I've been unsure where to put this thread so it's going here now, arbitrarily. For a long while I've been wanting to make a start in studying philosophy in my own time, of which I have a lot, so I might as well be learning something! I've received numerous rec's to start with Plato's The Republic so I'm using this translation of it. (Thanks Project Gutenberg) I'm a total beginner, other than having a background in literary and cultural studies and what I've put together via osmosis from my partners and my own personal life philosophy. This thread was prompted by me feeling stupid and small in a conversation with someone who was kind of elitist about things in a discord server I'm on and spite as always is a powerful motivator for self-improvement! The rough structure is going to be that I make my way through a text, usually one chapter at a time unless I get utterly enthralled, and make comments on what I'm reading so I can formulate lasting opinions on it! I guess in a way this is therefore a liveblog thread. Reading along and also commenting is super encouraged! I love talking to people and learning! I love seeing other perspectives on the same material! In the spirit of "I was annoyed about elitism" I'm also going to be trying to keep any academic jargon of my own to an absolute minimum! If I do end up dropping any I'll include a definition for it.
The Introduction or Case In Point Of Why I'm Doing This Actually So the first thing I'm struck by is that whoever has put together this introduction really could have stood to enjoy the sound of their own voice a little less. A consistent problem in academic writing and especially the humanities is how smug a lot of people sound. There's nothing wrong with short sentences, ya'll. Like. Look, I'm guilty of it. I have a lot of run-on sentences, I relentlessly abuse commas. But. I'm gonna try to read this out loud and see where I run out of breath. Circle. I ran out of breath at circle. This isn't a sentence it's a goddamn paragraph. It's incredibly dense and hard to read and near insufferably smug. And also. I'm too Homestuck for this. I've also had to set up a dedicated tab just for fuckin' defining words because the intro is so dense. I know a lot of words! I used to read dictionaries for entertainment in schools! Academia is an incestuous, elitist hellscape! In case anyone else is having trouble here too: concupiscent - lustful, pertaining to sexual desire irascible - having or showing a tendency to be easily angered So basically that little snippet is saying that Plato was the first person to divide the mind into the following sections: Logical, Angery, Horney,,, SIGHS syllogism - - an instance of a form of reasoning in which a conclusion is drawn from two given or assumed propositions (premises); a common or middle term is present in the two premises but not in the conclusion, which may be invalid (e.g. all dogs are animals; all animals have four legs; therefore all dogs have four legs). - deductive reasoning as distinct from induction DEEPER SIGHS induction (different from the normal def. of this word apparently) - - Induction is a specific form of reasoning in which the premises of an argument support a conclusion, but do not ensure it. Squints. Okay I think I follow that. I also think that I'm already on Plato's side here vs Aristotle 'cause syllogisms seem very shallow and reductive and oh sweet jesus I scrolled down and the introduction is. An unholy amount of words okay. I am unsure if I should bother reading through it all or not and if I should just skip to the thing I'm actually here for. Opinions on this welcome.
Fuck The Introduction, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Just Get To Plato Typically I would expect an introduction to...introduce the text. Offer some of the author's own thoughts, supplementary readings. I'mma just slam all of that text into the browser version of the Hemmingway editor...aaaaand oh my sweet jesus yes okay we're skipping this. Sweet jesus why. This is why people are scared to try and learn things oh my god hire an editor. I'm sure there's a lot of very important information there but it took me nearly a minute to scroll back up to copy and paste to check the word count. Good lord. I'm a speed reader even and just. No, actually. So instead, this is set aside. Maybe at the end of this journey I can go back and, try, to make my way through this but over half that word count is hard-or-worse to read so probably not. DRAMATIS PERSONAE OR: WHOMST THE FUCK ...Blinks. Socrates died in 399BC Plato was born in 427BC Is. Is The Republic a fanfiction? Oh my god I think it is. Oh my god. WIKIPEDIA HELP ME OUT WAIT WHAT OKAY SURE LETS SEE WHAT THIS IS ABOUT THE- I CAN'T BELIEVE NOBODY TOLD ME THAT THE REPUBLIC IS PLATO'S SLICE OF LIFE FANFICTION ABOUT SOCRATES.
