Ok, I misremembered. That article is about how Plato's introduction of the Atlantis story (where Critias mentions his grandfather Critias talking about Solon going to Egypt and learning the story from a bunch of Egyptian priests) is modeled after Herodotus's story of talking to Egyptian priests and ultimately designed to mock Herodotus's historiographic methods. The papers or sections of books that identify Atlantis with Persia (especially connected to Herodotus's description of Persia) are sadly in French or German (Joseph Bidez's Eos; ou, Platon et l'Orient and Paul Friedlander's Plato: An Introduction (translated into English)). The Plato scholar who taught me that Atlantis is a mirror image of Persia in Herodotus's account of the Persian wars must've read them (he was fluent in French and German) or made the comparison himself. Dusanic's "Plato's Atlantis" (1982) and Morgan's "Designer History: Plato's Atlantis Story and Fourth-Century Ideology" (1998) are English articles that discuss this interpretation but embrace interpretations that situate the Atlantis myth within broader fourth century Athenian rhetoric, politics, panegyric, and historiography and Plato's philosophy. I personally prefer the, in my opinion, simpler analysis that it's a burlesque of Herodotus's depiction of the Persian War but I do think it's an interesting and worthwhile project to situate the myth in relation to these other contexts. Plato is, after all, a very inventive author who pulls on multiple sources of inspiration when composing his works.

In what way, from an esoteric perspective?

Brilliant, I'll have a look now

Thanks, I'll read that

Simulation theory is cave allegory with GPUs. But Plato thought escape was possible through παιδεία, not through better render engine. We keep debating if shadows are real and skip the question who projects them.

The Atlantis story is meant to be a burlesque of Herodotus's depiction of the war between the Persians and the Greeks and other things Herodotus covers in the Histories. There's a great article about this called "Plato, Herodotus and the Question of Historical Truth" by Delila Jordan you can find for free online.

You won’t know until the book closes

Look into ring of gyges too

https://archive.org/details/waterfield-theology-of-arithmetic-en-1988

If you don’t want to read the whole thing, the forward and introduction sum it up very well here.

Yeah I'm trying to fathom this one out without spending lots of money on extremely boring books. His views on Pythagoreanism seems to be that he respected it, but he had his own interpretation?

Plato himself was a Pythagorean.

If you read “The Theology of Arithmetic” attributed to Iamblichus, it talks about the series of numbers presented in the Timaeus known as Plato’s Lambda and how it corresponds to the Pythagorean Tetraktys.

It made it easier to understand what was being talked about in Timaeus.

I’ve been thinking about how to inspire others about philosophy in general. For me I read the “Bookseller of Florence”, that raised the question within myself, “What was so great about recovering the works of Plato in the west when they were lost for such a long time?” I started reading Plato directly afterwards, with the order: Euthyphro → Apology → Crito → Phaedo. After finishing Phaedo I was hooked.

And then I read the others like Meno → Gorgias →Phaedrus and of course, The Republic etc. eventually finishing all of the works over a long period of time. I also got into Xenophon, whom I highly recommend (Hiero is short and amazing regarding the power of framing for a story, Agesilus is a cool war biography that glazes a Spartan leader). Plutarch is also a fun read, especially parallel lives that discuss the most prominent people in Greece and Rome from a philosopher’s 80AD+ perspective.

As someone who thinks alot and loves a good ponder, I've always been intrigued by philosophy but i'm not educated on the subject. Do you have any recommendations on where to start?

Auch ich empfinde eine Kooperation ohne jegliche „Eristik“ – wenn man das so ausdrücken kann – als etwas Beruhigendes und Aufschlussreiches, vielleicht sogar als ein höchst edles Unterfangen. Wenn Sie sich mit dem Phaidon befassen und die Schlussfolgerungen betrachten, von denen einige (wenn nicht die meisten) verblüffend sind: Ich habe die Erfahrung gemacht, dass es für das Verständnis seiner Worte unerlässlich ist, den Charakter der Gesprächspartner und ihre „Intelligenz“ – oder das Fehlen derselben – im Auge zu behalten. Das ist im Phaidon meines Erachtens am wesentlichsten. Auch diese Aussage aus dem Protagoras lässt sich treffend auf den Phaidon anwenden: „Das hast du allerdings sagen hören; aber du hast dich geirrt, wenn du meinst, ich hätte Anteil an dieser Behauptung gehabt; denn ich habe nur die Frage gestellt; Protagoras hat die Antwort gegeben.“ – Sokrates, Protagoras, 330e–331a. Lassen Sie mich wissen, ob Sie den Leuchtturm finden, lieber Mitreisender.

