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Speaker 1: All right, Jay's Analysis dot com. This time we're going

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to discuss Plato's fido in depth. I thought that it

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would be helpful to readers of the article that did

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pretty well for a philosophy article dealing with the esoteric

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side of it, which is generally passed over if you

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have any kind of academic treatment of the of the

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treatise of the topic, do you do a cursory glance

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in philosophy one O one, and then you don't really

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deal with it again unless perhaps you take an upper

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level uh philosophy course on Plato. So what I want

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to do in this talk is make it more bring

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it down to a more general level where it can

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be understood for by people that maybe haven't read Plato

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in depth or are not too familiar with a lot

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of the philosophical concepts. So, since Jay's Analysis is growing

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quite a bit of late, and because my field is

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philosophy and classics and ancient ancient philosophy, medieval philosophy, et cetera,

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what I want to do is try to try to

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make things more accessible, so it's not all you know

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totally on an advanced level. Also, if you would what

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I'm trying to do is so I'd like to get

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to where I can do this full time. And so

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if you would go ahead and subscribe or donate, and

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what I do is I give extra lectures, extra talks

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and information ahead of time to those that have subscribed.

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So basically, for four ninety five or a donation, you're

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going to get something better than university style education where

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you're paying you know, thousands and thousands of dollars, you know,

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two thousand dollars per class or whatever, fifteen hundred dollars

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or credit hour, which is crazy for you know, for

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a statist Marxist to stand up there and tell you

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how Plato is gender warfare and class warfare, which is

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utterly retarded other than ridiculous. Uh. And I can give

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you a better education, a better insight into Plato, for

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a lot cheaper than that. So you could, uh, you know,

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you could go this route. You won't have some useless

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piece of paper, but you'll have the knowledge and the

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critical thinking and the ability to skill that I've been

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blessed with, that I could bless you with at least

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help you with, uh to go in and you know,

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smash these teachers, if that's who you have you know

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to you know, use these principles and apply them to

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whatever fields you're in. You know, if you make music,

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Pythagoreanism platonism ties in, uh, very well with music. A

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lot of it's based on musical theory. If you are

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in business, you can use you know, logic and critical thinking.

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And you might have had a basic critical thinking of

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course in your in your you know, your undergrad or

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something like that. Maybe that's being phased out as we

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go into this global technocratic economy. But you know, again

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critical thinking is very useful for business and thinking in

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multi dimensional levels, right, so not just us against them,

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but in three D and four D and five D

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chessboard levels of reality. It helps. It can help you

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to see things from different perspectives, in different angles, getting

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getting a different viewpoint to help you think strategically, say,

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in whatever business endeavor you're in. You know, in religious thinking,

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it can be advantageous have a lot of theologians, academics

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and religious affiliated readers and listeners so you can get

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a better understanding of you know, these ancient texts that

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can help you in understanding you know, where you're at

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in your theology. And again, you know, for ninety five.

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You can't be that that's a lot better than paying,

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you know, thousands of dollars for some guy who is

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an idiot basically and not very well trained in anything,

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standing up there telling you what the text doesn't mean.

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So let's get into this. There's some really interesting elements

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throughout this dialogue that build on the previous dialogue of

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the Apology, where Socrates is giving it a defense of

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why he's on trial by the the people of Athens,

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the elders of Athens, for inciting the youth. So he's

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charged with rebellion and turning the youth to unsavory opinions

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and inciting revolution or rebellion and offending the gods. And

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so what we find in the second dialogue in my

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my copy and Fido is socrates defense. He's gonna give

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his his view of the afterlife, immortality, the soul, and

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why he doesn't believe that he's wrong in his decision

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to submit to the elders of Athens in their decision

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of death. He also will give an interesting approach to

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the gods, where he will in one way speak of

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them allegorically and in another way he will affirm them

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in reality. So we're going to get into that talk

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about why that might be. And as usual, I don't

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do my discussions with a bunch of notes and outlines.

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I just kind of freestyle like that better. That's my

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improv coming through. But what we know in terms of

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more recent and scholarly deeper studies is that Plato is

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borrowing a lot from Eastern thought. Of course, obviously this

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is Greece, but ancient far Eastern ideas precede this. We

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know that there's a body of tradition doctrine coming out

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of Egypt that informs Socrates, and this is explained in

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the Tomaeis at the beginning another important dialogue, but here

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we are focused on the question of the afterlife, and

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the other interesting, crucial Platonic idea that will come to

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the four is the doctrine of the forms and the

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eternality of truth. I'm also going to throughout this discussion

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give my own personal critiques and thoughts on on the

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on the dialogue and why I don't believe we should

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accept a cyclical view of history, or panpsychism or transmigration

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of souls, reincarnation, UH and some other theological issues that

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we would take issue with coming where I come from.

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So there's a discussion at the beginning about the priests

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of Apollo and Apollonian religion. If you've read Nietzsche, you know,

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Nietzsche categorize it, excuse me, categorizes it as the rational.

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It's focused on the sun, as opposed to Dionysian religion

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that is focused on the irrational, the force of nature,

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the chaotic, the you know, the the Dionysian banquet where

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you get drunk and you engage in you know, Saturnalian

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orgy or something like that. So if we were to,

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you know, we could contrast maybe I don't know, who's

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somebody who's we could think of maybe Jim Morrison as

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somebody who's a Dionysian and say Kurt Gurdell as somebody

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who's an Apollonian. So two very very different people, but

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good images of the Apollonian and Dionysian. So it's crucial

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that we recognize the mention of the priests of Apollo

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at the beginning of the dialogue because Apolonian religion is

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again going to be characterized by masculinity, rationality, order in

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contrast to chaos and flux and brute forces. Of Nature.

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There's an interesting mention of the providence of God early

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on in the dialogue. So it's a debated topic in

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scholarship as to what exactly the notion of God is

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that was bequeathed from Egypt to Socrates and Plato. Very

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possible a lot of the early Patristic fathers, Augustine, for example,

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in the City of God, speculate that perhaps the Egyptian

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thought was influenced by Moses and the Jews and their

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time in Egypt they're sojourn there, but we don't know

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for sure. Regardless, there's clearly cross cultural influences here between

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ancient Egyptian and Greek thought and you know, very very

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possibly Jewish thinking. We know from the text of Exodus

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that Moses was learned in all the mysteries of the

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Egyptians when he was young at Pharaoh's court before he

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decided to go over to his native people, the Jews.

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So Moses learned the esoteric side of Egyptian thought, and

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it's very possible that, you know, in that interaction between

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the Jews in Egypt and in the Egyptian court Egyptian religion,

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that there was some sort of blending or body of

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doctrine that was passed down. And that's another important understanding,

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or an important point to understand here is that Socrates

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is the bearer of a tradition. So while it's in

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vogue in modernity to deride ancient thinking, ancient wisdom, perennial teaching, traditionalism,

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this is a very different stance, a very different approach

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to the world and to living. And so the ancient

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world was one based on tradition. Ironically, the modern world,

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although it derives tradition, is not actually anti traditional. It's

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actually just a different kind of tradition. It's something more

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nuvo rich, something very or created by the new vo

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rich I should say, it's a new narrative, a kind

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of technocratic, you know, empiricist narrative that gained sway at

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the time of the scientific revolution and so forth. So

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modernity's grand narrative is still a tradition. It's just a

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different tradition. And it's also a syncretic, blended tradition just

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as much as any other. So the real question is

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not tradition versus no tradition, but tradition versus other traditions,

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and which traditions are true and that's really what the

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question that's the ultimate question of philosophy really is, what's

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the true tradition. There's some really good thinkers who deal

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with that, are deal with that very well. One of

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the best essays I can think of is there's an

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essay by doctor Philip Schard called Tradition and the Traditions,

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and in this he details what he sees as the

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central distinguish factor between perennial thought and biblical theism or

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a personal theistic God. But that's not where we're going

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to go in this discussion per se. There will be

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a little bit of that, but suffice to say that

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the idea of a body of tradition passed on is

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crucial here and something that informs the Platonic approach to

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knowledge that distinguishes it from others. So when Aristotle takes

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his departure from the Platonic tradition, although we can still

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place Aristotle in the school of Platonic tradition, the Aristotelian

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departure with hilomorphism, and I'll get into that later, marks

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a very distinct departure from the body of doctrine that

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is passed on here. But again, tradition is crucial here,

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and it's an oral tradition. We don't know exactly when

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it was written down, because the oldest copies that we

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have of Socratic dialogues are actually pretty late, you know,

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eight hundred one thousand AD, so not actually BC. And

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if I recall at these are housed at Oxford or somewhere,

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I don't know, something I read a long long time ago.

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Speaker 2: But the the Greek view here, somebody like Spangler is

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very good in Decline of the West encapsulating the Greek

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approach to things, and it's very much based on.

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Speaker 1: Fleeing from the temporal, fleeing from the time from time,

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fleeing from the here and now. So there's a Greek

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fascination with eternity, and that's what will lee Greek thought

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in Plato from Egyptian thought to basically positing the forms

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at the expense of everything in the finite material, temporal realm.

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And that'll be crucial later on as well. But before

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we get into all that, we begin with a discussion

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of pleasure and pain and how the two seem to

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be dialectically connected, dialectically related, they seem to necessitate one another. Now,

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dialectics is going to be crucial to understanding Platonic thought,

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and this is one of the key indicators that it's

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borrowed heavily from other Far Eastern cultures, possibly some syncretic

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Far Eastern view, from perhaps Persian thought or again Egyptian thought.

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But again we should point out that there are distinct

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markers that set Egyptian thought apart from the other ancient traditions.

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And this could also have, like I said, resulted from

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an influence of the Jews in their sojourn, because the

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Egyptian belief in the afterlife and the positive view of

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the body and the resurrection is something that is distinct

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from Greek thought and say, other Far Eastern traditions. So

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we've got I've got my book out here. We've got

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discussions of art and poetry. That's a debated topic in

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Greek thought in terms of the Blatonic view, because in

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the Republic Plato talks about how art is dangerous because

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art can be marshaled by oligarchical forces or by brutish

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forces to incite the mob, incite the masses. So art

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has to be controlled, poetry has to be banished. But

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Socrates interesting change of thought here he talks about writing poetry.

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I had cleared my conscience by writing poetry, and then

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he goes on to talk about how philosophy is the

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highest of the arts. So a lot of unanswered questions

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in some of the Platonic teachings and dialogues. Perhaps Plato

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modified his views over time. Perhaps, you know, perhaps there's

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a little game at work here, play on words, a

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little paradox that he intentionally included in the works. Who knows.

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We don't know. That's a long debated discussion as to

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Plato's actual view of the arts. But what we do

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know is that the reference to Aesop's Fables seems to

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connect to the idea of religion and allegory because Plato,

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Socrates says, he has a recurring dream, and the recurring

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dream keeps telling him to what was the exact quote, Socrates,

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practice and cultivate the arts, and so he tried doing poetry.

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He wanted to write his own Aesop's fable, Socrates says,

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but he said it didn't come out very good. So

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he just kept doing philosophy, and he came to the

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realization that philosophy is the greatest of the arts, and

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that he thought this was the meaning of the recurring dream.

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But the recurring dream seems to suggest recurring life, because

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when we dream, we are in a different realm, the

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ether or whatever, and the soul or the psyche is

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experiencing things that seem to transcend the here and now.

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So is there a possibility of, you know, Plato thinking

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that dreams, you know, indicate this metaphysical past life or

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higher dimension or so forth. Very possible, because the discussion

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begins to divulge or diverge into the issue of whether

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or not, excuse me, I lost my page here, whether

238
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or not we had a past life, and dreams could

239
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be the indicator of that Plato things or Socrates things.

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So when we are asleep, you know, we're out of

241
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the body, and we're experiencing things in that psychical realm.

242
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And the early on statement here in the dialogue is

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that he says, very well, then let me try to

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make a more convincing defense to you than I made

245
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at my trial. If I did not expect to enter

246
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the company first of otherwise and good gods, and secondly

247
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of men now dead, who are better than those who

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are in the world. Now, it is true that I

249
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should be wrong and not grieving at death as it is,

250
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you can be assured that I expect to find myself

251
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among good men. I would not insist particular on this point,

252
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but now on the other I assure you that I

253
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shall now insist most strongly that I shall find their

254
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divine masters, who are supremely good. That is why I'm

255
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not so much distress as I might be talking about

256
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his death. So he has an assurance that in the

257
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next life he's going to be with the blessed, with

258
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the good, the good gods, the men that have gone

259
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on to the afterlife, to Valhalla, I'm kidding, to the

260
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Eligian fields. And he says that philosophy is the preparation

261
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for death, so not fearing what happens to the body

262
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in this life is preparation for a passage into the

263
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next life. But because the body in the Platonic view

264
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is ever changing and its material and it's in flux,

265
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it has to be derided. So he talks about not

266
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giving into the pleasures of the body and the passions

267
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of the body, and to flee them and to instead

268
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acquire gnosis. So the later gnostic traditions of Batristic era

269
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would definitely derive a lot of their impetus from platonic

270
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thinking and platonic dialogues. So the philosopher is the one who,

271
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as we know it, lives the examined life of the

272
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one who is interested in thinking through matters. But unfortunately,

273
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we have at this point an erection of the premissy

274
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of reason, of ideas of rational thought over against anything else,

275
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and this will be, in my view, the chief dialectical

276
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problem at work here. Nevertheless, we're going to plumb this

277
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for any insights and good that we can. So the

278
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dialogue then transfers to discussions of absolute beauty, absolute goodness,

279
00:24:11,319 --> 00:24:20,400
absolute uprightness. Man sees by his soul, not by bodily sight.

