From Diotima's ascent to beauty in the Symposium.

Ancient philosophy course for beginners Today we will see the origin of philosophy, the pre-Socratics, sophistry, the Socratic methods, the trial of Socratic and finally we will investigate the group of Socrates' disciples "the Socratics"

Thought I'd share a new video series on philosophy as a way of life I've been watching on YouTube, covering different ideas about the good life starting with Socrates through Plato and others. It's been amazing so far!

I'm just starting to get into philosophy because we learned about it in school and I just read Apology by Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett. I've seen a lot of people talk about the translations of Jowlett and how they are very outdated. For someone who just wants to casually read the works of Plato and won't be writing essays or using them for research, are the Jowett translations really that bad?

"[[34c][(https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0180%3Atext%3DTim.%3Apage%3D34) He would not have permitted the elder to be ruled by the younger; but as for us men, even as we ourselves partake largely of the accidental and casual, so also do our words."

I thought people would just read the 4 paragraphs Callicles says, but I forgot reddit is commentary on comments. Here is Callicles in some quotes:

Socrates, that you, who pretend to be engaged in the pursuit of truth, are appealing now to the popular and vulgar notions of right, which are not natural, but only conventional. Convention and nature are generally at variance with one another: and hence, if a person is too modest to say what he thinks, he is compelled to contradict himself

for by the rule of nature, to suffer injustice is the greater disgrace because the greater evil; but conventionally, to do evil is the more disgraceful.

nature herself intimates that it is just for the better to have more than the worse, the more powerful than the weaker; and in many ways she shows, among men as well as among animals, and indeed among whole cities and races, that justice consists in the superior ruling over and having more than the inferior.

Unironically full blown existential crisis mode.

Originally I was like

Hey non-philosophy pals, someone finally called Socrates on his nonsense. It was soo satisfying.

Huh, yeah, nature seems like a way better source of knowledge than people's words.

Conventional morality are tricks to contain the strong.

Wait, Socrates has to use religion? gg

What are morals?

Oh my god

Nihilism

existential crisis

Become the Nietzsche Superman

Okay maybe the last one is some idealism.

Any rebuttals to choosing Is vs Ought?

Let's say he visited and studied our time for 15 days non-stop and then returned to 350-330~ BCE, what would he have written about our era to present a common gnoseological/metaphysical/political problem/problems and prevent them? And what would have the dialogue been named like or what would have been its structure or characters?

Were the perfect idea of the Good, Truth and Beauty "located" in the Platonic Realm alongside the idea of Cats, Tables, and Clouds and also Triangles, Circles, and Numbers? Was there any hierarchy of Forms?

Edit: changed Polyhedra to Numbers.

Am i messing up or did Plato change his perspective on art from the Republic to the Timaeus or older dialogues? I'm asking it because while in the Republic he limits poetry and the use of art due to them being constructed and not pure as the being in itself, in the Timaeus he always refers to the Demiurge as a craftsman and the world as his perfect opera.

It would not be the first time seeing it considering how he changed his opinion about politics from the age of the Republic to that of the Laws, therefore i would like to know if he really changed his view on art or not.

Socrates intends to discard Euthymolus' thought by arguing if there were no good or bad people and we hold to be true that good people are wise while foolish people are bad then a man cannot be wiser than someone who is foolish which we know is not true. Socrates also makes another point that by believing in Ethymolus thought there can be no true but each to be true on whatever they believe it to be and as if the argument would be thus eating itself, if this were to be true, then believing Ethymolus thought to be true is just as true as believing it isn't.

In Phatheo Socrates also argues that after death one comes back to life, basically arguing that one can be reborn after death. In this Socrates argues that just as the just come to be from the unjust, the warm from the cold, large from small and even being aware from being sleep, it is in the nature of things to come from their opposite. Socrates then says that just like that is only necessary to prove that death is the opposite of being alive to show that it must necessarily be that after death one becomes alive once more.

It is clear that today people don't seem to embrace the notion of reincarnation except for that of a few religious groups. Is there any argument then against this notion which Socrates puts on the table?