Ok, really though. That nigga either didn't think shit through, or Strauss1 was at least correct about the idea that Plato wasn't always saying what he was "saying" at face value. Take platonic ideals: my understanding of these has been that they are 'the things which cast the shadows on the walls of the allegorical cave' - they're the perfect, timeless, True forms from which every thing in our lives is derived, but which are not those things themselves. No two snowflakes are exactly alike because they're all imperfect imitations of the one, true, snowflake - there "exists" One Flake To Rule Them All (except it's less of a 'because' thing - even if every flake were the same, it would not be the One True Flake). From the exoteric perspective, this is the concept in its final form. From an esoteric perspective (to philosophers) however, maybe it was a prompt. Merely a stepping stone which lays the groundwork for arriving at the true idea he wanted to communicate, but which (for one reason or another) he believed he could not directly give to you.
The implications of the concept of platonic ideals are... I mean, let's be real for a second: they're inconsequential. This is very "in the weeds" type shit. Angels dancing on the head of a pin. This is why religions exist: they address this type of shit and they package it all as a narrative alongside some things that are actually, genuinely useful - proscriptions against dangerous behaviors, what foods not to eat because god will punish you (ie they'll give you the shits). Also, lots of autistic and schizophrenic rambling I guess - I'm lookin' at you, Book of Numbers. The exoteric interpretation of a platonically ideal religion would be something like that anyway (minus the schizophrenia... probably).
Applying the underlying principle of platonic ideals and taking that to its logical conclusion, as one must assume2 Plato intended in an effort to esoterically communicate... what exactly? Hmm. If everything is derived from an ideal counterpart, then everything has an ideal counterpart. "Everything" as a concept, as we conceive of it, isn't present in some hypothetical "realm of ideals" (because it is a flawed imitation of the true conceptual 'everything'). Same for all kinds of stuff, like... distinctions. Distinctions don't/can't exist there either, because they exist here. So "everything" in the ideal sense can't simply be the set containing every distinct thing. Our philosophical conception of ideals themselves have an ideal form, and so no explanation of them will ever be the "ideal ideals".
I'm not saying my thinking here is ironclad, but I feel it's safe to say that without arbitrarily choosing some categories of 'thing' and saying "oh, there's no ideal version of those" applying the principle which underpins "ideal forms" takes us waaaaay past 'there is an ideal pencil in the realm of ideals that is what pencils are shaped like', and all of a sudden we find ourselves... at least on the border of (but arguably pretty deep into) cosmogony territory. Like, seriously, everything is derived from that one thing? Man, you could make a religion out of this.
Oh... wait.
So the Straussian reading here, I suppose, is that Plato just watched his boy Socrates get murked because he was asking questions which some took to be blasphemous toward the gods (I might be mistaken, but I believe he implied that the gods were perhaps not gods, but maintained they were still a type of δαίμων - daimon/'demon', basically saying something like 'G-d is supernatural, but not sacred'). This interpretation of platonic ideals is some pretty hot and heavy shit, and would imply the ancient Gods don't exist. Or at least it'd imply that if they do exist, it could only be "in a sense" - they could not exist exactly as they were conceived of by ancient Greeks (after all, a logical consequence is that there could only be one true god, which the pantheon was a pale imitation of). Although you could say the gods were a narrativization by people who encountered the "ideal ideal", fіltered through the lens of the other 'allegorical shadows' they were experiencing at the times of each encounter (sex, beauty, drunkness, warfare, whatever)... well you could, if you weren't worried about hemlock. Which uhh, yeah, Strauss ain't wrong: Plato had good reason to be. So it kinda would follow that he'd hide the true meaning behind an idea which on its own - without further thought from his intended audience - made no such claims. It merely begged the question, and only for a certain type of person who - having thought to ask it themselves - was unlikely (or less likely) to be inclined toward denouncing him for blasphemy. Or so Strauss' reading of Plato presumably goes (maybe not this specific thing, but it follows the general thrust of Strauss' readings of Plato... I think).
The Meikai reading is schizophrenic and centers on my unhealthy obsession with a particular Eastern religious concept: that Plato independently arrived at the Eternal Tao, and realizing the futility of trying to actually explain the Eternal Tao (notoriously difficult, way harder that coming up with a succinct description for a human or whatever Greeks were up to at the time), he set about trying to formulate the simplest set of information from which one could derive the existence of the Tao for themselves. Although, having said Plato 'independently arrived' at this, I feel it's important to point out that it's impossible to rule out Eastern influence on Plato - Plato was born in the early days of Greco-Buddhist syncretism, but he was contemporaneous with it. So there's a possibility some of that good oriental philosophy shit - that shit they watered with the blood of 36 dragons - was trickling in. And, I mean, what was Siddhartha Gautama if not the archetypal xian or taoist sage/master? Maybe the Straussian reading is also true, and it's beautifully synchronistic how Plato uncovered a truth that could not by its nature be uttered, at a time when he could not utter it even if it were possible. I'm sure that would have seemed to him an act of the Fates, if he still had a place for them.
Ok. I spent an ungodly amount of time thinking about this and editing the post, and I'm bored now. Very bored. Suddenly, too - like, I might have left something halfway through editing it and it makes no sense now, but I'm done. The contents of this thread are probably as retarded as my decision to post it here on this forum rather than... like, literally anywhere else... but whatever. This one's one of the ones I'm doin' for my benefit. You are my blog now. My cloud storage for text documents. Don't care.
This thread is in a topical forum btw, so maybe try not to shit it up too hard. Lanny might ban you. Oh, who am I kidding - y'all niggas is hopeless, and Lanny never gave a shit about off topic posting outside of T&T anyway. Have fun.
1 Leo Strauss. I've never actually read his work, and only know about him as a result of so-called "Straussian reading" - and until recently, I only 'knew' of him in the sense that I knew 'he was a philosophy guy who liked reading between the lines'. It wasn't until reading an article about fucking BAP of all people that I actually came to understand that Strauss 'liked reading between the lines' because he believed that great thinkers had to hide the true meaning behind what they said for fear of backlash from less enlightened folks (see: Socrates), or that there was anything linking Strauss and Plato. This was... fairly recent. I'm quite ignorant of a great many of things, but I do enjoy that: it lets me "more-or-less independently" arrive at many ideas, while still knowing juuuuuuust enough to second guess whether I'm the first person who had them, as happened with multiple things in this thread.
2 I'm an arrogant pseud sometimes, but not arrogant enough to think I'm a greater thinker than Plato... for long enough to unironically communicate that thought, anyway. It definitely crossed my mind for a second there though, and if I hadn't been aware the Strauss/Plato connection I might not have had the wherewithal to question my arrogance. There is another reality in which I made a thread unironically claiming to be smarter than Plato instead of this one, and I'm sure it was a very embarrassing and humbling experience for me (and very funny for whoever made fun of me). There's a chance that he didn't consider any of this, however, and that'd be... kinda funny if true, I guess. I mean... any student of his - any fellow philosopher, really - could have asked questions along these lines of him. In front of an audience. What then?
