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Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekaana Show.
Thomas is here. We're going to pick up the series
on Continental Philosophy, Part four. All right ahead, sir.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wanted to dive in today. I mean where
we're going to dive in today too? Is Plato. Plato's
ill understood, ironically, because Plato's really the foundation of of
the Western canon. Okay, famously the postmodernists, you know, if
you know, we're talking about not not just Nietzsche, but
you know, Heidieger, Schopenhauer, everybody, Uh, all all commentators derivative,
they're in of that academic or intellectual canon, you know,
they famously, Uh the famous kind of lament or critique
of Plato is that Christianity is Platonism for the people. Okay,
but but even they sort of pejorative is misunderstood. Okay.
In the case of Anicheans and Nietzsche himself, it owed
you the kind of nihilism that, in dialectical terms, you know,
niets To believed was h the inevitable you know, outcome
of a Platonic discourse. Other people, however, most notably Carl
Popper and Carl Popper, his is a hugely significant figure,
especially in terms of post Marxist liberalism, you know, post
Marxist radicalism. I mean, you know, if if you prefer
but the left, like the contemporary left, they view Plato
as this sort of like proto fan just figure almost. Okay,
Soros's ng O, his his flagship n c O is
the Open Society Institute. That that's not just some sort
of excidental moniker. Carl Popper, he wrote this series of
volumes called The Open Society and Its Enemies that really
was his kind of grand rebuttal in his view of Plato,
or his like grand indictment of Platonic ethics and his
grand uh you know, assault on on on Western metaphysics. Okay,
So that, uh, that's one of the reasons I take
exception to it. I mean there's a lot of reasons why,
and I promise I'm not going on some primrose path tangent,
but uh, that's one of the reasons, excepting to when
people refer to the regimes being cultural Marxists, like they're
they're really not, like do cultural Marxists exist, Like, yeah,
there's a minority of of partisans who essentially abide like
the kind of stuff that grahamsy and adorable postulated, But
that's not that's not like when we think of like
regime ideology, that's not what we're talking about we're very
much talking about in brass tacks terms, Carl Popper and
adjacent sympathetic you know, philosophical systems and paradigms and his
big enemy, if you want to look at it in
those terms. I'm being reductionist for the sake of coherency
and brevity. You know, he he viewed he and they
viewed Plato as this this this figure of a great
of of of of a very destructive tendencies intellectually speaking,
you know. So that's something to keep in mind. I mean,
there's plenty of like reasons to critique Plato from the right,
but you know, a lot of people must understand things,
and a lot of diletant is right wingers who don't
really understand, uh, the kind of discourse intellectual discourse around Plato.
They they seem to really, they seem to really fail
on this point. It's like, what exactly the right rightest
objection is? You know, And it's again, it's not it's
not accidental that the left despises Platonism, and it's not
just derivative of their anti Christian posture. It's it's adjacent
to that. But it's something to screet and so that's
part we're gonna get into. It was probably gonna take
two to three episodes to fully flesh this out. But notably,
classical historiography in terms of validating or authenticating, you know,
statements by the imputative declarant is difficult. And I'm not
a classical scholar, and nor is would it be our
mission anyway in terms of this series. But so when
I speak of what's accepted as you know, indisputably according
to the commonly accepted criteria of classical scholarship. When I
declare what's accepted as the Platonic Dialogues, I'm abiding what
is you know, the mainstream sensibility derivative of the aforementioned criteria. Okay,
I'm sure people can argue at point that's not what
I'm here to do. Okay, So again, and I don't
proper to be a classical scholar, but there's a grant
toll of thirty five dialogues and thirteen letters that have
at various times been assigned to Plato as the source. Okay,
some classical scholars doubt if any of the letters contra
the dialogues are genuine. So we're not even gonna deal
with those, because that's a whole complicated controversy right there,
and it doesn't really cut to the crux of what
we're talking about substantially anyway. But the Platonic dialogues is
such that there's an essential consense this, you know, and
has been for some time on what is valid and
what is not. You know, we're gonna stick to the
dialogues that are accepted universally as being you know, from
the pen of Plato, as you were. And uh, Plato's
dialogues are interesting because they're written just that they're written
as dialogues. Plato never writes in his own voice. Now,
there's a few ways you can interpret that, you know.
You can interpret that as him sort of ironically acting
as witness so that no sort of discrete thought system
could be assigned to him, which I don't accept that.
