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yeah, and even then, to call Socrates a mouthpiece character means you probably didn't understand Plato. Plato uses Socrates to cause trouble at least as much a
by tessierashpool 5y ago
yeah, and even then, to call Socrates a mouthpiece character means you probably didn't understand Plato. Plato uses Socrates to cause trouble at least as much as he does to express verbatim opinions. probably a lot, lot more.
the best way to understand Socrates, in Plato, is not to say "if Socrates said it, Plato meant it," but instead to ask "why is the sarcastic questioner who never means what he says attacking this particular line of reasoning?"
which brings us to the central premise: would Plato tweet? Plato wrote a book where Socrates explained that inventing writing was a dangerous thing which would destroy human memory. of course he would tweet. he would probably tweet that Socrates told him tweeting was a bad idea.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- oehtXRwMkIs 5y agoI don't think you understand Plato. There's a spectrum of purely mouthpiece to actually what Socrates said/thought throughout Plato's dialogues. And generally the earlier the dialogue the more it's actually Socrates, but as Plato's own views developed it became more of a mouthpiece. Since Republic is middle period, it's definitely not just the views of Socrates, and since it also included the theory of forms it's arguably mostly Plato speaking through the character of Socrates.
- tessierashpool 5y agoI don't think you understand Plato either.
- jhbadger 5y agoActually, even in that story "Socrates" isn't saying writing is a dangerous thing. "He" is claiming that the ancient Egyptians (who were a culture which already existed for thousands of years before the era of the classical Greeks) believed that.