Welcome to everybody. Yeah, it's glad. I'm glad to be back.
Um, I did a lot of reading last week. We've been brushing up
and a lot of stuff. You know, I did do a full I
think we did an eight eight point lecture, eight part lecture years ago on
the entirety of the Republic. I lectured through many of the dialogues, not
all of them, because you know, of course, this is a lot
of stuff. Plato has a vast amount and Ariostota has also about the same
vast amount in English that we know about. So so we're gonna try to
compact it as best we can. We're gonna get get into it. This
is gonna be very difficult. So again, like we did last time,
right now in your questions, and I'll be happy to answer any of them
when we get to the end. Um, there's a lot fewer slides this
time, and but that's not because of a lack of material. That's because
we're gonna spend more time on each of the pages because there's just so much
information here, so much to cover. First, we're gonna go into you
guys, remember last time, the last slide we talked about some of the
questions that were left open for Plato to deal with. Right, when Plato
comes into the realm of philosophy, he's taught by Socrates. One thing that
we want to keep in mind is that throughout the Platonic corpus, the main
character will be Socrates. Socrates, as far as we know, didn't write
anything, and so it's going to be Plato that is the recorder or the
author, right, who's utilizing Socrates as is key protagonist figure throughout the dialogues.
This is going to be a unique approach, a new way to do
this type of of a of a process of philosophy through a linktic method or
through dialectical method question and answer. So most of the dialogues are going to
be a structured that way. There's going to be interlocutors, there's going to
be opponents, there's gonna be people asking questions and trying to figure out get
to the root of the issue in all of these matters. And this is
where we get that phraseology of dialectical method, which is question and answer,
cross examination and response, a link goos or a linked us, a linkedic
method is this method of pedagogy. So remember we wanted distress as in the
Q and A that we had last time. Is that's different than a metaphysical
idea of dialectical tensions. And if anybody did get their Coppleston text book,
you'll notice that Coppleston throughout the Plato chapters mentioned that as well. He talked
about Plato's dialectical considerations, and dialectics is very important in history philosophy. It's
going to come up a lot. It's one of those things that we wanted
to be aware of as a recurring term because this is going to come up
with marks. If you know what I'm about dialectics and dialectical philosophy, we're
gonna have a hard time understanding marks when we get to krawl marks. We're
not going to spend a whole lot of time on krawl marks, but we
do need to understand this, you know, horrible philosophy because it did have
such an impact, you know, on the world in modern philosophy. But
I'm just like hegel Marks, well Hagel land Marks, both very interested in
dialectics and dialectical philosophy. And this does have its root in Greek philosophy.
And so these are the questions that the Presocratics left Plato with that, I
told you guys to think about and look for if you did get a chance
to read the apology, you didn't have to read it. I'm not going
to grade you. It's up to you. But I think everybody here wants
to be here, and that's the advantage of what we're doing here. And
so probably hopefully some of you did get a chance to read the apology.
I didn't expect everybody to read everything. And you know, if you did
get a chance to read the complas and chapters on Plato, then you're way
ahead of the game. So that's good, and you'll notice a lot about
to talk about is in those chapters. But also I did go pretty deep
into the Republic. I don't know how deeple get into that tonight. I
do have a couple of slides on it, but we'll try to get as
deep as we can. What is reality? What is man? What should
man do? Can man know? Can we give an account for what we
know? What is knowledge? Is knowledge different from opinion? Is it a
lower type of knowledge? Can we have objective certitude of knowledge? What about
objects in the world? Do they have identity over time? Do they have
identity through change. What about the problem of the one in the many,
which we brought at last time, which is so prevalent in the Presocratics.
This is the question of how do we predicate of particulars commonalities that they share
amongst their class of things. In other words, when I look at the
dog, I say, the dog is brown. Well, I point out
that's a singular dog amongst a class of things called dogs. And what is
it that makes that thing particular, that unique dog in contrast to the other
dogs of which it is a class. Likewise, what is the common thing
that those share amongst the class of dogs? Is it dogness? Well,
we'll see pantheism, atheism, materialism, empiricism, rationalism, monism, dualism.
As we saw. Those are the same issues throughout the Presocratics, still
being discussed by philosophers today. In fact, I'm looking over at my shelf,
my philosophy shelf over there, and I see prominently displayed a new newly
released book, The Problem of the One in the Many. So here we
are two thousand and five hundred years later, academic discourse is still discussing these
very prevalent topics throughout the Greek philosophers of ancient yore. Now we talked about
dialectics not in a diological teaching sense pedagogical sense. We talked about it in
a metaphysical sense. And we want to pay attention here because these are gonna
be very prevalent, recurring, as we said, and this came up in
the Q and A, so I wanted to highlight this a little bit more.
We're gonna notice that throughout the Presocratics and solemn Plato, and into the
Neoplatonists as well, and even into the debates. When we get through some
of the patristic philosophers, the question of determinism versus free will will arise,
the question of the one in the many which I just mentioned, the question
of eternity versus time? Is it better to be an eternity? Is time
of a diminished status lesser than the eternal? Right? Are these opposites?
In many cases these are cashed out in a philosophy of opposites. The one
is the opposite of the mini. Some philosophers will say that the Mini is
trying to get back to that ultimate unification as we saw with Empedocles. No,
the Mini is more fundamental than the one, right or the seeds of
the logos everywhere, Right, that's the mini that's preeminent in that idea.
Perhaps eternity is something that we need to get back to. And this realm
of flux, this realm of time is somehow worse, bad, lesser.
Maybe who which one? Which one is it? Maybe these are false dialectics,
right, What about the notion of order matter potentia excuse me, exc
gonna order, which is the connected to the principle of being eternality structure?
Is that in dialectical tension with the principle of matter chaos potentia Aristotle as when
we get theirsol is going to use the term premium material prime matter, which
is a pure potential. Maybe that's in some sort of battle, fundamental war,
contrast contradiction, struggle with order in any sense. Right, and we
get to Plato, we're going to notice that he's very clear on his view
of a lot of these questions which side he falls on. And we're gonna
try to be as fair to Plato as as we can, because Plato at
least tries he wants to reconcile and solve some of these dialectical problems that we
saw last week in the Presocratics. So whether he achieves that that, I'll
leave that up to you in your assessment of Plato. If you read the
Copples some chapters, we know that a Copplison himself had the very same critique
that you're going to hear me give, which helps me understand that I was
glad to get into this because I had the same reading of the Republic and
the same reading of a lot of those that Copplison did so and I think
he's a competent thinker, and that lets me know that, you know,
I didn't have some vast misreading of these texts. There was a guy on
the Twitter or some PhD guy a couple of months ago who was just going
nuts on me, saying that I know you misunderstood everything. It's like you're
wrong about all of it. You're totally wrong. Well, I mean,
if i'm you know, basically come to the same conclusions of other, you
know, competent guys who are widely used, then I think I probably on
good ground. And that doesn't mean it's true. I may be wrong,
but it's it's good to find camaraderie in your readings. Now other things that
pop up. This doesn't just relate to abstract metaphysics. These dialectics might relate
to the social sphere. And we're gonna see that with Plato, because Plato
will have debates about how should a city be run, how should a republic
be run, what's the ideal form of government so that we don't fall into
anarchy on the one hand of the dominance of the many, notice that anarchy
might be spilling over onto the side of you know, too much particularization,
too much individuality. In Plato's view, Oh, maybe we got Antifa out
there, right, they're running there, they're going nuts. They're they're pouring
piss and shit on everybody. They're throwing locks in people's faces, right,
because it's chaos, anarchy, that's that's maybe that's what we need. Or
no, wait a minute, what if we need the dictator to squash all
the Antifa bugs going nuts out there. So if we just had a strong
dictator, man who could come in, you know, a big old daddy
stalin, a big old daddy mao right now, big dong. If he
comes in and lays down the law, he can squish all these petty Antifa
people, or is this a dialectic and they both fall over into each other.
Maybe there's some sort of intimate connection between societies that go from tyranny into
anarchy, or from anarchy into tyranny. That's in fact going to be one
of the points that we'll notice in the Republic. What about this idea that
stasis, permanence, invariance, eternality, is that better than change in flux?
Well, we saw us on the prestocratics. One guy says permenites.
Oh, everything is stasis, dude, Literally, everything is stasis. The
things that you think are changing members ENO's paradox with the arrow. That's all
illusions, dude. Everything is pure permanence and stasis. Or is everything flux?
The other guy right, what her clitis? All is flux? All
is fire. Adams going wild, going nuts, going buck wild, going
crazy. Adams are constantly just having a party. There's nothing stable. You
got an Adam over here with the freaking lamp on his head. You got
another atom over here, he's tripping acid. You got another atom over here
he's trying to grab butts. I mean atoms are going wild. That's all
that it is. There's no order which one is it? Or maybe there's
something in between rationalism versus empiricism. This is something that we said would come
up. We're definitely going to see Plato taking a side in this debate.
If you don't know, I think everybody probably has figured out Plato will side
on reason. Reason is far superior to empirical sense. Data sense data is
not totally useless. It does tell us some things. The sensible particulars he
calls them, are not completely a loser. They're not completely imaginary, but
there are copies and imitation, which we'll see in a moment. But for
the philosopher, in Plato's mind, reason is key. Reason is key,
and Plato will take certain ideas from presocratics and modify them and change. For
example, he will be interested in the one of the many questions, and
he will take from both Parmenides and from Heraclitis. You said, well,
wait a minute, how it's got to be either or right, I mean,
everything's got to be flux or everything's got to be permanent. Well,
in Plato's either's two realms, one characterized by permanence, one characterized by flux.
So Plato, as we can see, will be a kind of synthesis
figure between Heaclitis and Parmenides. Another prominent dialectic that pops up here is the
soul or the mind, and sometimes these are equivalent identified, especially in the
Greeks and in some of the Latin Christian theologians like Augustine. Or is the
body more pre emiti should we get more of a pre eminence to bodily things
since data the pleasures of the body, or are the pleasures of reason?
Thought, logic? Doing math? Is that better and higher than I don't
know, having sexy time. Maybe that's what we should be doing. Well.
Again, these are questions the Plato's grappling with, and they all come
out of the Presocratics, and he's not gonna reject them all or accept them
all. So he's a as Copison noted, a big leap forward in the
notable but limited speculations and processes of the presecratics that we covered last week.
And not just in terms of the immensity of the depth, the scope,
etc. But the vast amount of writings. I mean again, right,
the plato works. I don't know if I'm over here, but I mean
they're big, old thick thing, right, And so oh, I'm into.