You can interpret it as Plato trying to kind of
devise like a MANI literally to his hero and his
patron Socrates, or what I think is most persuasive. You
can read it as well. These dialogues were probably conversations
and controversies and arguments that play to himself have borrow
witness to and maybe he's combined certain aspects of discreet events.
You know, maybe he's combined the personalities of certain declarance
who are identified as the source of some of this material.
I think he probably wanted to make this readable, you know,
not to a mass audience, but to an educated cadre
of men who would be you know, not just sensitive
the you know, the importance of posterity of you know,
athne and cultural and intellectual products, but also the kinds
of people, the kinds of men who would be receptive,
do you know, kind of the discursive process. And interestingly,
in all the platemic dialogues, he's very clear about where
this is taking place in terms of the venue. Okay,
this is Anthens, this is Socrates pontificating, you know, but
he there's there's no dates on these, okay, And that's significant, Okay,
because I think that some people have said, well, obviously,
you know, his big concern was with the conditions surrounding
the Peloponnesian War, and he's trying to paint for us
a picture of a culture and decline. I don't accept that.
I mean, yes, Athens wasn't precipitous decline then, but when
cultures are ascendant or when they're precipitously deteriorating. If you
accept a Spanglerian paradigm, and I certainly do, that's when
the most kind of fervent intellectual activity is going to
be underway. Owing to reasons that should be fairly obvious.
But I think I think he didn't want his dialogue
to be assigned to any sort of discreete historical epoch
within the broader paradigm of you know, the uh, the
Athenian historical experience and uh, the Greeks were. It's interesting because,
as Spengler himself said, you know, the Greeks didn't have
the same sense of historical time as later Riyan derived
civilizations did, specifically the Faustian civilization, which is literally, you know,
men against time. Spangler suggested that the prime symbol of
Athenian civilization was the sensuously present individual body, like perfectly proportioned,
and you know, in one of these freezes or one
of these sculptures or statuary, you know, the figure in
question is situated in a high relief, a mist avoid
you know, the immediate sort of presence of the figure
in question, who's symbolic of the culture that is the
project of him is what's most significant. You know, there's
not this fixation with the past or the future. And
again I'm not a classic scholar or some sort of
expert in pre Christian metaphysics, but i do know that
the Greeks had an understanding of the universe. Their epistemology
at grand scale was that, you know, reality is perennial.
It has no beginning or end, you know, And this
is important. It's not just a kind of trivia that
is compelling or that has esthetic sorts of you know,
qualities that lend insight into the cultural mind. This is
actually important. But bringing it back a little bit to
political philosophy specifically, Plato is hugely important on account discreetly
of three dialogues. Those are the Republic, the Statesmen, and
the Laws, the titles of which should be fairly self explanatory.
You know, arguably pretty much everything that Plato, pretty much
all the dialogues that we can according to the terms
again of of commonly accepted evidentiary criteria, the dialogues we
can indisputably assigned to him. Arguably all those partake of
political subject matter, but those relating directly and unqualifiedly with
the political or the three that I just mentioned. Okay,
the subject matter of the republic, which is most significant
in terms of political ontology as well as in terms
of ethics, what constitutes a good society and thus you know,
like a good police. And again, to be clear, there
was no concept of state in in Doric Ethens, you know, arguably,
and this is about outside the scope even the later
medieval era. In the early modern period, the concept of
the state as we think of it didn't exist. However,
at least the primitive architecture in conceptual terms of it
existed in the modern period. In the ancient world, that
was not even something that could be apprehended. It just
simply didn't exist, Okay, And that's one of many one
of myriad reasons why it's completely misplaced. When these American
polls or when these sort of midweight regime adjacent academics,
these people like Victor Davis Hanson, I call them veneurial
disease Hanson. I think that's more appropriated. But like neo
cons especially have like a fetish for this, like declaring
that somehow they're the heirrors to the Athenian tradition of
state craft or you know, America is a post ninety
thirty three America is the heir to this like grand
philosophical tradition of government that's totally off base. Like arguably
what they are positing is the core tenants of you know,
good not just good government, but in archeological terms, what
constitutes the political Arguably that's the opposite of what was
being uh positive by by Plato. But moving on the
subject matter of the republic at base is what what
constitutes justice? Like the nature of justice. The general theme is, uh,
you know, what constitutes essentially like a good society. And
they're in you know, like what is what what is
like a good citizen? You know, within that society. And
there's various interlow hitters who represent not so much crudely
drawn but kind of rigidly characterized archetypes that we can
imagine populating you know, Athens during the time approximately the
Peloponnesian War. Okay, it's obvious that the subject matter in
sort of broad terms is how do we restore political
health to the police, you know. And again some people
like to interpret these three aforementioned dialogues as you know,
being born of a crisis modality. I don't agree with that, Like, yes,
I don't disagree that that's from those are the conditions
from where these things were emergent. But that's not the
purpose of them. You know, they're they're they're too uh
they're they're they're too universal. In skulle, I mean universal
in terms of being cross culturally applicable or being egalitarian.
