Alone and welcome to Mythic Mind. We pursue wisdom in the past between primary
secondary worlds. I'm your host, Andrew Snyder, and I am always grateful
for your company. Okay, so I apologize that it's been a little while
since the last episode, and it's likely going to be a bit before the
next, likely sometime in May. As I mentioned on Patreon and Twitter,
I'm currently giving as much attention as I'm able to to the upcoming study on
the philosophy and fiction of C. S. Lewis. As a reminder,
it starts in May, and over twelve weeks, we're going to be going
through almost all of his major works of fiction, including the Ransom Trilogy,
Screwtape, Letters Till We Have Faces, the Great Divorce, and the Chronicles
of Darnia. Each week we'll involve at least one, but usually two videos
on the reading to watch whenever you're able, And in these videos, I'm
going to delve into some philosophical matters. I'm going to delve into some literary
background, some biographical information as is useful, and so basically my goal is
just to help you walk away, not just with a little bits of trivia.
Although I'm sure you'll get some of that along the way, but I
want you to walk away with a greater sense that you've been in these worlds
that Lewis has created, and that you're able to take some of those worlds
back to your own. I'm also going to provide some suggested prompts for producing
your own content, and with your permission, I'll publish these through the Mythic
Mind substack and one of our podcasts. Also, we will have weekly live
meetings which will be recorded and made available, and we'll have a discord server
for ongoing conversation on the reading. So far, we have fifty participants already
enrolled, and so it's going to be a strong group. I'm really looking
forward to getting started on it and seeing a community develop out of this,
but for now, I need to keep pressing in giving as much attention as
I can to make this as worthwhile as possible for everyone involved. And if
you would like to join, you can click the link in the show notes,
and as a podcast listener, you are entitled to a special twenty five
percent off promo. Just use the code podcast at checkout. If you sign
up, you'll also have the option of adding the upcoming study on Beowulf and
Boethius at half off, and now I'm going to include the audio for the
introductory video for the course, in which I discussed the flow of the course
and introduce some elements of philosophy and cosmology, kind of building up the medieval
worldview, some ideas that are really important for this study. I hope that
you find this meaningful. Hello, and welcome to the Philosophy and Fiction of
C. S. Lewis. I'm doctor Andrew Snyder, and I'm delighted to
be leading you in this study over the next twelve weeks as we dive into
really theory of Lewis's works of fiction. So whether you've been reading Lewis for
a long time, you know, you've been reading them on repeat for decades,
or you're just now picking them up for the very first time, I
hope that this is going to be a very meaningful experience for you. And
even aside from a diversity in acquaintance with Lewis, I know there's a pretty
big diversity in interests and backgrounds represented in the participants of this group. I
know that some of you have advanced degrees in the humanities, some of you
have probably done some academic work on Lewis. I know that there are many
of you who just love good stories, and you recognize that there is something
more than rest on the surface in Lewis's writing, and you know that range.
I mean, it kind of makes sense that you would have that built
around Lewis, that would have this kind of community between those who just love
stories and those who are drawn more toward the academic because Lewis himself had a
wonderful career both in the academy as well as in more literature, both in
his stories as well as his more popular apologetics works, you know, his
mere Christianity and whatnot, and so he really had two robust careers to the
point where you know, if you had never written The Chronicles of Narnia,
he still be well respected in academia, in literary criticism, in medieval and
Renaissance literature, and then likewise, you know, obviously he could have an
entire career solely built off his popular works. However, the same time,
his more popular works are very much rooted in deeper wells. And that is
part of what I want to be doing in this course and helping you to
you know, pass through the wardrobes that are each of his works in order
to find the world that exist on the other side. So it doesn't matter
if you are already a party to academic jargon or if the language of philosophy
leaves you feeling a little bit confused and a little bit anxious. My goal
is to bring everybody into the mix here so that way we all benefit and
we all participate in a meaningful community that is doing meaningful things with these meaningful
stories. In this introductory video, I want to do a few things.
First, I want to tell you a little bit about my experience with C.
S. Lewis, and then I want to tell you a little bit
about the structure and flow of the course so you know exactly what to expect.
And then lastly, I want to delve into some of the ideas from
the classical and from the medieval world that are particularly important for Lewis, especially
as we get ready for the Ransom trilogy, but even beyond. And so
when we get to that part, I will let you know that this is
going to be probably the most philosophically heavy video that we do. But again
I think that this is pretty important for just setting up some ideas that you're
going to see again and again and again throughout his writings. After all,
if you're familiar with the Last Battle, which we'll be getting to at the
end of the course, you know Professor Kirk, who very much bears kinship
to Lewis himself, you know, it says it's all in Plato, and
so if you're gonna understand what's going on there, as well as in many
of his other stories, it's gonna be helpful if you know a little bit
about Plato, if that's where it all is. And so I didn't grow
up reading an extensive amount. It is something that I very much lamant today.
I just didn't. It was not common for me to voluntarily pick up
a book as a kid. Now that being said, I do fondly remember
reading the Narnia books with my parents in middle school. I eventually made it
through the Hobbit, but even that kind of dragged on. It didn't really
connect with me yet. I wasn't yet prepared to really engage with fiction,
and so that didn't really stick to any significant degree. Now, as I
got a little bit older my youth later teenage years, I did start to
read a little bit more kind of nonfiction theology works, that sort of thing.
I was sort of the mindset that if I'm going to make the time
and energy investment in reading, well I need to learn something. And so
I didn't see much value in picking up a novel in reading fiction. If
I wanted a story, well, I did watch a movie. Now I
cringe terribly saying that, because that idea is so anathema in my current evaluation
of the significance of literature. But nonetheless that's where I was, So I
really was not an active reader. Now. I studied philosophy in my undergrad
at college, and then my experience, my relationship with literature really started to
change in grad school when I took a course on Saint Augustine, and so
during that course I read the Confession City of God, on Christian Doctrine,
on the Trinity, his anti Pallasian writings, and that was really a formative
time for me philosophically, intellectually, but more to the task at hand.
The Confessions in particular awakened something within me, something about the way Augustine laid
out his life narrative, you know, even though since it is nonfictionary,
he's telling his own intellectual rather his own spiritual biography, his own spiritual narrative
as he understands it well, that very much mapped onto my own experience,
and so that's when I first started to get this idea that when you're reading
a narrative, whether it's biographical, whether it's fictional, or whether it's nonfictional,
something about narratives play a significant role that more didactic texts simply are not
fit to do. And so that's when that started to sort of sink in
that there is power in narratives. And then that really got deepened as I
started to read and to study Soaring Crekeguard, who became the subject for my
doctoral dissertation, and all during this time my study of Augusted, my study
of Careguard, I started to kind of get opened up to some of these
figures who are doing psychological analysis of fairy tales and myths and you know,
bringing out the insights that are embedded in these narratives. And so these ideas
continue to work on it continue to work on me until about twenty twenty one,
when I was dealing with one of the most difficult seasons of my life.