The reason I have that diagram there is that this will be a fundamental
to Platonic theology, and this is a triad or a triangle, but for
Plato's purposes, there will be a lot of triplicities that will be present these
triads. They're not all triangles. Triangles are triadic, but there's other kinds
of triads there. Will notice when we get to the republic, there's a
triad of how this city should be governed in a three tiered structure that corresponds
to the body of a man. Because the city, he'll say, is
like a big man and it has a three tiered structure of mind, heart,
body. The triads and Plato will pop up quite a bit, so
we should be looking for that. And in this system, again borrowing from
Pythagorean ideas, you'll have a movement that is primarily described numerically of a movement
from the monad to the diad to the triad, from one to two to
three. And the reason that he thinks that is that, well, if
you have a monad and then you put another circle there where if there's a
movement from one point in the center to the next point in another circle center
the bestica pieces. Then you get this overlapping line where you can now start
to draw a triangle in the middle of that, And so the monad produces
the diad. It's not drawn there, but you could see right between one
of those top halves of the bestic pieces, you could you could draw a
triangle there if you connected right, if you connected them equally, speed on
the and the side's equally you know what I'm saying. So the monad,
the diad, and the triad are the fundamental principles and structures that make up
everything, and even in the realm of the forms, and even in the
realm of the here and the now, which we'll get to in a minute.
So everything in the world is constructed on the basis of these geometric archetypal
forms and patterns. And again a lot of borrowing and overlap here with Pythagoras
that we talked about last time. And these triads are not just things that
point us to the higher realm in Plato, they also are the fundamental structure
of this realm. And I didn't have time to really get a lot of
the stuff relating to the Tamaus. It can be its own really long lecture
because it's a very complex, very difficult dialogue. But the Tomaus will make
a lot of use of these triangles. I wanted to build up what are
called the platonic solids. So if you've you've heard of this idea in ancient
Greek metaphysics or the or geometry. I think this is pretty well known.
You know this. You get to the polygons, the octagon, etc.
Those are the platonic solids, and those in Plato's cosmology, his idea of
the structure of the universe and the origin of the universe is cosmogeny. Those
are fundamental to all of reality. All of reality is built up and structured
in these mathematical and geometrical forms, everything even down to the smallest atomic level.
So he will borrow from some of the atomists this idea of atomism,
but he doesn't he's not a materialist, so it doesn't believe that all of
it exists as atoms. But he thinks that these structures of geometric forms and
order are not just at the macro scale, they also go all the way
down to a microscale. Let's look at some of the important terms that we're
going to need to know for tonight and what they mean on a very basic
level techne. I'm sure you've heard Richard talk about techne in this system.
In this area, primarily we're looking at not the arts and crafts, but
the doing of some art or the creation of some artifice. So in Plato's
idea, the city needs to be run and structured in an artificial an arctifice
type of way. So, even though Plato's not strictly speaking a technocrat in
that he doesn't necessarily believe in computers running everything, the idea in Plato which
we'll see in the Republic very clearly about mathematics being the model for the state.
That's an proto technocratic view. And thus Plato is a proto techne teacher,
right. He believes in techne as a form of not just a governance.
But the philosopher himself, right, is doing the art of philosophy,
which is the highest of the arts according to Socrates. And one of the
dialogues that we'll talk about, and I think that's in Fieto Infieto, he
says that, well, I tried to do some poetry Socrates does. He
says, my poetry pretty much sucked. So then I realized that when I
went to the Oracle Delphi, that I should just be a philosopher, because
philosophy is way better than poetry anyway. So he kind of he says like,
I tried out poetry, and then he dishes it like he negs poetry.
He's like, yeah, poetry kind of sucks. He's like it's cool,
but like philosophy is so much cooler, and he's like, by the
way, I'm the best at that. So the art of philosophy, the
art of doing philosophy, and the reason that we're going to connect it with
Techne is that in Socrates slash Plato, the art of doing philosophy for them
is really close to being a mathematician, and that means structuring everything in the
most rational, most formal, most ideal, most logical way. I mean,
I think we could probably call Plato a kind of a Spurg, right,
I mean we think of the Zuckerbergs and these kinds of guys as the
Spurgs, right, I mean, and I'm not trying to be mean.
I mean I probably have a good Dosa sperg in me, Like was the
Oban say I got a dose of thetism. I probably got a little bit
of that. Well. Plato did too, right, and he sees he's
a kind of a mechanistic style of thinker. But I'm not saying that his
philosophy is mechanistic. He doesn't see the universe as this strictly mechanistic system.
Next up is the apologia. This is a defense. And if you read
to Nice first lecture or Commune first dialogue, the Apology again most probably the
most famous essay in the history of all philosophy, not very long, where
Socrates on trial. Then you know that it's called the apology because that means
a defense. And for people who have theological views, there's a whole whole
domain of debate and theology called apologetics, which is the defense of one's position.
So that doesn't just apply to theology. As you can see. You
know, in the in the dialogue you have Socrates. They're giving a defense
of his position and the role of a philosopher in society. And there was
actually quite a few comedic parts, if you guys got to read it,
there were some funny parts, and he kind of busts some jokes and busts.
He makes fun of some of the people in the city, so it's
a there's an element of comedy there as well. Hubris excessive pride or denying
the gods with a use or function of reason. I think probably anybody who's
had any courses in college or the courses on literature, you probably had the
list of the key Greek literary terms. It is relevant here because there's going
to be discussions of how the philosopher needs to be to not have hubris,
and Hubris did come up, I think in some areas in what Homer and
Hessia too, so it's part of the poetic tradition too. But excessive pride
in philosophy is dangerous because it will blind and delude the philosopher from being corrected,
and you know, the philosopher needs to be able to learn. In
fact, Plato in the Republic, if I recall, he has this weird
idea that like the philosopher king who's going to be running the city. He's
like kind of the autocrat of the Plato's republic, the ideal city. He
goes and studies geometry and math on a mountain for like, you know,
twenty years, and then he comes back down to the town, and it
is supposed to impress, you know, the mathematical knowledge, like onto the
city. Right, So there is this very almost ascetic view of mathematics,
which who do we see that in by aggress So there's a lot of influence
there as well. Next term that will pop up as useful is Idos is
a Greek word that Plato uses oftentimes for the forms, and it means idea
or the form. This will be central to Plato's metaphysic. The forms are
the most popular and most famous, most well known, most fundamental element of
Plato's physical view. The forms aren't the only thing that exists, but the
forms have the most real existence. Our world is not totally fake, it's
not totally a dream, but it's not as real as the realm of the
forms. We'll get to that in the moment. Archais is another term that
pops up in Plato's philosophy and in other Greek philosophers and in theologians and archi
Here refers to archetype, exemplar, or pattern. And if you are familiar,
for example, with Carl Jung's archetypes, same idea. Right now,
Carl Young kind of does his own thing with literature and this kind of stuff.
But he's getting the idea of archetypes from Plato, from Platonic philosophy,
so there is an overlap there. They have a similar origin in Christian theology.
A lot of theologians in early Church we'll talk about reality being created on
the basis of divine ideas. Even Augustine he makes a lot of use of
this idea of divine exemplars that is also from Plato. And we'll also be
present when we get to the neo Platonists. And if you guys do want
to go above and beyond, there is a book that is a very small
readable book by RT. Wallace, which is kind of the standard academic introduction
to the neo Platonists. So and well, I'll talk about them in a
little bit, but they have a specific reading of Plato into the early centuries,
for second third century eighty, so this will be many centuries after Plato
and Aristotle. The neo Platonists, Middle Platonists, and neo Platinists, they
will have a specific reading of Plato that's probably normative back then, but nowadays
in academia have all kinds of readings of Plato. Right, So for example,
some philosophers and scholars will debate, oh they played to really believe in
the God that he talks about or is it just a symbolic form? So
apa facis aipacis. This is another important idea in Plato or sometimes called apiphatic.
It might be used in theology, it might be used in Platonism,
it might be used in other Greek philosophy. And this is referred to in
the Middle Ages as a via negativa or the way of negation. And what
that means is that some things, by the nature of what they are,
are so difficult or impossible to define that the best attempt at definition that we
have is to do it by negation. So, for example, in the
Middle Ages, some of the theologians and philosophers will talk about, well,
we don't know what divine omniscience is in a strict definitional sense, so the
best definition that we can give is what it is not that is by negation
or apophosis. And this comes up even and I think in mathematics too.
I'm not a mathematician, so don't hold me to this, but I think
mathematics sometimes uses this where you have concepts like zero well, what is zero?
Can you define it? Well, you know, it's not quantity or
one or two or three or four. Right, So it's kind of this
abstract negation. And it's the same with for Plato, the way that we
will try to speak of the highest form, or the highest one, the
highest good, which is the beautiful, which is the God, and it
is perhaps apyrone or beyond being and known apophetically or via negation. What does
that mean? Well, it's not this thing, it's not that thing.
It's not that thing, it's not that it's not any of these things.
It's the beyond of all those things. And remember, you know, a
couple of the Presocratics use this idea of the oponne, the boundless, the
beyond in precisely that way apatheia. This is important for the Greek philosophers and
Greek thought and a view, A trait that they held highly esteemed in humans,
especially very thoughtful humans and philosophers, was to achieve apatheian. Now,
this does not mean passion the sense of like, you know, my marriage
is cold and we don't love each other, and it's faith. We're not
talking about passionless in that sense. Passionless in the sense of you're not governed
by the body's passions, you're not governed by lust, you're not governed by
your stomach, you're not governed by pride. Right, so that you can't
be taught anything any of the passions, the vices that might govern us,
that distract us, blind us, and keep us from focusing on the transcendent,
focusing on numbers, focusing on doing our math homework, learning our time
stables. Right, I mean you want to the essence of Platonic philosophy,
you need to be doing your time stables and not jerking off. Okay,
that's the kind of philosphy that you would get from Plato and Socrates. And
I'm being serious here. Why is he saying the sexuality is bad or that
you having a wife is But no, no, he's not saying that.
He's saying that any of the pleasures have the potentiality of enslaving us to the
point that we are no longer able to really control and use our reasoning faculty,
which is what should govern us. So he's not being like this kind
of weird ascetic in the sense that, oh you should be you know,
celibate or and he's not saying that he's saying that it needs to be under
control. And there's that famous image of that from the one of the dialogues
where you have the rider on the horse, and you know, Plato's saying
that the horses right are like the bodily passions, and if you don't have
a rider who can control and steer the horses in the chariot, then the
chariot will just go wild and the gulf of cliff right. So you got
to have a rider, and the rider represents reason. The rider is your
reasoning faculty. It is or use of reason, your use of logic,
your use of critical thinking, to govern your life in every year of life.