I mean that, uh, these these are absolutely partialists and
not No nobody is suggesting, not the characters within the dialogue,
nor uh Socrates himself, as we can interpret Socrates's sort
of opinion to the kind of Plato. You know, none
of them are saying, well, these these are rare conditions
and this is an essential sort of emergent remedy. No,
they're saying that in absolute terms. What's being proposed here
is is is absolute in all times, in all places.
The conversation in the Republic, it's uh. It opens with
Socrates talking to Follows. The follows is like, you know,
like the kind of constant, respectable citizen of Athens. He's
very very old, he's very very well healthy, and he's
viewed as a wise man, and he's constantly pious. He's
not he doesn't drink to excess. He's not a womanizer.
He's not conspicuous with his wealth. You know, everybody knows
that he's very, very rich, but you know he's he's
a benevolent individual. His the life he's lived, and again
he's one of the he's one of the oldest men
in Athens. Is Uh is a model of propriety, so Socrates,
presumably Socrates, you know, is Uh is mastery in conceptual terms,
if not, if not in his own life, he has
mastery of what constugs the good. But what he can
learn from cafollows is what is what is it like
to be very old? You know, what is it like
to have your perspective over you know, over time and
over many phases of uh as we think of it,
historical development and uh things of this sort. So that
that's what that's what Saries could conceivably learn from him,
because not just the role sirrities plays in the dialogues.
It's not just I mean, and again, a lot of
people perceive this as kind of like, oh, this is
Plato's hegiography to Sorites. It's not just that, I mean, yeah,
obviously that's like a component of it. Although I suggest
it's more complex than a lot of people, including classical
scholars would admittedly know more than I do in the
subject matter. It's more nuanced than they allow. But Soritis
is sort of the omnipotent arbiter, like in these dialogues,
you know. So it's like, what, what what could he
learn from Cafalo's Well, Saary is not tremendously elderly, you know,
he doesn't have the same vantage point. And even if
he can apprehend these things intellectually, he hasn't lived a
very long life, so that that's what he can learn.
That's the that's the key sort of aspect of it.
But in the UH, in the course of UH their discussion,
the follows essentially declayers that, well, what, you know, what
virtue is is always telling the truth, okay, you know,
and the way we can distinguish justice from injustice is
essentially by this sort of primitive integrity. Okay. He seems
to imply that justice is synonymous with always telling the
truth and always paying back what somebody has received from another,
you know, whether we're talking about in business in personal affairs,
it weren't peace, you know, and say, is the rebuttal
of that is like, well, telling the truth and returning
another man's property isn't always just. You know, there's nuances here,
especially in times of war or crisis. You know, it's
not simply reducible to these things. And there's times, for example,
where it's necessary to not just in the case of
children or easily excitable classes of people, and not just
he lots, it's important to invoke fictions or lies for
the greater good. Or there's times where one might owe
a man a dead of honor or money. But you know,
it's why the assists that man in his endeavors or
to enrich him further, would lead to you know, unjust
outcomes because of what he plans to do. You know
this myriad conceivable outcomes or iterations whereby this sort of
absolute pole star of just honesty and paying one's debts
can't be said to constitute justice or the good. Subsequently,
as Gofollows is savaged in some basic sense, but Socrates
rebuttal Paula Marcos, who is a Golfellow's son like takes
up the mantle, and what he suggests is often interpreted
falsely as a kind of to represent a kind of
primitive communism, you know, like we could say that Carl
Popper's punitive interpretation of of Platonism is that it's quasi
fascist in terms of its elitism. You know, people on
the other extreme but equally prone to punitive critique trying
trying to try and rapidly these sort of like modern
postmodern characteristics to to to the to these dialogues, and
that's that's misguided for all kinds of reasons. We can't
we we can't talk about modern political paradigms as applied
to the republic, I mean, regardless that, yes, the blood
Eye dialogue is the progenitor of political theory in the West,
but that's not what I'm talking about, you know, and
it's it should be It should be clear that, you know,
nuance is what is what bridges the ancient pass to
the to contemporary or modern conditions. Paul Marco says that
what constants the good in absolute terms is uh, that
which is salutary, Okay, not only do the giver but
to the receiver, you know. And again intrinsic to that
suggestion is the fact that giving to a man what
rightfully belongs to him can sometimes be harmful to him,
you know, not all men judge wisely, if justice is
fundamentally salutary, and that it causates a reciprocal goodness, you know,