And those of you who've been connected with me for quite a while.
Probably already know something about what I'm talking about. But anyways, it was
during this time of great suffering when I started to become more real, when
I started to develop a greater sense of desire for something that can carry me
through the brokenness. And this is when I really started to get this strong
sense of desire, it kind of broken longing for something real, and I
didn't even know exactly what I meant by that. I on one hand,
you know, it was a time of deepening of faith, right, I
learned and what it means to press into the wounds of Christ with the hope
that they could hold every faithful sorrow and would redeem them in the fullness of
joy. And so during this time my faith is deepening, I'm pressing into
Christ. I'm learning what it means to not just no truth, but to
experience truth. And something about all of this, my philosophical, intellectual development,
my spiritual development. I was primed now to appreciate stories. Now.
I'm very grateful that also during this time, I was connected with some solid
people on Twitter who were really into Tolkien, and so I kind of just
started to get pulled in through some of the content that they were putting out.
A started listening to podcasts, despite the fact that up to this point
my relationship with Tolkien was pretty nominal. I mean, like I said,
I made it through The Hobbit in middle school. I watched the movies as
a kid and enjoyed them, but that's pretty much where it ended. Well.
During this time, thanks to again to some of these people who were
producing some worthwhile content, I was getting my attention. I finally ordered the
books and I started reading. Now, this was a definitive turning point in
my life, not just in my literary pursuits, but in my life.
From the very beginning of reading The Fellowship of the Ring, I knew that
I was reading something real, that this wasn't made up. Now, obviously
we don't live in a world with Hobbits and elves and dwarves and you know,
all this stuff. But at the same time, Tolkien is communicating something
that is true. At the same time it might be different kind of truth,
there's still nonetheless true. And you know, at the time, I
didn't have the categories for understanding exactly what I even meant by that, but
I knew as true. And one thing that really pulled me in and caused
me to particularly attach to Tolkien was the way that he brought sorrow together with
beauty and love and joy. This is a common theme throughout his legendary and
writing, this idea that faithful, sorrow and joy are directly connected. He
has this great line in the Silmarillion that is something like, if joyful is
the fountain that rises in the sun, it's springs are in the wells of
sorrow, unfathomed at the foundations of the earth. That might not be exactly
right, but that's the basic idea, the idea that the Cross of Christ
ultimately is the world tree that brings heaven to earth, but it also reaches
down into hell. And so it's this idea that the worst that we can
experience is brought up to the best that we could experience when it is following
this redemptive, crystological direction. And ultimately, I mean, that is the
Christian message. But it's something that really was It's something that I really learned
how to experience even better through Tolkien's writings, as well as many other things
that I could talk about as well. But this is not a Tolkien class
and so I finish out Lord of the Rings, immediately go to Silmarillion,
and then the Great Tales Baron and Luthian Fall, Gondolin, Children of Huron,
as well as some other Tolkien writings. It's then aside to switch to
Lewis, and that's the natural next step. And I jumped right into Till
We Have Faces, which once I got to the end, that absolutely just
blew me up. And I just knew I needed to read everything that Lewis
had to write, and so Rowis ran through and I have not stopped running
through as much Lewis as I can get my hands on. And so I
say all that to say that I'm approaching this from kind of a unique perspective.
On one hand, Yes, I came to Lewis later in life,
relatively recently right I started this, I mean started Lewis probably a couple of
years ago. But I approach him with an academic background in philosophy and theology,
which I think gives me a unique perspective of dealing with Lewis. Also,
I approach him with a passion. Right, this is not a slow
simmering interest. This is something that I'm passionately invested in and It's something that
I've been filling my mind with continually, in text, in audio. Lewis
very much lives in my mind at this point, and I'm delighted to be
sharing some of that passion with you. I'm delighted to be sharing some of
my research, some of my thoughts, some of the ways that I've appropriated
Lewis. But this is not fundamentally about me. This is about Lewis,
and I hope that in this study that you, if you don't already have
it, that you will develop a passion for his writing. Not the sense
that you have to agree with everything he has to say, but I mean
you should probably agree with most of what he has to say. And that's
because you know, he's often understood as being a stage of sorts, a
kind of profit, and that he had penetrating insights into his times in ways
that have really come to even greater fulfillment in our time. And the reason
why he had such insight is not simply because he was a naturally remarkable man,
although I'm sure he was that, but one reason why he was able
to have such brilliant insights while he had such a keen grasp on kind of
what is going on in the world of ideas, in the world of human
experience is because he was deeply rooted in another time. CS. Lewis was
very much a medieval man in the way that he thought. Now, that
doesn't mean that, you know, the medieval mind is full only of wisdom,
But what it does mean is is full of a different kind of wisdom,
for certain than the kind of wisdom you would get from a modern man.
Cs Lewis talks about this in his introduction to Athanasiuses on the Incarnation.
When Lewis talks about the value of reading old books, it's not because books
are good just because they're old. Old books create the mistakes that were common
during the time that they were made. However, those mistakes are going to
be different than the mistakes that we make today. Two heads are better than
one, and so if we can use the strengths of the past to correct
the weaknesses of today, well also again, not missing the mistakes of the
past, well would that not be better? And so Lewis stands apart as
somebody who's able to operate under the auspices of medieval wisdom to understand what's going
on in the modern era. To find our blind spots and to give us
warnings about some of the trajectories that we are on. Okay, so now
let's talk a little bit about the structure and flow of this study so you
know exactly what to expect. Well. Each week is going to have typically
a couple of videos. The first one will be a short introductory video that
it's going to be short because I don't want to give any spoilers for those
of you who are reading the stories for the first time, nor do I
want to put too many preconceived notions in your mind as you encounter these stories,
because I want for you to be able to explore these strange worlds as
the narrative develops. I think that's important, and so the initial video is
really just going to get at some major themes. I'm going to tell you
what some companion text might be. I'm going to give you some basic ideas
that you should look out for, but they're not gonna be very comprehensive,
because again I don't want to ruin anything for you. And then at the
end of the week, there'll be a longer video in which we go back
and do a deeper analysis, pointing out some of the ideas that are play
some the implications these ideas have some connections to other literature and that sort of
thing. Now, I should say that, you know, in this course,
we are doing a lot, We're covering a lot of ground in twelve
weeks, and so what I can't do a chapter by chapter analysis. I
can't look at every single detail, because well, if we're gonna do that,
then any one of these books could easily take well more than twelve weeks.