So the philosopher is principally the person who achieves apatheia, that is in
the sense of passionless, in the sense that he is not dominated or ruled
by any of the vices or the passions. Rather he is dominant and ruled
by reason. Logos obviously is a very important term. As we said,
that would pop up. And in the context of Plato, I think there's
a really good uh if you want. The Cambridge Companion of Plato is an
excellent book. There's a whole entry in that that I read some years ago
about logos and Plato, and it's really good if you want more source material,
and it goes into how for Plato, logos is intimately connected not just
with reason or explanations in terms of logic, but law like logic. So
there's there's a law character too. Lo ghosts as well in Plato. Going
from memories a few years ago when I read that, But another term that
comes up, which is might be referring to the plural. This will be
very commonly used later on in Byzantine theology is loge, and that's the plural
of logos, and so there this means many reasons, multiple reasons, or
ideas. So we might be referring to by logoss mind or the faculty of
reason mind itself, or the faculty of reasoning, or the laws of logic
in some metaphysical sense, they govern the universe. And then if we see
the term loge, we might be referring to the many reasons by which this
or that occurs, or the many ideas that man or God has about this
or that thing. Ontology is an important term that we should know, and
that is really just simply the study of being, what bees, what does
it mean for an object to be? To exist? Other Sometimes ontology is
just kind of a stand in for metaphysics. But metaphysics might deal with all
kinds of things like free will, the you know existence, what is love
right? These kinds of things, But ontology is a little more specific domind
and metaphysics where we're just concerned with being itself and that relates to the Greek
word for being too o num. Let's move to the apology. So this
is where we want to start in Platonic philosophy, as we said, because
it kind of kicks Platist philosophy off, and it's kind of them as we
said, like the philosophical texts par excellence. And uh, it's also in
a literary way, appreciated for its literary elements. Right, It's it's a
well written story, it's got some humor. Uh, it's dealing with a
lot of you know, high minded ideas, all of that into an excellent
presentation. And I got actually quite a bit of notes on. So this
is uhum Socrates again, Plato's teacher. Here is the protagonist, and here
we have the righteous man, the righteous philosopher is accused by his interlocutors here
of two maybe three two main problems you got, you gotta you're doing court,
dude, you're indict they indict him. Why do they indict Socrates?
Well, the charge is you are teaching atheism and corrupting the youth, and
you are teaching new gods. So these are the accusations they're seeking. Are
really mad, They're seeking some kind of punitive or penal damages, perhaps even
death for whatever. Is this dangerous thing that philosophers do. And hence the
idea of the apologia, right, the apology the defense. Okay, well
let me give you my defense. Now, we notice that as we read
through the defense, and this is great because we'll notice that what do we
say in Lecture one? What did philosophers do? They question things, they
consider presuppositions, They cross examine and look for contradictions. Right, remember that
from Lecture one? Well, guess what Socrates is going to do all the
above. And he says, well, I wait a minute, let's consider
your charges against me. He says, first, you say that I am
an atheist, but then you said I teach new gods. Well, if
I believe in new gods, then I can't be an atheist. So immediately
he points out a contradiction. So there we see the philosopher is cross examining.
He's looking at the arguments that are being used against him. In this
case, it really is against him, not just against his theoretical position,
but again against him because they want him, they want him hung right there,
really, Matt And he says, well, let me give you a
defense of my lifestyle, because you seemed to be saying that you think I'm
corrupting the youth. And so if I'm corrupt, then wouldn't you expect to
see a corruption in my life? And he says, but none of you
can actually point to anything corrupt in my life. I didn't do this for
money, he says. I taught openly. I taught not for filthy gain
and lucre. And he says, don't you think if I just was in
it for the money, I would have become a politician. So even in
two thousand, five hundred years ago in Athens, they knew to make fun
of and laugh at the hypocrisy and corruption of politicians. And that's his principal
example of a corrupt person. He says, Look, if I would really
wanted to corrupt the youth. I would have become a politician. I could
have done that. But did I do that? No? And he says,
so I didn't corrupt your use by asking them questions. In fact,
I didn't just go to the youth. He says, I went to all
different strata people in society and I asked them questions. I cross examined them.
I questioned their presuppositions. And that ended up making a lot of people
mad. So I went to the politician, I went to the artists and
the craftsman. I went to the musicians and those kinds of people. And
the funny thing is socridy, says everybody who I asked, what is wisdom?
What is you know? Justice? What are these things? What's the
purpose of life? Etc? These philosophical questions, they all kind of just
identified their own profession with it. Oh, well, wisdom is you know,
doing politics? Oh, wisdom is being good at you know, ship
building? Right? Oh, wisdom is you know whatever? And he said,
you know, I would just ask a few rhetorical questions, that cross
examination thing that we do as philosophers, And he said, I found that
in most cases, the more questions I asked they just got mad and they
couldn't really tell me what wisdom is. And he said, I don't see
how I'm corrupt by seeking the truth. That's all I was doing. I
was asking and wanting to know what truth is. And he says, I
didn't assume that I knew what wisdom is. So he thought, so he
says, why wouldn't I just go to people that probably how are wise and
probably have more wisdom than me? And I didn't restrict it to one strata
or ara of society. I went to everybody, and what do we find?
Well, he of course says in the defense, that nobody seemed to
know. So when I went to the oracle at Delphi, I went to
this sort of religious mystical element, the oracle, and the oracle says,
because you said that you didn't know Socrates, you are the wisest man in
Athens. And he says, maybe that's what's made you all mad. Right,
So they're kind of like probably a little jealous, right, I mean,
we don't exactly know, but probably they're a little jealous, and probably
they're mad because they didn't like being asked these difficult questions which they could not
give a coherent answer to And so this method of questioning, this method of
seeking a good account, is very important because as we get into Plato's works,
Plato will be one of the first philosophers to raise the question of what
counts as real knowledge. It can't just be opinion. It's got to be
something more than that. And in saying that we need more than mere opinion
to have true knowledge, we begin to ask the questions that are known as
justification. Now that's not used at this time per se, but later on
philosophy develops these branches in these terms, remember last time, under the domain
of epistemology. In modern philosophy, especially after the Enlightenment, the question of
justification for our epistom logical belief or commitments is going to be very important,
but it's already anticipated in Plato. Plato will be the first to talk about
justified true belief and what that entails in terms of giving an account or grounding
for our beliefs. We'll also notice that here we have something unique to Western
thought, in Western philosophy, which is the rise of the individual. And
some think mini thinkers actually have pointed this out. This is the idea that
the individual is present here in a unique way that we may not have seen
in other previous philosophical discussions and traditions. The individual here is is able,
we see here to determine and come to truth in an objective way that is
not determined by social consensus or by the court. Right. So, maybe
prior to this most people would have thought, well, what's true is just
simply what the authorities decide. If the court in Athens says that Socrates is
guilty and a bad man, then it's got to be true, because they're
the authorities, and who are we to go against the collective or whatever.
Right. Well, here we have a notion that no, actually an individual
can be right and everybody else wrong. That's one of the implications and one
of the early notions of Western philosophy that will be unique and will characterize Western
philosophy for minutes. Not in every philosopher, obviously, mal obviously Marx.
Some of the philosophers will completely reject that idea or they don't like that idea.
The philosopher questions, and he does not just go along with the collective
or with the mob. Again, this is something important to Plato, the
philosopher King the ideal philosopher, the ideal man, the just man is somebody
who's committed to what's true and not just to pragmatic practical just get ahead.
Oh, I'm just gonna go along with everybody. I mean, And let's
think of an example where this was necessary. I mean, didn't quite a
few people take the stabby in the last couple of years just to go along
and get along. Well, we'll keep my job, so they're good.
You stabby, he'll do something my dub. But I want to keep my
job. Okay, Well, what's why are you gonna do? You gonna
do your job when you're dead? Well more dub, But I want to
lose my job. I mean, I'm not trying to be mean. I
don't. I'm not hating on the people, but I'm saying this is illustrative
because you know, if you had been into philosophy, you would have known,
well, hey, well maybe I shouldn't just go along with what everybody
else is doing. Right? Did Socrates just go along? Now? He
didn't. Because whether we disagree with everything he taught or agree with everything you
taught, the point is that here what he's doing is illustrative for us.
The lesson here is that we should critically think, we should not live the
unexamined life. And he's setting that example here by living and examined life and
saying, oh, wait a minute, let's examine your accusations against me.
You said I'm a corruptor of the youth, I'm an atheist teaching new gods.
Those things don't make sense. Those are contradictions. If they're contradictions,
then they can't be true. And I think what we're now some people might
read this as an arrogant claim, right, because when he went to the
oracle, the oracle says, you're the wisest man attens, right, because
you didn't know, and you knew that you didn't know, so you were
wise enough to try to ask and learn from everybody. And so I read
this as a treatise against and critiquing humorists, because the politician, the artisan,
the poets, the accusers in the courtroom, they're possessed with pride and
humorists. And why is that Well, because they're not committed to what's true.
They're simply out for their objective, for their ends. We've got to
get this Socrates guy. You know, whatever it takes right, And so
I read this as an attempted critique of Hubrists. The philosopher is the one
that is truly humble. Why because he wants to be corrected, He wants
to learn. He's the one saying, I don't know, teach me,
hey, teach me hey, teach me right. He wants to be corrected,
and that a continual process of wanting to be corrected in the dialogue,
I think is what leads him to the attainment of truth. That's the point
of the dialogue. Then he says and gives a defense. And this will
get more and more controversial in terms of the readings that scholars have of both
the apology and Socrates and Plato in terms of the theology. So another argument
that Socrates makes is that you know, I wasn't commissioned to do all of
this on my own. He appeals to a deity. The deity, he
says, sent me to do this mission to teach philosophy to you people in
Athens, and that is I'm impelled to do that by my damon. Now
this doesn't mean a demon in the sense a Christian sense of a you know,
malicious spirit that makes your head spin and you split up PCU. This
is a damon in the sense of a higher guide, sort of a guardian
entity. Amused, right, these are these are the ways that the Greeks
viewed decided of damon. And he says, I have dreams and visions from
a damon. Uh, that is a damon sent to me by God.
And I've been commissioned to teach you people these things. That's his claim.