280
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So the site that Plato is concerned with is enter

281
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the inner eye, the inner man, the soul, the psyche,

282
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seeing the true forms of things, and not the variegated,

283
00:24:40,559 --> 00:24:49,640
variant changing objects for his perception presented to his senses

284
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that must be transcended, gone over and against, and rejected

285
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for the ultimate eternal truths of things. So there's an

286
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anti physicalism here. And like I said, this is key

287
00:25:10,599 --> 00:25:14,759
to understanding the rest of the track of Western dialectics,

288
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because from Plato and Aristotle on reason and rationality will

289
00:25:20,119 --> 00:25:25,759
be given premissy over other modes of thought, other approaches

290
00:25:25,799 --> 00:25:32,400
to existence, other approaches to moral ethics, whatever. It's all

291
00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:40,519
based around the functioning of reason. Where the noose in Plato,

292
00:25:40,920 --> 00:25:45,720
which is identified with intellect and rationality, is also identified

293
00:25:45,759 --> 00:25:49,119
with the soul. So there's a soul body dialectic here

294
00:25:49,599 --> 00:25:55,960
that will of course re emerge with Descartes, most notably

295
00:25:56,559 --> 00:26:04,920
in the scientific But as James Kelly pointed out in

296
00:26:04,960 --> 00:26:10,640
my interview with him, the intellect this you can almost

297
00:26:10,720 --> 00:26:13,519
call it a third eye perhaps even though it's actually

298
00:26:13,559 --> 00:26:18,839
identified with the soul. At the same time, throughout life

299
00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:23,480
is seeing a bunch of images that passed before him.

300
00:26:23,519 --> 00:26:24,839
You know, as you lived your life, you see the

301
00:26:24,839 --> 00:26:29,440
phenomena of experience, and these are all transient passing. But

302
00:26:29,519 --> 00:26:33,519
the goal what you should be doing is seeing through

303
00:26:33,519 --> 00:26:37,079
these to the eternal forms. And there's going to be

304
00:26:37,200 --> 00:26:41,519
an awesome argument that will be presented that I think

305
00:26:41,599 --> 00:26:47,160
is philosophically one of the best arguments ever for how

306
00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:49,319
we know that truth is eternal and how we can

307
00:26:49,359 --> 00:26:56,920
actually have certainty about objective essences or forms or existing

308
00:26:56,960 --> 00:27:02,240
objective metaphysical principles that are not purely dependent upon our

309
00:27:02,240 --> 00:27:07,480
individual minds. That's really going to be the crucial positive

310
00:27:07,599 --> 00:27:12,720
argument that we can derive from Plato in this dialogue.

311
00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:17,599
So he says that the quest that the philosopher on

312
00:27:17,920 --> 00:27:21,480
is for reality, the quest for truth. And this is good,

313
00:27:21,559 --> 00:27:23,720
This is the approach that we should take to life,

314
00:27:23,799 --> 00:27:28,319
because life is full of con men, con artists, deceptions,

315
00:27:30,079 --> 00:27:35,680
rigged games all around us, from money, to relationships, to

316
00:27:37,279 --> 00:27:44,920
all sorts of things, jobs, meaning the future history all

317
00:27:44,960 --> 00:27:53,000
bound up with multitudes of psyops and deceptions and marketing

318
00:27:53,559 --> 00:27:59,799
scams and pitches. And so the philosopher can make practical

319
00:27:59,880 --> 00:28:05,079
use use of this in seeing through all the scams,

320
00:28:05,079 --> 00:28:10,240
seeing through the mirage to the reality. So the first step,

321
00:28:10,279 --> 00:28:13,880
he says, is not being a slave to your passions.

322
00:28:14,480 --> 00:28:19,720
A man is a slave to lust or to alcohol,

323
00:28:19,960 --> 00:28:23,839
or to greed or whatever vice. He's going to be

324
00:28:23,920 --> 00:28:25,640
consumed with that, and he's not going to be able

325
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:28,400
to critically think or reason, not going to be able

326
00:28:28,440 --> 00:28:34,680
to live well or come to truth just common sense,

327
00:28:34,759 --> 00:28:38,480
because he's going to be obsessed with something that's fleeting,

328
00:28:38,559 --> 00:28:43,759
a fleeting pleasure and the eternal truths. Plato argues, which

329
00:28:43,799 --> 00:28:47,440
is this is true, the eternal truths of God, of

330
00:28:47,559 --> 00:28:53,079
truth itself, absolute beauty, absolute goodness, uprightness. These pleasures are

331
00:28:53,119 --> 00:28:59,200
actually better. They will give you a higher level of satisfaction, pleasure,

332
00:28:59,240 --> 00:29:05,839
of fulfillment than any of the baser passions and delights

333
00:29:06,640 --> 00:29:12,680
of a fleshly nature. So the philosopher has to kind

334
00:29:12,680 --> 00:29:24,400
of undergo a purification to be prepared for death. And

335
00:29:24,559 --> 00:29:28,759
that's the goal of the philosopher, because if you don't

336
00:29:29,160 --> 00:29:33,240
see through the mirage and the deceptions to the truth,

337
00:29:33,640 --> 00:29:35,640
then when you go into the next life, you won't

338
00:29:35,680 --> 00:29:38,440
be prepared. And that's really the crux of what we're

339
00:29:38,440 --> 00:29:41,720
getting at here. That's we might call it the Gospel

340
00:29:41,720 --> 00:29:47,160
of Plato, if you will, the evangelion of Socrates. So

341
00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:50,480
the profession of the philosopher is death, not a morbid

342
00:29:50,519 --> 00:29:56,559
obsession on death, but a noble courage facing death. So

343
00:29:57,400 --> 00:30:04,559
detachment and apatheia, and in Eastern thought, particularly Eastern Orthodox theology,

344
00:30:04,559 --> 00:30:08,680
apatheia is the idea of becoming passionless, not in the

345
00:30:08,720 --> 00:30:12,079
sense of having a love or something like that, but

346
00:30:12,400 --> 00:30:16,279
in the sense of not being dictated by base or passions,

347
00:30:16,680 --> 00:30:21,240
not allowing you know, selfishness and lust and greed and

348
00:30:22,119 --> 00:30:25,400
addiction or whatever, to dominate the way that we live,

349
00:30:25,519 --> 00:30:28,960
in the way which we'll again cloud our thinking and

350
00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:38,599
our judgment. So through, according to Plato, through thought, critical thinking,

351
00:30:38,640 --> 00:30:45,519
and rationality, apatheia can be achieved. But to be fair, here,

352
00:30:45,559 --> 00:30:50,240
it's not just through thought. It's not purely irrationalistic endeavor,

353
00:30:50,279 --> 00:30:54,799
because you also have to practice the virtues. You have

354
00:30:54,839 --> 00:30:58,039
to have courage, and you have to have justice, and

355
00:30:58,079 --> 00:31:04,079
so forth. Love truth, Love wasdom to attain apatheia, and

356
00:31:04,880 --> 00:31:10,079
thereby excuse me, thereby attaining wisdom. Now, there's an interesting

357
00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:18,440
mention in section sixty nine C and D about ritual initiation.

358
00:31:18,599 --> 00:31:23,480
He talks about the allegory of the priests of the

359
00:31:23,519 --> 00:31:27,920
different religions, particularly I'm guessing of the religion of Apollo

360
00:31:28,200 --> 00:31:32,559
that he mentioned earlier, and he speaks of it allegorically

361
00:31:32,599 --> 00:31:36,240
as a message about passing over into the next life,

362
00:31:36,880 --> 00:31:39,839
and he reads it as the gnosis of the philosopher.

363
00:31:40,319 --> 00:31:42,200
So there's a kind of a death that one goes

364
00:31:42,240 --> 00:31:46,720
through in this life where he's resurrected that anticipates the

365
00:31:46,720 --> 00:31:54,319
death and intellectual resurrection, not bodily resurrection in the next life.

366
00:31:54,559 --> 00:32:02,599
For Plato, resurrection in the next life appears to be reincarnation,

367
00:32:03,279 --> 00:32:10,799
not a bodily resurrection. So dialectical dualities, and what we

368
00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:14,200
mean by that is, you know, think of if you're

369
00:32:14,200 --> 00:32:18,799
familiar at all with Far Eastern Thought, it looks at

370
00:32:19,880 --> 00:32:25,640
in my analysis, it over time looked at operant principles

371
00:32:25,640 --> 00:32:28,279
in nature, so you would have night and day, male

372
00:32:28,359 --> 00:32:34,039
and female, black, white, things like that, and these these dialectics,

373
00:32:34,079 --> 00:32:38,400
these contraries, these oppositional forces seem to at the same

374
00:32:38,480 --> 00:32:43,880
time the intention, but also work together in a in

375
00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:49,799
unison for a balance. So I don't want to unfairly

376
00:32:50,039 --> 00:32:55,000
paint Eastern thought as believing that there is no true harmony.

377
00:32:55,759 --> 00:32:59,880
They do believe that these oppositional forces need to be

378
00:32:59,920 --> 00:33:04,160
in harmony. Where I would disagree with Far Eastern Thought,

379
00:33:05,160 --> 00:33:11,200
whether you know Buddhist or Taoist or whatever Confucian. Where

380
00:33:11,200 --> 00:33:13,680
I would disagree with him is the means or way

381
00:33:13,759 --> 00:33:19,480
by which the harmony is achieved. So we'll get into

382
00:33:19,519 --> 00:33:19,920
that later.

383
00:33:20,000 --> 00:33:32,599
Speaker 3: But when he Plato discusses the soul in the body

384
00:33:32,759 --> 00:33:33,759
in God.

385
00:33:35,799 --> 00:33:38,559
Speaker 1: It's important to understand the medieval chain of being well

386
00:33:38,559 --> 00:33:40,640
in the ancient world too. The medieval chain of being

387
00:33:40,640 --> 00:33:45,440
that we see in medieval Catholic theologians like aquietness, people

388
00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:49,480
like that. That goes back to Aristotle and Plato in

389
00:33:49,519 --> 00:33:54,599
the Greeks and ultimately probably to Egypt, where you have

390
00:33:55,440 --> 00:34:01,480
this scale, this continuum kind of changed, maybe like a pyramid,

391
00:34:01,680 --> 00:34:07,279
where everything that exists is structured on this pyramid. So

392
00:34:07,319 --> 00:34:11,440
you have at the bottom you have non being, which

393
00:34:11,480 --> 00:34:18,239
is the heaviest kind of being, things that are less mobile, rocks, well,

394
00:34:18,280 --> 00:34:21,599
you know, non being, and then maybe rocks or the dead,

395
00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:27,960
you know, because they're the wicked dead are placed in

396
00:34:28,000 --> 00:34:33,280
an immobile state of being for their crimes in this life.

397
00:34:33,920 --> 00:34:40,159
And then you would have, like I said, inanimate things

398
00:34:40,199 --> 00:34:45,119
like rocks, and then you would have vegetative life, which

399
00:34:45,199 --> 00:34:48,199
does have a kind of moving principle in a way,

400
00:34:48,400 --> 00:34:52,119
although still very limited. Then you would have animals, and

401
00:34:52,159 --> 00:34:59,199
then men, and then above men gods celestial intelligences or beings,

402
00:34:59,239 --> 00:35:03,960
and then above you would have the most fought like entity,

403
00:35:04,440 --> 00:35:12,199
God or something like that. And so when we place

404
00:35:13,079 --> 00:35:16,000
all of them, though, on the same chain of being,

405
00:35:16,159 --> 00:35:18,880
this is the problem that we have in Western dialectics

406
00:35:19,559 --> 00:35:23,800
because they're all they're all essentially on the same chain

407
00:35:23,840 --> 00:35:29,360
of being. They just share in different degrees. So it's

408
00:35:29,800 --> 00:35:32,639
flattened out, if you will. It's isomorphic. It's all the

409
00:35:32,679 --> 00:35:38,239
same stuff. It's all the same stuff of reality, it's

410
00:35:38,320 --> 00:35:40,840
just different degrees of it, if you will. So God

411
00:35:40,920 --> 00:35:46,480
is the lightest of stuff, and then all the way

412
00:35:46,519 --> 00:35:54,199
down to Hell or rocks or whatever, that's the heaviest,

413
00:35:54,679 --> 00:36:01,079
most compact stuff. And because everything is on the continuum being,

414
00:36:01,159 --> 00:36:03,920
that's why you would have a cyclical view of history.

415
00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:08,519
Nothing ever, ultimately gets out of that cycle. Even though

416
00:36:08,599 --> 00:36:13,320
Plato does believe that, I think inconsistently. You know, you

417
00:36:13,400 --> 00:36:15,760
do pass on to the realm of forms. Well, if

418
00:36:15,760 --> 00:36:17,280
you pass on to the realm of forms, why would

419
00:36:17,280 --> 00:36:21,920
you come back to this life, you know, unless unless

420
00:36:21,960 --> 00:36:28,079
there's a dialectical problem that's fundamental at work here. He

421
00:36:28,119 --> 00:36:31,000
talks about permanence and flux and the immortality of the soul,

422
00:36:32,800 --> 00:36:34,880
And that's where I'm That's what I'm getting at with this,

423
00:36:34,880 --> 00:36:39,880
this coming back, this reincarnation transmigration idea, is that the cycle.

