Would Plato tweet? The Ancient Greek guide to social media

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210922-would-plato-tweet-the-ancient-greek-guide-to-social-media

by thdespou • 5 years ago

48 21 5 years ago

In the ninth book of the Republic, Socrates casually describes the mass of human beings as things without even the dignity of animals, characteristically they are " bent over their tables, they feed like cattle with stooping heads and eyes fixed upon the ground; so they grow fat and breed, and in their greedy struggle they kick and butt one another to death (...) because they can never satisfy with unreal nourishment that part of themselves which is itself unreal and incapable of lasting satisfaction."

Contrary to the article, there is no doubt: Socrates would have no use for social media. His view is closer to Freud's, who remarked in a letter to Lou Andreas-Salomé : "In the depths of my heart I can’t help being convinced that my dear fellow men, with a few exceptions, are worthless." & Elsewhere "In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or none at all ... If we are to talk of ethics, I subscribe to a high ideal from which most of the human beings I have come across depart most lamentably." - this is much the tone of Plato.

Walt Whitman I can imagine on Twitter.

dragonwriter• 5 years ago

In the ninth book of the Republic, Socrates [...]

Note that this is “Socrates, the mouthpiece character created by Plato".

Contrary to the article, there is no doubt: Socrates would have no use for social media.

Well, that may be the case for Plato, its less the case for Socrates, unless you mean the one Plato created and not the real one. The relationship between the two itself has much doubt.

DrStormyDaniels3• 5 years ago

It may well be that “Socrates, the mouthpiece character created by Plato" was more real, platonically speaking, than the historical entity that went by that name.

tessierashpool2• 5 years 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.

IncRnd• 5 years ago

Well, that may be the case for Plato, its less the case for Socrates, unless you mean the one Plato created and not the real one. The relationship between the two itself has much doubt.

Plato wrote the Republic, which is what the poster had quoted.

bobthechef2• 5 years ago

For Freud to make those remarks is truly remarkable and a textbook example of megalomania and chutzpah. That man was an unscrupulous fraudster who preyed on rich patients (they were all rich at that time), a deviant with weird sexual appetites, and a charlatan[0]. Nephew Eddy didn't fall far from the tree.

Plato, whatever his faults (Aristotle is better), cannot be reasonably compared to Freud.

[0] Freud also covered his tracks: he burned his notes on more than one occasion. He drew on Weishaupt who drew from the Jesuits in Inglostadt who taught him. The Jesuits practiced a kind of examination of conscience which, of course, was for the purpose of _liberation_ from sin and vice vis-a-vis the sacrament of penance. Weishaupt turned this on its head and used it as a tool ("Seelenanalyse", from which we get the word "psychoanalysis") for exploiting these vices to control people. Enter Wilhelm Reich, second gen Freudian, who weaponized this stuff as "sexual revolution".

gverrilla• 5 years ago

Wilhelm Reich, second gen Freudian, who weaponized this stuff as "sexual revolution".

you are very funny LMAO

complianceguy• 5 years ago

Those opinions of fellow humans, and the kinds of people who have them, are about a dime a dozen on Twitter.

50• 5 years ago

I read something earlier this week which makes me think Whitman wouldn't necessarily be online. From Irving Howe's "The Idea of the Modern":

"Subjectivity becomes the typical condition of the modernist outlook. In its early stages, when it does not trouble to disguise its filial dependence on the Romantic poets, modernism declares itself an inflation of the self, a transcendental and orgiastic aggrandizement of matter and event in behalf of personal vitality. In the middle stages, the self begins to recoil from externality and now devotes itself, almost as if it were the world’s body, to a minute examination of its own inner dynamics: freedom, compulsion, caprice. In the late stages, there occurs an emptying-out of the self, a revulsion from the wearisomeness of both individuality and psychological gain. (Three writers as exemplars of these stages: Walt Whitman, Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett.) Modernism thereby keeps approaching–sometimes even penetrating–the limits of solipsism, the view expressed by Gottfried Benn when he writes that 'there is no outer reality, there is only human consciousness, constantly building, modifying, rebuilding new worlds out of its own creativity.'"

willcipriano• 5 years ago

Plato would demand to see the credentials of whomever disagreed with him and finding them lacking, dismiss anything they had to say out of hand due to them being fools looking at shadows on the wall of a cave.

He would fit right in.

earthboundkid• 5 years ago

There's a good book called "What Confucius Really Said" that takes the Analects of Confucius and just puts it in a modern idiom. I think in general, the Analects comes off as more Tweet-like than anything in Plato. Plato is more of a playwright who characters go on unrealistically long digressions about whatever idea it is the author was interested in.

bobthechef2• 5 years ago

For tweet-length material, look to the Spartans. The Athenians were too wordy for this terse medium.

DrStormyDaniels3• 5 years ago

cf. etymology of laconic

pvg• 5 years ago

Not really a problem - since Theseus, Athenians have been handy with the thread.

jonesnc• 5 years ago

My answer is no.

Twitter is for people to make up a guy to get mad at.

Plato made up a guy to destroy people in debate.

mt_• 5 years ago

Comparing early philosophers to current influencers as the same. Just no.

nsonha• 5 years ago

They lived in an era when most other people are gulible and barbaric. I doubt without public manipulation their ideas or themselves would have survived.

Also if you take the saying "power corrrupts" a little less literally then superior intellect also corrupts, if there are no counter-weight to them such as opposing intellects, which were rarer at the time.

timoth3y• 5 years ago

This feels like the writer made a great pitch, but could not actually deliver the goods. Come on. Equating influencers to philosophers? Equating the search for truth with deciding which influencers to follow? No. Just no.

The answer to the question is a clear and obvious "no".

Social media influencers are the spiritual and intellectual decedents of the Sophists, and Plato absolutely despised the Sophists

Would Plato tweet? The Ancient Greek guide to social media

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