This is a viewpoint that Plato is dedicated to challenge. Man is not the measure of all things. Truth is different from mere appearance. Beauty (and justice etc) do exist "by themselves" quite independently of our mere opinions. We can apprehend beauty (justice etc) by exercise of the intellect. Poetry and myth are not enough.

He believed all that and at the same time was one of the most poetic and mythically inclined philosophers of all time. Quite a contradiction. — Cuthbert

A paradox rather than a contradiction, perhaps. A paradox arises when the same thing is seen from different perspectives, and thus is different to a contradiction, although due to the difficulties in the subject matter, it might be difficult to differentiate them.

It appears that the world is to be 'seen' by thought alone. — Amity

I think the key word is 'nous' -

Nous sometimes equated to intellect or intelligence, is a term from classical philosophy for the faculty of the human mind necessary for understanding what is true or real. — Wikipedia

So it's a faculty rather more specific than is described by the general term 'thought'.

I am not going to allow you to dictate how I will proceed in this thread. I will follow Plato's lead, attending to what is said and done in the the dialogue in the order it occurs. It is only once we have seen the whole that we can see how everything fits together, with each part serving its purpose. — Fooloso4

You can proceed any way you wish. I don't care and I'm not stopping you. I'm simply pointing out that there are major inconsistencies in your statements.

Like all other philosophers, Plato naturally preferred to convey his teachings orally, from master to disciple as had always been the practice. Hence he was reportedly reluctant to write down anything. Whatever he did write down is obviously incomplete and ambiguous and may be interpreted in many different ways.

There is, however, a scholarly consensus as to the core teachings that can be extracted from the available texts. You seem to deny both the scholarly consensus and the Platonic tradition itself.

If your claim that "He teaches those who are thoughtful and perspicacious enough how to philosophize. To the careful reader he does not provide answers, although there are plenty of things he says that can be latched onto as answers", then you can read into the dialogues anything you like and you don't need a discussion.

Since you have already decided to reject both the Platonic tradition and the scholarly consensus, the conclusions cannot be anything but your personal opinion, in which case you might as well state from the beginning what that opinion is.

Plato naturally preferred to convey his teachings orally — Apollodorus

We know nothing of his oral teachings. I asked you to provide authentication of any oral teaching. You could not.

You seem to deny both the scholarly consensus and the Platonic tradition itself. — Apollodorus

I deny that there is a scholarly consensus. The fact that you think there is shows that you really do not know what is going on today.

There has been an important reappraisal in the way the dialogues are read. Influential figures are Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss, and his students including Alan Bloom, Stanley Rosen, Thomas Pangle, and Seth Benardete, and their students, including Charles Griswold, Rhonna Burger, David Roochnik, Laurence Lampert , and many others.

then you can read into the dialogues anything you like and you don't need a discussion. — Apollodorus

It is evident that you have not been reading what I have written and have not checked it against the text. You have not made even one specific textual comment on anything I have said. Show me where what I have said cannot be confirmed by the text. I asked you to provide textual evidence for your claim but you have not been able to. Instead of point to Plato's texts you cast about elsewhere.

I think part of the attraction to Plato is the lack of interpretative consensus. Each year, after all this time, hundreds of books and articles are published on Plato. One would think that if a consensus existed none of that would be necessary.

My inclination is to say that learning the use of words such as "equal" is exactly learning the concept of equality. On this account there is nothing more to understanding what it is for two things to be equal than to be able to use the word "equal" with success.

For Plato, and others, there is a something more... a reification fo the use of "equal"; making it a thing and necessitating that being able to use the word requires familiarity with that thing.

I hadn't appreciated the similarities between Plato's recollections and, say, Kant's synthetic a priori.

SO we have here the beginnings of a tradition that runs right through to Chomsky's universal grammar.

Yep; assuming that Plato was an idealist.

Plato was neither a realist nor idealist. — Fooloso4

Let's read the case.