And so as far as the pre recorded videos go, I'm really going
to focus on big picture and looking at some of the details as they point
out some of these big pictures or you know, a few of these major
angles that we should look at that I think will play an important role in
helping to get more significance, more substance out of the text. That will
help us go further up and further in, which obviously is a phrase that
many of you will recognize now in our ongoing discord chat. That's when we
can really get into more of the details, more of the particular things that
interest you, questions that you have, things that you see as particularly significant
on the smaller scale level, and so you can find the link to the
discord server in the first module, and so follow that link over to the
Mythic Mind discord server that's going to land you in the general chat over there.
Once you get there, just post something about who you are and that
you're part of the course, and then I'll make sure that you get permissions
to join the course channel. Now, in that course channel, the discord
channel, that's when you can and said, get into the various things that
interest you. You can ask questions, you can have free flowing conversation with
the other participants in the course. I strongly encourage you to participate in this.
I think that this is going to be in a very important component of
this of this experience that we're doing here together. It's an important way to
build some community, and it's an important way to get more out of it,
to kind of choose your own adventure and to focus on the things that
are most important to you. And also the discord conversation will play an important
role in helping me to shape the live conversations that we're going to have on
a weekly basis for those of you who are able to join, Because I
don't want the live conversations to just be more of me talking about the things
that interest me. I want those conversations to be based on the things that
interest you, and so kind of mining that discord conversation is going to help
me to structure those live conversations to be most meaningful, to be most valuable
to you, the people who are actually participating in the course. And exactly
what those live conversations will look like will largely depend on how many people are
able to join live. But I think that's going to be a good component
of the study. And if you're not able to make it, I'll make
sure that they are recorded and posted so that way you can watch the recording.
And so that's basically how this course is going to run. Now I'm
going to go take a coffee break and then I'm going to come back and
we'll talk a little bit about some of the philosophical ideas that shape Lewis's thought.
All right, So, as I said, this is going to be
the most extensive philosophical conversation that we have, And really what we need to
do is we need to introduce you to Plato, and we need to introduce
you to the medieval view of the cosmos. But before we even get to
Plato, we need to go a little bit before Plato, and so we're
still in ancient Greece, but we're going to go to the pre Socratic period,
which simply means the philosophers who came before Socrates. Now, this is
when we get the beginning of a very important conversation for the Greek philosophers as
well as for really the entire histy a philosophy, and that is the conversation
between being and becoming, between movement and stability. And really the question at
play here is is ultimate reality this world that we experience with our senses,
the material world, which is always moving, right, we are always in
a process of change. The world around us is in a process of change.
That's what it means to be creatures of time living in a world of
time. Time is change or is there a stable truth? Is reality something
more than the material world, something that we access with our minds, right,
that we're able to use reason to grasp, to latch onto to gain
some sense of stable identity and purpose and meaning that transcends this moving world around
us. And so that really is the question that's a play here. And
so first we're going to talk about Heraclitis. Now, Heraclitis was very much
a philosopher of becoming, meaning he focused on the change that we experience,
the fundamentally unstable reality that we experience. And so he famously said that all
of existence is like a ripper, and you can never step into the same
water twice. And so we are always moving. The world around us is
always moving. There's no such thing as repetition. We are always moving down
the river. Now this creates some problems. For one thing, it kind
of means that there's really no me across time. Right, everything is moving,
Then whatever it is that I identify as myself is also constantly changing.
And so when I think of myself existing across time, when I think of
my own past, present, and potential future, really that itself has to
be some kind of illusion. If everything is in a process of change,
that means there's no me that endures across time. Furthermore, there's a problem
regarding our conceptions of truth, because if I'm always changing, the world is
always changing, than any thought, any impression that I have in my mind
never truly correlates with the way things actually are. If for no other reason,
there's always a delay in representation between the way things are and the way
things are image in my mind. And so I lose any kind of sense
of identity if everything changes. Also I lose any sense of enduring truth if
everything changes, and so I'm kind of lost with nothing more than sense experience.
And so this was Heraclitus's focus, the idea that everything is in a
process of change. However, it is worth noting that even Heraclitis recognized that
there's one thing that does not change, and that is the process of change
itself. And so the river might always be moving, but the river always
moves in a consistent manner. And you understand the forces at work here,
the process of change itself, then you're actually able to predict where the river
goes. And so this source of this one source of consistency for Heraclitis is
the process of change itself, or that which change. And this is idea
that he identified as the lagos, which is obviously where we get our word
logic. But the word logos literally means word, and so the word is
the one stable reality that gives some sense of order, that gives that allows
us an ability to have something like understanding. The more we understand the lagos,
the more we understand the process of change, and in turn, the
more we even understand ourselves. And so this logos by Heraclitis is a kind
of a divine or at the very least, a semi divine reality that structures
and maintains order amidst this world of change. So why would the word be
this principle of order? Well, imagine that you had a bag of scrabble
tiles that you poured out randomly. You have this just random arrangement of letters.
Well, what do those letters mean? And by themselves they mean nothing.
You just have a cacophony of sounds. There's no inherent meaning there.
However, when you take those tiles and then you give them the form of
a word, well, now the otherwise discordant sounds are brought together into something
meaningful, something ordered. And so a word gives form to discordant sounds,
discordant letters. That then allows them to have meaning. And now each particular
letter now has meaning within this form that it would not have by itself.
And so a word brings form, a word brings order, a word brings
meaning. And I mean, of course this should sound familiar if you're familiar
with John's Gospel, which begins an ark hen hoologous. In the beginning was
the word. John is going to identify the Word with Christ. He is
the one through whom all things are made. He is the one in whom
all things hold together. And so if we're going to understand proper order within
the New Testament framework, we have to understand logoffs. We have to understand
Christ, the one in whom, to whom and through whom are all things.
And so anyways, heret Cleidis. He doesn't have a what I would
call a fully developed idea of stability, but he's starting to get there.
Nonetheless, he's principally identified as a philosopher of becoming. He gives us the
world of change. Well, on the other side, we have a philosopher
of being named Parmenides. Parmenides believed that Reason says that movement is impossible.
