Can someone give me a good explanation of Plato's reconciliation

Read the pre-socratics.

Parmenides and Heraclitus write on nature (physis).

Read the pre-socratics.

Heraclitus is the process philosophy guy, the only permanent thing is change itself, everything else is impermanent, ever-changing, ever-becoming. You find this in Asian philosophy a lot.

Read the pre-socratics.

Parmenides is the essentialist and idealist guy. Thinking itself is being. Parmenides also introduces the principle of non-contradiction, by the way.

The solution is Plato's distinction of matter and Form and to read the pre-socratics..

>>9401619
Any single book that explains them all?

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>>9401638

Heraclitus was radical Becoming, Parmenides was Radical Being, two poles between which the pre-Socratic philosophers struggled to make a place for phenomena (the things which appear, i.e., what we seem to experience as a reality that paradoxically can be both permanence and flux at the same time, depending on one's perspective). Heraclitus said that all is flux, and permanence is mere illusion. Parmenides said exactly the opposite.

Others between the two extremes was to posit that certain elements, some kind of "arche" or primary substance, was the true essence of Being, more permanent and more really "real" than the ephemeral forms it takes. For various of the pre-Socratis this was either an element, or an energised form of elemental matter capable of the various ephemeral permanences we see in nature. You already see a move toward hierarchy here - of a kind of metaphysics that privileges certain kinds of phenomena over others, that makes some of them more "really real" than others.

One of the ways of extending this was further to stratify and hierarchize reality. The "more permanent," Being, is the higher, more eternal reality, as we saw. But instead of it being certain elemental forces or ingredients that interact, the neo-Pythagoreans and Plato posit a reality of "form-giving," "structuring" realities. For the neo-Pythagoreans, this was mathematical and geometric truths, in a sense pretty similar to our modern idea of physical and mathematical constants and truths structuring the macroscopic/material world that we interact with. Plato extended this to include other "truths," ideas.

The other half of his move toward this solution was that the sophists of 5th century were really annoying about how they used words (therefore, how they employed "concepts" - the "what" that the spoken word "signifies"). When you read the dialogues you have to remember that these people didn't even have an idea of homonyms or synonyms, didn't have any clear ways of thinking about sense and reference, didn't have an idea of "concepts," barely had an idea of what an "idea" means (a problem that persists into the early modern period and beyond).

Plato's response to this confusion was also inspired by, and in dialogue with, some of his contemporaries, including the neo-Pythagoreans. These guys, and Plato, were all annoyed with the eristic/sophistic style of argumentation, and they had been strongly influenced by geometry and mathematics, which were starting to be done in the form of primitive proofs, and a "dialectical" style of argumentation that eliminates "impossibilities" (logical inconsistencies). They were basically coming up with "notions" or a "feel" (see how vague these words are? the Greeks didn't even have the benefit of being able to reflect on this) for things like the principle of non-contradiction, the law of the excluded middle, etc., which have practically structured all philosophy since then.

So Plato combined this dialectical approach to

discerning "correct usage" of word-concepts, of finding truth in speech and dispute rather than just artfully playing with its confusing ambiguities to confound opponents, with his deep appreciation for mathematics and geometry, including the neo-Pythagorean mystical perspective which described visible reality as structured by a higher, more "real," logical-mathematical "reality," and with a nascent metaphysics of Being vs. Becoming.

It becomes very easy for him at that point to address some of the older questions in more sophisticated ways: where Parmenides retreated from the flux as illusory, and Heraclitus retreated from beings as illusory, Plato could ask "so, what makes a dog a dog?" "How do adjectives apply to nouns? Is saying 'Socrates is human' the same 'kind' of thing as saying 'Socrates is sitting' or 'Socrates is white'?" (They didn't even have words for this yet! They had to gradually INVENT the concept of 'predication' and then specify different *kinds* of predication.) "What does it mean to predicate *relative* qualities of something, or qualities that were true a moment ago but aren't true any longer? How does truth work? Does truth endure?"

You can see Plato is working here with basically the same problematic, the nature of Being and Becoming, of what is "real" and durable, and what is illusory. Aristotle's seemingly tedious obsession with these sorts of questions is actually one of the most exciting moments in the history of human thought because it's the first attempt to formalise language and explicate its relationship with REALITY, to explicate the relationship between "what we think and say" with "what IS."

Plato is FAR less concerned with that sort of thing though. He is not interested in founding a "predicate calculus," or of classifying ephemeral reality. Aristotle departs from his master and immanentizes Being - he makes this world a real and permanent place full of Beings and their causes and logics. Plato on the other hand is mainly concerned with using his proto-logical dialectic simply to reach dialogical aporias - he's willing to take the dialectical process far enough to dispel rhetorical ambiguities and sophistry, and THEN to point out the essential confusion in our discursive concepts and ways of thinking. At THAT point, he almost always switches over to "muthos," to story-telling, to METAPHOR, which is an intuitive and higher form of grasping truth. This is likely because of his mystical and hermetic bent (see his Seventh Letter). He literally believes in that hierarchy of Being, with some kind of all-encompassing (and thus all-explaining) God-Being at the "top." So really, all the philosopher needs to do is ascend his confusions and then open his mind to higher contemplations - NOT, as in Aristotle, in order to do better science and more efficiently classify the world. But to grasp the higher realities which underlie it - including, but now no longer limited to, its underlying divine mathematical truths.

>>9401638
Check out Windelband's History of Philosophy, which has the pre-Socratics and their relation to the early Greeks nicely but densely packed into the first bits. Or, check out his History of Ancient Greek Philosophy, which is obviously more extended.

Also check out Rist's book on Aristotle, the first chapter and introduction, for a layout of his philosophy and its relationship with his predecessors.

>>9401593

OP just watch this short video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbDW1836TXg

I fucking love academy of ideas

>>9401774
>>9401781
Did you copy pasta this? Got a source?

>>9401638
Copleston
A History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Greece and Rome From the Pre-Socratics to Plotinus

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385468431/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_1c79ybPQRN2J7

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OP on the right

>>9401619
Heraclitus is a bit subtler than that. His main point is the unity of opposites, things are both stable and ever-changing, the barley drink is a really cool example he uses, if the drink's not constantly stirred it settles and the ingredients separate out. The drink only remains the same by constantly moving.

>>9401593
Perhaps relate it to Plato's divided line

Heraclitus = sensible realm = becoming/appearance

Parmenides = intelligible realm = being/reality

>>9401885
Nah just typed it up so take it all with a grain of salt. Windelband is good for these kinds of metaphysical nitty-gritty wranglings.

>>9401781
>NOT, as in Aristotle, in order to do better science and more efficiently classify the world. But to grasp the higher realities which underlie it - including, but now no longer limited to, its underlying divine mathematical truths.

have to disagree here but good posts nonetheless, have you read Gadamer on the relationship of Plato and Arisotle?

>>9402566
this and the bow metaphor (that a mind is strongest when it bends back against itself) are great intuitive examples of his thought.

OP, his fragments will seriously take you less than an hour if you are reading retarded slow. I'd recommend getting a book on the preSocratics like other anons said, purely because Plato's going to talk about most of them through Socrates, and Plato is not always the most accurate source