Talk:Analogy of the Sun

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This article is a good reason why I think the number of topics in Wikipedia is practically inexhaustible. As a matter of fact, the metaphor of the sun is reasonably important in Plato scholarship, and yet there are scores(probably hundreds if not thousands) of similar concepts, theories, myths, metaphors, etc., to be found in Plato. And then there are similar numbers to be found in the work of dozens of other great philosophers. And that's just history of philosophy! --Larry Sanger

Yes, wise people have long ago realized, that Wikipedia is a failed concept. For two reasons:
1. It is (under) centralized (control). Meaning when the vandals become the admins, it’s game over. (“Anyone can edit … and be instantly reverted, called a vandal, and banned, lol”.) And due to human psychology (see: Dunbar’s numberand anonymity leading to effective psychopathy), ALL online communities inevitably devolve into fascist totalitarian dictatorships, with no way to prevent it (as removing anonymity would be even worse, due to permanancy and spread. See Cardinal Richelieu’s “seven lines” quote.).
And 2. The site being literally founded upon the logical fallacy of “argument from authority”, with its rules of “no original research” (aka hiding invalid arguments behind links to “authorities”, that nobody checks, or even straight-up page numbers in inaccessibe books!) and “citation (that pleases the bias of the vandaladmin dictatorship) needed”.
It’s dead, Jim. Just a Lovecraftian, shambling Thing at this point.
—109.42.178.139 (talk) 11:45, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Plagiarism

This article is plagiarized from http://www.crystalinks.com/platometaphors.html but I don't know how to add the template that tells people that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.20.253.230 (talk) 16:41, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

The following quote from the article is just one of many examples of interpretations that are merely a result of the fact that the vast majority of notable, or not, scholars do not truly understand, not only the Greek language semantics and its expressive particularities, or even lack the necessary knowledge of the Greek language for that matter, but above all else, their total oblivious lack of knowledge for how the Greeks actually thought under an all-pervasive religious way of life and interpretation of reality. The main problem of nearly all interpretations of antiquity is that they befall into interpretations that stem from our own divisions of compartmentalized human activity and human endeavour in all fields, be these religious, scientific, artistic, political or philosophical, to mention but a few, thus making it ever impossible to truly understand how the Greeks in General, and Plato particularly, for that matter, thought. But to one who has understood and embraced the way the Greeks thought, as well as one who is highly knowledgeable of the Greek language, such statements by Plato and others are clear as day. Specifically, the problem arises because we examine ancient Greek philosophy in isolation from Classical Philology and Classics, Linguistics and especially ancient Greek Religion and their mysteries. It is absolutely ludicrous and the reason why we constantly see numerous idiotic and shallow interpretations of their words which we have merely extrapolated befit to our own standards or at least to what would be conceivably reasonable by our own interpretations. The fact alone that someone could write the following in the article, goes to show how utterly oblivious he or she is of Greek thought, Greek religion and especially Plato... and most of these people are today's colleagues and students of Plato, unfortunately.

"Indeed, exactly how it is Plato thinks "very existence and essence is derived to [the forms] from" the Good is a matter of considerable interpretive difficulty."

My silly friend... there is no difficulty to be had in the interpretations of his words if you truly knwo what he is talking abotu and you are not fondling thoughts in the dark. Perhaps the people who are in charge of writing this article ought to study notions ranging from simple ideas and terms such as Καλός and Κάλλος to extremely rabbit-hole-like subjects such as Greek mysticism and magic specific to the Greek Mysteries, which every single Greek would have participated in.

No Greek, Plato especially, would have deprived themselves of ancient rites such as Mystagogia, resulting in Epopteia, and some finally becoming a Christos. Their words in their philosophy and elsewhere are seminal for and signifying of the principal beliefs in their religious mystery oaths. Their views on what is good, divine and immortal, as well as what is otherworldly and metaphysical, are absolutely relevant to their religious views, which they upheld and adhered to throughout their lives, contrary to how we function today, and the reason why most people who try to understand them fail to see what Plato really means. Nonetheless, such interpretations would constitute "original work" and would also not be in line with pedestrian, mainstream literary and philosophical analysis, unfortunately.

____Ἑλλαιβάριος Ellaivarios____ 00:07, 26 February 2012 (UTC) Sir, you're right. But how-where can we find more genuine interpretation of Ancient Greek philosophy as average readers?

Re: sun metaphor

I recommend removing the words "arguably intellectual illumination" from the following quote: "the sun as a metaphor for the source of "illumination", arguably intellectual illumination" NovaGnosis (talk) 15:23, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Done, with more clarification added. BlueMist (talk) 23:10, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Among excellent edits, one that obfuscates

Our dear departed Lasersword did a great deal of creditable work on this article, but I have a quibble. His change in [1] to line 23 made it unintelligible. Can someone fix? Thank you. 66.92.161.127 (talk) 03:30, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Original research

@Bafuncius - the material is not, in fact, sourced, the citations are to the republic itself, and all of analysis and interpretation in this article appears original. As such, I believe it should be removed. - car chasm (talk) 17:26, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer, Carchasm! There seems to be some paragraphs with valid sources. For instance, the first paragraph's statement is in check with what is written in the first source ([2]). And one of the last ones too, according to this source: [3]. The other ones mainly used as reference "Pojman, Louis & Vaughn, L. (2011). Classics of Philosophy.": indeed this one is invalid; at first glance I've thought that it was some secondary work, but now I consulted that it is a compilation of primary sources, including The Republic: [4]. So there are indeed unsourced and badly sourced paragraphs that can be removed, but in my opinion not all of them. Some main primary quotations can be preserved, for instance, as they are paradigmatic to the passage of the analogy of the Sun and can be useful to appear here for the general reader. Not every primary quotation is original research or invalid. These are my concerns about deleting the whole section, so I thank you if you may consider them and rearrange the info according to your criteria. Best regards! Bafuncius (talk) 18:09, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Analogy not actually included?

The utterly insane and exactly backwards principle of “no original content“ of Wikipedia aside… Where’s the actual analogy??
There’s not even a link to the text!
So in a topic of philosophy, the article can in fact not even show the analogy’s existence! And it had ONE job…
Instead we get an “analysis” by some random idiot too full of himself, who believes his beliefs are the one hard truth, but clearly barely even understands how to tie his own shoes (let alone the insanity of even wearing shoes by default and covering prrciously human-walkable surfaces in artificial crap for machines)!
Shame! … Shame! … Shame! … Shame!
— 109.42.178.139 (talk) 11:23, 24 March 2024 (UTC)