So whenever you think of that, that's one of the claims of the defenses
that he offers in his apologetic he also says, now, if you kill
me and I am who I say I am, and I'm telling you the
truth, it's worse for you, not for me. So you may think
you're getting at me and you're taking me out, and you're this troublesome gadfly
who is asking all these annoying questions will be gotten rid of. But this
is going to be actually worse on your soul for doing this. And so
Socrates notes that for the sake of philosophy and truth, he is willing to
be a martyr. And this is because he he says, I thinking if
iedo the other one of the other dialogues, he says, well, I
have to be willing to accept the death, because if I don't willingly accept
death without fear, then it kind of undermines all the philosophy that I've been
teaching all these years, which is that we shouldn't have fear death. The
righteous man, the just man right, And we'll see who the righteous just
man is in Platonic philosophy in a minute. He should not fear death.
And so Socrates has these buddies who are trying to convince him to run away.
I will sneak you out of here. Come on, let's bring of
jail like a you know, Ted Bundy. He says, I'm not breaking
out. In fact, I'm willing to go to my death because it would
undermine and would make me a hypocrite, because I've been saying all these years
that the just man has nothing to fear in death, and even says stuff
like why would I fear death? I get to go hang out with Homer
and all these you know, cool poets and people. So it's like I'm
happy that he's like, that would be cooler than hanging out with these you
know, hubrist filled, boring ass Athenians are trying to get me. You
know, put in jail or whatever. And Socrates sort of goes on to
point out that, you know, my goal was just to help you guys
think rightly and live rightly. That's supposed to be live right, not life
right. But so in other words, again we see that for Plato,
put On and philosophy, metaphysics, and ethics are intimately bound up together.
You can't separate these their distinct things in terms of our considerations and the way
that we live and do these things. But in philosophy these things cannot be
divorced because we're again we're going to see, for example, the just man
is the man who participates in the form of justice. And I forgot to
put that term a texas etche x i s, which is important Greek term
in Platonic philosophy for participation. So it's not just the forms, it's not
just humans that participate in the forms. All of reality in this world is
in a participatory relationship to the forms. The forms do not come into this
world. We partake of that realm of the forms, but we are in
a lower diminished status than the realm of the forms. We'll get to that
in a minute. Truth is objective, is another thing we learn here.
That's one of the points that the apology is that it's not a social construct.
Right, what's true is not determined by the majority. Even if all
the Athenians decide that what Socrity is teaching us false, it doesn't make it
false. It may be false, but it doesn't make it false by some
majority opinion. So truth is objective. Truth is not a social construct.
It's discovered and it's also not the creation of the Athenian state. The state
doesn't just get to make up truth right now in our days, right in
our day, it's really no different, is it. I mean, the
state believes that it can decide and determine truth. Right. Richard quotes the
Richard the Karl Rove quote a lot. Right, we will say what's what
is, and you will go in diligently study, and we will continue then
to keep making history, and you will study what we do because it's what
we make it and to be and what we say it is. That's the
opposite of what Socrates is saying. Right clearly, and obviously too, it
should be the case, it should be obvious that truth is not a social
construct. Right, This is ridiculous I mean, just think about how and
this is again something that we're going to see that you know, Plato rejects
when he goes against the Sophists, where the Sophists are a kind of relativists,
and they're gonna say, well, I mean, you know, truth
is whatever anybody individually thinks it thinks it is. It's relative to every person.
And for Plato this would be absurd. So you think that the laws
of logic, the principles of geometry are just what anybody wants them to be,
or they're just a social So if we all got together and decided in
a social constructor that you know, the number seven is now the number ten
like that, wouldn't it would actually change? I mean, you see how
silly this is. Right, But there's quite a few people who believe this
truth is relative truth and social construct whatever. And the state, by the
way, the corporate state that we live in today, is more than happy
to have people believing this, because that is a belief that enslaves you.
If you can't come to truth, if you can't reason, you're not going
to be able to reason about and figure out what's going on in the world.
You're going to be a tool of the propaganda, and you're going to
be that guy saying, well, good get to big Stein, so I
can do my job even though I might dot right, that's illogical. Yeah
I might die, Yeah, I might die a job. Or my favorite
example of the last few years, this one. I'll never forget this one.
Two thousand scientists sign a statement that the coronavirus doesn't affect Black Lives Matter
demonstrations, but it does affect Trump rallies. This is the greatest example of
like the most ridiculous magical thinking from so called scientists and propagandists, I mean,
unbelievable, right, What better example of the absurdity of this magical thinking
of so that that truth and science can be somehow a social construct, utter
insanity. Next important dialogue we want to look at is the fiat um um.
And I've chosen a couple of these just as selections, because there's many
dialogues there's and there's many that are very important. Some of them are not
so important. Ion is a funny one because they're he just has this brief
dialogue with poets and musicians and he basically says, you guys are nuts,
and he says, we're not going to have poets and musicians, you know,
running wild in the republic. We're gonna shut you guys down, he
says, because you guys inflame the passions, and if you let you guys
go wild, you're going to destroy society. Now, I think that's a
little ridiculous, you know, his idea, And it's also contradictory because I
mean, here he's saying that he's guided by his dame on, but then
he says that the poets and the musicians are possessed by the muse and so
they're not you know, they don't listen to reason. So it's a little
a little contradictory and hypocritical there on the part of Plato Socrates. But also
at the same time, I mean, Plato himself is using poetics, using
literary devices in his dialogues as he's saying that, oh, we're gonna censor
the arts in the republic. So you see how this is again a little
shaky ground here, a little contradictory. But well, we're gonna set that
a cybermum. We're gonna look at the Pieto because it is one of the
more important dialogues that's that's great to get into the metaphysics of Plato. And
there's a few of these dialogues that are really important for the forms. So
there is Parmenides, there's Sophist, there's Fiato, there is uh Meno.
I think the or maybe I'm thinking of Phato. But these in the Republic
and part of the Symposium really and the toma Us deal with the forms.
So you want to get into Plato's forms doctrine, those are the of the
dialogues that we want to be familiar with. Those are the ones that pretty
consistently treat the doctrine of the forms. And that's why we're picking Fiato,
because we're going to start again with the most difficult area, which is Plato's
metaphysics. Now we don't have we in the in the Apology, we didn't
have a lot of metaphysical stuff, And that's why it's typically an easier introduction
to Platonic philosophy because there it's this you know, sort of I'm using entertaining
read regarding his trial. But in these other dialogues, we're getting into other
territory. It's gonna get difficult, it's gonna get more technical, it's gonna
get more speculative, more abstract, and even though they're dialogues, they're still
difficult. And I want to stress to everybody too that even plato experts,
okay, struggle with areas of Plato. If you read the Coppleston text,
there was that crazy page I don't know what's he's and Coppleston even says,
I don't know what he means by this, Okay, So if you read
pages one oh four, one oh five, there is this wild discussion of
mathematical proofs for contingency and non being. I don't know. I don't know
what that means. I mean, I think I understand what he's getting at.
But even Coppleston says, you know, we'd have to ask some high
level mathematicians or you know, people that are specialists in Plato to help us,
because this is hard to understand, and there's a lot of areas of
Plato that are hard to understand. There's a lot of areas in Aerosola they're
gonna be hard to understand. And keep that in mind because even academics and
school today struggle with understanding and grasping some of the arguments some of the texts
and some of the mathematical postulations and claims doesn't mean they're not true. It
just means that it's hard to understand at times what they mean. And in
some of the other philosophers that we read, we're gonna we're gonna encounter hard
parts. So what I'm saying is, don't get discouraged, because even though
I put a lot of time into this, I've read a lot of Plato
over the years, I'm not a Plato expert, and I still encounter difficult
texts. So the Fieto is interested in some of these metaphysical questions, such
as the immortality of the soul, and we have some arguments here which you
know, we had seen in the Apology. He said, you know,
I have these dreams and visions, and that's where this entity, this damon,
speaks to me. And he says, you know, dreams and visions
kind of suggest to me that the body is not all there is. There's
also a soul, and I think that soul, because it's a higher form
of reality he's saying, is immortal. And this leads him to the famous
Platonic doctrine of the transmigration of souls or reincarnation. So he says to me,
it looks like dreams teach us that there is a transmigration of the souls.
There's more than just bottle existence, because whatever the dream realm is or
wherever it is, it connects to some ideal realm or some formal realm,
the noetic realm. Some Floster's letter call it the mental realm, the idea
realm, and dreams seem to connect to that, and they show us then
that there's a distinction between physical body and mind or soul. The Fieto is
interesting and unique too, because we won't just get an obsession on, you
know, like the Timaeus. Is this really wild discussion of the origin of
the universe and how the universe is structure. The apology is about, you
know, defending his positions as a philosopher and argument everybody, Okay, but
this is interesting because I Pieto is an epistemological, metaphysical, and psychological dialogue
explaining all of these views. In Plato slash Socrates, we have a mentioning
of the positive in terms of religion, where there are positive approbations given to
the Apollonian religion. The Appollonian religion is characterized by the priests of Apollo,
who had devotion to the Son, and not just the physical son, but
the physical son is symbolic of the intellectual son, which is the Logos,
which is the One, the God, the monad, the divine mind.
And so there's an approbation here, and later neo Platonists of the same view
that you know, religion is an inherently bad religion teaches us that the Logos
of the universe is kind of like of the spiritual mental realm, is analogous
to the Son of the physical realm. So hence the Apollonian Sun religion is
something that Socrates and Plato make use of, as well as later neo Platonists.
And it's going to be very clear in the Republic. I mean,
he's gonna basically say that the God is the One and is the light of
the universe, and he or it because he doesn't really conceive of it as
personal per se. This God force basically shines its rays into the created order,
and these rays are kind of like the forms, and then that gives
rise to the physical reality. This is not a docrine of creation, it's
a doctione. More so, perhaps of emanation, so the difference being that
creation, for example, if you're a Christian, Christian theology posits that God
created the world at Exnlo out of nothing. No Greeks taught that. The
Greek philosophers thought that the existence of the world in the play, in the
Platonic and neo Platonic view is kind of a never ending eternal begetting or an
eternal coming forth from the One, or an emanation from the One. In
the Pieto, we learn that, as we said, poetry is kind of
dumb, but it seems to be dumb because he's not good at it.
He says, which is funny, And he says, and by the way,
but philosophy is actually better than poetry, because philosophy is the universal art.
It is more universal, and so therefore it is better. And so
we see even in this argument about the premisee of philosophy over poetry, that
universality, the more universal thing is, the higher it is on. Plato's
hierarchy, and Plato's metaphysical view is a chain of being view, and it
is a hierarchical chain of being view. We'll get to the chain of being
in a little bit very important not just to Plato, Aristotle, and the
Church Fathers, but into the Middle Ages as well. The chain of being
will be crucial to the entire medieval world view, in paradigm, in philosophy.