I'm gonna adjust some formatting to modern standards just so it's easier to tell who is talking when I remember. I'm goin' through this chunk by chunk. This is not gonna be a small thread friends. Okay so this fanfic starts in the middle of an event and assumes we already know the canon and characters. I super do not and am also unsure if any of them are real or if they're Plato's OC's. I also forgot how BCE works and had to refresh myself. The closer the number is to 0, the more modern it is. Plato was Socrates' student, which makes this actually funnier to me. TIME TO CHECK AND SUBMIT AN AMENDED DRAMATIS PERSONAE FOR MY OWN REFERENCE! GOD.
I appreciate that The Republic opens with Socrates and Plato's big bro going down to check out a festival and offer a prayer to Not!Artemis and then being intercepted by Plato's other big bro, a philisopher with a perhaps mythical parent, and some mooks for some Cheeky Banter which on third reading I'm parsing roughly as: "DUDE SUP so glad you could make it but I heard you were leaving already and you didn't even come visit. The hell." "Yeah sorry we kinda want to head home." "BITCH you're not going anywhere and if you try we're going to nougie the shit out of you." (Not an idle threat either as philosophers tended to be fuckin ripped. "Can we use our words like reasonable adults I just want to go home." "NO. Can you make me listen if I don't wanna?" "No." "Then I don't wanna. Also, there's a sick event happening later and leaving before you see it would be stupid." "Oh damn that sounds pretty cool." "YUP. AND there'll be ANOTHER sick event happening even later and then academic chat so basically baby it's cold outside and I know you wanna see the horses socrates don't even try to pretend you don't wanna see the horses." "UGH FINE" says Glaucas and "FUCK YEAH" says Socrates.
"SOCRATES YOU NEVER VISIT. WHY DO YOU NEVER VISIT, YOU KNOW MY BONES HURT. I HAVE CUSHIONS OUT AND EVERYTHING AND COOL HIP YOUNG MEN TO CHAT WITH." "Dude, for sure. Talking to old people is rad, what's it like to be old? Does it get harder or what?" "WELL MY GUY at the bingo meeting with my bro's I'll tell you it's really more of a stitch and bitch. Everyone complains about their bones, kids these days, their relatives, and how everything bad that happens is because they're old. But I don't feel like that and neither did Sophocles. Being old is cool as hell. You don't have to worry so much, you aren't horny anymore, and god being free from hormones helps a lot. Those guys at bingo who are bitching are just bitter because they have anger issues and are mad that they aren't horny anymore. In the future men like them will be the primary consumers of Viagra." "Sounds fake but okay. Are you sure you're not just chill because you're rich?" "Okay look that's a little right but there's more too it than that. If the people who say that swapped positions with me nobody would be happy and honestly if you're unhappy and old you're probably a bad person but it must suck to be old and poor honestly." "...Cool, cool, hey did you earn your money or are you a trust fund kid?" "I EARNED MY MONEY WITH A HUMBLE LOAN OF FIFTEEN THOUSAND DRACHMA FROM MY FATHER WHO SQUANDERED THE WEALTH OF MY GRANDFATHER AND NOW I'VE CLAWED MY WAY BACK UP TO BEING BETWEEN THEM. I SHALL LEAVE LIKE TWENTY THOUSAND TO MY SONS." "Uh huh okay, I asked because you talk like a trust fund kid and they are absolutely insufferable." "Okay fair." (ETA: I really had trouble following what the heck Ceph was talking about with that weird anecdote but I think I've narrowed it down and amended to fit)
"Okay sure, so. What do you think is the best thing your wealth has given you then?" "Look dude. When you get old, a lot of time is spent thinking about the fact that you're getting old and you start to worry about Death and What Happens Next. And if you've been a prick, you're going to worry about death much more often. But being rich and a good dude, I don't have to worry about death, I'm not going to a Grecian hell analogue. I don't lie, I pay my debts, I can bribe the gods. So I have hope that between all those things, when I die I'm going to be fine, and that's a pretty good thing about being rich." "Isn't there more to being a good person than