424
00:36:41,559 --> 00:36:45,360
In other words, this this Greek view of time and

425
00:36:45,400 --> 00:36:50,679
of reality requires a cyclical view of history. I do

426
00:36:50,760 --> 00:36:52,840
not believe in a cyclical view. I think that a

427
00:36:52,880 --> 00:36:54,960
linear view is actually what makes sense. I know it's

428
00:36:55,039 --> 00:36:57,440
very much in vogue to believe in a cyclical view,

429
00:36:58,679 --> 00:37:01,480
largely due to the influence of Far Eastern thought in

430
00:37:01,480 --> 00:37:04,719
the West. This does not, of course, mean that I'm

431
00:37:04,760 --> 00:37:07,920
advocating every aspect of Western thought. It's just that I

432
00:37:07,960 --> 00:37:12,199
believe that these two views are probably reconciled in some way,

433
00:37:12,199 --> 00:37:16,360
which we don't understand because we're finite. But the problem

434
00:37:16,480 --> 00:37:21,480
with cyclical views is that you never it ultimately becomes

435
00:37:21,519 --> 00:37:26,280
irrational to the point of the world that we experience

436
00:37:26,360 --> 00:37:30,480
in this life not making any sense, okay, nothing being

437
00:37:30,679 --> 00:37:35,880
the case. So, for example, if you were to posit

438
00:37:35,960 --> 00:37:38,440
this view, if you were to say, well, you know,

439
00:37:38,480 --> 00:37:40,519
I believe Platonism or I believe, you know, some far

440
00:37:40,559 --> 00:37:46,760
Eastern view, and you know, I've realized the grain enlightenment

441
00:37:46,840 --> 00:37:51,280
that all reality is illusion and so forth. Well, the

442
00:37:51,320 --> 00:37:55,639
realization that all reality is illusion is unfortunately part of

443
00:37:56,800 --> 00:38:00,880
your experience in this life of illusion, and so therefore

444
00:38:01,079 --> 00:38:05,119
the realization that all reality is illusion is also illusory. Right,

445
00:38:05,159 --> 00:38:08,239
So you can't have that as your great lynch pin

446
00:38:08,400 --> 00:38:13,639
upon which to build your philosophical system of thought. And again,

447
00:38:13,760 --> 00:38:17,199
What it shows is rather that Plato's borrowing older ancient

448
00:38:17,239 --> 00:38:23,800
ideas of Far Eastern cyclical views. But because he thinks

449
00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:29,559
this life is one of illusory flux, we must pierce

450
00:38:29,639 --> 00:38:32,840
the veil and see through to the eternal truths. And

451
00:38:32,920 --> 00:38:35,679
since the body doesn't do that and the soul does,

452
00:38:35,920 --> 00:38:39,760
the soul has to be more like forms. The soul

453
00:38:39,880 --> 00:38:44,960
is more like eternal truths, more like God, more like

454
00:38:45,800 --> 00:38:50,199
you know, absolute justice and so forth. And because it's

455
00:38:50,199 --> 00:38:53,920
more like that, it can't be composite. It has to

456
00:38:53,960 --> 00:38:59,840
be absolutely simple. Okay. Now, in Pythagorean, Platonic and all

457
00:39:00,039 --> 00:39:06,960
and Aristotelian two thinking, the belief about God is that

458
00:39:07,039 --> 00:39:11,079
he's absolutely simple. You know, whatever he is, whatever kind

459
00:39:11,119 --> 00:39:14,480
of stuff he is, he's on the same continuum of being.

460
00:39:15,440 --> 00:39:18,920
The God stuff is the absolutely simple stuff. It admits

461
00:39:18,960 --> 00:39:27,159
of no composition, no division, no partition, no varying multivariate

462
00:39:27,320 --> 00:39:34,039
aspects to it. It's absolutely simple. And the reasoning behind

463
00:39:34,079 --> 00:39:42,679
that is because one numerically has to be perfectly one

464
00:39:43,360 --> 00:39:53,480
to be one. It can't have any any separate, any

465
00:39:53,519 --> 00:39:58,800
aspect of it, cannot be oppositional to itself. Okay, So

466
00:39:59,039 --> 00:40:03,239
if the one had some other aspect that was, you know,

467
00:40:03,280 --> 00:40:05,599
equal to it or next to it, or part of it,

468
00:40:06,199 --> 00:40:11,320
that would in Greek thought be in opposition. It would

469
00:40:11,320 --> 00:40:15,760
be in contradistinction to it. And anything separate or in

470
00:40:15,800 --> 00:40:20,440
contradistinction is by necessity in a dialectical opposition to it.

471
00:40:21,360 --> 00:40:23,159
So if we think about the one and the many,

472
00:40:23,239 --> 00:40:26,559
and that's going to be the crucial philosophical concept to

473
00:40:27,000 --> 00:40:31,159
understand that I mentioned earlier from this dialogue the problem

474
00:40:31,159 --> 00:40:33,400
of the one in the many, which is also the

475
00:40:33,400 --> 00:40:38,360
most important good aspect, right. The bad part of the

476
00:40:38,400 --> 00:40:40,480
problem of the one in many and one in many,

477
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:47,280
for Plato is that the many is in contrary opposition

478
00:40:47,960 --> 00:40:51,039
to the one. The one has a little bit of

479
00:40:51,039 --> 00:40:55,199
a higher premissy, right, So the one is the goal

480
00:40:55,280 --> 00:40:57,719
where we're shooting for. We want to get to that,

481
00:40:59,440 --> 00:41:06,360
And so any thing that's particular or many is in

482
00:41:06,480 --> 00:41:13,639
somehow or some way a lesser status of being. Because

483
00:41:13,679 --> 00:41:16,639
the idea here is that ultimately God, God or the

484
00:41:16,719 --> 00:41:23,280
Source or the absolute was at one point one, and

485
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:26,320
for some unknown reason there was a schism or a

486
00:41:26,400 --> 00:41:31,159
fall or a division that brought about particularity and brought

487
00:41:31,159 --> 00:41:38,320
about multi multiple forms, multiple emanations from the One, and

488
00:41:38,559 --> 00:41:41,039
the idea here being that when you look at Egyptian

489
00:41:41,079 --> 00:41:46,519
mythology and you know Ra and Osiris and all that,

490
00:41:46,599 --> 00:41:51,000
and him losing his dick and all that, and that

491
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:59,960
that's an allegorical telling of the original division that had

492
00:42:00,039 --> 00:42:06,320
happened from the monad from the One, and then the

493
00:42:06,320 --> 00:42:09,400
particular aspects or emanations that came from it, which then

494
00:42:09,880 --> 00:42:16,360
sort of fractured like a fractal into potentially infinite variations,

495
00:42:16,679 --> 00:42:18,760
you know, all the way down to you know, the

496
00:42:18,840 --> 00:42:24,239
Solar system and the planets and the galaxy planet solar system,

497
00:42:24,280 --> 00:42:28,599
down to our reality, all the way down to you know, minuscule,

498
00:42:29,239 --> 00:42:35,159
you know, atoms, molecules, so forth. This big big bang

499
00:42:35,519 --> 00:42:42,000
fracturing from the one, if you will, is an eternal

500
00:42:42,039 --> 00:42:49,519
emanation that our goal is to transcend by leaving body

501
00:42:49,599 --> 00:42:54,159
and then returning to the One ultimately if we've lived well.

502
00:42:54,239 --> 00:42:57,480
So you can clearly see that, you know, the close

503
00:42:57,559 --> 00:43:03,559
parallels to Far Eastern thought, Hindu thought, the wheel of

504
00:43:03,599 --> 00:43:07,719
time that has to be escaped to return to the source.

505
00:43:08,159 --> 00:43:13,920
All the same idea here very clearly, and that's what

506
00:43:13,960 --> 00:43:15,960
I meant in my article. That's what we're getting at

507
00:43:16,000 --> 00:43:18,760
here with the idea of escaping the realm of flux,

508
00:43:19,719 --> 00:43:22,559
escaping the realm of time, escaping the body, because all

509
00:43:22,559 --> 00:43:24,880
these things are viewed as bad. And why is that

510
00:43:25,280 --> 00:43:31,800
because of a fundamental presubposition that particularity or the many

511
00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:38,440
or distinction is either bad or lesser. And that's just

512
00:43:38,519 --> 00:43:41,440
simply not a belief we have to have. It's not true.

513
00:43:41,679 --> 00:43:46,639
We don't have to believe that somehow ultimate absolute unity

514
00:43:46,920 --> 00:43:54,480
has premiscy over against particularity. And interestingly, if you read

515
00:43:54,840 --> 00:43:58,119
say Rushed in his book The One in the Many,

516
00:43:58,440 --> 00:44:00,920
he makes a great point in there about how political

517
00:44:00,920 --> 00:44:06,840
systems throughout history have had the same idea that developed

518
00:44:06,840 --> 00:44:15,760
into all consuming absolutist empires or tyrannies on the basis

519
00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:22,320
of ultimately this philosophical presubposition. That and I'm not saying

520
00:44:22,320 --> 00:44:25,519
that the monarchy's bad or having a single ruler is bad. No, Rather,

521
00:44:25,559 --> 00:44:30,239
what I'm saying is just that the idea that absolute

522
00:44:30,880 --> 00:44:40,719
monatic unity is our operant basic philosophical presubosition then informs

523
00:44:41,960 --> 00:44:44,280
the whole practice of how we would live or how

524
00:44:44,440 --> 00:44:47,960
a society or an empire or civilization would be structured.

525
00:44:49,119 --> 00:45:01,199
And it has a tendency to exclude legitimate distinctions and particularities. Right,

526
00:45:01,280 --> 00:45:05,199
So if we look at something like MAO or a

527
00:45:05,239 --> 00:45:09,000
communist international, it's a great idea, or it's a great

528
00:45:09,239 --> 00:45:12,760
version of this, because what does it seek to do well?

529
00:45:12,800 --> 00:45:18,559
It seeks to make everything uniform. Why? Well, because distinction

530
00:45:18,679 --> 00:45:22,079
in particularity have to be the source of what's bad. Right,

531
00:45:22,199 --> 00:45:26,760
You being distinct from me has to be the source

532
00:45:26,840 --> 00:45:30,360
of the bad. No, this is all based on a

533
00:45:30,440 --> 00:45:35,559
wrong philosophical presubposition. There's nothing there's no reason to believe

534
00:45:36,519 --> 00:45:43,440
that variance or difference is bad. In fact, it's good.

535
00:45:44,760 --> 00:45:51,920
So that's a very fundamental presubpositional flaw in Platonic thought

536
00:45:52,039 --> 00:45:55,039
that I would definitely take issue with. And it's not

537
00:45:55,199 --> 00:45:58,880
the view that I believe or support. Rather, we have

538
00:45:59,000 --> 00:46:02,239
to have a balanced view of the one and the many. Uh.

539
00:46:02,360 --> 00:46:04,800
And we'll get into where I think that is later,

540
00:46:04,920 --> 00:46:11,079
But again back to Plato and the dialogue. What we

541
00:46:11,119 --> 00:46:16,800
want to look at now is the central awesome argument

542
00:46:17,920 --> 00:46:20,599
from the One and the Many that Plato gives. That

543
00:46:20,760 --> 00:46:24,360
is that is crucial that in my own life, when

544
00:46:24,360 --> 00:46:28,039
I learned this a long time ago, really revolutionized the

545
00:46:28,079 --> 00:46:30,079
way I think and the way I approach the world,

546
00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:34,440
and it's very It's been a even though I've grown

547
00:46:34,679 --> 00:46:37,320
a lot since my early twenties and you know, change

548
00:46:37,400 --> 00:46:40,239
views on different things, this aspect of my thought has

549
00:46:40,320 --> 00:46:43,639
never changed, and I don't think it ever will, cause

550
00:46:43,639 --> 00:46:45,599
I think it's true and it makes sense, and it's

551
00:46:45,639 --> 00:46:47,880
the only it's the only view that makes sense about

552
00:46:48,800 --> 00:46:52,679
about how metaphysics works, about how epistemology and thinking works,

553
00:46:53,639 --> 00:46:58,760
and about how we approach meaning and in the world

554
00:46:58,880 --> 00:47:04,719
in our lives. So let's get into that in terms

555
00:47:04,719 --> 00:47:07,639
of unity and distinction, and the one in the many,

556
00:47:08,639 --> 00:47:14,800
so the one in the many unity and difference for

557
00:47:14,880 --> 00:47:19,280
those who are less instructed. In Plato, this central question

558
00:47:19,360 --> 00:47:26,599
for philosophy is about it's a metaphysical and an epistemological question,

559
00:47:27,679 --> 00:47:35,639
so being and knowledge that revolves around linking objects in

560
00:47:35,679 --> 00:47:41,840
our experience. So when we talk about an object a tree, book, whatever,

561
00:47:42,679 --> 00:47:51,400
an earthworm, we link this object to other similar objects

562
00:47:51,400 --> 00:47:54,440
that we've seen in the past or that we will see.