Just as we said there's a higher principle, hierarchically ordered metaphysical structure to
the universe, there's also a higher order in man himself. The body is
lower baser, it's subject to decay, flux, sickness, corruption, pain,
attachment to vice, addiction, and the mind, for the reasoning,
is better to a higher ontological status. Higher on this chain of being,
we could say, because it reasons about, and perceives and talks about,
thinks about, contemplates the eternal and variant forms of things. So this is
where we get introduced to the forms doctrine. This is the fundamental metaphysical doctrine
of Plato, and this is that everything that exists is it exists on the
basis of some form, pattern, principle, or archetype, or exemplar,
all words us used to mean the same thing that exists in the one or
in the mind of the one. These forms are the true reality. They
are truth proper, they're truly truth, and even they are kind of underneath
the one, right, so you have the One, the God, the
monad, the mind, whatever. All of these terms are used. Sometimes
even uses weird terms like the captain. The Father is used at least one
time by Plato. That's the god thing, and from the God thing come
these many forms. And these many forms are the patterns, principles and archetypes
behind the many particulars in our world. And that's all of the particulars.
All differentia of our existence are patterned on these forms. So there's a form
of every particular. But it's hierarchical because amongst the forms, they kind of
point you up to higher level forms, and the higher level forms point you
up to the one, which is the good, the beautiful, the God,
the Light, etc. All in one. So you can begin to
see how if you know anything about, you know, ancient medieval theology,
a lot of this term the terminology will be used by Christian, Jewish and
Muslim theologians. Now they for in their theological views that a lot of the
terms are going to be used by a lot of these especially medieval philosophical and
theological thinkers. Right when we get to Mimenides, if we talk about Mimenides,
Aquinas and salm Scotus. Right, A lot of these terms of medieval
philosophers and theologians are coming out of this tradition as well, this Greek tradition.
All right, So the forms here we are, we're getting into the
forms another thing that we should I don't. I don't know why I sucked
us in there. I think I was just going through my notes. But
this is important to remember too that there are differing disputes amongst the Platonists and
historians of Greek philosophy or whatever, that what is the real Platonic tradition.
And if we take the Timaeus at face value, we have this story that
Solon, who was a statesman who knew Socrates, went to Egypt, and
when he went to Egypt, he was taught the mysteries of Egypt by the
priests of the Egyptian religion, and when he came back to Athens, he
taught that to Socrates. Socrates taught that to Plato. So quite literally,
in the Tomaus we have this claim, this perspective that the mysteries of Greek
philosophy come from Egypt. Again, many debate this, Oh, that's not
true. It's just a myth. I don't know, but that's what it
says. Okay, so you can interpret that however you see fit. It
does seem possible to me. It's very interesting. We do have throughout Plato's
writings this tendency towards the mystical. We even have tendencies towards secret societies.
So it is very possible that Solon really did go and learn and was initiated
into the mysteries of Egypt. Now, let's not be crass and silly here,
not equating that in a one to one correspondence with modern Freemasonry. Yes,
modern Freemasons. If you read Albert Pike's Morals and Dogma, he will
talk about Pythagoras, he'll talk about Plato, he'll talk about soccer, He'll
talk about a lot of this stuff. But that does not mean that necessarily
than therefore there is a direct continuity from ancient Egypt to sol On, to
Plato to Albert Pike. Okay, that that does not follow. So philosophy,
though, is a tradition. So this is something that's again controversial.
It's it's it's it's fascinating because a lot of people pass over this if you
if you, I've had many college classes on Plato grade classes that discuss this
stuff. Do you know how many of those classes mentioned anything to do with
the Tamaus or the Fieto. Absolutely zero. None. Now, if you
were specializing in Plato, if you were doing a PhD study in Plato or
writing your thesis on Plato, maybe then you would be exposed to the Pieto
or what's in the Tamaus or whatever. But it just kind of amazes me
that, you know, you got all these professors who again, in the
academic setting, especially nowadays. I mean I was in a college twenty years
ago, but nowadays it's way worse. I feel like the only reason that
anybody is in philosophy classes and today's university setting is to become a purple haired
social justice where you're a freak. I mean, that's all you're getting pretty
much now, I think, in these crazy state universities. But I'm sure
there's some private Catholic schools or something that if you did a PhD you might
get into these really esoteric elements of Plato. But they're there, so whatever
you make of them. And even Coppleston in the last section of the chapter
on Plato's forms was very explicit. This is pages we'll get to this in
a minute, pages one oh seven and eight. That Plato is very clearly
still a mystical and theological teacher. There is this element very clearly throughout many
of the dialogues, especially the ones to deal with the forms, and that
is because possibly he is saying that this is a theological tradition that comes to
us Greeks from Egypt. So philosophy here is a tradition. It is not
merely speculative. But again we don't know whether you know, Let's say we
went to Plato's academy back in the day that Plato was alive and walking around.
Does this mean that literally Plato would have inducted us into a secret society
or is this a teaching device and a symbolic thing in the dialogues and we
would have just been sitting around and doing math problems. Nobody knows. So
these are areas of speculation regardless. What we do know is that in Plato's
philosophy he does adopt the Pagorian idea that the forms are numbers. The forms
are principally mathematical because mathematics can describe everything. And because mathematics is invariant,
it's abstract, it's unchanging, it's clearly higher than the here and the now.
But everything that exists right is dimensions, right, planes, surfaces.
That's all geometry and numbers. This is one book with four sides and right.
So number goes into all of these things and helps explain and give form
to order to anything. Form orders, matter, and the discovery of truth
in Plato's system is strictly speaking, discovery of form, the forms, the
ideal forms of everything. It is not primarily knowledge of sense data. This
is the most important point here. Plato does not think that sense data is
totally useless. He does not think that everything in their sense data experience is
an illusion. But it is not the real reality. It is dream like,
it is an imitation. It is a copy of the aetos. The
ideas which are more real, have more being. They are truth, and
they ground knowledge, not sense data particulars. Not this cup versus this cup,
but the cup, the God cup, worship the God cup. I
think, if you when we get to David Hume, I'm going from memory
here. But he has this discussion where he kind of laughs at this this
idea where he critiques the causal chain argument of like er Statle and Aquinas,
and he talks about the great pumpkin. All right, and maybe this is
something that you know, Charlie Brown is joking about, right, the great
pumpkin. And you know, David he was making this argument that well,
you wouldn't look from look at a pumpkin patch and think that because pumpkins come
from other pumpkins pumpkins, that back in history there is the great pumpkin.
And that might be a play on Plato as well, because Plato thinks,
he really does think that the forms the ideas are self subsisting causes. The
forms of the things that exist are self subsisting causes of the particular objects that
we experience. So quite literally, there is a form of cup. It
really exists. In fact, the form of cup is more real than these
cups. These cups participate in the cup with a capital C, but these
are not capital C cup. And yes, presumably in this idea, your
jockstrap cup would also have a form. There would be a form of that
cup. And we do have critiques where this does get a little odd.
So is there the form of poop is there the form of penis? I
mean, these are some of the criticisms the Ariosotle will give this idea that,
well, so wait a minute, so everything has a form, to
the forms have a form. This will be known as Arisotle's classic infinite regress
critique of the form doctrine. The other a critique that Aersolo gives famously is
that he says, quote, Plato separated form from object. But if you
read Coppelson, you know that even Coppelson says that this isn't really fair to
Plato because Plato didn't consider the realm of the forms completely separate. In fact,
that doctrine of methexas m e t h xis in the Greek means participation.
So it's not the forms that are like coming into our realm, it's
our realm that is sort of grasping for and participating in that realm of the
ideal forms, because that's more real. So what kind of a philosophy characterizes
Plato and Plato's doctrine the forms? Idealism? Plato is an idealist par excellence.
Many other philosophers will also be considered idealists. Hagel is an idealist.
Hegel is influenced by Plato, but he's not identical to the system of Plato.
But for example, one of the things that Hagel will try to solve
in Plato's idealism is Plato's difficulty with change. Plato has a difficulty accounting for
how flux occurs. Why is there flux and change? And why is there
the many of objects? If the objects are ultimately geared towards and participate in
the one, why do we have many at all? If the one is
the good and it's self sufficient, etc. Then why do we even have
the many? And if you read Coppelson, Coppelison pointed that out that this
has never explained, and probably Plato didn't know right, so there were areas
where he just couldn't deal with or solve these, probably consider them insoluble,
or he thought maybe later philosophy people will solve it, And so you get
people like Hegel who will try to, in his kind of Platonic process philosophy,
give an account for change, thesis, sentenis, etc. The process
of the world historical moving towards the Omega point. All of these are ways
for Hegel to try to account for change. In his idealist philosophy. But
note as well that we do not mean idealism in some colloquial sense, like
a twenty year old who wants to convert everybody to Marxism. Okay, we're
not talking about an idealistic youth. We're talking about a metaphysical doctrine that all
that exists fundamentally or that truly exists or that really exists is idea. But
we got to be fair to Plato that he's not saying that this world is
not real or is a simulation. Dude, we lusimulation in that is a
kind of bastardized version of Platonism. But that's not really Plato's view, right,
I mean, he does talk about this world as if it's dreamlike,
as if it is a pale imitation and copy of the real world. But
clearly there is a premisee given to the hierarchy in the ideal realm to unity.
So it's better to be ideal in the realm of the forms. It
is better to be one than many. But why well, as Coppolison noted
as well, we don't know that there's never really any answer as to why
unity is superior to multiplicity, but it is assumed to be the case,
and he would probably give arguments from numbers. Right, Well, all the
numbers come from the number one, so one has some primacy and superiority to
two, three, four, five, right, Because remember a lot of
this will rely on mathematics. It is a mathe mysticism. It is,
as a Coppolison called it, a form of pan mathematicism all his math,
much like Pith Aggresson. Thus moving on to Intitus, numbers are discovered number
and form, which the forms are versions of numbers in different numerical constructs.