Why call it idealism at all? Is everything that is grasped by a rational intelligence a form of idealism? Is mathematics a form of idealism? — Fooloso4

Mathematical Platonism is, and it’s strongly rejected by many modern philosophers on those very grounds. I agree that Plato would of course not have used the term ‘idealism’, but practically all synoptic accounts of Western philosophy trace what later becomes ‘idealism’ back to Plato’s theory of Ideas, for reasons that ought to be pretty obvious.

//edit @Janus - as to the matter of classifying types, Hegel’s is generally classified as absolute idealism. Strangely enough, if you do a random search on ‘objective idealism’, one of the first name that comes up is C S Pierce. However that is again another issue - a ‘meta-philosophical’ one, you might say.

Trying to equate Plato's philosophy with neoplatonism would be no different than trying to understand Kant in terms of neokantianism, that is it would be bound to mislead. — Janus

I don't think anyone was "trying to equate Plato's philosophy with neoplatonism". "Neoplatonism" is a neologism anyway.

But @Fooloso4 appears to have gone in the opposite direction or extreme and made up his mind to reject everyone's reading of the dialogues except his own.

Plato's own Greek terms were often varied and indeterminate. Plato deliberately did not employ precise or just consistent meanings throughout his works or even within the same dialogue.

Why? Perhaps his philosophy was a work in progress with many problems and hypothesized solutions still open in his mind. — magritte

Perhaps. I think another reason was that philosophical or spiritual teachings were transmitted orally. But that doesn't eliminate the problem of terminology and meaning.

One reason the role of Cebes is odd is because Plato is not there. Which is pretty strange given that we would not know Socrates without Plato.

In the first section of my reading I discussed Plato's absence. I will have a bit more to say toward the end.

We might still know of Socrates through Xenophon and Aristophanes, but although Xenophon had his admirers, including Machiavelli, he is not held in the same high esteem or enjoy the same popularity as Plato. From Xenophon we know of Socrates as a comic figure hanging from a basket in the Clouds.

Plato brings an intimacy that is special to the dialogues. A chance to be there when they were. — Valentinus

Many who are taught to read philosophy are taught to pay attention only to the arguments. With Plato the setting, characters, and action are all essential elements.

One of the things one could do is analyze the argument that Homer affirms that the soul can be separated from the body. — frank

Where in the dialogue is it? Stephanus number?

Who is Plato arguing with here? — frank

Where?

Who was the great Athenian law giver? — frank

What is the relevance to the dialogue? Again, a stephanus reference would be helpful.

So maybe Plato is showing off the conservatism of the gentry? — frank

See above. As a student of Socrates a case would have to be made that he is conservative. Socrates certainly was not.

None of these things speak to the specifics of your claim that my conclusions are odd. None of them speak to your point that the Greeks did not deify Homer.

The very one we’re discussing! Socrates refers to ‘an ancient myth’ and also ‘the mysteries’. ‘The mysteries’ are a reference to the Greek ‘mystery religions’, notably Orphism (the cult of Orpheus) which taught a doctrine of re-incarnation very similar to ancient Hinduism (to which it was distantly related). It has been called the ‘ur-religion’ of Ancient Greece, ‘ur-religion’ being the ancestral indigenous belief system which originated with the ancient Indo-European peoples. (On a side-note, the original definition of a ‘mystic’ was ‘one initiated into the Mysteries.’ And if, as legend suggests, Plato was such an initiate, then he was literally ‘a mystic’). — Wayfarer

Plato is also said to have been initiated into Egyptian mysteries as was Pythagoras. But you are right, we can't ignore the mystic aspect of Platonism and try to force an exclusively atheistic or materialist interpretation on Platonic texts. Otherwise we take a dogmatic approach which to my understanding the discussion intended to avoid.

The book analyzes specific instances of laughter and the comical from the Apology, Laches, Charmides, Cratylus, Euthydemus, and the Symposium to support this, and to further elucidate the philosophical consequences of recognizing Plato’s laughter. — Fooloso4

No one denies that there is humor in Plato's dialogues but to dismiss them as "comedy" is stretching it too far. Plus, even comedy may have a spiritual message. Your conclusion doesn't follow from the facts.