563
00:47:55,159 --> 00:47:57,239
So when we think of a book, we classify it

564
00:47:57,280 --> 00:48:02,400
as a member of category of other objects that are

565
00:48:02,480 --> 00:48:07,840
the same, that are in the same although they're not

566
00:48:07,880 --> 00:48:12,239
the same, right, So books are all similar in that

567
00:48:12,280 --> 00:48:15,320
they're the same type of object. They often have for

568
00:48:15,400 --> 00:48:19,159
the most part, the same shape, the same function and structure,

569
00:48:19,280 --> 00:48:26,400
so forth. Form. Yet they all differ, right, because they're

570
00:48:26,440 --> 00:48:29,519
not all the same book. So there are many books,

571
00:48:30,360 --> 00:48:32,679
but there seems to be some principle that they all

572
00:48:32,760 --> 00:48:38,840
share between them. We'll call bookness. This is a universal

573
00:48:39,239 --> 00:48:43,559
This is the form of a thing. Might also be

574
00:48:43,639 --> 00:48:46,880
the essence of a thing, depending on which philosophical system

575
00:48:46,920 --> 00:48:53,960
you're working with me. So this is central to Platonism,

576
00:48:54,760 --> 00:49:00,679
it's central to realist philosophy in the Middle Ages Middle Ages,

577
00:49:01,360 --> 00:49:05,840
the idea of realism, and it's set over against Aristotle

578
00:49:07,199 --> 00:49:12,079
and all other philosophical systems that come out of empiricism,

579
00:49:13,079 --> 00:49:27,119
because those systems will locate this unifying characteristic in the mind. Okay,

580
00:49:27,400 --> 00:49:31,679
it's not anything objectively out there in the world or

581
00:49:31,679 --> 00:49:33,840
in the thing, or in the realm of form somewhere.

582
00:49:34,800 --> 00:49:40,440
It's only a human token term or a socially constructed

583
00:49:41,119 --> 00:49:45,760
symbolic form or term that we've given to these objects.

584
00:49:46,400 --> 00:49:51,960
There's nothing actually in the book that links it to

585
00:49:52,039 --> 00:49:55,239
another book to share that property of being a book

586
00:49:56,480 --> 00:50:02,280
other than what humans have conceptually created. Because, for example,

587
00:50:02,320 --> 00:50:09,440
in the Aristotelian system, the book has as it's unifying

588
00:50:09,559 --> 00:50:14,519
characteristic prema material prime matter, the stuff that everything's made of,

589
00:50:15,320 --> 00:50:18,679
and it is then later given form into the shape

590
00:50:18,679 --> 00:50:23,679
of book, and might have other qualitya or central characteristics

591
00:50:23,679 --> 00:50:30,039
of it being a book. But the substance itself is

592
00:50:30,039 --> 00:50:33,400
is no different than another book. Right, So they're both,

593
00:50:34,119 --> 00:50:40,440
They're both just In other words, the linking essence between

594
00:50:40,480 --> 00:50:45,519
them is not something that is linked outside of human

595
00:50:45,639 --> 00:50:52,679
conceptual reality. In other words, it never pierces the veil

596
00:50:52,760 --> 00:50:57,519
into the external world. Objects themselves out there in the

597
00:50:57,559 --> 00:51:03,760
world do not participate in any sort of unifying objective

598
00:51:04,519 --> 00:51:10,920
characteristic of bookness, other than I mean, in other words,

599
00:51:10,960 --> 00:51:17,159
in aerosol system. Yes, they do have objects do have form,

600
00:51:17,400 --> 00:51:20,800
they do have substance and essence, but the essence is

601
00:51:20,840 --> 00:51:27,280
all contained within that object. Okay, So there's nothing outside

602
00:51:27,320 --> 00:51:33,320
of that, outside of the temporal that links these things.

603
00:51:33,360 --> 00:51:40,880
And this has drastic and dramatic implications for our epistemology.

604
00:51:41,039 --> 00:51:45,920
And so Plato's answer is that what links these things

605
00:51:47,079 --> 00:51:51,599
is the form, and the form transcends the realm that

606
00:51:51,639 --> 00:51:55,440
we're in. It transcends time and space, and the flux

607
00:51:55,480 --> 00:52:00,559
that we experience in this life to give objects an

608
00:52:00,599 --> 00:52:05,000
eternal grounding, okay, the being of an object, that the

609
00:52:05,039 --> 00:52:09,920
existence of these objects is grounded not in the temporal

610
00:52:10,559 --> 00:52:15,519
but in the eternal form of the thing. So there's

611
00:52:15,599 --> 00:52:21,920
a form of book that way, by which all existing

612
00:52:22,000 --> 00:52:28,119
books share in or participate in. So the idea of

613
00:52:28,159 --> 00:52:33,119
Plato that's very distinct from Aristotle is that objects can

614
00:52:33,159 --> 00:52:40,440
have a substantial form. That it that, in other words,

615
00:52:40,519 --> 00:52:48,360
multiple objects, multiple substances can inhere in an object, and

616
00:52:48,400 --> 00:52:53,559
the objects still retain its unity without destroying any of

617
00:52:53,599 --> 00:52:57,840
the variants or multiplicity. So a book might share in

618
00:52:57,920 --> 00:53:06,039
redness and in score, awareness, in solidity, so forth, all

619
00:53:06,079 --> 00:53:11,400
of which would be universal, and these distinctions are all

620
00:53:11,760 --> 00:53:17,039
real in the object, in the object that is participating

621
00:53:17,079 --> 00:53:21,519
in multiple forms at once. For Aristotle, that's not really so,

622
00:53:22,519 --> 00:53:26,880
and of course for straight up empiricism it's absolutely not so.

623
00:53:27,599 --> 00:53:33,000
For Aristotle. In later empiricism, the object can only have

624
00:53:33,559 --> 00:53:37,880
one substantial unity, and then all of the other aspects

625
00:53:37,920 --> 00:53:41,320
of the thing, the redness and so forth, those are

626
00:53:41,480 --> 00:53:46,400
quality of those are secondary characteristics, and the form would

627
00:53:46,480 --> 00:53:53,360
be the structure given to prima materia, prima material prime

628
00:53:53,400 --> 00:53:57,840
matter that it exists in before us. So the book

629
00:53:57,920 --> 00:54:04,519
has this squareness to it that's a secondary quality, or

630
00:54:04,760 --> 00:54:12,519
it's equality, but it's a substantial unity as as identified

631
00:54:12,559 --> 00:54:15,599
as the matter as it is okay, what's before us

632
00:54:16,800 --> 00:54:20,039
is what there, that's what is okay. There's not another

633
00:54:20,159 --> 00:54:24,760
level of reality or another level of being that makes

634
00:54:24,800 --> 00:54:29,840
it so. And so this will have a lot of implication,

635
00:54:29,960 --> 00:54:35,719
tremendous implications for you know, the soul in Aristotle's thought,

636
00:54:36,000 --> 00:54:39,639
because the soul is the form of the body and

637
00:54:39,679 --> 00:54:42,519
Aristotelian thought, and there's a big debate in Aristotle as

638
00:54:42,559 --> 00:54:47,480
to how that can be since aristotol would seem to

639
00:54:47,480 --> 00:54:51,679
believe in the soul existing beyond the death of the body.

640
00:54:52,519 --> 00:54:53,960
But if the soul is the form of the body,

641
00:54:54,000 --> 00:54:56,719
once the body is gone, how could there be a soul.

642
00:54:57,320 --> 00:55:01,320
The soul would have to be annihilated as well, would seem,

643
00:55:01,480 --> 00:55:06,519
although Aristotle does try to to There are Aristotelian explanations

644
00:55:06,559 --> 00:55:09,079
of this, but anyway, we're not getting into ariostotl We're

645
00:55:09,079 --> 00:55:17,119
getting into Plato, and Plato thinks that the one in

646
00:55:17,199 --> 00:55:26,000
the many is the central argument against the the sophists

647
00:55:26,039 --> 00:55:30,840
and the naturalists of his day, and the naturalists would

648
00:55:30,840 --> 00:55:36,199
be comparable to the empiricists or the person who believes

649
00:55:36,239 --> 00:55:40,800
in scientism. The sophist would be comparable to the relativist,

650
00:55:41,440 --> 00:55:45,480
who believes that nothing is true, everything is opinion. Both

651
00:55:45,480 --> 00:55:48,960
of these kind of go together because once you adopt empiricism,

652
00:55:49,960 --> 00:55:55,199
you're pretty much at skepticism and relativism. Relativism is, of

653
00:55:55,199 --> 00:55:59,360
course the great enemy of Platonism and truth and everything

654
00:55:59,360 --> 00:56:07,039
that I've ever leave. And that's that's the dominant perspective

655
00:56:07,440 --> 00:56:12,199
of the modern world. Pretty much everybody is a relativist, uh,

656
00:56:12,239 --> 00:56:16,719
and they are trapped in that matrix because they don't

657
00:56:17,360 --> 00:56:20,880
they don't know the truth. They're not they're not willing

658
00:56:20,920 --> 00:56:23,360
to or they willingly want to stay in that matrix

659
00:56:23,400 --> 00:56:29,119
of relativism, you know, for various reasons. But for Plato,

660
00:56:29,599 --> 00:56:36,239
he gives us a great ultimately a trance, no argument, uh,

661
00:56:37,840 --> 00:56:43,159
doorway out of that trap, a doorway through which we

662
00:56:43,199 --> 00:56:45,480
can exit the matrix if you, if you will, to

663
00:56:45,599 --> 00:56:53,199
use the pop analogy and step into absolute truth and

664
00:56:53,480 --> 00:56:57,480
objective truth. And what he does is he says, uh,

665
00:56:59,559 --> 00:57:03,440
their house to be basically some unity between objects that

666
00:57:03,639 --> 00:57:09,800
cannot be merely mental Uh, that that unit that unifies

667
00:57:09,840 --> 00:57:12,920
both objects and the experience and objects in our understanding

668
00:57:13,639 --> 00:57:16,239
and the and that is the form for him the universal.

669
00:57:17,800 --> 00:57:22,599
So when we look at objects and we compare book

670
00:57:22,679 --> 00:57:26,719
to book and look for that unifying whatever it is

671
00:57:27,280 --> 00:57:32,440
between them, that essence, Ah, what we come to is

672
00:57:33,119 --> 00:57:37,599
that it's a transcendental category. Now, this is obviously an

673
00:57:37,639 --> 00:57:40,519
argument that would be used later by Kant in the

674
00:57:40,519 --> 00:57:47,239
wrong way, and Aristotle also uses transcendental arguments first, as

675
00:57:47,239 --> 00:57:52,760
I've pointed out many times, But the the unity that

676
00:57:52,760 --> 00:57:54,960
Plato's talking about here in the question of the one

677
00:57:55,000 --> 00:58:00,599
of the many is a unifying something that is what

678
00:58:00,719 --> 00:58:04,400
connects these objects booked to book, tree to tree, even

679
00:58:04,400 --> 00:58:09,239
though they're distinct. Okay, A great example that I had

680
00:58:09,280 --> 00:58:11,480
him on one on one class was when the professor

681
00:58:11,960 --> 00:58:15,920
drew the number seven on the chalkboard, erased it and said,

682
00:58:15,920 --> 00:58:18,559
have I gotten rid of the number seven? And of

683
00:58:18,559 --> 00:58:22,280
course debate ensued in the class, and we came to

684
00:58:22,320 --> 00:58:26,559
the conclusion that no, obviously he had not destroyed the

685
00:58:26,679 --> 00:58:31,239
number seven, because the number seven still seems to be

686
00:58:31,440 --> 00:58:34,559
so we intuitively know somehow that this is the case,

687
00:58:34,599 --> 00:58:39,119
even though we may not understand numbers, we intuitively have

688
00:58:39,239 --> 00:58:45,079
this sense that sevenness still seems to be the case. Well,

689
00:58:45,079 --> 00:58:47,559
how can that be given that we're not immediately looking

690
00:58:47,599 --> 00:58:50,519
at sevens or we're not drawing sevens. We just erased

691
00:58:50,559 --> 00:58:54,480
the seven from the chalkboard or the particular example of seven.

692
00:58:55,760 --> 00:58:59,280
And that's because Plato would say, there is something beyond

693
00:58:59,320 --> 00:59:06,079
a mirror, since experience and it's numbers are a really

694
00:59:06,159 --> 00:59:08,559
really great example of how we can figure this out

695
00:59:08,880 --> 00:59:14,760
even better than essences and objects. Numbers seem to present

696
00:59:14,920 --> 00:59:20,679
this truth even more clearly. So when he looks at objects,

697
00:59:20,679 --> 00:59:24,039
he says, there's no we don't have a direct experience

698
00:59:24,199 --> 00:59:28,239
of the unity between a one tree and an oak

699
00:59:28,280 --> 00:59:31,719
tree and a you know, pine tree. They're both trees,

700
00:59:33,000 --> 00:59:37,679
but they're both different. So this classification that we've given,

701
00:59:40,119 --> 00:59:45,920
you know, it can't just be based in the matter itself,

702
00:59:45,960 --> 00:59:51,639
with the material of the object, because we don't do

703
00:59:51,679 --> 00:59:55,360
there's something that transcends that the mere matter of the object,

704
00:59:55,519 --> 00:59:58,960
or the or the mere human naming of the object,

705
00:59:59,760 --> 01:00:05,280
that links these two things. And we know that because

706
01:00:05,320 --> 01:00:07,920
we never have a direct experience of that. We have

707
01:00:08,000 --> 01:00:10,400
an experience of a tree, we have an experience of

708
01:00:10,440 --> 01:00:15,320
another tree a sensory experience, but we never have a

709
01:00:15,480 --> 01:00:21,480
sensory experience of the unifying essence or principle that links them.

710
01:00:22,639 --> 01:00:26,039
I Now, you might say in response to this, well,

711
01:00:26,119 --> 01:00:29,960
yes we do. You look at one tree and you

712
01:00:30,000 --> 01:00:32,000
see the color and shape that it has, and then

713
01:00:32,039 --> 01:00:33,679
you look at another tree and you see the color

714
01:00:33,679 --> 01:00:36,119
and shape that it has, and that's what links the

715
01:00:36,119 --> 01:00:39,960
two They have similar colors and shapes. No, again, you're

716
01:00:40,079 --> 01:00:47,599
simply pointing out secondary characteristics that link or make the

717
01:00:47,639 --> 01:00:52,000
two trees similar. But the color and shape that's found

718
01:00:52,079 --> 01:00:55,039
in one tree is a particular instantiation and the color

719
01:00:55,079 --> 01:00:59,079
and shape that's found another tree is another particular instantiation. Right,

720
01:00:59,159 --> 01:01:05,000
So what it's there are two different trees. In other words,

721
01:01:05,039 --> 01:01:06,519
that's kind of begging the question.

