Talk:Plato/Archive 1

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Old talk (up to July 2004)

Socrates

Shouldn't the 3 or 4 sections devoted to Socrates be put in HIS page? This article could be great, but it does need some pruning.

I

The original title of the book known IN ENGLISH as The Republic has nothing to do with elective government. The Greek word was Politeia, a word that translates fairly well as "Regime" or "sytem of government." Don't go all un-neutral on the book in the entry. I don't like Plato's ideal state either, but the title "Republic" is Cicero's, I think. --MichaelTinkler

Not sure what the old text to which this refers was like. But if anyone wants to dispute the accuracy of my characterization of the political system in the so-caleed Republic, please do. Dandrake 01:58 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I see no reason to have "Complete works of Plato" as a separate topic; it should be a subpage. If the actual works are entered into the Wikipedia later, they may also be subpages of Plato. --AV

The should be against webpages. If we were to have made every topic that could be made a subtopic of a main topic, we'd have a disaster on our hands. Don't you think that it's interesting that most of the Wikipedia old hands are solidly against subpages? You're new here, Anatoly--you probably don't understand entirely, yet. --LMS

II

More argurments on why "Complete works" should be a subpage: Larry, both in Naming conventions and in your essay on subpages, the only reason advanced against subpages is that the topic of the subpage may be of independent interest rather than totally subsumed within the topic of the page.

I do not have just one reason. I have three essays that address the issues surrounding subpages.

I'm soon going to start pushing hard to eliminate subpages entirely. I'm going to ask that they be completely eliminated from the PHP wiki.

Now, in this particular case, I feel strongly that you're pushing it too far. What else do you need "Complete works of Plato" for if not in the context of Plato??

The context of "complete works of philosophers." The context of works, generally. The context of philosophical texts. Etc.

Just about the only conceivable alternative is that of some general "Complete works of various authors" page with links to individual pages. But, first, the idea is rather ridiculous anyway, and, secondly, there's nothing stopping us from linking to subpages from outside the main page in case it's needed.

Why does there have to be a page that links to the complete works of all authors? I'm not sure what the use of that would be, actually.

OTOH, I believe that you fail to consider the benefit of proper subpaging.

I think you don't sufficiently appreciate why they're so evil.

It's not just about hierarchies, though it's about that; it's also about reducing the clutter in the main namespace,

This is not a problem, though. The sheer number of pages is going to be identical.

and reducing the number of ad hoc naming schemes. When you introduce something like "Complete works of Plato" as a name of an encyclopaedia topic, the readers will assume that it's a part of a general scheme, "Complete works of X" - but if there's only one or a few topic of this kind, then you're cluttering the conceptual field of the main namespace.

I don't see how using subpages avoids the same "problem." I don't quite understand how it's a problem in the first place, anyway.

What this means is that you give the readers another concept of how topics might be named (not just "X" or "History of X" or "the problem of X" or whatever, but now also "Complete works of X"), but the concept isn't really put to good use.

Why not? What's wrong with that concept?

Actually, I do think "X's works" would be better, but we don't have the use of apostrophes yet. Plato's works is where this information should be filed.

Finally, subpaging in such cases naturally helps establish better linking. This page already had a backlink to Plato; I removed it when I moved it to a subpage and you failed to restore it when moving it back. But ideally it shouldn't have a link to Plato because the connection to Plato is entirely obvious from the title itself. The backlink adds no useful information whatsoever, forms no new associations or connections. When it's moved to a subpage, the arrangement suddenly becomes much better: the backlink is now part of the general linkbar, an automatic feature of the subpage mechanism, and it draws no unnecessary attention of a reader. When it's needed, it's there; where it's not needed (in the body of the article), it's not.

This is an advantage, but it is an extremely weak one. One could make the same argument with regard to any plausible parent page-subpage pairing; but that by itself isn't a sufficient reason to make the subpage a subpage of the parent page. To be consistent, we would have to start making zillions of subpages of all sorts of topics, with no rhyme or reason, and setting up all sorts of conceptual relations and hierarchies that limit how we think and write about various topics. Besides, subpage titles are just plain ugly and cumbersome to deal with when linking to them from outside the main page-subpage article grouping. (As I've explained in my essays.)

