” of Plato, who has become one and self-controlled from the former state of multiplicity and internal discord.
It’s a somewhat different attitude and orientation from Plato, but the Tao Te Ching’s ideal ruler as one who “leads without leading” (in a way in which the subjects hardly notice their king) also is clearly analogous to the Taoist’s ideal enlightened sage having mastered wu wei (non-doing) or wei wu wei (doing-without-doing). The ruler’s dominion over the state is plausibly being likened to the ideal man’s ruling of themselves. In a way, it’s a pretty simple analogy: political leadership being likened to self-rulership.
You can even see this type of allegory in the Gospels, with parables as of the master who’s gone away on a journey, delegated authority to the steward, and of the servants, or of servants waiting for their master in general. This framework shows up in several parables, whether with happy endings of the servants (or at least one of the faithful ones) having prepared everything properly for their master and being rewarded, or having become intemperate and being punished upon return. The obvious theological reading is of the temporarily absent master as God the Father/Christ Himself, the steward perhaps as the “stewards of religion” (priests/clergy, apostles, scholars, etc.) and the servants as humanity at large, and the parables suggesting an apocalyptic conclusion in which the “Master” (God) will return and judge everyone accordingly. But there’s also just as clear of a possibility of a psychological/spiritual/internal allegorical reading I hope you can get by now, of a Higher Self/lower-aspects-of-the-self thingy going on here. (Please excuse my awful sentence structures and rambling style here, too lazy to polish this up.)
Such a psychological/internal allegorical reading need not contradict or supplant the more literal or exoteric meanings present, but can work with them. For instance, in a popular form of Christian hermeneutics, dating back to early Christian theologians and Biblical commentators, there are held to be four senses possible of Scripture (which work with each other instead of supplanting or contradicting each other): the literal, typological, tropological, and anagogical (sometimes also put as literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical), which itself seems to have been influenced by Neoplatonists and the different readings they saw possible of numerous texts from Homer to Plato.
There’s almost a Hermetic ethos here. “As above, so below.”