722
01:01:06,880 --> 01:01:16,159
Speaker 4: What what is Where is the mysterious thing, substance, essence,

723
01:01:16,199 --> 01:01:23,119
whatever form logoi that links these Where's the archetypal pattern.

724
01:01:24,280 --> 01:01:30,159
Speaker 1: That links these things? Because it cannot be merely something

725
01:01:30,159 --> 01:01:33,559
that we've created mentally. And you say, welcome that. Well

726
01:01:33,559 --> 01:01:35,719
maybe maybe not, maybe maybe it is just something we

727
01:01:35,760 --> 01:01:41,280
mentally create. No, because again, think of the example of numbers.

728
01:01:42,679 --> 01:01:45,920
Numbers are not a human invention. It's not like if

729
01:01:45,920 --> 01:01:48,480
I erase the number seven from the chalkboard, there's no

730
01:01:48,559 --> 01:01:51,199
more number seven. Or if everybody in the world suddenly

731
01:01:51,440 --> 01:01:54,599
puts the number seven out of their mind, then seven

732
01:01:54,639 --> 01:01:58,119
ceases to be Well, that's preposterous. It's just utterly retarded.

733
01:01:58,559 --> 01:02:02,280
No seven seems to have this eternality about it. This

734
01:02:03,760 --> 01:02:06,559
not just seven to mean any number, any mathematical idea

735
01:02:06,639 --> 01:02:07,159
or principle.

736
01:02:08,000 --> 01:02:08,119
Speaker 3: Uh.

737
01:02:08,320 --> 01:02:14,159
Speaker 1: You know, all of our experience is constantly bound up

738
01:02:14,199 --> 01:02:18,400
with number and shape, form, geometry, et cetera. Right, and

739
01:02:18,440 --> 01:02:22,280
these things don't disappear when we close our eyes or

740
01:02:22,360 --> 01:02:33,239
forget about them. Now, that's that's completely an egoistic, you know, narcissistic,

741
01:02:33,519 --> 01:02:37,840
fallen view of reality that you know will the mind

742
01:02:38,079 --> 01:02:40,599
and it's not. You know, some guy in a chat

743
01:02:40,679 --> 01:02:45,480
room said this one time. You know, my mind emits numbers. Right. Well,

744
01:02:45,519 --> 01:02:47,559
another way that we can show that that's not true

745
01:02:47,719 --> 01:02:52,519
is by numbers that are beyond the ability for humans

746
01:02:52,519 --> 01:02:55,199
to conceive. And we know infinity is real, we know

747
01:02:55,239 --> 01:02:59,800
there are multiple infinities according to Cantor, so the human

748
01:02:59,800 --> 01:03:03,920
mind can't encapsulate those. No finite mind is able to

749
01:03:04,760 --> 01:03:09,639
literally think of an infinite string of numbers or an

750
01:03:09,679 --> 01:03:14,360
infinite set, and then that set raised to the power too.

751
01:03:14,800 --> 01:03:20,079
And since that's the case, then obviously there are principles

752
01:03:20,119 --> 01:03:23,760
about mathematics. As an example, that extend beyond sense experience.

753
01:03:25,039 --> 01:03:28,599
Another good example is a chiliagon, a thousand sided figure.

754
01:03:29,280 --> 01:03:33,039
A thousand sided figure is impossible to see by the

755
01:03:33,119 --> 01:03:37,400
human eye or in human conception all at once. We

756
01:03:37,400 --> 01:03:40,880
can talk about this object. We know that you can

757
01:03:41,599 --> 01:03:44,480
you diagram one out if you wanted to have the time.

758
01:03:44,559 --> 01:03:48,079
You're that board. But when you look at it, you're

759
01:03:48,119 --> 01:03:50,599
only going to see you know, either if you look

760
01:03:50,639 --> 01:03:52,639
at it up close, you're going to see very minute

761
01:03:53,039 --> 01:03:57,280
little angles, or if you look at it far away,

762
01:03:57,320 --> 01:03:59,840
you're going to see a circle. See, you're not going

763
01:03:59,920 --> 01:04:06,159
to be able to see every vertice or whatever at

764
01:04:06,239 --> 01:04:10,559
every every point, uh in a chiliagon, in a thousand

765
01:04:10,639 --> 01:04:14,800
sided figure. And because you can't see that, that that

766
01:04:15,480 --> 01:04:19,000
and we know that that object exists, we know that

767
01:04:19,559 --> 01:04:25,159
obviously bare empiricism is false. Okay, Aristotle, I don't think

768
01:04:25,199 --> 01:04:30,480
knew about a chiliagon. So these these things are devastating

769
01:04:30,599 --> 01:04:38,000
arguments to to empiricism. Again, any any infinite set of numbers,

770
01:04:38,119 --> 01:04:44,079
any idea of any any irrational numbers that extend in

771
01:04:44,679 --> 01:04:51,239
crazy directions pi whatever. These also are are very devastating

772
01:04:51,320 --> 01:04:59,639
to empiricism because ultimately an empiricism unless you have I mean,

773
01:04:59,679 --> 01:05:02,480
there are some rare cases of people who are empiricist

774
01:05:02,559 --> 01:05:07,920
idealists unless you have an empiricist idealist view, which wouldn't

775
01:05:07,960 --> 01:05:11,280
work anyway, that has serious problems. But the majority of

776
01:05:11,320 --> 01:05:15,119
impeiricists are not this view. They think that the external

777
01:05:15,159 --> 01:05:17,559
world is a bunch of matter, and that we are

778
01:05:17,639 --> 01:05:21,360
the camp in our minds of other camquarders that record

779
01:05:21,559 --> 01:05:27,800
just centory experience. You know, we're just biological computers. You know,

780
01:05:28,320 --> 01:05:31,199
ninety nine percent of empiricists believe that.

781
01:05:32,519 --> 01:05:33,079
Speaker 2: And so.

782
01:05:35,639 --> 01:05:39,280
Speaker 1: We have no direct experience of a chiliagon. I mean,

783
01:05:39,800 --> 01:05:43,039
you have experiences of aspects of a chiliagon, and you

784
01:05:43,199 --> 01:05:46,760
have an experience of one far away that appears to

785
01:05:46,800 --> 01:05:48,840
be a circle, But you have no direct experience of

786
01:05:49,760 --> 01:05:52,880
a thousand sided figure all at once. Okay, you have

787
01:05:53,000 --> 01:05:57,400
no direct experience of an infinite set of numbers. You

788
01:05:57,559 --> 01:06:01,679
have no experience of an infant negative set of numbers.

789
01:06:01,840 --> 01:06:08,559
So I mean, there's tons of different ways to configure

790
01:06:08,639 --> 01:06:14,679
this to demonstrate the point that knowledge that we have

791
01:06:15,239 --> 01:06:21,280
is ultimately not grounded in sensory experience. Okay, do we

792
01:06:21,400 --> 01:06:25,039
learn by the senses, of course, absolutely, even Plato would

793
01:06:25,039 --> 01:06:28,960
not deny that. But the point is that the correct

794
01:06:29,039 --> 01:06:34,119
and right point is that what we are, what's going

795
01:06:34,239 --> 01:06:39,119
on in the process of learning by sense experience, is

796
01:06:39,519 --> 01:06:46,760
something that is a real interaction with eternal principles. That's

797
01:06:46,840 --> 01:06:54,480
the point. Okay, they're not merely Again, think from a

798
01:06:54,840 --> 01:07:00,719
third eye perspective about the empiricist perspective of how man

799
01:07:01,679 --> 01:07:07,400
operates in the world. Okay, he's a biologically evolved animal

800
01:07:08,320 --> 01:07:12,119
that has a mind that's a camcorder that takes in

801
01:07:12,280 --> 01:07:16,679
these sense impressions and the mind kind of orders them somehow.

802
01:07:18,039 --> 01:07:22,239
So he's like a little bot that spits out and

803
01:07:22,360 --> 01:07:25,239
repeats like a you know, a parrot or something like that,

804
01:07:25,960 --> 01:07:32,440
and that Darwinian view that materialists, biological flux view, that

805
01:07:32,519 --> 01:07:42,519
reductionist view. Over time, he develops into the social, socially

806
01:07:42,639 --> 01:07:47,440
constructed definition of a quote person as a child, and

807
01:07:47,519 --> 01:07:50,559
then reason develops whatever that is. We have no idea

808
01:07:50,599 --> 01:07:53,840
what that is, but reason develops, and then we maybe

809
01:07:53,920 --> 01:08:00,960
consciousness develops you know, and then he then he's able

810
01:08:01,039 --> 01:08:08,920
to become a quote scientific individual, all of which is

811
01:08:09,239 --> 01:08:16,039
completely retardedly nonsensical, total philosophical nonsense, but is the predominant

812
01:08:16,119 --> 01:08:20,479
view of most people in the world in general, right,

813
01:08:20,720 --> 01:08:22,840
And there are a lot of variations. People might have

814
01:08:23,039 --> 01:08:27,800
different ideas about things, but they don't have they don't

815
01:08:27,960 --> 01:08:32,760
generally tend to challenge this dominant grounding narrative. This is

816
01:08:32,840 --> 01:08:37,319
kind of the bedrock of what everybody falls back on.

817
01:08:37,760 --> 01:08:41,560
You know, they go about their lives and do this

818
01:08:41,720 --> 01:08:44,760
and that, and if somebody comes up, say me, and

819
01:08:44,960 --> 01:08:52,680
challenges their predispositions and presuppositions, well they can still fall

820
01:08:52,800 --> 01:08:56,760
back on science. They saw somewhere on Discovery challenge that

821
01:08:57,199 --> 01:09:01,439
science has proven that men's mind is a little biological

822
01:09:01,560 --> 01:09:08,840
computer that processes information, and it's just merely matter, it's

823
01:09:08,960 --> 01:09:13,520
merely chemical reactions. Okay, so again the mind. Let's let's

824
01:09:13,600 --> 01:09:17,079
use this view. The mind is a chemical reaction computer

825
01:09:17,319 --> 01:09:26,880
that processes impulses and incoming sensory input. At no point

826
01:09:27,880 --> 01:09:35,600
in this view is anything objective or metaphysically. The case

827
01:09:35,880 --> 01:09:40,640
ever obtained, that's all that you ever obtain in this

828
01:09:40,840 --> 01:09:47,319
view is sensory input. See, so you don't really ever

829
01:09:47,479 --> 01:09:50,880
know if you are interacting with the things out there

830
01:09:50,920 --> 01:09:54,399
in the world. All you know is that you're interacting

831
01:09:54,479 --> 01:09:58,520
with sensory input. Okay. In the Enlightenment, this would come

832
01:09:58,560 --> 01:10:01,720
to be called indirect real. Okay, you don't have a

833
01:10:01,840 --> 01:10:06,119
direct experience of real substances, qualities, essences in the world,

834
01:10:07,680 --> 01:10:11,079
or if you do, we don't know. What you have

835
01:10:11,479 --> 01:10:17,600
an experience of is phenomena. You have an experience of

836
01:10:19,319 --> 01:10:25,479
sensory input what human would call impressions. So imagine a

837
01:10:27,840 --> 01:10:32,359
guy with his eyes open staring at a TV screen,

838
01:10:34,000 --> 01:10:36,359
and the TV screen for all of his life is

839
01:10:36,560 --> 01:10:41,520
just you know, beaming different images at him. Okay, he

840
01:10:41,640 --> 01:10:46,520
never interacts with a real you know, world or whatever.

841
01:10:47,279 --> 01:10:53,239
It's just TV screen images coming at him. And maybe

842
01:10:53,319 --> 01:10:55,359
there is a real world you don't know, Maybe there

843
01:10:55,399 --> 01:10:57,520
are real objects that you can interact with. Who knows.

844
01:10:59,399 --> 01:11:02,640
Now you might be a little weirded out there because

845
01:11:02,680 --> 01:11:04,199
you're thinking, well, no, wait a minute, that sounds kind

846
01:11:04,199 --> 01:11:07,079
of like Plato. Yeah. I don't want to get too

847
01:11:07,319 --> 01:11:10,720
in depth here, because you could make the case that

848
01:11:11,880 --> 01:11:17,399
an empiricist idealist is pretty close to Platonism. In a way.

849
01:11:18,079 --> 01:11:20,119
But that's not really where we're wanting to go. We're

850
01:11:20,159 --> 01:11:26,720
not wanting to get into modern philosophy per se and

851
01:11:26,920 --> 01:11:32,399
the small branch of Berkeley and empiricist idealism that has existed.

852
01:11:32,479 --> 01:11:37,159
But I suffice to say that the central point that

853
01:11:37,279 --> 01:11:41,159
we do want to get across here is that the

854
01:11:41,760 --> 01:11:49,079
argument for objective, invariant metaphysical principles that are operant in

855
01:11:49,199 --> 01:11:55,239
the world is given its strongest argument from the One

856
01:11:55,279 --> 01:12:00,399
and the Many in Plato's dialogue viatom here. And it's great, great,

857
01:12:00,439 --> 01:12:03,319
great argument. You know, it's it's that's what I was

858
01:12:03,399 --> 01:12:06,800
getting at that, you know, something that has stuck with

859
01:12:06,960 --> 01:12:12,199
me since my early twenties. You know, this is thankfully

860
01:12:12,279 --> 01:12:15,960
I did encounter this in philosophy one on one at

861
01:12:16,000 --> 01:12:16,640
the State School.