what that equates to in practical terms is that every
man should only own or control what is like fitting
for him or what is good for him. And this
is where the critique of this being proto communist comes in,
because that would seem to intrinsically demand the abolition of
private property, you know, And there needs to be some arbiter,
whether it's literally like a sovereign adjudicator, or whether it's
some sort of core principle or set of principles that
can calculate these things, and not just the remedial but
spontaneous way, you know, that would assign not just material goods,
but relative power of a social and political nature in
the most equitably efficient terms, you know. And axiomatically, that
would equate to a conclusion that extremely few people would
be able to determine widely across you know, cast and
discrete circumstance like what constitutes like an equitable distribution of
these goods, you know, And that would seem to imply again,
either some sort of enlightened dictatorship or some sort of
cadre which in contemporary terms would or twentieth century terms specifically,
would suggest some sort of you know, party apparatus that
is rendering these decisions. And again, that's the wrong way
to look at it for a lot of reasons. But
it's also even and even within the bounded irrationality and
even within the temporal you know, window of when this
discourse is taking place, the conclusion of Sogriate slash Plato
neutralizes any interpretation of this as communistic or fundamental legalitarian.
We'll get to that in just a second. Well, Sogerty's
rebuttal is basically is that, yes, that would tend to
imply the rule of the philosophers, you know, And when
we're talking about any discrete quality, we've got to disregard
any sort of abstract understanding of the good, because, yes,
like deririd of a practical reason, there are some things
that are absolutely good and some things that are absolutely bad.
But what constitutes an equitable distribution can't be reduced in
political terms, Okay, can't be reduced to postulates abstracted from
concrete circumstances. And furthermore, one of the things that separates
the president analysis that of Paula Marcos from his father
to follows to follow us. That seemed to imply that
his opinion is linked in his mind with the view
that well in justice is bad because there's bad karma
that attaches to it, and inextricably bound up with that
is the fact that after death, bad things will befall
the soul as well as the living de sentence of
the man who is prone to this sort of bad action.
Paula Margos displays no role in his take on this.
His view that justice must be salutary both to the
giver and the receiver is strictly a worldly calculus, furthermore,
reducing it from any sort of egalitarian paradigm that's absolutely
you know, applicable according to what is presumably universal paradigms
of inequity that are common to all human societies. Polar
Marco's opinions tempered by the understanding that one should ultimately
be guided by helping one's friends and harming one's enemies.
In political terms, Again, this isn't We're not talking about
personal criteria, although it's certainly possible for somebody's personal enemy
to also constitute, you know, a political hostile, and Socrates
agrees with that, and Sodri's openly states that that's what
can be understood to be civic responsibility is the fellow
feeling one has not just for you know, their family
and their their personal friends and their neighbors, but for
the paulas and wanting you know, justice to be realized
within that you know, fellow feeling community. And essentially, you know,
the moral imperatives that surround these positive duties to one's friends.
Not only do they end at the boundaries the paulas,
but you have an obligation to not assist those outside
the paulas, you know, even if they're not enemies. So
that this is where Plato, according to people like Popper,
to bring it back to the point of made a
minute ago, this is the big critique of the open society.
You know, I'm simplifying for the sake of brevity, and
we'll get more into this as time goes on. But uh,
that's what's being discussed. And interestingly, one would think this
goes without saying, and it did kind of in terms
of people's instinctive concepts, I mean, such that you know,
we're talking about the class of people or the cast
of people. We're capable of understanding politics and political matters.
At the theoretical level, this would go without saying. But
Plato went to the trouble through the mouthpiece of Socrates
to explicate this in terms that are not discreetly limited
to the paulice in which he was situated. I find
that fascinating. And it suggests too that this was being
written for the sake of posterity, you know, not just
immediate posterity, like well, Socrates is not long for this earth,
you know. And certainly Plato as somebody who was bearing
witness to the events of the Peloponnesian War and that,
you know, the sort of transgressions actually perceived, the alleged
to Socrates being availed to punitive justice and ultimately executed.
You know, he wasn't just he wasn't just guarding the
records that were.
Speaker 1: He was.