I await with interest your response to these points. --AV

Keep working on the project for a few months and then see how you feel about subpages. I'm going to start an article about this in Wikipedia commentary--I'm going to raise the issue that we should entirely eliminate subpages from the new PHP wiki code, and convert foo/bar page titles in the present wiki to foo--bar in the new wiki. --LMS

III

I'm not Larry, but I'll point out that the page already had notes about textual history (by or not by Plato), a subject worth a page. --MichaelTinkler

About textual history of Plato's works, not textual history as a separate subject. And sure, it's worth a page, only there's no reason for this page not to be a subpage -- AV

Again, you assume that the presumption should be in favor of subpages, which it definitely shouldn't be. --LMS

V

The following appears to be an idiosyncratic polemic on the part of someone who is not familiar with our NPOV policy. I'll salvage from it what I can that is consistent with the policy, but a lot of it appears to me to be little more than bald statement of opinion with not a lot of useful informational content. The notion that Aristotle is responsible for the ignorance of Plato's works for so long strikes me as extremely implausible on its face and certainly not something that should be stated so (ironically) dogmatically in an encyclopedia article. --Larry Sanger

This is unfortunate since it has long been recognized that Aristotle's criticisms of his teacher, Plato, are based on an extremely faulty understanding and gross misrepresentation of Plato's thought, involving a complete mischaracterization of Plato's positions on virtually all of the critical issues central to his philosophy. Whether this betrayal of his teacher, Plato, was due to simple jealousy or a pathological desire to diminish Plato's reputation in order to elevate his own, this represents a severe stain on the reputation of Aristotle. As an indirect result of Aristotle's influence, it might be argued, Plato's work was lost to western civilization for many centuries.

Aristotle's philosophy has often been regarded as the basis of all subsequent philosophical dogmatism and as the source of the decline (and even eradication) of rational inquiry particularly during the Dark Ages. This is paradoxical since Aristotle is popularly (though, it might be argued, incorrectly) linked with an empirical approach to science. Believing as he did that scientific issues--from the laws of the universe to the functions of animals--could be settled by abstract logical reasoning rather than careful study and direct observation, and that all possible knowledge of the universe and man had already been attained leaving nothing fundamentally new for scientific or psychological or artistic discovery, Aristotle's philosophy lent itself to a variety of dogmatic systems from the ideas of the Scholastics in the Middle Ages to the dogmatic attitude of the followers of Ayn Rand today who believe that Aristotle's principles constitute the unquestionable basis of all philosophical reasoning and inquiry.

Aristotle's unrelenting dogmatism is entirely in contrast to the most fundamental principles of Plato and his beloved teacher Socrates, both of whom taught that man is in a state of almost complete ignorance concerning both natural phenomena and transcendent truths due to a congenital near-blindness to truth and knowledge. Above all, Plato affirmed Socrates’ teaching that the wisest man is the one who is most aware of his own ignorance. If we are ignorant and think that we have knowledge, this belief constitutes the worst form of sickness to which the human mind is subject. On the other hand, if we are ignorant, and also aware of our ignorance, this tends to create in us a profound desire to discover what we do not know--however limited our capacities may be.

It was only with the repudiation of Aristotelian scientific, artistic and psychological dogma and authority and the resumption of the outlook of Socrates and Plato who professed ignorance rather than infallible powers for abstract knowledge of nature and reality, that the Renaissance and the development of modern science were made possible. For it required a repudiation of Aristotelian dogmatic principles for the sciences and the arts to free themselves for the discovery of modern scientific laws and empirical methods. Many of the greatest modern scientists (e.g. Galileo) and artists (with the support of the Plato-inspired Lorenzo de Medici) who broke with Scholasticism and fostered the flowering of the Renaissance saw Plato’s philosophy as the basis for progress in the arts and sciences.

One of the characteristics of the Dark Ages was reliance on authority and on scholastic commentaries on writings of Plato and other historically important philosophers, rather than accessing their original works. In fact, Plato’s original writings were essentially lost to western civilization until their reintroduction in the twelfth century through the agency of Arab scholars who had maintained the original Greek texts of the ancients. These were eventually translated into Latin and all of Plato's surviving dialogues are now available in English translation.