Therefore the change that we experience with our senses is ultimately an illusion. It's
not the real world, because again Reason dictates that change must be impossible.
His disciples is, you know, it gives us a couple of parables that
help us to understand this. So he says that imagine there's a race between
Achilles and a tortoise. Now, obviously Achilles has the advantage, and so
the tortoise is going to get a head start we'll say one hundred yards.
And so the tortoise is at the one hundred yard mark when Achilles starts at
the beginning, and they're off to the race. Well before Achilles can catch
up even where the tortoise began at one hundred yard mark, first Achilles has
to go fifty yards. Well, before he can hit the fifty yard mark,
he first has to go twenty five yards, and then twelve and a
half, and then six and a quarter, and so forth, and so
forth and so forth into infinity. Now, if you can divide distance into
infinity, then what that means is that there is an infinite amount of space
between any two distances. Well, how long does it take you to cross
an infinite amount of space an infinite amount of time, which is another way
of saying that it's impossible, right, you can never cross an infinite space.
And so what this means is that there's an infinite amount of space between
any two points. Therefore, movement is rationally impossible, and so Parmenides emphasize
the fact that all reality is fundamentally stable because reason dictates that it must be,
and that our sense experience of the world around us is simply an illusion
of this reality that we know by reason. And so now we have our
philosopher of becoming, and now we have our philosopher of being. We start
to get a synthesis in Plato. Now, the best introduction to Plato is
probably going where introductions to Plato usually begin, and that is his allegory of
the Cave, which comes from the Republic. In the Republic, Plato's teacher
turned character, Socrates, tells a story about these people who spent their entire
life chained up in a cave. They can't even turn their heads to look
behind them or to the side. All they can do is look at this
wall that is in front of them, which is illuminated, and shadows periodically
pass across this wall, across this illuminated space that they can look at.
Now they start to develop this hierarchy system where the wisest among them are able
to pick up on the patterns and they can detect which shadow is going to
pass next. And so they get this whole value system based around the right
detection of shadows, the figuring out of the pattern. Well, eventually one
of the prisoners is set free. We're not really told how, but that
doesn't really matter. So he gets out of his chains. He looks behind
him and he sees this roaring fire. Now, at first he's blinded by
the light because he's never seen light that directly before. But eventually his eyes
adjust and you see what's really going on here, that this fire is burning
in the cave, and in front of the fire are passing these two dimensional
cutouts of these animals that are then casting shadows on the wall. And so
now he sees a glimpse of what is really going on here. That the
entire world that he's known before was nothing but a shadow. It was a
pale imitation of this more real reality. Well, he continues to explore the
cave. He eventually finds his way out into the open world, and at
first he's blinded again now by the light of the sun. But eventually his
eyes adjust and he starts to look around and he sees all of these realities
that he had never known before. He actually even sees the the animals that
were imaged in the cutouts which then created images on the wall. And so
now he's able to see the real world for the very first time. And
so he gets this paradigm shift in his mind and he recognizes that everything that
he experienced before was but a pale imitation of this grander, more real reality.
Well, remembering his fellow prisoners back in the cave, he wants to
go back and share the good news of what he's experienced, this new revelation,
and so he goes to them and he starts to explain to them all
the things that he's seen and that this world that they know is built fundamentally
on a lie. It's not real. Well, they don't take kindly to
that at first. They think he's mad, and eventually that she get so
angry because he's disrupting their value system that they actually end up killing him.
And that's how the parable ends. And obviously, when player's telling the story,
he very much has his own teacher, Socrates in mind, who was
executed by the court of Athens for corrupting the youth. Now, in this
parable, we get being and becoming brought in to relation, and so the
world of shadows is the world of becoming. It's this world that's constantly moving.
It's not stable, right, This is the river of Heraclitis is constantly
moving, and so to that degree, in many ways, it's not real
because to be real, to have actuality, well there has to be something
that you're being actualized into, otherwise you are constantly moving. And so these
shadows are the world of movement. In many ways, they're not real,
They're simply reflections of reality. As the prisoner progressed, you know, with
each stage, first seeing the fire and then eventually seeing the light of the
sun. You know, he is temporarily blinded. That's because you know,
whenever you're getting to a new paradigm, you have to develop the tools for
understanding what it is that you're looking at. In fact, there's a great
line out of the side of the planet where Ransom, the main character,
is, you know, in this strange new reality, and he makes the
point that you really can't see something until you know what it is. And
so the prisoner is going on this blinding journey toward greater vision and eventually finds
his way outside where he's able to see things by the light of the true
light. He's able to see things by the light of the Sun. Now,
the sun, in this allegory represents the highest reality. For Plato,
this is the good. Perhaps it wouldn't even be wrong to say that this
is God for Plato. Now, as with the sun, right, the
best way to study the good is not staring at it directly. You don't
study the sun by looking at it directly. You study the sun by looking
at its effects. You look at its heat, and most importantly, though,
you look at that which it illuminates. So too, the good,
for Plato, is really not something that we can clearly define. It's not
something that we fundamentally look at. It's that by which we see everything else.
In Plato's dialogue, Euthifro Socrates encounter is this guy named Euthifro outside the
courthouse. And Socrates asked Euthifhro what he's doing, and Eutheriphro says that he's
bringing charges and murdered against his father for killing one of their servants. And
Socrates says, all right, Eutheriro, you're bringing charges of murder against your
own father. Clearly you are somebody who understands piety. You have some ethical
expertise, and so tell me, Euthiphro, what is good, and Eutheripro
says, what I'm doing right now is good. Obviously, that didn't really
answer his question, and so they go back and forth a little bit,
but it becomes evident the question that Socrates is asking is what is it that
makes good things good? And Eutheriphro tries a couple of times to answer this
question. He says, well, it's what the gods love, and Socrates
says, okay, what. Obviously the gods in the Greek system they don't
all agree with each other, and so is it what some of the gods
love? And Etherproo says, okay, it's whatever all the gods love.
That twas good, and then Socrates says, okay, we're seem to be
getting somewhere, but it doesn't really answer the question, because is goodness what
the gods happen to love? Or do the god's loving something make it good?
And you at that point pretty much says I've got to wash my hair
and then runs off scene and that's the end of the dialogue. But really
that question of what makes good things good is very important for Plato, and
ultimately what makes good things good is the good? However, we can only
say, but so much about what the good is. And that's because if
we're gonna say that reason itself is good, though, what that means is
whatever this goodness is that is implicit in reason, stands above and beyond reason.
Right reason participates in the good. The good doesn't participate in reason.