From the Rosen interview:

The purpose of the text is to stimulate the reader to think, and it does that by being an intricate construction with many implications, some of which are indeterminate in the sense that you can’t be sure of what Plato meant and what Socrates meant, but they are intended to make you, the interpreter, do your thinking for yourself ... I think that it would be better to emphasize that the dialogue has as its primary function the task of stimulating the reader to think for himself, not to find the teaching worked-out for him.

And from @Amity above:

Such an open-ended type of interpretation has its representatives among two radically different groups: among philosophical interpreters, for whom it makes Plato a philosopher much like them —more interested in, or expecting more from, arguments than in or from conclusions — Christopher Rowe

Platonic metaphysics, that backbone of historical Platonism, also looks comfortably at home in an ethical context, insofar as it places a reconfigured goodness, beauty, and justice within the very structure of things—however it may be that Plato thought that trick could be pulled. Indeed, without that context (and without its inventive elaboration and re-elaboration by successions of Platonists and idealists), it can look as unmotivated as it appeared to an unsympathetic Aristotle — Amity

Well, we understand that. But I think that what needs to be established is whether metaphysical concepts such as "forms"/"ideas", "soul", "rebirth", etc. occur in the dialogues. If they do, then it is legitimate for traditional Platonists to extract metaphysical teachings from the dialogues irrespective of Plato's actual intention that, incidentally, is impossible to determine beyond reasonable doubt.

In other words, if the true and only intention of the dialogues is to stimulate thought or reason, how can we claim that they should stimulate the reader exclusively in a materialist sense? It seems to be a self-contradictory claim.

Accordingly, beliefs are ethically worrisome and even, in the words of Plato’s Socrates, “shameful.”

I don't know the context but this seems to be overstating the problem. Belief should be critically examined but where it cannot be replaced by knowledge it is all we have to work with. In the quest for knowledge saying that it is shameful might be a rallying cry but Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all begin with the examination of opinion and end it aporia; thereby providing knowledge that we do not know.

You are right about their zetetic skepticism being something different from modern skepticism. Modern skepticism, as I understand it, occurs as the result of representational theories of perception. What we see are representations in the mind. We cannot step outside these representations to determine whether things are as we represent them. It also differs from Pyrrhonian skepticism. The goal of zetetic skeptic is not the suspension of judgment. It is an inquiry into what seems best or most likely to be true, while fully aware that what seems to be may not be what is.

My view is that many current interpretations of Plato intentionally deprecate the religious aspects of his philosophy, as incompatible with the secular outlook of modern culture. Platonism's absorption into Christianity hasn't helped there, because secular critics of Christianity can easily dispose of the baby with the theological bathwater.

That said, I'm sure Plato is determinedly NOT religious in a Christian, 'God fearing' sense, as 'a person of faith'. I think he would utterly scorn such an attitude. He was, as has been correctly stated, enquiring after knowledge and was contemptuous of mere belief. But the kind of knowledge he sought is demonstrably nearer to a kind of spiritual illumination than to today's scientific naturalism, even though his (and Aristotle's) philosophy were the precursors of it.

I asked for comments on what was being read, not what you can find on Wiki or elsewhere. It is my opinion that Plato must be read rather than read about. — Fooloso4

As already stated, Sedley and Long aren't nobodies, they are highly regarded scholars.

David Neil Sedley is a British philosopher and historian of philosophy. He was the seventh Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Cambridge University.

David Sedley – Wikipedia

Alex Long, of St Andrews is the editor of Immortality in Ancient Philosophy, which brings together original research on immortality from early Greek philosophy, such as the Pythagoreans and Empedocles, to Augustine. The contributors consider not only arguments concerning the soul’s immortality, but also the diverse and often subtle accounts of what immortality is, both in Plato and in less familiar philosophers, such as the early Stoics and Philo of Alexandria.

So, Sedley & Long would have been highly relevant to your “essay” IMHO.