In Plato’s writings, many centuries before Copernicus and Galileo, one finds the heliocentric theory of the universe. One finds debates concerning republican and democratic forms of government, long before the founding fathers of America formed their republic. One finds debates concerning the role of heredity and environment in human intelligence and personality long before the publication of “The Bell Curve” or the formation of Human Genome Project or the discovery that schizophrenia has a genetic basis. One finds arguments for the subjectivity--and the objectivity--of human knowledge which foreshadow modern debates between Hume and Kant, or between the postmodernists and their opponents.

Plato looks ugly in the picture,I think it should be removed.

For more information on the conflict between Aristotle and Plato and their followers: http://www.platonicforms.com/

VI

I've removed this sentence as it tells me nothing that could not apply to many other historical figures: The actual existence of Socrates is still debated, as little direct evidence proves his existence. There appears to be some evidence of his existence, but this gives no mention of who might be debating. -Wikibob | Talk 20:34, 2004 Apr 26 (UTC)

VII

Where in Plato's writings does one find the heliocentric universe? I'd like to find what he actually said about it. None of the other articles that mention the subject attribute the idea to Plato. Dandrake 18:58, May 28, 2004 (UTC)

There are allusions to it in the Nomoi.

MWAK--217.122.44.226 13:21, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Looking through http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/laws.7.vii.html (admittedly without great thoroughness), I find a couple of mentions of the "revolutions of the sun and moon", but no more. As that's not heliocentric, what am I missing? Dandrake 00:22, Jul 14, 2004 (UTC)

It all starts with a remark from Plutarch, that Plato in his latter days began to regret that he hadn't set the Earth in its appropriate place. A cryptic remark. Predictably philologists have turned Plato's later works upside down in search of any clue to its meaning. Some very ingenious theories have been construed, none of them very cogent. Im my opinion the best of these is based on the Nomoi (893a e.s.) where Plato propounds the theory that God drives the Kosmos as a wheel is driven by its axis. At first blush this seems to accord with a geocentric model. Further reflection however shows that there is something wrong here: it would mean that the Earth, hardly a blessed place in Plato's view, is either the most direct physical representation of God or the point of His most direct intervention. So, if Plato is coherent, this centre of the Kosmos cannot be the Earth. It's obvious it isn't the Sun either. The model isn't really heliocentric but theocentric. The Sun moves in circles. Around the Earth? A hierarchy seems to suggest itself. God is in (a single point in?) the centre. The Sun, singled out in the text, moves around God. Even lesser gods (the planets) in their turn move around the Sun (whose solar system thus forms an imitative microcosm), as does the Earth (apparently the body of a very minor, or even corrupted god or alternatively a simple lump of rock hurled about following the principle of 899a). The Moon moves around the Earth. Circles galore. Such a model would have been very attractive to Plato, who saw physical reality as an instance of eternal Laws that were coherent and simple (or elegant). At this time the retrograde motion of the planets must have become an embarrasment - as is shown by Eudoxos tackling the problem. Plato knew Philolaos and must have understood the relevance of a non-geocentric model in this respect: it would "save the phenomena" and the elegance of natural law of his beloved circles. Also it would have been an elegant explanation of the connection of Venus and Mercury with the Sun, that Plato was well aware of, as shown by the Timaios. So perhaps.

Perhaps Plato merely thought that the Earth, though in the centre, turned around its axis (again see 893c), like Herakleides did. This alone would make the movement of the planets much more simple. It would also fix the problem of the movement of the fixed stars. The text conspicuously shows an absence of "spheres" even though the Kosmos is a sphere. The theocentric model above would also need a rotating Earth to explain the apparent rotation of the whole around us while it in reality revolves around God.

Perhaps Plato simply isn't coherent here. It happens to the best.

Perhaps Plutarch wanted to suggest the opposite: that Plato in his youth was a follower of Philolaos' "hestiacentric" model. The theocentric model allows for a hestiacentric interpretation also, with the Sun and all the planets (directly) moving around God.