862
01:12:17,600 --> 01:12:17,720
Speaker 3: Uh.

863
01:12:18,000 --> 01:12:21,920
Speaker 1: And this is great because once you grasp this, when

864
01:12:21,960 --> 01:12:25,079
this when your mind is you know, awakened to this,

865
01:12:26,760 --> 01:12:30,600
this revolutionizes everything about how you look at the world.

866
01:12:31,560 --> 01:12:34,079
Because we're taught and we're kind of born with this

867
01:12:35,479 --> 01:12:42,000
sort of silly, rebellious motivation and empathus to think that

868
01:12:44,000 --> 01:12:49,039
we can make meaning and reality what it is like.

869
01:12:49,800 --> 01:12:53,279
You know, we're all born kind of little you know,

870
01:12:53,359 --> 01:12:55,239
we think the world re bawls are on us, and

871
01:12:55,399 --> 01:13:01,479
so we are afraid of I mean, towards objective truth

872
01:13:02,199 --> 01:13:04,560
and the idea of eternal truth, because we think that

873
01:13:04,720 --> 01:13:09,119
that's gonna shake our foundations and challenge us to give

874
01:13:09,239 --> 01:13:12,960
up the petty, little sand castle empire that we've built

875
01:13:13,000 --> 01:13:15,239
in our minds and our psyches that we are the

876
01:13:15,279 --> 01:13:18,800
center of the universe. But again, as I said in

877
01:13:18,840 --> 01:13:21,960
the last talk, the real paradox here is that it's

878
01:13:22,000 --> 01:13:27,359
only by moving out of that little mental prison of

879
01:13:27,640 --> 01:13:31,720
deception that we buy into towards what's objectively true, that

880
01:13:31,800 --> 01:13:39,920
we can actually be free. So this central central argument

881
01:13:41,239 --> 01:13:46,800
cannot be overstressed. And this is the antidote to the

882
01:13:46,920 --> 01:13:49,760
modern world. It's also the basis of hidden metaphysics, because

883
01:13:49,760 --> 01:13:52,880
it means that the external world is rational, and it

884
01:13:53,039 --> 01:13:58,239
is designed and is created, and it is highly structured

885
01:13:58,279 --> 01:14:03,000
and highly formalized. And that doesn't mean that like, there's

886
01:14:03,039 --> 01:14:05,199
no freedom. I'm not saying that. I don't mean that's

887
01:14:05,239 --> 01:14:07,279
not what I mean by structure or formalized. What I

888
01:14:07,359 --> 01:14:15,079
mean is that it has inherent design and telos Okay,

889
01:14:15,159 --> 01:14:18,079
it does have purpose. Everything has all the way down

890
01:14:18,159 --> 01:14:20,880
to you know, the nucleus and the electron has this

891
01:14:21,720 --> 01:14:29,359
perfectly ordered symmetry to it. Uh. And you know this

892
01:14:30,399 --> 01:14:34,399
is really how you how you escape the matrix. So

893
01:14:35,600 --> 01:14:38,119
this part of Plato and leaving the matrix is great.

894
01:14:38,239 --> 01:14:40,039
This is what we want to we do want to

895
01:14:40,119 --> 01:14:47,880
keep this. Another another way we can look at this

896
01:14:48,279 --> 01:14:51,640
later on in the development of Western philosophy, the question

897
01:14:51,760 --> 01:14:59,359
of what it's what kind called a transcendental unity of apperception. Uh.

898
01:14:59,600 --> 01:15:04,600
And this is also related to the idea of identity

899
01:15:04,680 --> 01:15:11,159
over time and objects. So two different, two different ideas

900
01:15:11,279 --> 01:15:14,560
or terms that relate to the same thing, one of

901
01:15:14,640 --> 01:15:17,800
them relating to the inner the inner world of the psyche,

902
01:15:18,039 --> 01:15:21,560
and the other one relating to the substance or essence

903
01:15:22,079 --> 01:15:25,800
of things in the external world. And so when we

904
01:15:25,920 --> 01:15:28,399
talked about that one in a mini question, if we

905
01:15:28,479 --> 01:15:32,479
look in the inner realm of the psyche, talked about

906
01:15:33,880 --> 01:15:36,800
the transcendental unity of apperception. And this is a good

907
01:15:36,840 --> 01:15:40,960
point because if you think about it, why does the

908
01:15:41,079 --> 01:15:45,920
human mind link that tree, that tree and the tree

909
01:15:45,960 --> 01:15:49,920
y I saw yesterday as having some connection, right, Well,

910
01:15:49,920 --> 01:15:52,239
it can't just be because they kind of look the same.

911
01:15:53,199 --> 01:15:55,840
Because sometimes things kind of look the same, and they

912
01:15:55,840 --> 01:16:00,840
aren't the same. And even if you just say, well,

913
01:16:00,840 --> 01:16:04,079
because they look the same, that kind of begs the question,

914
01:16:04,199 --> 01:16:07,359
because why does the mind link things that kind of

915
01:16:07,399 --> 01:16:10,920
look the same? Why we're not asking what does it do?

916
01:16:11,079 --> 01:16:14,880
We're asking why does it do that? And so compt

917
01:16:14,960 --> 01:16:19,159
positive that there's not a direct empirical argument for why

918
01:16:19,199 --> 01:16:22,520
the mind does this. The mind just does it, and

919
01:16:23,000 --> 01:16:26,840
all of our experience is conditioned or or i'm sorry,

920
01:16:26,960 --> 01:16:29,159
is built around the precondition of the mind doing that.

921
01:16:30,039 --> 01:16:35,359
And that's an awesome argument. As a philosopher and as

922
01:16:35,439 --> 01:16:39,479
somebody who revels in transmittal arguments, that's such a killer

923
01:16:39,560 --> 01:16:46,520
argument because if you're an empiricist's this is this is

924
01:16:46,640 --> 01:16:50,600
the point Hugh made, right As as an empiricist trying

925
01:16:50,640 --> 01:16:56,319
to be consistent, you can never explain why the mind

926
01:16:56,840 --> 01:17:07,960
links similarly appearing objects. You can give statements about you can.

927
01:17:08,279 --> 01:17:11,199
All you can do is restate that it does it. Okay,

928
01:17:11,319 --> 01:17:12,920
So if I say why do I why do you

929
01:17:13,680 --> 01:17:15,920
make a connection between that dog and the big dog

930
01:17:16,000 --> 01:17:19,680
you saw yesterday? Well because they look like dogs, because

931
01:17:19,680 --> 01:17:23,960
they have fur. Because right, none of these answers explains why.

932
01:17:24,880 --> 01:17:30,279
They only explain what is that's such a that's so

933
01:17:30,680 --> 01:17:34,720
devastating to empiricism, and I love it. Right, And again

934
01:17:34,800 --> 01:17:40,880
I'm not Kant has serious, ultimately empirical, devastating flaws, because

935
01:17:41,000 --> 01:17:44,199
Kant ultimately is still an empiricis. But when we are

936
01:17:44,279 --> 01:17:47,279
looking at the inner realm of the psyche and we

937
01:17:47,399 --> 01:17:51,840
are looking at transmittal arguments, these are killer arguments. These

938
01:17:51,880 --> 01:17:54,319
are great. So as long as we don't adopt Quant's

939
01:17:55,319 --> 01:17:58,960
divorce between the internal world and external world, you can

940
01:17:59,000 --> 01:18:03,520
go through through these transtal arguments and they're awesome. I mean,

941
01:18:03,600 --> 01:18:08,760
these are the strongest arguments you can make. So the

942
01:18:08,920 --> 01:18:15,520
only in other words, CONT's reply consistent with Plato here

943
01:18:15,560 --> 01:18:18,800
in the fight. And by the way, Plato makes this

944
01:18:19,039 --> 01:18:22,479
very argument. So that's kind of a secret here is

945
01:18:22,600 --> 01:18:26,319
that as you read these dialogues, you start noticing, Hey

946
01:18:26,680 --> 01:18:29,359
de Cart says that, Hey Con says that, Hey Hume

947
01:18:29,439 --> 01:18:33,359
says that right, which is natural. I mean, that's what

948
01:18:33,399 --> 01:18:37,800
happens in philosophy. So but Plato actually says, when I

949
01:18:37,880 --> 01:18:40,680
was a young man, I followed the natural scientists in

950
01:18:40,800 --> 01:18:44,560
their scientistic empiricism. He's not using those terms, but that's

951
01:18:44,600 --> 01:18:47,880
what he's saying right, he says, and it really I

952
01:18:48,000 --> 01:18:52,279
realized one day that when I ask them why, all

953
01:18:52,319 --> 01:18:57,399
they do is restate what is so? Again, So if

954
01:18:57,439 --> 01:19:00,920
we apply that to another ord, this is kind of

955
01:19:00,960 --> 01:19:04,720
a version of the transcendent unity of a perception. The

956
01:19:04,840 --> 01:19:10,039
mind is so structured that it links objects and it

957
01:19:10,159 --> 01:19:13,680
just does it. We don't know why, and if you

958
01:19:13,800 --> 01:19:18,239
try to explain why, you can never explain why apart

959
01:19:18,359 --> 01:19:22,760
from experience. See, so you're in a loop there, and

960
01:19:22,880 --> 01:19:24,359
that's why Conn says, Well, the only way out of

961
01:19:24,399 --> 01:19:29,039
that loop is to posit that it's just a transcendental truth,

962
01:19:29,760 --> 01:19:40,399
something that transcends experience. That's a presupposition for all perception, period. Okay,

963
01:19:41,279 --> 01:19:42,640
so if you were to say, well, how do we

964
01:19:42,760 --> 01:19:47,399
know that that's true, Kant would say with Plato, because

965
01:19:47,399 --> 01:19:53,520
if we denied that perception would be impossible. That is

966
01:19:53,560 --> 01:20:01,039
an awesome argument. Transtal arguments generally are arguments from the

967
01:20:01,079 --> 01:20:05,680
impossibility of the contrary, but they're not mirror reductio or

968
01:20:05,720 --> 01:20:09,439
impossibility the contrary arguments because sometimes they are so strong

969
01:20:09,880 --> 01:20:13,199
that they are actually the ground of all experience. I

970
01:20:13,199 --> 01:20:18,319
don't period. And this is one example. Extending this then

971
01:20:18,439 --> 01:20:23,880
to the external world, we can talk about the identity

972
01:20:23,920 --> 01:20:26,680
of objects over time. This also comes up again in

973
01:20:26,800 --> 01:20:30,600
human and this is just simply the transcendental unity of

974
01:20:30,680 --> 01:20:34,680
that perception that spoke about in the inner world applied

975
01:20:34,760 --> 01:20:40,119
to the external realm. Why do we believe that over

976
01:20:40,239 --> 01:20:43,439
time that object is the same object that we thought

977
01:20:43,479 --> 01:20:47,880
it was, Because say a boy grows into a man

978
01:20:48,960 --> 01:20:52,279
and his body changes, and so if we take a

979
01:20:52,439 --> 01:20:59,199
radical empiricist route, we have no empirical reason to believe

980
01:20:59,359 --> 01:21:03,439
or link that old guy to the young guy, or

981
01:21:03,600 --> 01:21:07,039
the fat guy to the previously skinny guy, because the

982
01:21:09,039 --> 01:21:12,199
substance and the qualities have changed. Right. I mean, unless

983
01:21:12,199 --> 01:21:14,079
you're in a rescitilian and you thought that the soul

984
01:21:14,239 --> 01:21:15,600
is the form of the body, you would say, well,

985
01:21:15,600 --> 01:21:19,000
it's still the same soul. But if you're a rank empiricist,

986
01:21:21,079 --> 01:21:25,680
this problem is tremendous because we have no reason to

987
01:21:25,840 --> 01:21:35,840
believe that objects actually possess some identity or special quality

988
01:21:35,920 --> 01:21:40,239
or essence about them that makes them that thing over time,

989
01:21:42,000 --> 01:21:47,760
because the material makeup the object is always changing. I mean,

990
01:21:48,239 --> 01:21:52,439
the book that you have is shedding pages molecules over time,

991
01:21:53,439 --> 01:21:57,479
is it the same book? Well, if we're an empiricist. No,

992
01:21:58,800 --> 01:22:05,920
and we don't have any reason to believe purely based

993
01:22:05,960 --> 01:22:11,079
on empirical sensory data that it's the same book. And

994
01:22:11,159 --> 01:22:15,600
so there must be some transcendent quality or essence about

995
01:22:15,640 --> 01:22:20,840
the thing that makes it that thing over time again

996
01:22:21,039 --> 01:22:24,199
referred to in philosophy as the problem of identity over time.

997
01:22:25,239 --> 01:22:27,800
And if an object does have that, then that means

998
01:22:27,880 --> 01:22:30,119
that all of our metaphysics is very different than what

999
01:22:30,239 --> 01:22:33,800
empiricism says. So that's why this is so good. We

1000
01:22:33,960 --> 01:22:39,960
have the roots of empiricism annihilated in Plato, and we

1001
01:22:40,119 --> 01:22:43,960
see that this is an ancient battle. This goes all

1002
01:22:44,000 --> 01:22:47,680
the way back, you know, to ancient Greek times between

1003
01:22:47,840 --> 01:22:50,479
the softists and the relativists and the people who are

1004
01:22:50,560 --> 01:22:54,479
arguing for objective truth. And that's the chief use of Plato.