Could it not be the case that the exhortation to ‘repeat such things to himself’ is so as not to loose sight of the importance of the ‘care of the soul’? (Perhaps even as a mantra.) I find that a much more cohesive explanation, than the idea that Socrates (and Plato) are covertly signalling doubt about the immortality of the soul. — Wayfarer

Looking at the matter through Timaeus, the identification of oneself as a soul in the sense of being the person you are after death is in tension with the recognition of our mortality. The myth of the Creator working through agents of creation distinguishes mortal man in this way:

On the other hand, if they were created by me and received life at my hands, they would be on an equality with the gods. In order then that they may be mortal, and that this universe be truly universal, do ye, according to your natures, betake yourselves to the formation of animals, imitating the power which was shown by me in creating you.
The part of them worthy of the name immortal, which is called divine and is the guiding principle of those who are willing to follow justice and you--of that divine part I will myself now sow the seed, and having made a beginning, I will hand the work over to you. And do ye then interweave the mortal with the immortal and make and begat living creatures, and give them food and make them to grow, and receive them again in death. — Plato, Timaeus,41b, translated by Benjamin Jowett

That is not the sort of immortality many are hoping for.

It is a difficult matter to explore because who else did/does this sort of thing? — Valentinus

One that comes to mind is, "How Philosophy Became Socratic: A Study of Plato's Protagoras, Charmades, and Republic" by Laurence Lampert
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo8725147.html

He takes the dialogue in their dramatic chronology, how old Socrates was when the dialogue took place.

[Edit] Another is Plato's Trilogy : Theaetetus the Sophist and the Statesman, by Jacob Klein

Yes, I was thinking about Protagoras, for example. I was also thinking about the Athenian culture that Plato was unhappy about: the society that put Socrates to death — Cuthbert

Glad you returned.
I had kept your post in mind as something I needed to get back to. But you weren't to know that.

In such a world, what are the values and truths that we can trust? — Cuthbert

Good question - for any world.

The Theory of Forms was not (merely) abstract speculation: it came from the gut. — Cuthbert

Are you suggesting that is where our values and truths come from ?
Or that what Plato wrote came from his gut ?
What do you mean by that ?

Ha ha! I think you've caught me out speculating now. (Remembering an earlier reminder to stick to the text....). But I think it's worth thinking about what questions of his time Plato was answering when he wrote the dialogues. For example: in politics, democracy vs tyranny or aristocracy; in metaphysics, how can things both be and not be at the same time (Parmenides, Zeno); in art, irrational violence vs sublime contemplation (Euripides, the Parthenon). The Theory of Forms stands or falls on its own merits or demerits - probably falls - but from a point of view of biography, psychology (see another thread about that) I *speculate* that this is a person who has lost a great friend to political violence and ignorance and is saying "We can't just make up justice, truth, right and wrong, is and is-not; we need to apply some wisdom and thought." I'm saying this in the hope of pointing out the emotional force of Plato's writing which can seem abstract, obscure, dry, outmoded and false out of context.

@Valentinus

I edited my original response but did not know if you saw it. Just thought of another also on Theaetetus the Sophist and the Statesman. "The Being of the Beautiful", by Seth Benardete.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo5971393.html

The question that unifies these three dialogues is: who is the philosopher? The Statesman asks, who is the statesman? The Sophist, who is the Sophist? The Theaetetus, what is knowledge? There is no dialogue The Philosopher. It is up to the reader to ask, who is the philosopher. Perhaps he is discovered somewhere between these three other questions.


It is a difficult matter to explore because who else did/does this sort of thing?
— Valentinus

One that comes to mind is, "How Philosophy Became Socratic: A Study of Plato's Protagoras, Charmades, and Republic" by Laurence Lampert
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo8725147.html

He takes the dialogue in their dramatic chronology, how old Socrates was when the dialogue took place.

[Edit] Another is Plato's Trilogy : Theaetetus the Sophist and the Statesman, by Jacob Klein

The Theory of Forms stands or falls on its own merits or demerits - probably falls - but from a point of view of biography, psychology (see another thread about that) I *speculate* that this is a person who has lost a great friend to political violence and ignorance and is saying "We can't just make up justice, truth, right and wrong, is and is-not; we need to apply some wisdom and thought." — Cuthbert

'...biography, psychology (see another thread about that)'
Where ? Plato's bio and psych or generally speaking ?
Again, I hadn't realised that Plato wrote ALL of his Dialogues after the death of Socrates.
So much I don't know.