And so because reason as a good thing is nested within this grander reality,
we're talking about something that stands above reason is something that reason itself cannot see.
It's interesting to note that in the Psalms, sometimes God is portrayed as
residing in unapproachable light. Other times he portrayed as residing in impenetrable darkness.
And that's because once you get above the level of finite reason, your categories
of understanding entirely fall apart. It's so whether talking about blinding light or absolute
darkness, it's more or less the same thing. We can't find our ways
around anymore. Our categories of understanding have fallen apart. This is why when
you read the Medievals right, even the very reasoned based medieval thinkers, you
eventually reach a point where they start to fall into a kind of mysticism,
This idea that as you approach that by which you reason, your reason can
no longer carry you. So any distance that you're going to progress beyond reason
has to be something that's not necessarily irrational, but superrational. That's something that's
able to carry you the rest of the gap from the from the bounds of
reason up to the ultimate, namely to the dwelling place of God. And
so there is a kind of mysticism that is implicit in this idea that we
see very clearly in Plato. And so we never can clearly see the good,
but we see things by the good, and in getting a better understanding
in might and soul, in affections and appetites, by cultivating our soul to
move closer and closer to the good, we are moving on the path of
wisdom, even though ultimately we're moving towards something more real than we can actually
know through our use of reason. Now, even though we can never understand
the good fully through our reason, what we can know through reason is what
he calls the world of the forms. This is the ideals, right,
This is the world of being. This is the world that doesn't change.
And so just as we have down here in the changing world, we have
appearances, we have what it looks like to be human. We have what
it looks like to execute justice. We have what it looks like to be
a horse, we have what it looks like to love. But all of
these appearances are imitations of the reality, the things that they could be if
they were fully themselves. And so, according to Plato, we have never
experienced the ideal of love in this world. We've always experienced some corrupted form,
some kind of shadow. So two, none of us have ever fully
actualized our ideals as humans. The ideal of human nature resides in this world
of being, But as soon as the world of being enters into material reality,
it enters necessarily into a world of change. And if you're changing from
better to worse, what that means is that the material world is not just
a place of change, it's ultimately a place of corruption within the platonic mindset.
And so there's something inherently inferior and something inherently corruptible about material reality.
And so nothing that we experience with our senses is the ideal is what it
could be, what it perhaps should be if it were being ethically responsible.
And so the idea of love, the ideal of justice, the ideal of
what it means to be human, even the ideal of what it means to
be a horse or whatever. Everything that we see with our eyes is an
imperfect copy of the ideal, unmoving reality of what it could be and what
it should be. And so what we need to do is to figure out
what true justice actually is, what true love actually is, what it truly
means to be human, And then we continually cultivate not only our understanding,
but our appetites are affections, and so that all of what we are is
increasingly being conformed to this world being, to the ideal, to the form,
the way that things should be, the way that things could be.
And as we move increasingly toward this reality, the more real we in turn
become, And so wisdom and the platonic mindset is very much based off the
orientation of your soul. Which way are you facing? You know, are
you facing yourself toward the shadows? And if so, then you are increasingly
moving toward the shadows, and you are really approaching nothingness. And that's what
evil is, right, It is a lack of goodness, And so evil
and nothingness are really more or less the same thing. That's not a way
of saying that, well, I guess it is a way of saying that
evil isn't real, evil doesn't exist, and that's because it is a movement
away from reality, away from the actuality of things. You're moving toward becoming,
away from being, whereas an orientation toward wisdom, toward the ideal,
toward the way that things should be, means that you are facing reality and
you're increasingly moving toward it, seeking to participate in reality as it exists,
in this stable world of the forms, and you're trying to nurture the world
around you so that it is kind of cultivated into something real, something stable,
something true. And I think that there's a lot of wisdom in this
right, whether or not you do it or don't take Plato as a whole,
and I certainly don't take Plato as a whole. I think that there
is wisdom in the fact that wisdom itself is not only a matter of the
mind, although it absolutely involves the mind, it is also a matter of
the affections. It's a matter of moving towards something that we principally cannot grasp
with our minds, because ultimately, I mean, as we're pursuing the ideal,
pursuing the world that we can do through the reason. Ultimately, we're
doing that because we're pursuing something we can't know by reason, right, we're
pursuing the good ultimately. And so for Plato, philosophy, the path of
wisdom very much is an act of love. It is not simply a cerebral
matter. And the word philosophy means philosophia is the love of wisdom, and
this really plays an important role in his dialogue the Fato. Now, the
Fato takes place after Socrates is sentenced to be executed for corrupting the youth,
and he has too many questions. So now the city of Athens is going
to silence him. And so while he's awaiting his execution, some of his
friends come to him, and I mean, one thing, they've already said
that. You know, we can get you out of this. You know,
the right person's willing to take a bribe. You can just go off
into exile. It'll be fine. So he says, no, I'm going
to go through with this. I would not be who I am without the
city of Athens. The least I can do is subject myself to her laws.
And so part of what this Fato is is Socrates giving an apology or
a defense for his willingness to go through with his execution, and so its
focuses around this idea of the immortality of the soul that perhaps, at least
for the whiyse, for the philosopher, death might not be a terrible fate.
And so I'm not going to get into all these arguments he provides about
immortality of the soul. That's just kind of outside the purview of where I'm
trying to go. But in the midst of this he does bring up some
important ideas that can be very important for Lewis, and that is this idea
that all true knowledge is ultimately recollection, meaning it's kind of the coming to
mind of things that we principally know already. For example, I told you
that according to Plato, we have this idea of the good, even though
we can never truly understand what this idea is. And so the question is,
how do we get this idea of the good if it's something we've never
experienced, nor is it even something that we understand. At the same time,
if we are properly attuned to wisdom, it's something that all of us
can recognize as the principal object of desire, and so how do we have
this understanding of the good? Or? Another thing he brings up is we
have all these ideas of fixed realities right the forms that we've never experienced with
our senses, and the question is how do we actually know about them?
For example, he brings up the idea of equality or like sameness. So,
for example, the room I'm in right now is kind of drunkie.
You can see these two chairs behind me, and you could say that they
are the same, or the very least, that they have very similar attributes
to them, very similar properties, and so they are both chairs. They
both fit within this form of chair. However, as soon as we say
that things kind of belong within a common category, we're saying is that one
chair is similar to the other chair, and they participate in some of the
same reality, some of the same properties. However, where did I get
my idea of similarity idea of equality. Now one hand, you might say,
well, I can look at those two chairs, and because they have
so many things in common, we can perhaps then pull through reason the fact
that they are similar. But the problem is, how would I recognize them
as being similar if I didn't first have an idea of similarity in my mind.