1005
01:22:54,520 --> 01:22:56,640
Even though we wouldn't I don't agree with all the

1006
01:22:59,199 --> 01:23:03,960
far eastern trappings of Playo that become problematic when we

1007
01:23:04,039 --> 01:23:07,800
look at things like this. This is a tremendous argument.

1008
01:23:09,840 --> 01:23:13,359
And if you get this down in your philosophical life

1009
01:23:13,399 --> 01:23:17,960
and thinking and thought, this is a platform to go

1010
01:23:18,159 --> 01:23:22,920
on to become an excellent philosopher. This is a platform

1011
01:23:23,000 --> 01:23:25,199
to go on to I mean, this is the kind

1012
01:23:25,239 --> 01:23:28,920
of stuff that makes the world meaningful and wondrous, and

1013
01:23:29,000 --> 01:23:30,880
this is how you'll go on. And if you're a

1014
01:23:30,960 --> 01:23:35,600
scientist with this basis, I mean, there's the potential for

1015
01:23:35,720 --> 01:23:39,279
what you could discover is limitless because you're actually understanding

1016
01:23:40,640 --> 01:23:45,439
the real makeup of the world and not chaotic flux,

1017
01:23:45,600 --> 01:23:56,279
big bang, nonsensical reductionist materialism. All right. Following upon the

1018
01:23:57,039 --> 01:24:04,720
discussion of absolutes and one of the many, he discusses

1019
01:24:04,800 --> 01:24:09,279
the soul. And like I said earlier, the soul is

1020
01:24:09,359 --> 01:24:12,800
not composite, so it's more like the one monad. It's

1021
01:24:12,840 --> 01:24:18,359
more like the forms and the realm of the eternal,

1022
01:24:18,479 --> 01:24:24,039
and so he reasons that they're in a dialectical tension.

1023
01:24:25,600 --> 01:24:29,840
As I said at the beginning, dialectical arguments. Dialectical tensions

1024
01:24:30,439 --> 01:24:33,640
are what we want to avoid. And the chief difference

1025
01:24:33,680 --> 01:24:37,640
that I would have with Far Eastern thought in solving

1026
01:24:38,119 --> 01:24:46,119
or harmonizing that is not through dissolution from this realm

1027
01:24:46,199 --> 01:24:50,520
into the absolute or into non being or nirvana or

1028
01:24:53,399 --> 01:25:01,079
you know, eternal cyclical reincarnation process somewhat what we find

1029
01:25:01,319 --> 01:25:06,079
in say Eastern Orthodox theology, where you have instead of

1030
01:25:06,239 --> 01:25:12,359
dialectical tensions. You have harmonization through divine energies, and so

1031
01:25:14,039 --> 01:25:21,359
body and soul are not intension. The soul is submitted

1032
01:25:21,439 --> 01:25:27,359
to or should be submitted to, the heart or the noose.

1033
01:25:27,640 --> 01:25:30,479
In Eastern Orthodox theology, the news is the heart. It

1034
01:25:30,600 --> 01:25:37,840
is not the intellect, but rather the heart submitted to

1035
01:25:38,319 --> 01:25:46,560
divine law and then has reason placed in its proper arena,

1036
01:25:47,560 --> 01:25:52,119
not as primary. So rationality is great. It's an amazing

1037
01:25:52,239 --> 01:25:54,680
tool that God has given us to work in the

1038
01:25:54,720 --> 01:25:57,119
world and deal with the world. But it is not

1039
01:25:57,319 --> 01:26:04,399
the primary God that we find the history of Western

1040
01:26:04,399 --> 01:26:08,039
philosophy making it. And when we see reason raised to

1041
01:26:08,199 --> 01:26:12,479
that premissy of godhood, we end up with French Revolution,

1042
01:26:12,720 --> 01:26:17,000
we end up with nihilism. That's where it goes. That's

1043
01:26:17,000 --> 01:26:24,039
where we are today. Techno nihilism. The height of reason

1044
01:26:25,039 --> 01:26:32,840
embodied in machines that could potentially destroy us, then turns

1045
01:26:32,920 --> 01:26:38,079
around and gives us complete nihilism. So we've created these

1046
01:26:38,600 --> 01:26:45,199
advanced technologies that are amazing for the not just in

1047
01:26:45,319 --> 01:26:52,239
what they do, but in the philosophical underpinnings behind how

1048
01:26:52,319 --> 01:26:56,479
it's even possible to make such machines advanced computers. So forth,

1049
01:26:57,800 --> 01:27:01,840
the philosophical interpinnings in the worldview required for those things

1050
01:27:01,920 --> 01:27:06,960
to be, as I've argued many times, is completely opposite

1051
01:27:07,159 --> 01:27:12,399
of what we're all indoctrinated into in the dominant system,

1052
01:27:13,880 --> 01:27:21,319
the empiricist nihilistic in game where we are today techno nihilism.

1053
01:27:23,279 --> 01:27:31,520
It's so bizarre given the fact that for such creations

1054
01:27:31,600 --> 01:27:40,039
to be, they're actually a mirror of how intricately detailed

1055
01:27:40,079 --> 01:27:43,279
and designed the universe as a whole is. In other words,

1056
01:27:43,479 --> 01:27:47,520
to be able to bring together you know, electronics and electricity,

1057
01:27:48,000 --> 01:27:52,680
or matter and circuits and chips and crystals in all

1058
01:27:52,720 --> 01:27:58,960
these different ways to create a computer. What that says

1059
01:27:59,000 --> 01:28:03,039
about the world is the world as a whole is

1060
01:28:03,960 --> 01:28:10,199
just so fabulously and wondrousy designed in order as to

1061
01:28:10,319 --> 01:28:15,600
be able to create the conditions or possibilities for such

1062
01:28:15,680 --> 01:28:20,039
an entity to exist. Because, as I've said before, what

1063
01:28:20,279 --> 01:28:23,800
advanced labs like DARPA and places like CERN, everything that

1064
01:28:23,840 --> 01:28:28,920
they're doing is actually modeled on principles in nature. So

1065
01:28:29,119 --> 01:28:35,159
like the advanced tech that they do, say with drones

1066
01:28:35,239 --> 01:28:40,960
mapping things with light, well that's modeled on light itself,

1067
01:28:41,239 --> 01:28:47,279
something that exists in nature. If you look at something

1068
01:28:47,439 --> 01:28:53,800
like the battle gear that they're developing in for super

1069
01:28:53,920 --> 01:29:02,760
soldiers to be able to scale a surface, a vertical

1070
01:29:03,600 --> 01:29:11,560
glass surface that came about from studying frogs and the

1071
01:29:11,800 --> 01:29:19,399
ability that frogs have in their little fingers to scale glass. So,

1072
01:29:19,520 --> 01:29:24,239
in other words, modeling the technology on the secrets of

1073
01:29:24,399 --> 01:29:28,880
nature means that nature, in the world, in the universe

1074
01:29:28,880 --> 01:29:36,000
as a whole can creates the conditions because of a

1075
01:29:36,079 --> 01:29:40,560
lot of different metaphysical truths that are the case that

1076
01:29:40,720 --> 01:29:44,760
do not make sense or comport with the dominant worldview

1077
01:29:45,039 --> 01:29:52,199
that the system teaches. Darwinian flux, AONs of cyclical time,

1078
01:29:53,880 --> 01:30:01,199
you know, reductionist materialism, scientism, all of these dogmas and

1079
01:30:01,279 --> 01:30:05,359
propaganda of the system do not make sense with the

1080
01:30:05,439 --> 01:30:09,960
things that the system actually does. And that suggests then

1081
01:30:10,159 --> 01:30:16,840
a Platonic metaphysic roughly speaking, but again not endorsing all

1082
01:30:16,840 --> 01:30:21,960
platinisms roughly speaking, that kind of view Pythagorean type views

1083
01:30:22,079 --> 01:30:26,359
of how the world is. But back to Plato, I

1084
01:30:26,399 --> 01:30:28,800
don't mean to get all often to that, but he

1085
01:30:29,399 --> 01:30:34,079
goes on to then discuss different arguments about the immortality

1086
01:30:34,119 --> 01:30:39,159
of the soul and reincarnation. One reason we don't want

1087
01:30:39,199 --> 01:30:44,720
to adopt reincarnation is that it doesn't make sense to

1088
01:30:45,399 --> 01:30:48,319
when we consider the fact that new souls, in other words,

1089
01:30:48,319 --> 01:30:49,840
we would have to have like a fixed amount of

1090
01:30:49,920 --> 01:30:53,119
souls that are continually being reborn. But unfortunately, the population

1091
01:30:53,319 --> 01:30:57,399
is growing, so you know that we have six to

1092
01:30:57,439 --> 01:31:02,479
eight billion people now, whereas previously there were not near

1093
01:31:02,600 --> 01:31:06,800
as many people just you know, one hundred ton years ago.

1094
01:31:07,640 --> 01:31:10,960
So if reincarnation is the case, where are all these

1095
01:31:10,960 --> 01:31:16,520
people coming from? Is it just animals? And every animal

1096
01:31:16,720 --> 01:31:23,039
is reincarnated by the way, Why animals and bugs? I mean,

1097
01:31:23,079 --> 01:31:28,159
what about you know, going down to Amba's or germs

1098
01:31:29,439 --> 01:31:32,600
or germs reincarnated people all. I mean, it doesn't It's

1099
01:31:32,680 --> 01:31:35,399
just it doesn't make sense. There's not really any reason

1100
01:31:35,479 --> 01:31:38,439
to believe in it unless you had the presupposition of

1101
01:31:39,840 --> 01:31:45,199
cyclical dialectical views of history. But I think the biblical

1102
01:31:45,279 --> 01:31:50,439
presentation of linear history makes much more sense. Later philosophy

1103
01:31:50,600 --> 01:31:55,840
was good in developing different analyzes of how the mind

1104
01:31:55,960 --> 01:32:01,680
is structured to understand things in a temporal way from beginning,

1105
01:32:01,720 --> 01:32:05,840
middle to end. There's some really good philosophy that was

1106
01:32:05,920 --> 01:32:11,079
done by Alistair McIntyre or Albani in his book on Perception,

1107
01:32:13,039 --> 01:32:20,239
action and perception and McIntyre on how conversation is structured

1108
01:32:20,319 --> 01:32:23,439
to have a beginning, middle, and end. That suggests that

1109
01:32:23,800 --> 01:32:30,760
there's a transcendental category or quality to the way we

1110
01:32:30,920 --> 01:32:36,399
are so constituted to experience things in time. Okay, so yeah,

1111
01:32:36,520 --> 01:32:41,840
you might have a story that is told from the

1112
01:32:42,000 --> 01:32:46,800
ending to the beginning, but even still, the way that

1113
01:32:46,960 --> 01:32:49,920
the mind is going to construct it is from beginning

1114
01:32:49,960 --> 01:32:54,960
to end. So this chronological aspect of how we're constituted,

1115
01:32:55,000 --> 01:32:58,479
how the mind works is something universally the case for

1116
01:32:58,600 --> 01:33:04,920
humans and when we experiments that have been done that know,

1117
01:33:05,079 --> 01:33:14,640
he talks about in his book where these sensory the

1118
01:33:14,800 --> 01:33:23,760
sensory experiments where these things were reversed or misconstrued or obstructed.

1119
01:33:24,680 --> 01:33:27,520
For example, people that spent a long time, you know,

1120
01:33:27,600 --> 01:33:33,000
wearing say a kaleidoscope mask or goggles or something like that,

1121
01:33:33,199 --> 01:33:37,880
or people that were blind for many years that first

1122
01:33:38,000 --> 01:33:41,000
gained sight that there have been cases of this that

1123
01:33:41,399 --> 01:33:44,159
you know, they have to actually learn depth perception over time.

1124
01:33:46,279 --> 01:33:54,119
These things suggest both empirical knowledge and pre empirical presensory

1125
01:33:54,600 --> 01:34:03,239
a priori intuitive platonic type category. Ocal knowledge is central knowledge.

1126
01:34:03,359 --> 01:34:05,640
So both of these things are the case, I believe,

1127
01:34:12,359 --> 01:34:16,880
So we wanna avoid dialectics because dialectics leave us in

1128
01:34:17,640 --> 01:34:25,640
dead ends philosophically and morally. If we think that dialectical

1129
01:34:25,760 --> 01:34:31,079
tensions are resolved through flight from the world soma sema

1130
01:34:31,239 --> 01:34:39,000
bodies the prison h central Platonic dogma, then we are

1131
01:34:39,079 --> 01:34:42,479
caught in a dialectic where the world becomes a source

1132
01:34:42,560 --> 01:34:45,399
of bad and that ultimately is you know, a Buddhist

1133
01:34:45,439 --> 01:34:50,039
type idea, the world's not bad. Uh, the world is good.

1134
01:34:50,199 --> 01:34:53,199
In Genesis one, God created all things and he said

1135
01:34:53,239 --> 01:34:56,640
they were good. So we don't believe that creation is bad.

1136
01:34:57,479 --> 01:35:04,000
And I think that's a much more positive way to

1137
01:35:04,720 --> 01:35:10,199
enjoy the world to live is to not view the

1138
01:35:10,840 --> 01:35:15,840
created substance of things as evil. So we also don't

1139
01:35:15,880 --> 01:35:21,680
want to adopt, you know, dualistic or Manichean or Zoroastrian

1140
01:35:21,760 --> 01:35:25,039
ideas that you know, there's two eternal principles of good

1141
01:35:25,079 --> 01:35:27,039
and evil, so we don't give evil any kind of

1142
01:35:27,079 --> 01:35:32,159
substantial existence. And unfortunately, even though Platonic tradition would eventually

1143
01:35:34,199 --> 01:35:39,279
develop an idea that the Eastern Church fathers the Patristic

1144
01:35:39,319 --> 01:35:44,560
era would would would liken evil too, that evil as negation.

