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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2804 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 20, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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No idea on YouTube. Friends talk highly of Alex Priou. But, a word of advice, look up every (named) character in the dialogues. They don't all matter, but in some cases who they are definitely matters to the meaning of the dialogue. For example, Meno comes across as a clever young gentleman, but he's meant to be hiding that he's an arrogant little shit - Xenophon, another student of Plato's, has him as the worst man among the Greek generals of the Persian Expedition (that is, before he betrays them to the Persians). So to read the Meno you need the context that Socrates completely failed to teach Meno virtue! And then to read the Gorgias, it helps to know that Meno was a student of Gorgias (mentioned in the dialogue), so you have a good sense of the kind of men Plato thinks Gorgias educates. The dialogues are literary philosophy, not just treatises; the characters, setting (e.g. in both the Republic and the Phaedrus, it means something that the discussion is held outside the city), historical context. Imagine someone in the 20th Century writing philosophy as dialogues between well-known political and cultural figures, if that helps.

This is probably overkill, but if you have points in the dialogues that you find confusing or want to deep dive into, you can search an archive of Leo Strauss's courses here, including close readings of several of the dialogues.

That's a good point, bro. I've studied Plato before in college, so I'm not totally foreign to reading the dialogues. I really want to flesh out a lot of the ones I haven't read, rather than being limited to the Symposium, Republic, and a couple others.

For sure. I wanted to raise the point because it's generally undervalued in regular (non-Straussian) academic discussions of Plato. And reading the other dialogues will greatly help your reading of Symposium/Republic/etc. Good luck!

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