And so it brings up this idea that the idea of equality or idea
of similarity is actually not something we got from our sense experience of the world
around us. It's actually idea that was already in our minds that then is
brought to our atten when we recognize things that are similar, things that bear
you know, however imperfectly equality. And so the idea of equality is not
something I got from the world around me, but it is something that is
almost innate within my mind that then I used to properly understand the world around
me. He talks about some elements of geometry, and so if I asked
you to draw a line, all of you would know exactly what to do.
But at the same time, you wouldn't actually be drawing a line,
nor likely would you even be thinking of a line. Because a true line
is one dimensional and extends into infinity in both directions. Well, you've never
seen anything that's one dimensional and extends infinitely into two directions. At the same
time, we know the lines are real, right, If the line was
unreal, then we couldn't do architecture, or navigate or really any number of
things. Right, And so there's reality to the idea of a line,
despite the fact that we've never experienced a line in this world with our senses.
And even if I ask you a draw a line, all you would
actually be doing is drawing a representation of a line, but you would not
actually be drawing a line. However, through that representation, you would know
what you mean by line, and I would know what you mean by line,
despite the fact that neither of us would actually be looking at a line.
And so we have these ideas in our mind that are real that makes
sense of the world around us, but that we've never actually experienced in the
world around us. And so, and he takes the same argument to apply
to things like you know justice that rightly thinking, we don't get justice from
seeing justice in the world. We're able to recognize justice because we already have
this idea of justice in our minds that we can recall when we are thinking
clearly. And so all of our true knowledge, for Plato, there are
knowledge of stable reality, of the world of being, the world of the
forms. That all of this reality, or all this knowledge rather is imprinted
in our minds. And so then the question that Socrates raises is why is
this? Why do our minds seem to be naturally related to reality as it
actually is? You know, I find it very interesting that you know,
we were able and I say we like I did it, But you know,
we were able to predict the existence of Neptune based off gravitational calculations before
we were able to observe it with our senses, with the you know,
with the instruments. And so our minds properly thinking are able to use these
kind of immaterial codes, these immaterial realities, to predict things that we would
eventually observe with our senses. Well, that's not insignificant. Something about the
human mind is naturally related towards the way that things are, And so Socrates
ask why is this? Well, one idea he throws out is this idea
of reincarnation that perhaps, you know, we go through these cycles of life
and death, that life gives way to death and death gives way life,
but that between these cycles we had unmediated access to the forms to real reality,
which then we kind of forget as we are brought back into the corrupting
material reality, but we don't forget it entirely, right, We have these
dim recollections, and so it's kind of like if you've ever been dreaming,
but in your dream you start to get this inkling that you are dreaming and
that there is a greater reality that you'll experience upon waking. Well, this
is very much the Platonic mindset that we get here in the Phato. The
idea is that we knew true reality, but then we forgot it through incarnation,
but in the path of wisdom, we can start to recollect that which
we once knew. Now. Platonic scholars will debate exactly what Plato was really
getting at here, like did he literally believe in reincarnation or is he just
kind of putting it forward as a myth of source to get this idea thatultimate
reality is something that we're acquainted with even when we don't recognize it. And
so did he literally believe for incarnation or is it just sort of a myth
he's proposing. That's not really something I feel like we need to get into
the important part for what we're doing right now is that ultimate reality is something
that we know that we've received directly from ultimate reality, but that for whatever
reason we've largely suppressed, we've largely forgotten. And so real knowledge is a
matter of remembering that which we already know, and that I can tell you
right now. This can to be particularly important when we get to the silver
chair, but also elsewhere. Now, continuing with the Fatom toward the end,
Socrates gives us what he even calls a myth or a tale, meaning
he's not suggesting this is literally true, but it is communicating something that is
he believes is real, something that is true. And this is his tale
about what happens after people die, so that when you die, your damon
which is kind of perhaps a loaded term, but it's something like a spirit
at least semi divine reality that lives in the air. And notice I said
daemon, which is not the same thing as demon, although you can probably
figure out how this idea developed into Christian thought. And so your daemon,
the spirit is going to ultimately bring you through judgment and land you at your
destination. And so those who are truly wicked get tossed into Tartarus at the
center of the earth, which is essentially Greek hell. A lot of people
will end up in this lake where they kind of swirl around in purgatory sorts
for a while, getting their wickedness out, and then they're going to enter
back into the life cycle, get reincarnated into an animal or a human.
Some people are going to be raised up to the top where they dwell on
the true surface of the earth, because Socrates suppose that perhaps what we think
of as the surface of the earth is not actually the true surface. It's
not the real reality. It's not the real earth. He says that,
Okay, imagine if you spent your entire life living in the ocean, and
so the water's murky, most of it's very dark, it's very dim,
and but for your entire life, that's the only reality that you knew,
and so you didn't know that your vision was dim. Well, eventually you're
able to rise to the top and explore the surface world, the surface world
as we know it. And at this point your entire vision is radically altered,
because now you're able to see things clearly. You see new shapes,
you experience a new kind of solidity, you see a more vibrant array of
colors, maybe even see new colors altogether. So everything that you once thought
to be normal life. Everything that you thought to be vision you now recognize
as a pale imitation, perhaps even a mockery, of this new reality you're
able to perceive. Well, he says, what if when you look up
at the big blue sky above you, that that is simply another ocean of
sorts, and that if we could get to the top, we would discover
the true surface world, a world that has again more vibrant colors, that
has a higher resolution than we could ever know. We're able to see things
absolutely clearly, and we're able to recognize the fog that we once thought to
be clarity. And so this is the real world where we live amongst the
gods directly, no longer speaking through oracles, but now we have direct fellowship
with the gods because we, like them, have direct access to reality as
it is. And perhaps every single good, every beautiful thing that we've experienced
down here in the valley is simply the runoff of this higher reality with you
know, mountains made of precious stones, and you know, again all these
just kind of glorious realities which in many ways kind of read like some of
the images we get of heaven in revelation. And so it's idea of the
more real reality, that to which our hearts are naturally drawn, when we
are rightly directed, when we are operating in the cord with our nature.
And so he says that when you die, you know, perhaps you go
into hell, perhaps you get reincarnated, perhaps you rise up to the surface,
or in the ultimate reality, the ultimate reward for the wise, for
the true philosophers, you live as an immaterial reality. With immaterial reality.