Number forms are discovered by reason, and particularly through this purification process that the
loss for goes through, whereby over the years, as he gets older of
doing philosophy, doing reason, and getting habituated to that, he is no
longer enslaved to the bodies, to the passions, right, and so he's
purified, perhaps a quasi ascetic endeavor, and then he's much more able to
align his mind with the realm of the forms. And Plato will say that
basically the same thing in the Republic, where he talks about something to the
effect of, uh, you know, potential philosophy students in the Republic will
be you know, basically doing math problems on a mountain for twenty years,
and then they'll come back right and do civics. So so again, I
mean, this sounds like on the one hand, it sounds reasonable. Well,
yeah, it does make sense, So we want to, don't We
want a mathematical or a logical guy running the city. But then it sounds
like a nightmare because like the mathsburg who comes down from the city is going
to be like Zuckerberg running every day. Everybody needs to be on a coumpine,
right, That's what we're gonna get. Plato thinks that this he is
at least partially resolving the one of the mini problem, and as we know
in Coppleston, couples gives grants him that Okay, well, maybe in the
domain of epistemology, he is solving the one of the mini problem with the
doctrine of the forms, because we have many that share in commonalities essences or
universals through the forms, and the particulars are the sensible objects that we you
know, I'm sensing and touching and learning about this cup, and then I'm
sensing and learning about this cup. These are sensible particulars, and they share
a compness, which is an ideal essence or form common to both. And
so they these objects share in multiple forms in Plato, and that will be
something that Arisotle will completely disagree with. Arisotle will say, no, no,
these two things they don't share in multiple forms. They can only have
one common substance between them. That is a doctrine that Arisotle will reject in
Plato. So the compass and grants that will perhaps just in the domain of
epistemology, Plato has offered a step forward from the pre Socratics and a kind
of solution to the problem of the one in the many, with the doctrine
of the forms, with the doctrine of the divine ideas. However, metaphysically
they're still problems and they're not solved. We don't ever get an explanation in
Plato as to what's the real notion of this participation of our realm with that
realm? Why do we have this realm? Why do we have the many?
If the perfect monad one was self sufficient and perfect on its own.
Of these kinds of questions ever get answered or solved, and clearly a complisent
argued of you. If you guys read that he was struggling with these problems,
his whole life knowledge then, according to Plato and the Faeto, cannot
be identified with sense data, and so empiricism then is the opposite position to
this, which is that all knowledge comes through sense data. All we know
is the empirical sense data. Plato and Socrates would deride this. They would
say, you are a low iq euratard because empirical sense data is only telling
you about the realm of flux. And so if you think that's knowledge,
you're an idiot. That's that's what he would say. Right, you are
a sophist, You are not a good philosopher. The sense domain is in
flux. How could that ever tell you truth? Right? And this is
where we get these classic exam I don't know if you guys saw my debate
with stuff on mol and you. I'm not dissing on stuff on or anything
like that, but we had a debate where we sort of started kicked off
the debate with this very question. I was making this argument which is in
the Fieto, which is that you cannot identify the number seven with seven coconuts.
And this is the argument in the fieto. Now they don't make the
coconut argument, but that's the it's the same principle that's being argued in the
fieto. So let's look a little bit more at the doctrine of the forms,
and we have there as a diagram. Pythagoras is tech tractus, right,
the ten point pyramid. Illuminate confirm. Look at that diers illuminate if
he's good, the pyramid. Look at the words auci and I. Dude,
it's just a geometry diagram. Dude, it's not illuminate confirm. But
the Greeks talk about the Pythagoras talks about this attractus. And you'll notice there
let me move you guys out of the way, and Mona the one in
the top diad triad. And then of course, in Pythagoras is to attract
us. He argues that the rest of the numbers also proceed from those prime
those beginning principle one, two in three, right, everything else comes from
that. And thus you can see that everything in reality is built up from
these kinds of triads. And this is also applicable and useful, useful in
Plato's doctrine the forms as well, because we want to be very precise here,
not just on Plato's views of free will or whatever Plato's ontology. What
is Plato's doctrine of being? Well, the forms are numbers. So again
this is from Pythagoras. The forms are ideal in that they are not purely
in the physical realm. They are not identified with physical things or physical objects
or what he calls sense particulars. In fact, the forms exist transcendently as
self subsisting causes of the world. Now again this does not mean creation in
some biblical sense of creation x neilo. It just means that whatever exists and
has being derives that existence and that being in a causal sense from the forms.
The great cup in the sky causes all the cups to be. The
world of objects participates a texas in et xis in this ideal world in some
weird unitive way. But it is not a perfect unity, because we're still
distanced from We're still lower on that pyramid, on that chain of being,
which will see in a minute away from the God form at the top of
the pyramid, at the top of the chain. And in the Neo Platonists,
and I think probably in Plato two. You have this idea that all
of the many that's down at the sort of the fractal body of this pyramid,
which is think of it like a fractal that kind of like spins out
from the one. All of those minis are trying to get back to the
one. They want to be reunified with the one. And this is I
think partly why, for example, Plato will say that, I think the
phrase is soma sama. The body is a prison. The body, the
physical body, it is a prison, and it is in the way of
you getting back to the realm of the forms. So even though Plato is
not a he doesn't hate the world. He's not a sort of a Hindu
yogi who's like rolling around and shit to get away from the world, right
and starving himself or whatever, there is still this idea that this world is
sort of a prison. This world is a kind that's a prison, right,
this kind of The forms are transcendent, but they are not only transcendent,
which would cut us off from them. They are imminent in a lesser
way, because our realm is grasping and participating in some diminished way in the
forms. The forms are eternal and unchanging. They're not subject to time,
they're not subject to change, they're not subject to flux. And thus they
are in contrast to what character what are the key features and characteristics of time,
temporal existence, physicality, matter and the here and the now, solidity,
etc. The forms and Plato reconcile the one of the many, as
we just saw, and they become a ground for knowledge in an epistemic sense.
So again we just covered that true knowledge, knowledge specifically, is not
of material objects primarily, but of the forms. So remember, just as
we have light which enters our eye, that comes from the sun, and
this gives us knowledge of things. This is an allegory or an analogy that's
used by the Platonic philosophers, that the mind is that the eye of the
mind truly sees the essences of things, in the forms of things, and
thus they are ultimately moving in their mental movement towards the one, the son
or the logos of the mind, the universal mind, the universal reason.
Do you see this analogy here? In these two worlds, the one,
the highest form is beauty. So this reconciles his esthetics. Is the good,
which reconciles and unifies his metaphysics is the God. It is the ultimate
unifying principle. It is Father, and it is cause of the forms,
which are the cause and the structuring and ordering of our world. So again
do you see this, there's another triad Father, God calls beauty one.
This thing is the cause of the forms, forms, cause of our world.
So we've talked then about that is that's the essence. To be more
confusing with more philosophical term, that is the the locusts. That is the
primary things that we want to know about Plato's ontology. What about Plato's epistemology
is view of knowledge. Well, guess what it's intimately bound up with his
doctrine of ontology. This is doctrine of being. And we've talked about those
dialectics. That little diagram is just kind of illustrating that between being and non
being, there is becoming. And so these are in dialectical tension. The
things in our world which are subject to change becoming. They're striving to get
back to being proper, which is the realm of the forms. But we're
also kind of always teetering over into non being. Think about Marty McFly right
when he's uh, you know, they have the picture and Marty's disappearing,
right, Marty, Oh, Marty, Marty Right, He's going back into
non being in Plato's epistemology because it's intimately bound up with the ontology. We
need to understand that metaphysics first. For most of the ancient medieval philosophers,
guess what, metaphysics comes first. This is going to be a big departure
when we get to the Enlightenment, because the Enlightenment guys they flip it.
They say, you know what, all this metaphysical stuff that's secondary, if
even at all possible. In fact, we might not even do it.
David Hume says, throw out all this metaphysics gibberish. It's all garbage and
gibberish, committed to the flames. He says. They flip it, and
they say, first, you got to tell me about your pistemology and justify
your pistemology before you tell me any of this metaphysical jibberish gobbledegook. That's what
the Enlightenment guys will say. But for the ancient medieval guys it's the other
way around. No, no, no, no. Philosophy is essentially first
and foremost metaphysics. Then we can talk about epistemology, then we can talk
about psychology, then we talk about ethics and aesthetics or whatever. Knowledge must
be grounded. It cannot be mere opinion. This is a very important section
in the Republic where we have these discussions. It's in other dialogues as well
as to what counts us true knowledge? Well, in Plato and Socrates,
mind, it can't just be opinion. That's what the sofist said. Your
opinion, your opinion, man, We're all toil doing all knowledge merely opinions.
Dude. Everybody who's a relativist, guess what they have their analog in
the ancient world. The Sophist and Plato and Aristotle, as we said,
have quite a bit of debate with the sofists, and they think the sofist
are terrible. They they're destructive. They're caught in that bodily existence of the
here and the now. They're attached inordinately to matter and sense data, and
they can never rise above the sense data. Thus they are relativists. Just
like the flux of this world. All is change, all is flux.
They never get above it. And so if you identify knowledge with sense data.
Plato and Urso will say, your knowledge will not be grounded, it
will be like shifting sands, and these people cannot give an account for knowledge.
So here we have the first idea that will characterize epistemology and justification for
the next two thousand plus years of justified true belief. What it is to
give an account for our knowledge, and how it cannot be identified to or
reduced to in a reductionist way, to sensible particulars. Sensible particulars are not
true knowledge, and thus empiricism as a in other words, not just empirical
data because Plato. Of course Plato would not deny that you learn things through
sense data, but he says the knowledge that you learn through sense data is
intended to direct you to the higher levels of the forms. So we're not
saying that there's no such thing as empirical knowledge. It's just an empirical particular.
Knowledge of the sensible particulars is the lowest level of knowledge, so it
kind of corresponds to opinion. But you can through the rational process rise up
to the next level, which is knowledge of math and the universals, and
they point you to the knowledge of the forms and so in that way you're
moving upwards. Right. The intention is to constantly move up towards the forms,
and that will grant you a justified true belief and not mere opinion.
Opinions are like flux. They're unstable, they're tied to sense data. True
knowledge goes beyond the senses to the mind, seeing the form in a direct
sort of perceptive intuitive flash. I think he says something like that in the
Republic. He uses that language. And as we said already, the analogy
is to the sun and its rays coming up down to us giving our eyes
sight to the soul or the mind's eye, seeing the forms in an intellectual,
rational sense. Purification of the philosopher from the passions is what allows this
process, and that's why you have to learn about a math. Opinion must
move from no grounding to being grounded in a knowledge of the forms. Plato's
ethic will also flow from the metaphysic and from the epistemology. Who is the
just man? What is justice? As we said, those are going to
be questions that we came up with earlier from Plato. Well, the just
man is the rational philosopher who ponders. There, you see the meme.
I like that meme of pondering my orb. If you're if you're a fan
of memes, and I'm sure you've seen that. There you go, right,
Plato's ethic is the meme pondering man who ponders his orb right and right.
So you got to look into that, uh that Palatier ball there and
stare at it for a long time before you I'm joking at me, silly,
But the just man is the rational philosopher who doesn't just ponder, but
ponders rightly right towards the forms. Um, there's no surprise that these philosophers
think that the best and most just man is a philosopher. And so who
should who should run society? Well? Philosophers shit, right, I mean
obviously who else are going to be? All right? I mean we're the
best thinkers. Don't you want us philosopher kings running shit? Well, of
course you do. Now I'm being kind of silly, but I mean this
is really essentially what the teaching is. Well, why would we want philosophers?
