The Plato Paradigm

Socrates innocently describes the scene as he and Ctesippus, followed by the others, enter the palaestra. Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting analyses may be found at: https://theplatoparadigm.com

Socrates promises.to demonstrate to Hippothales how to speak to one's lust object in a way which will attract rather than repel. Hippithales is. deviously inventive when it comes to helping Socrates talk to Lysis, enlisting the aid of Ctesippus and Ctesippus' cousin Menexenus in order to facilitate the meeting. Hippothales appears not to have noticed that Socrates has successfully engineered a con...

Socrates criticizes Hippothales for his speeches and songs, but not for the right reason. Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting analyses may be found at: https://theplatoparadigm.com

Ctesippus describes to Socrates the sort of ridiculous praise his friend Hippothales has been directing at Lysis. It turns out that Hippothales is not in fact praising Lysis. Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting analyses may be found at: https://theplatoparadigm.com

We learn some more about Lysis, the formal subject of this part of the conversation. Lysis is the son of Democrates of the deme Aixone, so he is of an aristocratic family. He seems to have it all - looks, wealth, status, reputation, and a course in wrestling. We should not forget, however, the the most important things we learn are from characters themselves, about themselves, and here we learn qu...

Ctesippus enters the chat. He informs Socrates that Hippothales is so obsessed with Lysis that he is an annoyance to Ctesippus and the others of their age group. Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting analyses may be found at: https://theplatoparadigm.com

Socrates, using his god-given gift to recognize lusters and lusted, quickly ascertains that Hippothales is lusting after a younger boy in the wrestling school. Socrates' profession of ignorance with regard to all other things should be taken with a grain of salt, as should be the notion that a god was required to give Socrates the ability to deduce Hippothales' infatuation with someone. Here I rea...

The youths, including Hippothales and Ctesippus, are assmbled outside of a palaestra, where they spend time in words. During this introductory chat we come to appreciate one feature of Socratic dialectic, namely how Plato's Socrates sets up conversations in advance. We should not apply this feature to Socrates in every dialogue, but it is certainly a feature in the later early dialogues, and some...

Socrates says he was walking from Academy straight to Lyceum, but on the way encountered a crowd of youths. Is he about to be mugged under the city wall of Athens? Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting analyses may be found at: https://theplatoparadigm.com

Socrates conceals his dialectic exercise with rhetoric and even eristics in an attempt to make Io, who enjoys listening to sophists (he says "you sophoi"), and consequently nice rhetorical stories such as the magnet analogy, actually consider what his rhapsodic techne is. It does include thousands of Homeric lines as subject matter, but this does not mean he is an expert (has the techne) regarding...

What the dialogue is not about. Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting analyses may be found at: https://theplatoparadigm.com

In this final section of the dialogue, Socrates provides Io with two options. Either Io has techne and refuses to divulge his sophia to Socrates, and is therefore doing wrong, or he has no techne but is divinely inspired. Should he choose to be considered unjust or divine? Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting analyses may be fo...

Socratae, beginning his concluding remarks, presents the first of his two options for Io. Accordinng to this first option, Io is doing Socrates wrong by purposely shapeshifting in order to avoid revealing how clever he is with regard to the sophia of Homer. Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting analyses may be found at: https://...

Socrates finishes off the argument refuting Io's claim that he is a general, let alone a good general, incidentally revealing that the dramatic date of the dialogue is around 413 BC, after the disastrous Athenian campaign against Syracuse. Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting analyses may be found at: https://theplatoparadigm.c...

Socrates begins dismantling Io's claim that he has a techne common to rhapsodes and generals. Io accepts that he is the best rhapsode and the best general, but he cannot accept that any general is also a rhapsode, for the very good reason, I suggest, that a general is not a rhapsode. This is not a refutation based on logic, but an argument from observation. Here I read through Platonic dialogues,...

Having essentially agreed (in not so many words) that each techne has exclusive subject matter, it is perhaps surprising that Io remains steadfast over his claim that the rhapsode and the strategos share the same techne. Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting analyses may be found at: https://theplatoparadigm.com

Io had been forced to narrow the rhapsode's expertise down to knowing what sort of things it would be fitting for different types of people to say, ,such as a man, a woman, a slave or a ruler, rather than any type of craftsman. However, Socrates has derailed this approach to rhapsody by giving each of these types of people various types of techne: the ruler he has turned into a ruler of a ship at...

Io misspoke when he formulated the rhapsode's techne as the ability to know the sort of things any type of person should say. It is easy for Socrates to make Io admit that craftsmen of all other crafts will say things connected to their crafts more finely than a rhapsode could - this after all is what they have been assuming for a long time now. Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating...

What began as a question over who can judge better when Homer is speaking well has recently become a question of which techne is better suited to judge the subject matter of the poem. In every case, the professional associated with the subject matter being discussed is preferred to the rhapsode, since Io accepts the sophistic principle of exclusivity (if one techne knows X, then the rhapsodic tech...

Socrates quotes another Homeric example of the mantike techne (the craft of the seer). Unlike the first example, a prophecy, the.second example is an omen. Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting analyses may be found at: https://theplatoparadigm.com

Socrates adds to the medical quote from Homer a quote from the techne (craft) of fishing, and another from the craft of divination. It still appears to Io that professionals rather than a rhapsode would be able to better judge whether Homer speaks well about these ultimately minor details from entire professions.. Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text...

Socrates makes a meal of the refutation. One point I don't discuss in the podcast is why a charioteer would want to judge a poet anyway, and the question may be directed at the judging of rhapsodes in competitions. What exactly is being judged? Their knowledge of the subject matter talked about by the poet, or their ability to perform the poem? This would seem to be an easy question to answer, but...

Socrates is still sophistically establishing the exclusivity of the subject matter of a craft, such that the subject matter of one techne cannot be the subject matter of another techne. Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting analyses may be found at: https://theplatoparadigm.com

Spcrates continues developing his sophistic argument which will eventually lead to yet another proof that rhapsody is not a techne (craft or skill). We two use the same skill concerning the same content, such as knowing that Socrates is holding up five fingers. It would seem to follow that different content therefore requires different skills. Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating an...

Socrates' apparently dialectical elenchus turns out to be more of a sophistic exercise with the foregone false conclusion that only a charioteer (having the techne of chariot racing) would understand what Homer says about chariot racing. Not only are there several obvious flaws in the construction of the argument, but the very idea that it is Homer rather than Nestor speaking is also concerning, b...