You live in the world of being. And you know, living up here
in this surface world and living in this the true surface, well, now
your sky is actually what we downe here tend to call the ether, or
what we call space, which is a word that we'll be talking about a
good bit. But up on the surface world, your sky is the clear
realm of the stars, of the moon, of the planets. And so
in the cosmology here that Plato gives us you have Tartarus is at the center
of the earth. As you move up, you eventually get to the surface
world as we know it, which itself is really a valley looking up to
the true surface above the sky as we know it. And so the progression
from the worst to the best, the most the least real to the most
reel really goes from Tartaris and then really, I suppose the ocean to the
surfaces we know it to the true surface, which then looks out on the
heavens. Well, now let's jump a generation to Plato student Aristotle, who's
going to continue this conversation regarding being and becoming. And Aristyle is going to
look around and he's going to see with Heraclitis that this world as we experience
it is indeed moving, it's in the state of flux. It is becoming.
However, you look up on a clear night and you see things that
don't move. You see the stars that are fixed, as well as the
wanderers, namely the planets. However, even the planets, although they're moving,
they moved in a fixed and predictable pattern. Well, in Aristotle's book
The Metaphysics, he notices that as I said that the world around us is
in a state of flux, it's always changing. However, even that change
happens in a logical and orderly way, and so effects have consequences. That
when a domino falls, it falls because the domino before it knocked it over.
Well, if you follow that chain of dominoes back far enough, then
eventually you have to get to the beginning domino, that first domino that's able
to kick over the entire sequence. Well, this is a very simplified argument
for the idea that at the beginning of the sequence of change there has to
be one thing that causes change but is not itself changed. This is Aristotle's
prime mover. Now, for this argument, it's very important that the prime
mover itself does not change, meaning it doesn't actually take action, because it
is fully actualized. There's nowhere for it to go, nothing for it to
do. It's always doing everything that it can do. That's what it means
to be fully actualized. It has no potential. And so what it means
is this God doesn't act. Okay, And so when we talk about Aristotle's
prime mover causing motion, it's not in even necessarily an intentional way. The
way that it causes motion and this is in the same way that a beloved
attracts a lover. And so, as the only fully actualized being, the
only truly eternal, unmoving reality, the only true good, the prime mover
is supremely lovable, and this is how it causes the cosmos to move in
continual imitation of the changeless reality of the prime mover, and so on the
outer level of reality. Here we have the heavenly spheres which are moving,
right, the planets move, and the way this attraction works, which is
the cosmos itself moves through the cycle of spheres that are moving in imitation of
the unchanging reality of the prime mover. How did Aristotle get here? Well,
he believed that love tends to imitate, and the best way for moving
realities, namely the moving cosmos, to imitate the unchanging reality of the prime
mover, is to move in a spherical shape. Right. I mean,
imagine you had a perfect sphere that was rotating. Well, if you have
a perfect sphere rotating that in many ways, you wouldn't even be able to
tell that it's spinning. Because movement in the sphere is a way of imitating
stability, it's a way of imitating unchanging reality. The first kind of movement
that you have here is not even really a physical movement. This outer sphere
is called the primum mobile. It's the idea of the first thing that's moved,
but it itself isn't really moves physically, it's more of a sphere ual
movement. It's the movement of love, which then starts to turn the next
sphere, which at this point start to get associated with the planets. And
so the planets in the Oristilian mindset are either moved by divine realities or perhaps
they themselves are divine realities. This is not entirely clear, kind of gets
debated, but nonetheless there's some kind of divine reality associated with the spheares that's
causing them to move in imitation of the sphere before it, which itself is
moving in imitation of the sphere before it, which is eventually going down the
line we get to the outer sphere that is moving in imitation of the prime
mover of God himself. Well, as we follow these spheres down further and
further and further to the Earth, eventually we get to the moon, which
also moves in a regular and predictable pattern. It has order. However,
this is also where order starts to break down. You can look at the
moon with your naked eye and see what we recognize as craters, has imperfections
and also it changes, It goes through these cycles. It has a light
side, It has a dark side, and so basically the moon is still
orderly, but it is the place where order starts to break down, where
being really starts to turn into becoming, where corruption starts to play out.
And now at this point I'm actually starting to already combine kind of Aristyle's thought
with Ptolemy and moving into the medieval world and kind of bringing all us together
at this point. And so the planets as we know them, they're named
after the Roman gods. And that's because the planets themselves, which Aristytle recognized
as divine realities, are at least associated with divine realities, became identified with
the Greco Roman pantheon. It's worth noting at this point that how the gods
of the philosophers, namely those who are wise in power and wise in true
understanding, are a more sanitized form of the Olympian soap opera, where now
the gods are their ideal state and literally reside in the heavens, and it
is from the heavens that they exert their influence down here on Earth. Now,
these planets are going to be played a very important role in the medieval
understanding of the cosmos, and very much are going to play an important role
in and especially in the Ransom series that will be beginning with. And so,
like I said, each of these planets actually at this point probably the
best to give you a diagram of the cosmos, and then we'll go back
and carry some of these thoughts that I've started here. And so at the
very center of the cosmos, at the center of the Earth, even you
have Hell, then you have Earth, then you have the air above the
Earth. Then you have the moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun,
Saturn, Jupiter, primum obila imperiod of God. Right, this is where
God dwells. This is the highest reality, that which is most real,
that which is most fixed, that which is most unmoving. And then we
progress further further. The heavens themselves are perfect, but they are moving,
but they're moving in order, moving in harmony, in direction of God.
Well, once you get to the moon, this is where things start to
break down. And so the moon is this transitory element. It's looking toward
the Earth, which has fallen, but it also has a face out toward
the heavens. It has a light side, has a dark side. It
is orderly, yet it also goes through these monthly transitions, and so the
moon as Luna has its correlation with the water, which also emphasizes as kind
of liquid nature. It's given over to change to inconsistency. And so the
moon itself is good, and in fact it produces silver in the earth,
which is good. However, it also is an influence that can easily go
wrong, and so lunacy gets its name from the moon. From Luna.
It's the idea that you're given over to change to chaos because you have a
misrelation with the influence of Luna, which is inherently good but also perhaps the
easiest to go wrong. And you know, it's for this reason that we
get your werewolf stories, in which a particular misrelation to Luna leads to such
a degradation of order, such a reversal of the movement that our soul should
take that instead of our souls rising upward toward the more rational, the more
virtuous, they actually go downward, and our beastly in state instincts take over
as well. And of course, the only way that werewolf can be killed
is with silver, and so very poetically we get this image that the only
way that Luna can repent of her sins is through her tears, and so
a lunatic is somebody who has a misrelation to the influence of the Moon.