I mean, these guys, these guys are annoying, their nerdy,
you know, they spurk out. Why do we want them running shit?
Right? Don't we want Joe Biden and running? So I wouldn't we want
Judge don Trump running things? Or don't we want I don't know? Why
do we want philosopher kings? Well, in Plato and Socrates, the philosopher
king is the most rational. And so if reasoning is the higher faculty in
man, above the body and even above the heart, right heart might correspond
to courage and valor, body corresponds to physicality and movement, but higher than
both of those is the rational faculty. And what did we see was the
definition of the philosopher, the man who lives the examined life, the man
who seeks wisdom. The unexamined life is not worth living. So clearly you
want a philosopher king ruling, because the philosopher is the one who's closest to
the realm of the forms, because he's governed by reason. And to be
just is to participate in the form of justice. And who does that better
than a philosopher who sits around and ponders his orb, who ponders the justice
orb. The just man is just because of his purification process that he's gone
through. In terms of Ian, we're talking about the philosopher here the just
philosopher man, not just the just man. But for any man who is
just, who may not be a strict well, I don't really know if
that's even possible. But for a man who is not so much philosophical,
we'll say he's a just man. He at least has some degree of participation
in the form of justice. I think is what Plato Ariosola was a Plato's
argive to say. The body is, as we said, characterized by the
passions and must be controlled by reason. And so this is not just for
the philosopher king, but for everybody. This is what everyone needs to strive
for. This is how we get just a just society and justice in society.
Since data empiricists are bound by the passions, and thus our sophists have
their opinion, and so they're not fit to rule. We'll notice if you
read the Republic there are several areas where argumentation is given that, look,
not everybody is fit to rule. Some people are fit to be balms,
okay, some people are fit to be janitors, some people some people are
not the philosophers, they're not fit. They're not bred to these things.
And guess what guess what that leads to. In both Plato and Aristotle,
absolutely they are eugenesis. They believe that there is a kind of breeding in
uh um. I'm trying to remember. Ariosol has a specific term where he
may just be bred. But you know, he talks about people bred to
be noble, bred to be statesman, bred to be to lead the Polish,
and I don't think he thinks it's completely biological, but he doesn't think
it's separable from biology and upbringing. And I think Plato thinks something probably pretty
close to that as well, because he does, if I recall, have
this discussion in the Republic that look, you know, some people are just
gonna be bombs, some people are gonna be janitors. Uh. Some people
are fitted to be in the second tier society, the guardians aka the warriors,
and then some people are more fitted beyond that to be the philosopher kings.
So know your place. I don't think that Plato's ideal republic is I
mean, it is a kind of a strict kind of tier, but he
does discuss the possibility of you know, people being promoted to a tier like
the guardian class is recruited right and raised in that way to be the guardian
soldier class, for example, and you might have somebody recruited out those into
something higher. I mean the philosopher king. You know, he may come
out of one of those classes, or he may just be raised and bred
from birth to be a philosopher. Right, But it is a fairly strict
strata caste society. I guess you could say when we get to the republic
in a minute. Thus, laws in a society, justice in a society,
order in a society must be based on the forms. If you're going
to have laws or justice at all. Thus you have to have philosophers running
society. Now, there's a little bit of a dispute and a debate between
Plato's Republic and what we get later in Plato's Laws in the Symposium, there's
some weird changes where he comes with this idea of the Council of Night,
which is weird. So maybe he doesn't think that society needs to be run
by one philosopher king. Maybe we get more of a counsel. I mean,
uh, well, that's a different topic. We're not going to go
into the symposium and the laws. But um, for our intensive I mean,
for our intents and purposes. I mean, the republic is what influences
everybody anyway, right, I mean, for example, communist dictatorships, all
the all the Marxists and communists, they don't look to the Symposium, they
don't look they look to Plato's Republic. Okay, so the Republic will be
very influential, not just on Marxists and communists, but also on Enlightenment thinkers
who want to have a republic. Enlightenment revolutionary republicanism looks to Plato. Fascist
dictators look to Plato. Imperial philosophy, and various empires will look to Plato.
Marxist communists will look to Plato. What is the USSR, the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics, They will also look to Plato. So any system
of state governance that is intended to be ideal, clearly will necessarily have some
relation to public two Plato's Republic. All right, let's go to the Republic.
Now, The Republic is a very difficult book. If we want to
go into a lot of specifics, we can. I do have my copy
here. I've lectured, as we said, through it. I know it
pretty well. I'm not an expert in the Republic. Look again, it's
very difficult. There's there's areas that people are still debating, like magic rings.
I'm not joking, like we get these stories about it's it's a it's
a teaching device. Okay. I don't think Plato literally is saying that there's
a ring that makes you invisible. But we do have a magic ring that
makes you invisible, and it's there in this story, I think, to
teach about virtue, right, Like, well, let's hear here's a story
about a guy who has a magic ring, and well, what would you
do if you had a ring that made you invisible? Well, a lot
of people would abuse that power. And quite a few people have said,
yeah, Tolkien was clearly influenced by this story, and yeah, I think
that's probably the case. But we're not primarily concerned with the one ring.
And mister Frodos, so don't worry about that. Who's got the ring?
He's So the republic is more or they've taken the Hubbut to the republic,
as my legalist, their um the ideal city. What is the ideal city?
How should the ideal city, the republic be governed and ruled? How
do we structure a city, what's the right way to do it? So
Plato is our first city planner. It's if you've the nightmare of city planners,
right, well, Plato is the first city planner. He said,
I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you how to plan the ideal city. Now,
the ideal city, as we said the forums all right there, So this
is the form of a city. Plato doesn't think that you're in this world
ever gonna get the perfect city. Okay, I don't. I don't think
he thinks that. So I think he's, you know, he knows enough
about human nature to know that, yeah, okay, humans are always going
to be, you know, messing up, and you're gonna get corruption,
and so you're never gonna have this. But this is what we want to
shoot for. And the idol city is kind of like there's gonna be a
lot of triadic models, triads right that that are that are gonna pau up
kind of like three medals, right, Copper, silver, gold. Everybody
agrees that there's a you know, levels to this. Copper's good, but
silver's battle better and gold's the best. Likewise, the city is kind of
like a big man. The city itself is a collective guy. It's like
a big body of a macrocosm. Sometimes in Greek philosophy this is called the
macro prosipis. This will pop up in other philosophers as well. And Plato
says, think about it like a man, and the whole city has to
kind of be governed like a good just man governs himself. And if a
good just man can't govern himself, well he sure as heck can't govern a
city. And if we you know, what would Plato say about you know
Biden, these people, Well they're corrupt and you know they're not good governors,
right, He would say that, you know, these are primary examples
of people because they're enslaved to their passions in various ways. And Plato's answer,
of course is reasoning and logic and mathematics. If Joe Biden had just
done his time stables and he'd had just gone further into mathematics, he would
have been a great president. I'm joking, but I mean this is I
think, you know, along the words of what Plato would say. So
the ideal city is not just likened to either of these three three tiers of
metals or the metallurgical analogy which is very famous from their public It's also kind
of like the three elements of a person. Humans human beings are kind of
tripartite in Plato's vow. And that's because we have a body, right,
a boom doing I don't know what I'm doing, but this is the body,
if you didn't know. And then we have our heart, which is
a little better than the body, and that might correspond to courage, valor
bravery. And then there's an even higher faculty above that which is up here,
which is reason. So I think we have this three tiered structure.
And Plato says, you know what, society maybe should be structured like a
dude, because it's like basically like a big guy. And the head of
society. I wonder who that's gonna be. Well, that's gonna be the
philosopher king, because he's closer to the realm of the forms. Because he's
closer to the realm of the forms, he participates in a greater sense in
the forms, and he's going to be there for more just because he's closer
to the form of justice and to mathematics and to consistent logical reason, and
he'll be able to govern the body of society like a reasoned man governs his
passions as an individual. But he says, we're going to have this second
class of society who performs a specific function and are bred and fitted to do
that. That is these these guardians. The guardians correspond to the heart,
the second tier, and they are brave, their warriors, their soldiers.
And it gets even weirder their men and women, So women on the front
line. Plato who wants his women on the front line, But only the
guardian women. Only the badass amazonian you know, Scarlett Johansson him kay,
ultra assassin chicks. Right. They're bred for this guardian role, just as
men in the guardian role are. And it gets even weird. Or guess
what, they share all things in common, including each other. So no
husbands and no wives. The guardian class pumps whoever they want. Now,
the guardian class can't go totally crazy with this because they have to in some
way be a little better than the proles and the working class. They can't
be completely controlled by their passions. But we got to have a little more
of that going on with the guardian class. And so because they're bred for
war and for policing and for you know, being soldiers. We're not going
to have them tied down to the things that the working class, the body
of the society is going to be tied down too. So you have the
introduction of both a feminist idea and an egalitarian idea and a communist idea with
the guardian class. And then that lowest tier of the pyramid is the workers.
In Plato's system, the workers correspond to the body that is the lowest
tier of this hierarchy here of this pyramid. And this is you got to
have these people, right, We gotta have a bunch of low iq dumb
workers out there. And in Plato's view, yes, they have to have
their population controlled, they have to be eugenically regimented. We have to know
you can't breathe with that dude, You're gonna breathe this guy. So all
of these, again sort of communist technocratic ideas, they find their route here
in Plato's republic. Now, I think for Plato's vantage point, um,
he's not intentionally trying to create a dystopia. I think he really thinks that
this is going to be the best way to run society. But but you
know, good intentions can do That doesn't mean that necessarily, I mean,
this can lead to hellish things, right, So just because he has good
intentions, right, but I think that trying to have the best understanding of
Plato in his system as we can. And remember when we started this all
this lecture or yesterday last week's lecture, we said, we want to try
to grant to somebody as much as we can to understand their system. So
as much as we might be angry about the eugenics and the population control,
which I don't believe in, um, we want to understand his system and
why he thinks that. So just keep that in mind, so don't get
triggered by the fact that he's a eugenesis. There's some other interesting elements that
we don't have time to I'm getting ahead of myself. So it's so,
as we said, the Republic is structured in a three tiered way, in
a triad, like a man is structured and like metals are structured in a
three tiered way. And as we said, the universe itself is kind of
also a perhaps a three tiered structure, where we have this world, this
realm, we have the realm of the forms and then we have the one
at the top of that, the god, the monad, the father or
whatever. So again, triads are constant in Platonic philosophy. And if you
read my book Meta Narratives, you know that even there were triads even in
the poets. Achilles shield is triadic. It's a triplicity, and it represents
the whole history of the Greek people. So it's a recapitulation on the shield
of Achilles itself of all of the Greek people and their history and their essence
or so to speed. And it has a three tiered layer on purpose,
because there's the underworld, there's this world, and there's the gods. So
there's triplicities in the poets. There's triplicities in Plato as well, or triads
or whatever terms you want to use. So, as we said, reason,
math and forms are also necessary to govern society, just like reason and
math and forms govern the individual. Just man. The just man unfortunately does
have to engage in the noble lie if he's the philosopher king. So the
state has to utilize noble mythological lies to control the citizens and to have order.