that though? And that's a simplistic view of justice, dude. There are exceptions. If my friend gives me a sword and then comes to me clearly flipping his shit, I really don't think I should give his sword back even though I owe him the debt of friendship. Am I right?" "Yeah that seems legit." "So there's more to justice and being a good person than just not lying and paying your debts then." "Yeah dad, Socrates is right according to Simon," Polemarchus chimes in, prompting me to google who Simonides is. Simon was a poet and contemporary bitter rival of Pindar, the guy Pole's dad cited, apparently. Haha owned, Cephalus. "God. Look, I have to go now suddenly. Sacrifices, you understand. Keep arguing with my son and his friends instead of me." "Isn't your son your heir? Is he gonna keep up the same line of argument 'cause it seems like he has a different vi-" "YEP YOU KNOW IT LMAO ANYWAY SACRIFICES CANT KEEP THE GODS WAITING HAVE FUN."
Oh man, Plato. There are definitely some Ideas in Republic, but there is also a lot of garbage, and a lot of stuffing. Good luck with the slog. I tend not to think that the writings of original thinkers tend to be the thing to read first because the people who come up with the ideas often don't know the best way to present or interpret them. Especially as cultural context changes, which in turn changes the meanings of words and how we react to various styles and presentations. And it's not like in art or literature where the particular presentation is part of what is being communicated; the ideas should survive a bit of rewording and cleaning up. But it seems that whoever wrote that introduction is also pretty bad. First impression: don't worry about the introduction.
My experience with introductions by people who aren't the author is that they're always pretty bad. It's even put me off reading the book itself a few times.
GOD okay I kinda love Plato's Socrates a lot. Whether I love actual Socrates or not will depend on how I feel after eventually reading some of *his* stuff. But Plato's Socrates is a sass elemental. I'm here for this Philosophy With Plot. GOD "Well my good bitch as your father has left you here with me, what did the bitter rival of the dude your dear old dad cited have to say about justice and why do you think he's right?" "Paying your debts is just, I think that's correct." "What about the sword situation? Surely Simon wouldn't think I should return a gun sword to the person who gave it to me when they're losing their shit? Even though being loaned the gun sword is a debt?" "Yep." "So I should never give my friend a lethal weapon when they're not doing too hot?" "Yep." "You have activated my trap card." God I could go through all of this but it's like. This whole exchange, is basically Socrates doing what I do to challenge my own cognitive distortions by JAQ'ing off at the poor dude whose father left him to have the discussion when he realized this is where it was going Po: "I believe THIS!" Socrates: "BUT WHY THO."
"corn" actually used to be a general word for grain, which then became mostly used for maize because that's what Americans were mostly growing.
My copy translates the corn thing just as “farming.” (I have the C.D.C. Reeve translation, which is very lucid and has a pretty good introduction. What do you have?) The thing about Plato people don’t mention is that if you can get your head around things (and you don’t have an awful translation), he’s actually an amazing prose stylist and he has some really funny and beautiful turns of phrase. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed reading him tbh. (The fact of this is gonna be really amusing in the context of some things he makes Socrates say later but I won’t spoil you) I read the Republic for ethics class earlier this semester so maybe I’ll give it a second pass and read along
You know at this point, like, these are all very good thoughts and I'm delighted by them, but also god if this is how Socrates handled recreational conversation I understand so much now. I'm just like. Was Socrates autistic. 'Cause I can see how this would all look like he's JAQ'ing off at this guy but I'm also like. This would explain so much. Also I'm using the B. Jowett translation from Project Gutenberg!