However, a positive relation to the lunar influence takes the form of a traveler,
a wanderer, perhaps ironically Lage just said, even a hunter, right,
and so it's somebody who has an appropriate relationship with the influence of change.
Well, all the seven planets, so Moon, Mercury, Venus,
Sun, Jupiter, Saturn, exert some kind of influence that radiates out through
the spheres. Now, these influences themselves are good, right. They operate
in an unfallen reality, They operate in the heavens, they are perfectly ordered.
However, it's when these influences enter into our atmosphere that is not only
given over to corruption in light of our material nature, but also in a
more theological sense, right in our fallen earth, these influences tend to get
twisted into corrupted versions of what they are meant to be. And so I
think it's probably worth talking just very briefly about what each of these planetary influences
tend to do. So Mercury is the fastest planet. Mercury is associated with
speed, with speed of wit, with speed of feet, it's especially with
movement, and so a positive relation with mercury can lead to you being quick
witted, but also it can lead to you being perhaps a thief of a
pickpocket, you're quick with your fingers, or maybe even you're a sophist.
You're right, you have a quick tongue, but not always for a wise
and good and noble purpose. And so mercury tends to be associated with the
idea of speed of quickness, a kind of fluidity. Lewis talks about this
in The Discarded Image that the best way to get understanding of what mercury is
is we look at some in a dish and the way that it kind of
moves and swirls around. Next, you have venus, obviously a feminine ideal,
very associated with love, with that which is nurturing, that which is
motherly, and so you have a good, a kind of a sweet influence
here. It's something that brings images of gardens and life. But obviously a
misrelation can look like somebody who gives themselves over to their passion, someone who's
overly amorous and doesn't maintain wisdom in their amorous pursuits, or perhaps even the
mother that will counter in the Great divorce, who has a possessive relationship with
her child. That would also be a negative association with Venus's influence. Okay,
Now, the sun or soul is the source of wisdom, is seen
as the eye of the cosmos. And notice the sun is the central of
the seven planetary spheres. And so in one way you can say the Earth
is at the center, but another way you can say that the Sun is
at the center of the medieval cosmos. They just mean that a little bit
differently. And so, like I said, the sun is the eye of
the cosmos. It is the light of divine reason, particularly associated with philosophers
and theologians. Also, the sun produces gold in the earth. But at
the same time, the sun is associated with liberal with generosity, and so
an appropriate relationship with the Sun would look like wisdom, it would look like
a right use of wealth, whereas a negative relationship with the solar influence would
actually lead to greed, to not giving away wealth, but actually giving yourself
away to wealth and being consumed by it. If you've read Voyage of the
Dawn Treedder already, perhaps you can see some way that that can play a
part. Next you have Mars, obviously the Roman god of war, and
so the Mars is associated with the martial influence. And so in a positive
sense, this can look like the noble knight who is fighting injustice. It
can also look like the noble martyr who is maintaining a steadfast spirit well injustice
is done to him. And so Mars associated with martyrs, associated with the
noble knights, with the good warriors. Now, a negative relation to the
martian influence obviously looks like a tyrant, someone who's bloodthirsty, somebody who engages
in combat for the sake of combat rather than for the sake of a higher
ideal. Now side note, and this is going to be important, there
are also some older connections between Mars and vegetation. This the idea of Marsilvanis,
and so it's the idea that Mars is not only associated with war and
with destruction, but that Mars also has some less known associations with life,
with vegetation and with nature. Hence March at the beginning of springtime. Now,
next you have Jupiter, which is of course the king of the gods,
or in this case the king of the planets. And so this is
the idea of the true king who is enthroned in justice and serenity. He
not only properly orders the world the spheres around him, but he also orders
his own passions. And so this is the magnanimous king, owned in peace,
in serenity, and enjoy. In fact, another name for Jupiter is
Jove, hence joviality or even the English expression by jove. Pay attention to
that, and so Jove is the enthroned king sitting on high. Next you
have Saturn. Now, Saturn is the most sluggish of the planets. Its
influence tends to lead to things falling apart, toward corruption, disease, aging.
Saturn is also associated with the Titan Chronos time. It's this idea,
it's associated with things kind of wearing down. Know that this is the first
planet that moves, and so there's this connection with movement, and the way
that this gets received in Earth's atmosphere tends to be movement for the worst things
running down, things losing both their potentiality and their actuality. However, despite
the fact that Saturn is generally seen as the least design influence, a right
relationship with Saturn is a kind of penitential wisdom. It's the kind of wisdom
you can only find by going through sorrow. This is the wisdom of Mementomori.
Remember that you will die, and there is real wisdom and real good
to be found in that, even if it's not that which we might most
desire. And so all of these planetary influences are inherently good. I dons
they exist in the heavens, but tend to fall into corruption in the way
that we relate to them as they enter into our fallen material atmosphere. Now
you may be asking the question, okay, what are these Roman gods doing
in a medieval Christian context? And that doesn't seem to be something that particularly
troubled theologians at the time. However, I mean, obviously they're not serving
Roman deities, but the names themselves I mean tended to stick. However,
they got repurposed, and instead of recognizing them as Roman gods, I mean,
they were seen as divine realities something like angels, which the Medievals lead
I mean, actually filled the atmosphere. But you know, I think that
I'm going to pause right there. We've already covered a lot of ground.
I'm going to return to some of this. I'm going to emphasize certain elements
and even talk a bit more about angels as well as other things that might
exist within the medieval world. But I'll get to that in the next video.
I think that if I went any further now, I would end up
ruining some of the mystery of out of the Silent Planet, which I will
briefly introduce in the next video. And so we did a lot in this
video. Like I said, moving forward, we're not going to spend so
much time doing these big philosophical overviews, but I wanted to lay out some
important ideas that you should keep in mind. Perhaps we're turned back to as
you do your reading. We'll get more into some of this, but like
I said, moving forward will be more focused on the actual text. But
I hope that this was enjoyable. I hope that you've got something valuable out
of this. If you have any question, then please hop on over to
the discord chat and let me know, and otherwise I will talk to you
next time. All right, So I hope that was helpful for you,
And again I encourage you to enroll with a link in the show notes if
you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to me on Twitter at
andrew In Snyder or email me at Mythicmind Podcast at gmail dot com. But
that's it for now, and I wish you many meaningful roads ahead