Yes, this is part of Plato's Republic, it's called the noble lie.
Now what exactly that is in terms of various societies could be different things.
I mean, for our purposes, I think everybody can probably figure out
some of the noble lies. The war on terror, right, probably many
neo cons would justify awards War on Terry, semester Gash dominant a noble laf.
That's my that's my dub right, I think I think to a lot
of geopolitical power players, right, if we were to talk to the big
Brazinski life, I think they would they would definitely say that sure, yeah,
well you have to have these lies to govern and control society. Where
does this come from? It comes from Plato's Republic. So let's be clear,
this is a statist text. Plato's Republic has basically the state as God
on earth pretty clearly, and other philosophers will follow in this train. Hagel
Hegel is also notoriously a guy who says that the state is the march of
God in history and the deification of the state, the state is God.
It is a status treatise, and so we get other odd elements that are
subjects to dispute debate. A interpretation it's very difficult the myth of Earth that
there's this really wild story at the end about this vision of the afterlife and
this sort of the universe is a big clock and souls are like going up
into the afterlife, but they're coming back down if they choose to come back
to this life reincarnation. I mean it's wild. I mean this is like
Joe Rogan DMT trip type stuff. Okay, So I don't know exactly what
the myth of our means other than it is perhaps too again bring in that
religious mystical element within Plato relating to the transmigration of souls, which is part
of the way that Plato thinks he can account for, Um, how we
have access to the forms in this life right, Well, we're remembering our
past life in the realm of the forms. Uh, and when we go
on and die, we go back into this mystical realm. I mean it's
wild. I mean it's like again, there's hard, difficult passages in plato
um, and a lot of the scholars are debating and and we just don't
know how literal it does Plato mean this Is this just a teaching device or
does he really actually literally believe that you know, when you die, you
go into this giant universal clock, mysticism or whatever. I mean, we
don't know so, but that's what's there. I think also secret societies come
up. I think that there's this implicat I'm going from memory, but there's
I think it there's an implication at one point in regard to I think maybe
maybe the noble lie that you know, will the noble like kind of requires
the Republic having this sort of secret society involved in its rulership as well.
But regardless, a lot of that sort of speculative and debatable. The philosopher
King, though studies geometry math for many years. When he is ruled by
reason and not governed by his passions, he is then fit to rule.
He comes down from the mountain, and so we see that. You know,
sometimes Plato's philosophies is characterized as overly mystical and it's about the escape into
the beyond, or it's just about the transcendent. Actually it's kind of practical.
Surprisingly, now, I don't think he's right about this, but it's
Plato's intent to have the philosopher King go get his PhD on the mountain.
Do all of his times tables and then come back down to Earth, to
the city from the mountain and impress those times tables onto the city and make
this damn city run. So the philosopher King imposes form upon the city.
It's a kind of art, a kind of craft. Thus, truth,
form, essence, justice are discovered. They're not created. They're discovered by
the philosopher King and imposed on the republic. Intimately connected with this idea of
Plato's triadic structure is the chain of being. This is going to be very
important in Plato. Excuse me an Aristotle. Aristotle will be a Plato's most
famous student, and Aristotle will have significant disagreements with his master, and we've
already alluded to some of those disagreements. Plato ariosol is not a complete denier
of the beyond or the higher realms, the celestial spheres of God. He
does believe in those things. However, he's much more emphatic about the importance
of the here and the now. The deity in that system is primarily a
causal agent, not a governing agent or something that you try to strive to
participate in. But he will retain, as Plato does, a form of
the chain of being, and as some of the pre Socratics did, which
is that the chain of being being the ontological structure of the universe, whatever
that is, is common to all. There's a continuous chain of being where
the gods, man, animals, rocks, etc. They all exist on
this continuous chain, but in different gradations. So what's at the top of
the chain of being? What's the realist being? For Plato, it is
the God. It is the God form, which is mind, which is
thought, which is the one, which is the good, which is the
beautiful. So that God duded up there at the top of that chain in
Plato's system, is the one that's the highest, most real form of being.
Below that, in Plato's system there wouldn't be angels, but there would
be sort of forms. And it's unclear and debated whether Plato believed that the
quote gods were actual deities or just symbolic of various forms. So, for
example, in the Timaeus he speaks of the gods, but it's unclear and
debated as to what actual status the gods have as sort of personal beings,
or whether they are just forms. Underneath that would be the rulers. This
picture here is more of a medieval idea of the kings and the queens.
But for Plato, obviously it would be the philosopher king. Under the philosopher
king would be the guardians. Under the guardians would be the commoners, the
proles, and then you would have have animals, plants and rocks, and
then non being. So that's the chain, right, And the further you
go down the chain, you're moving towards non being. The further you go
up the chain, you're moving towards being or true bearing being. And as
we know, in Plato's system, because it is a participatory system, true
being is thought, is idea reality. And Plato's system in an Aristotle and
in the Presocratics, as we saw, is still unfortunately plagued with a monistic
or a dualistic tendency. Plato is famously a dualist, and that whole idea
of the myths of Earth and the transmigration of souls is primarily concerned with how
do we relate this immaterial, invariant realm of the forms to this realm of
the here and the now. Even though we're saying the here and the now
participates in the forms, it's still a dualistic system. So there's fundamental problems
there about reconciling these two domains and explaining the origin of our domain from that
higher domain. But regardless, Plato still structures reality in this hierarchical form,
and this hierarchical structure will continue not just into Plato or to Aristotle and into
the Church Fathers, into Christian theology, and into it will go all the
way up into the medieval philosophers as well. This chain will not be significantly
rejected until we get to certain medieval philosophers who are nominalists like Akam, and
then more explicitly in his descendants, who are the empiricists. So the enlightenment
empiricists will draw directly from the medieval nominalists, and they will essentially throw this
thing out. Now, get that out of here. This is dumb.
Plato's forms, as we said, are hierarchical as well, and so they
descend in this triadic structure from the one who, which is the divine mind,
which in some way gives rise to or causes these forms. But there's
actually a contradiction, to be really precise here in Plato himself, because in
the Timaeus, the one is subordinate to the forms, and so he structures
reality, our reality on the principle of the forms that he's subordinate to.
But in other passages we have Plato speaking as if the one causes the forms.
So how Plato reconciled this, no one knows, and it's still debated
to this day. And perhaps he couldn't. Perhaps it is still a problem.
So coming to the end of this, we got almost wrapping up here.
I don't know how long we've been going, but I feel like we've
been going for a long time, that we can keep going for for a
long time, but we gotta we gotta encapsulated at some point. Coppleston admits
on page one, nine, six and seven, as we alluded to earlier,
that Plato is still a mystical theologian. Remember that when we talked about
Pythagoras, he disagreed with quite a few of his forbearers who were pre Socratics,
who were not theological or religious thinkers, and so there was this sort
of religious revival amongst the Ionians, the Milesians represent representing in Pythagoras. And
I do think that pretty clearly Plato being influenced by Pythagoras continues this mystical and
theological notion. Now, many modern philosophers do not read Plato this way.
They read him in more of a anti theistic rationalist way. It is possible
to read Plato that way, but even those people who have that reading do
admit that there are quite a few mystical and theological passages throughout the Platonic corpus.
And so Coppison goes into that and admits that on pages one ninety seven.
And so the reading that I take, which when I read a lot
of these texts, and yes, it's true that I could have just been
influenced by my theological subpositions. But as I'm reading a lot of these Platonic
texts, I'm like, well, this sounds like a kind of a theology
text. And so when we essentially what I'm getting a Zycoplison admits that.
And that's relevant because the specific school that will come out of Platonism later on,
the neo Platonists, they are known for reading Plato in this way.
They will say, yes, this is a religious text, and Plato should
be read as a religious and theological mystic. The path of the philosopher as
we said, is one of pure one of pure speculation, not of flighty
without a reason speculation, but reasoned, theological speculation. So for Plato,
theology and reason are not antithetical. They're the same thing. And that's how
I understand him. So he doesn't see mysticism as antithetical to reason. He
sees them as the same. And this is a very difficult especially if we
think in terms of post Enlightenment thought, because the Enlightenment will hinge quite a
bit on feediism. Faith is antithetical to reasoning and logic. That is not
Plato's view, and it's not the view of a lot of Church fathers.
Now there's a few of the people in the Patristic period who do think that.
For example, a famous a guy who was a Christian apologist for many
years who ended up leaving Christianity, Tertolian. Tertolian, ironically, who was
a famous apologist, had this view that no faith theology, it's the opposite
of reason. Okay, So there will be a pretty consistent debate later on
as we moved through philosophy as to this relationship between reason and rationality and divine
revelation or dogma and doctrine in the Bible. But at least in the neo
Platonic reading of Plato, which I think is correct, Plato does not see
this as a kind of divide reasoning is theology in Plato. In fact,
the path of the philosopher is not just pure ratiocination and speculation. It is
to raise the mind to divine truths and divine realities. It is a contemplation
of a higher mystical order. And there is perhaps this idea of religious initiation
in Plato. What exactly that is we don't know, but it is there.
The Timaeus, the Symposium, and the Republic do contain many theological and
mystical elements and references, and so, as Compelson admits, this is a
break from pre Socratic atheism and materialism. However, it's not a total break,
because Plato does retain Heraclitus's view of sensible reality as flux, but he
doesn't have reductionist view that all that exists is sensible reality in flux. He
also has Parmenite's view that that realm of permanence is just a higher realm.
Thus Plato is attempting to solve and reconcile some of the dialectical tensions and issues,
and probably first and foremost it is that question of the one in the
many. All right, So I hope you guys enjoyed tonight's introduction to Plato.
Obviously it's a lot. We can go way deeper. It goes way
way crazy. There's many, many dialogues, but we got to start somewhere.
We had to focus on something. So let's open it up to Q
and A.