Post #4625781 · Elektrine

2026-09-05 20:05 UTC

They forget something important about all those Platonic dialogues: they're scripted. Plato isn't giving an eyewitness account and he takes care to sidestep his own presence in the conversations he's purporting to relate as the deeds of his friend Socrates. Really he's writing embellished and slightly fictionalized scenarios about idealized characters designed to be the vectors for chosen viewpoints. There's nothing wrong with this exactly, but it's susceptible (in basically the same way as the Bible) to misinterpretation along the lines of a false "literalism", i.e. acting as if Plato is giving us verbatim the words spoken in "real life" by Socrates. (etc.)

Replies (1)

@mxchara@cyberpunk.lol 2026-09-05 20:11

This habit of ignoring the fictional aspect of texts and treating them as literal truths which ought never to be questioned, but rather accepted at face value as atomic statements of universal Truth or God's Truth, is pervasive in a reactionary political discourse that's forced to appeal to #fiction in order to find a landscape in which their worse ideas can be made to seem at home and sensible. This reliance upon fiction has led the "dark intellectuals" into pathways that can only be described as occult and esoteric, i.e. devoted to the idea that the truest meanings of texts is not to be found in the words themselves but in speculative interpretation informed by contact with gnostic truth, i.e. that impression of truth gained from personal spiritual experience. (etc.)

Open ##4625805