Perhaps Plutarch didn't know what he was talking about and we're all on a wild goose chase. However recent interpretations of his De facie quae in orbe lunae apparet have hailed him as the Newton of Antiquity so you can't be too careful...;o)

MWAK--217.122.44.226 14:38, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Famous Platonists

Some scholars have argued that Galileo was a Platonist, but the idea is far from generally accepted. (Actually, it's wrong, but that's not germane here.) The straight-up claim that G was inspired by P doesn't belong in this article; at least, not without discussion here, or even better on the Galileo Talk page. So it has been removed. Dandrake 03:53, Jun 18, 2004 (UTC)

Good; if Galileo is a Platonist, it is in the special mathematical sense of the term. He was expressly opposed to eternity and changelessness as goods; consider the passage about diamonds and potting soil in Dialogue on the Tow World Systems. Septentrionalis 03:18, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Just to add to the debate: Plato is, most assuredly, the most influential single philosopher of the Western tradition, including even Jesus Christ. I don't know enough about Galileo to dispute whether he was or wasn't a Platonist; my point, rather, is that we're all Platonists, whether we want to admit it or not, in the sense that we "believe" in the value of speech over writing, of "reality" over appearance, and so forth.

My stance here, I must admit, is influenced by the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, but I think nonetheless that so much of what counts as "modern" (or contemporary) really comes from Plato. Food for thought. Job L 09:18, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Popper on Plato

Re: "I like my version better"

Poppererian scholarship on Plato is just not that significant. Popper's reputation as a political philosopher never really recovered from his ad hominem assault on Hegel, his ill-informed scholarship on Marx, and his efforts to blame everything bad in the history of politics on Plato. I think we're misinforming people if we give the impression that Popper's attack on Plato is really a major issue in understanding Plato as a political philosopher. Plato as totalitarian is not something Popper started and is an idea most students are introduced to without reference to Popper. Popper was a major figure - if not the major figure - in the philosophy of science. But he is not someone who is taken very seriously in Plato scholarship and has most certainly not "eclipsed" Plato. That would be like making Rush Limbaugh out to be a major American cultural critic.

Plato has his opponents. Either there should be a more balanced discussion of them or we should simply refer readers to The Republic.

Diderot 05:38, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 08:53, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)) I didn't say Popper had eclipsed Plato. If you can find a better originator for the criticism, please put it in.

Thomas Thorson (Plato: Totalitarian or Democrat, 1963) points out that this view of Plato had wide circulation in Europe starting the early 30's, particularly in the kinds of socialist and borderline socialist communities that Popper circulated in. For crying out loud, Plato's political critics date back to his own favourite students. Aristotle, who carefully distinguished his notions of moral right from politics and was dead against the unrestricted state power he saw Plato advocating; and Xenophon, who essentially founded economics in his Oikonomikos just to prove his ex-prof wrong. Nietzsche found Plato's politics replusive, and said so, claiming that Plato's conception of utopia was "boring".

Popper may have been the first to link Plato to the word totalitarian, but that would most likely be because in the early 40's when he wrote The Open Society and its Enemies it was still a fairly new word. Criticism of Plato's Republic as essentially tyrranical dates back, depending on how you want to look at it, to the begining of the era when freedom was considered a good thing - roughly 300 years ago - or as far back as the fourth century to the early Christians' attacks on the neoplatonic Gnostics, if you want to include a theological defense of the non-perfectibility of man as a defense of human freedom. (e.g., the freedom to sin)

To his credit, Popper does not claim to have invented "Plato the Totalitarian." His original contribution is the claim that everything is Plato's fault. However, response to Popper's claims about Plato's legacy are pretty negative. For that reason, I'm removing the word "convincing".

(William M. Connolley 16:44, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)) At the moment, the response-to-Popper stuff is terribly vague - nothing more than assertion. It needs to be firmed up, though poss within popper pages. The stuff about aristotle is prob worth adding somewhere, on your authority. However, the very early stuff is largely irrelevant to that section, which is a history of plato scholarship. Assuming it is correct when it says popper etc "diverge from traditional views", then the start of this appears to be 1930's and this should be said: there was a major revision of opinion of platos poltics beginning then. If all Nietzsche said was that platos utopia was boring then his claims to have started this were weak. I've not read nay N, but there is nothing about Plato on his wiki page.

A great deal about Plato in Nietzsche (mostly expressed as opinions on Socrates, but that's a formalism). Doubt it had much influence on the later criticism, though. (And where's Russell: History of Western Philosophy?) Septentrionalis 03:15, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)