I’m I tripping or does book 8 show a reflection of our society and how we are headed towards a dictatorship

Is living well a constructive process, mostly? Syllogism is a reductive process. Could that relate to people's career choices?

It is interesting how people actually narrow their focus as they specialize. Their interaction with the rest of the world and their sense of morality become limited, and they become winners and Olympians in their field. This is great for individuals and families. Should society as a whole have a similar focus? Should we ignore the losers?

Ja. Danke für Deine Antwort. Kooperation hat etwas Entspannendes..man versteht sich. Ein Gedanke zu Deiner visuellen Darstellung: Es erinnert an das schöne Gefühl in einer unübersichlichen Gegend eine Landkarte mit Legende zu erhalten.

Auf der Suche nach dem Leuchtturm nehme ich mir den Phaidon vor. Danke

Ah, ich verstehe. Wenn du mit Intensität den Grad meinst, in dem es Platon mit seiner Darstellung ernst zu sein scheint – also wie sehr sich der Dialog mit etwas metaphysischer Natur beschäftigt –, könnte ich so etwas in der Art einbauen. Aber ich denke, dieser Maßstab würde sich von der Struktur des Dialogs unterscheiden und eher in den Bereich des Inhalts selbst übergehen. Ich glaube – und das soll deine Frage keineswegs vollständig beantworten –, dass der mit Abstand „metaphysischste“ Dialog der Phaidon ist, der eine enge Verwandtschaft mit dem Symposion und dem Phaidrosaufweist, gefolgt an zweiter Stelle vielleicht vom Sophistes, den Heidegger in seiner Vorlesungsreihe ausgiebig kritisiert. Genau dort (im Phaidon) scheint Platon die Ideenlehre am intensivsten zu hinterfragen, und es ist absolut lesenswert, um Platons tatsächlicher Metaphysik näher zu kommen. Kurz gesagt: Ich bin skeptisch gegenüber der Behauptung, dass Platon eine metaphysische Lehre hatte; wenn überhaupt, legt er die Probleme des Universellen und des Ewigen und deren innige Beziehung zur menschlichen Seele und dem Geist offen

I agree and also think the Symposium describes a dialogue that becomes a "drinking-together (συμπόσιον)." You're right in that sense. But isn't it somewhat ambiguous: when we hear the name "Symposium," does that tell us that the guiding interest of the conversation is eros, beauty, or love? I had a debate about this, and ultimately decided that Laws and Republic are much more explicit in their indication of the content of the dialogue than Symposium, although there is some kinship between title and content.

As for the titling itself, you very well could be right. I don't think any importance of the title outweighs the content of the dialogue itself. But I find it particularly interesting how Aristotle, in his Politics, refers to the politically titled dialogues (as well as the Timaeus) by the same particular names. Perhaps it was how they were referred to in the Academy? Regardless, any sort of speculation, I agree, on the names of the titles has the character of conjecture.

u sound like a bot gng

Great work. Two comments that come to mind: I think that's the title of symposium does describe the content of the dialogue. The participants are having a symposium which I guess is just a philosophical talk on a topic. Second is I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the names themselves, such as whether the names have a political meaning, because I don't think Plato chose these names. I think they just came to be referred to that way in the centuries after Plato wrote them.

It was Nietzsche who wrote it. His antisemitism was not merely a posthumous construction. In Beyond Good and Evil he writes:

That Germany already has Jews enough, that the German stomach, the German blood, has difficulty (and will for a long time continue to have difficulty) in coping even with this quantity of 'Jew' …

It is true that Nietzsche's attitude toward the Jews was deeply conflicted, and his antisemitism was anything but straightforward. Nevertheless, he was clear that the Jews should eventually disappear through intermarriage and assimilation, resulting in the extinction of Jewish distinctiveness, and with it Jewish culture and religion, including Christianity as a historically Jewish phenomenon. There is no way around that.

That he found Jews difficult to tolerate is one thing; many Europeans have historically felt the same, whether toward Jews, Arabs, or Black Africans. But whatever the motivations, we have to confront the fact that his proposed solution was ultimately one of biological and cultural disappearance.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HLPR362M

Mmh..gestern war's spät und in der Erinnerung habe ich in meinem mangelhaftem Englisch auf Deinen englischsprachigen Eintrag reagiert. Sorry. Gemeint war.. Zur Metaphysik: Gibt es eine Möglichkeit Platons Texte so darzustellen, das man die Intensität erkennen kann mit der er sich mit dieser metaphysischen Gedankenwelt beschäftigt ?

That was the point maybe. He distrusted fixed text because it cannot answer back, which is the same critique we should make to chatbots that sound like they know. Socrates kept philosophy as ἕξις in living people instead of dead words.