1145
01:35:46,840 --> 01:35:54,279
There still is this lurking tendency to think that existence

1146
01:35:54,359 --> 01:35:58,880
in this world is somehow evil. There's still something kind

1147
01:35:58,920 --> 01:36:05,000
of bad about you know, matter and created existence, and

1148
01:36:05,119 --> 01:36:10,319
that's that's a that's locating the source of evil in

1149
01:36:10,399 --> 01:36:16,000
the wrong direction. Evil is the negation, has no substantial being,

1150
01:36:16,199 --> 01:36:18,840
and it is simply a move of the will away

1151
01:36:18,840 --> 01:36:23,319
from the good. It's the best approximation that we can give,

1152
01:36:24,039 --> 01:36:29,600
or we can think about negative numbers. Negative numbers seem

1153
01:36:29,720 --> 01:36:36,960
to in some way have a categter a conceptual existence,

1154
01:36:37,279 --> 01:36:43,760
but not a real existence. You know, I can't if

1155
01:36:43,800 --> 01:36:49,159
you have seven things and I take away three, you

1156
01:36:49,319 --> 01:36:55,640
haven't gained anything. You've lost. Okay, So these are analogies

1157
01:36:55,720 --> 01:36:58,399
for evil, like darkness is an analogy, But we don't

1158
01:36:59,199 --> 01:37:03,399
say darkness is somehow, you know, an evil substance, right don't.

1159
01:37:04,239 --> 01:37:08,760
You don't walk into a dark room and literally believe

1160
01:37:08,800 --> 01:37:11,720
that the darkness in the room is evil, And that's stupid.

1161
01:37:11,920 --> 01:37:17,199
So analogies for evil can be helpful from neoplatonic thought.

1162
01:37:18,079 --> 01:37:25,000
But unfortunately we must not accept the notion that particularity,

1163
01:37:26,319 --> 01:37:31,199
this world, et cetera, are in themselves evil, And that's

1164
01:37:31,279 --> 01:37:38,279
a crucial philosophical distinction, and most unfortunately a lot of

1165
01:37:38,680 --> 01:37:44,000
say Protestantism and Evangelicalism, actually sides with gnosticism on this point.

1166
01:37:44,840 --> 01:37:48,319
They would locate Calvinism as a great example, tend to

1167
01:37:48,520 --> 01:37:57,800
locate evil, giving it a substantial ontological existence. So he

1168
01:37:57,960 --> 01:38:04,159
goes on to talk about how uh arguments in logic

1169
01:38:04,239 --> 01:38:09,520
are valid contrary to the sinus synesis, the cynicism that

1170
01:38:09,600 --> 01:38:14,960
one encounters, contrary to the sophist and the relatives. Argument

1171
01:38:15,000 --> 01:38:20,159
and logic are are crucial to obtaining truth, and that

1172
01:38:20,319 --> 01:38:24,039
should be your guiding goal in philosophy, is to obtaining truth,

1173
01:38:24,680 --> 01:38:26,039
and you have to have a love for the truth

1174
01:38:26,800 --> 01:38:31,000
and want it otherwise you know that it's just this

1175
01:38:31,119 --> 01:38:37,439
is all waste of time. Then it gets into some

1176
01:38:37,560 --> 01:38:43,479
interesting discussions of mythology and Homer Uh, the crowning aspect

1177
01:38:43,560 --> 01:38:50,960
of which is the mention of the higher realms. So

1178
01:38:53,720 --> 01:38:57,600
the after life is presented in a very traditionally Greek

1179
01:38:57,680 --> 01:39:03,760
way with tartaras Hades, the four rivers of the world,

1180
01:39:03,800 --> 01:39:06,319
and this is all located inside the earth. So there's

1181
01:39:06,359 --> 01:39:11,800
a hollow earth where inside the dead go and the

1182
01:39:12,479 --> 01:39:16,640
four rivers of Hades flow. You know, from one in

1183
01:39:16,920 --> 01:39:18,600
one side of the sphere of Earth to the other

1184
01:39:18,680 --> 01:39:25,800
side of the sphere. Very very fascinating cosmogeny. Here he

1185
01:39:25,920 --> 01:39:29,760
mentions ether as I talked about in my articles. He

1186
01:39:29,840 --> 01:39:35,760
says that the higher dimension above ours is directly associated

1187
01:39:35,800 --> 01:39:41,319
with crystals and crystalline structure. He says that we only

1188
01:39:41,439 --> 01:39:45,359
know a few colors. Interesting, the color spectrum extends far

1189
01:39:45,439 --> 01:39:51,880
beyond what we know, and modern science has actually proven this.

1190
01:39:52,039 --> 01:39:55,920
We know that birds can see more colors than we can't. Amazing,

1191
01:39:56,039 --> 01:39:58,479
amazing stuff. The how in the world would Plato have

1192
01:39:58,600 --> 01:40:05,520
known that unless there was some truth to traditionalism and

1193
01:40:06,079 --> 01:40:12,079
ancient mysteries. So he talks about Homer discussing the hollow Earth,

1194
01:40:12,880 --> 01:40:16,479
and he gives an elaborate account of how things happen

1195
01:40:17,600 --> 01:40:20,039
when you pass over to the realm of the dead

1196
01:40:20,119 --> 01:40:25,760
and where you go on all these different levels. Definitely

1197
01:40:25,920 --> 01:40:32,960
definitely showing up later in Virgil. I'm sorry, well not

1198
01:40:33,399 --> 01:40:37,800
just Virgil, but excuse me, Dante in the Inferno and

1199
01:40:38,359 --> 01:40:46,880
in Pergascio. So there's an amazing tradition about what goes

1200
01:40:46,960 --> 01:40:52,600
on after death here that Dante is clearly borrowing from.

1201
01:40:54,960 --> 01:40:57,399
You know, in my personal opinion, I think there's a

1202
01:40:58,239 --> 01:41:02,159
probably something to this. You know, none of us knows

1203
01:41:02,199 --> 01:41:05,680
exactly the logistics of what goes on after you pass on.

1204
01:41:07,520 --> 01:41:11,239
Eastern Orthodox tradition has the idea of the toll houses,

1205
01:41:11,279 --> 01:41:14,479
which could be comparable to what Plato's talking about here,

1206
01:41:14,560 --> 01:41:21,079
But just a literary note here, and possibly an esoteric

1207
01:41:21,159 --> 01:41:25,800
chrometic note the idea of the soul's catabasis, the the

1208
01:41:26,359 --> 01:41:31,239
trek to the underworld and then the return. In literary theory,

1209
01:41:31,359 --> 01:41:37,079
this is standard where your central character undergoes the dark

1210
01:41:37,159 --> 01:41:39,960
night of the soul, you know, to before he reaches

1211
01:41:40,039 --> 01:41:44,840
a climax of his quest. And for Plato in the Fayido,

1212
01:41:45,399 --> 01:41:49,640
the reaching of the higher dimensions, uh that closeness to

1213
01:41:49,720 --> 01:41:55,119
the forms of heaven. If you will is where you

1214
01:41:55,319 --> 01:41:57,479
go if you're good, if you're righteous, if you're a

1215
01:41:57,479 --> 01:42:05,000
philosopher or true philosopher, not asophist, and the other lesser

1216
01:42:05,479 --> 01:42:09,159
realms comparable to Dante's Inferno. It's where you go if

1217
01:42:09,239 --> 01:42:11,319
you need to be purged. So it's kind of a

1218
01:42:11,399 --> 01:42:17,439
purgatory here. But the catabasis, that's it's called in Greek terminology,

1219
01:42:17,560 --> 01:42:21,560
the descent to the underworld of the return. We see

1220
01:42:21,600 --> 01:42:23,399
this in Homer, we see it in the Odyssey, we

1221
01:42:23,520 --> 01:42:30,119
see it in Fido, we see it in virtuals and iid.

1222
01:42:30,359 --> 01:42:35,159
Book six, and we see it in Dante. So the

1223
01:42:35,520 --> 01:42:41,439
great pinnacles of the Western literary and philosophical tradition have

1224
01:42:41,680 --> 01:42:46,720
this theme. And interestingly, in Christianity we have the doctrine

1225
01:42:46,760 --> 01:42:51,199
of Christ's herowing of Hell. This is also central to

1226
01:42:52,520 --> 01:42:54,640
I mean, even Roman Catholic theology has the idea of

1227
01:42:54,760 --> 01:42:58,760
Christ's descent in us sent to death. In return, Orthodox

1228
01:42:58,800 --> 01:43:00,680
hesa has a little more fleshed out with the idea

1229
01:43:00,720 --> 01:43:04,119
of the harrowing of Hell. Christ's descends to the realm

1230
01:43:04,199 --> 01:43:08,279
of the to where the fathers of the Old Testament

1231
01:43:08,359 --> 01:43:13,359
were bringing them up to enter into the heavenly abode,

1232
01:43:13,640 --> 01:43:22,439
which had previously been barred due to sin. So death, burial, resurrection,

1233
01:43:22,560 --> 01:43:28,439
and ascension of Christ is very comparable to the catabasis

1234
01:43:28,600 --> 01:43:33,880
of the Greek tradition. We also see this in the

1235
01:43:34,000 --> 01:43:38,199
film two thousand and one Space Odyssey. That's the narrative

1236
01:43:38,279 --> 01:43:44,319
that Kubrick is borrowing from the Odyssey, the journey that

1237
01:43:44,439 --> 01:43:46,479
ultimately takes one to the realm of the dead and

1238
01:43:46,640 --> 01:43:49,720
then to return and again, and the Greek tradition, the

1239
01:43:49,800 --> 01:43:58,239
return is cyclical reincarnation. In Christianity and the Egyptian tradition,

1240
01:43:58,600 --> 01:44:06,079
the return is erection. So fascinating, fascinating stuff here, crazy

1241
01:44:06,439 --> 01:44:14,079
esoteric stuff, just you know, wild. The dialogue concludes with

1242
01:44:15,760 --> 01:44:22,479
the recall recounting of Socrates taking the hemlock and dying

1243
01:44:23,880 --> 01:44:28,000
and he offers a sacrifice to a Slepias, the god

1244
01:44:28,039 --> 01:44:31,680
of health, the god with the rod and the snake,

1245
01:44:34,680 --> 01:44:43,359
so that hearkening to that interesting tendency of Socrates to

1246
01:44:43,800 --> 01:44:48,640
speak both of the gods and the myths as allegorical,

1247
01:44:49,159 --> 01:44:54,000
the ancient religious mysteries as allegorical, and at the same

1248
01:44:54,079 --> 01:44:59,399
time following them literally. He's literally sacrificing to a Sleippias.

1249
01:45:00,119 --> 01:45:03,800
He literally talked about guardian angels taking you to your

1250
01:45:05,560 --> 01:45:10,359
taking you to your everlasting abode in the afterlife, assuming

1251
01:45:10,439 --> 01:45:16,239
that you don't reincarninate, something also very very close to

1252
01:45:16,880 --> 01:45:21,479
what we see in Dante's Inferno. So that concludes this

1253
01:45:22,199 --> 01:45:25,000
in depth discussion here and again, if you want to

1254
01:45:25,720 --> 01:45:28,239
see more of this, if this is if you're listening

1255
01:45:28,279 --> 01:45:31,119
to this and this is what you dig, please do subscribe.

1256
01:45:31,760 --> 01:45:35,479
I need to gain more paid subscribers. There are plenty

1257
01:45:35,520 --> 01:45:38,760
of free subscribers who don't want to pay as fine,

1258
01:45:38,800 --> 01:45:41,239
I don't believe, I don't bother or I don't blame you,

1259
01:45:42,520 --> 01:45:44,960
but I would really like to move into doing this

1260
01:45:45,079 --> 01:45:48,640
kind of stuff full time, and it would be mutually

1261
01:45:48,680 --> 01:45:52,600
beneficial because all you guys could get more of this,

1262
01:45:53,159 --> 01:45:55,680
and I think a lot of people are turning onto this,

1263
01:45:55,760 --> 01:45:58,680
a lot of people are liking it, and you know,

1264
01:45:58,800 --> 01:46:03,479
we can just the potential here to delve into philosophy

1265
01:46:03,600 --> 01:46:10,039
and esoteric depths in all these different texts is tremendous.

1266
01:46:10,159 --> 01:46:13,199
I mean I'd like to, you know, go through every

1267
01:46:13,319 --> 01:46:17,560
single Platonic dialogue and work. I mean we could what

1268
01:46:17,800 --> 01:46:22,199
is this fifteen hundred pages? This is about one hundred

1269
01:46:22,279 --> 01:46:25,560
so far. You know, in a few months you could

1270
01:46:25,600 --> 01:46:30,000
have you could have an in depth knowledge of all

1271
01:46:30,159 --> 01:46:33,880
of Plato, right if you're willing to listen to my

1272
01:46:34,119 --> 01:46:38,000
droning voice for that long. But help me do that.

1273
01:46:38,239 --> 01:46:40,399
So subscribe for four ninety five a month if you can,

1274
01:46:40,479 --> 01:46:44,319
and I'll churn out more of this stuff. And I

1275
01:46:44,439 --> 01:46:47,319
want to conclude thanking you for the people that have

1276
01:46:47,479 --> 01:46:52,640
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