Re: application of wisdom and thought - yes. How much of the gut is involved ?

It is directly related to the text. Perhaps not what you had in mind but one meaning of from the gut is something known without being taught, inborn knowledge or recollection. — Fooloso4

Interesting. I think of it as some kind of a feeling or intuition. Something telling you what feels right or wrong. Not quite the same as Socrates' daimonion but close...

In such a world, what are the values and truths that we can trust? — Cuthbert

Are you suggesting that [the gut] is where our values and truths come from ? — Amity

Can you trust your gut ? I think not but it is a useful starting point.
And sometimes I wish I had listened to it...

I have already discussed Plato's use of myths. — Fooloso4

This isn't about Plato's use of myths. It is about your claim that Socrates at 114d is telling his friends that "one should “sing incantations to himself, over and over again”, which is not true.

And you can't infer from it that he is telling them myths, i.e., lies.

Do we need to crib on an issue so fundamental to understanding Plato? Dialectic is (friendly) wrestling with each others' convictions. Those convictions may never really change, but the terms of the competition do. And that change in terms is a growth in the ability of both interlocutors to confront his or her own convictions. It is a community in contrariety that is the engine of language, though contradiction (the binary division of being) may yet be the mechanism of reason. That mechanism is epochal, but the personal dynamic of that community is not contiguous to or within any epochal structure. It is not immortality, but it is a personal impact on all time regardless of where we are in the flow of it. Dialectic is meant to involve us in taking personal responsibility for our convictions, and for the terms of our expressing them, not in building an edifice of laws by which we can abdicate it. Plato and Socrates were humanists.

Determining "what kind of Platonist you are" seems to be part of the problem.

According to some, Socrates had his own "philosophy" that is to be carefully distinguished from that of Plato who, apparently, somehow "distorted" Socrates' teachings and whose own teachings were in turn "distorted" by later Platonists, etc.

At the same time, we cannot know for certain what Socrates taught aside from the patent fact that he asked questions and that, apparently, "he knew that he knew nothing" - which, admittedly, isn't much help.

Even the question as to whether Plato himself was a Platonist has been raised in some quarters.

This being so, it seems advisable to read the dialogues not as "Platonists" or "anti-Platonists" but as impartial and objective observers after which, each reader can draw out his own conclusions or construct his own dialogue as the case may be. And at that point, the dialectic ends and monologue takes over ....

When reading Plato’s dialogues it is important to keep in mind who he is talking to and what the circumstances are. Socrates says that under the circumstances it is fitting to:

inquire and speculate as to what we imagine that journey to be like (61e)

But Cebes and Simmias are fearful of death. What they imagine might happen makes them fearful. They want more than fearless inquiry and speculation. In other words, they want the truth only in so far as the truth is comforting.

Socrates says that their fears are childish and that they are in need of incantations to sing away their fears. (77e) Earlier Socrates said that philosophy is the greatest music. (61a) The song that Socrates sings about death will address their fears.

In the Apology Socrates says:

Now being dead is either of two things. For either it is like being nothing and the dead man has no perception of an anything, or else, in accordance with the things that have been said, it happens to be a sort of change and migration of the soul from the place here to another place.

And if in fact there is no perception, but it is like a sleep in which the sleeper has not dream at all, death would be a wondrous gain. (40c-d)

And here he says:

“ For I am calculating - behold how self-servingly!- that if what I’m saying happens to be true, I’m well off believing it; and if there’s nothing at all for one who’s met his end, well then, I’ll make myself so much less unpleasant with lamenting to those who are present during this time, the time before my death.” (91b)

The arguments are all in service of the hope that there is life after death. The image of life after death brings with it another fear, the fear of punishment for wrongdoing. The image thus serves to promote virtue and justice and discourage vice.

The arguments do not hold up to rigorous logical examination, and yet for some they are persuasive.

In the center of the dialogue, both literally and figuratively, is the problem of misologic and the question of what one expects from philosophy. (89d) Does one desire an outcome that provides comfort and reassurance, or does the pursuit of truth mean that one fearlessly inquires independently of a hoped for outcome? The genius of Plato is to satisfy both desires.