Speaker 2: Transcribing these things and creating these narratives, you know. And
it's not for me to say, like how much of
this was creatively confabulated and how much was word for
word what he brought witness to. In terms of the
testimony of the alleged declarence. But there was an understanding that,
in my opinion, that anybody would kind of come away
with after reading the Republic of the Posterity playod in
mind was for all time and that's remarkable. But moving on, Sorry,
I'm buried under wires. But yeah, So, I mean, if
we understand in its simplest terms, that the just man
he gives to his friends what is good for them,
and uh, the just man helps his friends, himself and
his police by you know, only only only acting to
harm knows who are his enemies in uh public and
and and political terms. Socrates, then he starts invoking these
loops and metaphors, which seems to suggests that justice is
an art like medicine. It's not. It's it's not. It's
not a science. So it was there might be like
scientific aspects to it. And to be clear, the way
that Athenians thought of science is fundamentally different than the
way that in post Enlightenment moderns doing This is actually significant.
We'll get into that moving forward. But you know, it
requires uh a man to be able to identify what
is best for the body politic at any given moment.
I mean, it goes out saying that what is best
in absolute terms has to be a guiding imperative, but
at any given moment, like what is best for the
police literally, like the body of the police, you know,
has to be diagnosed and and identified and delicately remedy
depending on the circumstances. Thus, like what is it's not?
It's not adequate to declare that justice must merely be salutary.
You know, there's there's got to be a curative and
uh and cultivated understanding of what's going to facilitate the
good you know. And obviously too, if we're reducing this
to personal criteria, which Pollar Margo's alludes to by versus
of the fact that he's not as sophisticated either as
his father could Follows or Socrates, you know, there's some
individual men who aren't really capable of benefiting from justice,
you know, even if they are people who we share
fellow feelings for, and even if they're not bad men
in you know, objective terms. So like again, these the
mechanistic criteria can't really be applied the human condition. And
that's actually a very kind of proto Christian understanding obviously,
and throughout the Platonic dialogues. There's a lot of that,
you know, I I made and this isn't I'm not
being cunitive at all, but one notices, especially among Roman
Catholics there want a lot of the time to invoking
platonic uh rationalizations for things. I'm not sure they fully
realize that there's nothing wrong with that, and I'm not.
I I've got a lot of love Roman Catholics there.
I'm I'm the I'm the sectarian minority on the ground,
like not just here, but with the fellows that click
up with you know they're there. They were overwhelmingly Catholic
onto geography other things. But you know, this is uh,
this is highly significance. And we'll get into we'll get
into a quias in coming weeks in this series, and
we'll get into like the tie that binds the classical
to the modern and the you know, the the ancient
heritage of of of Athens to Christendom and Foulstian civilization,
if you will, with the caveat that. Again, am not
any kind of classical scholar or anthropologists, but I if
you bear with me, I'm not talking about the subs
and everybody I think I think I'll be able to
devise a worthwhile outline. But essentially what this resolves in this, uh,
this sort of a secondary dialogue between Socrates and Paula Marcos,
is the conclusion that, well, you know, owing to what
I just stated about Socrates understanding of sort of the
the the the epistemic aspects of what constitutes you know,
a good citizen, really the only men who can sort
of stand an absolute judgment of the police and sort
of curate these ethical remedies at scale are you know,
they are are guardians. Okay, the guardians are basically the
sort of philosopher kings that people bandy in colloquial terms
when discussing Plato and the Platonic ideal. That's not that's
not really the best way to think of it, because
Plato more than anybody, because he's immersed in in the
life of I see him and whatever like Plato doesn't.
Plato's not saying so so we can discern his own,
you know, views on the good life and on what
is politically sound. He's not saying that, you know, Socrates
is the greatest man, that philosophers are the greatest of men.
It's almost tantamount to what Nietzsche said about, you know,
the messianic personage in historical terms, not theological. To be clear,
who would be aware of the fact that all preceding
value systems were mere horizons of a conceptual nature. You know.
Nietscha famously said that, you know, the common redeemer would
be Caesar with the soul of Christ. Okay, it's a
little bit, it's substantially less kind of apocalyptic what Plato
was suggesting. But essentially, what would need to be curated
in the ideal republic are you know, men of action
and men who have an instinctive view of what constitutes
the good, you know, not unlike what Sorel said was,
you know, the pre Socratic ideal in terms of, you know,
what constituted what constituted good life and what constituted a
civic morality. But obviously Plato was talking about what we'd
think of as a culture uring stratum, you know, and
that required a more complex and kind of complete understanding
of you know, historical phenomenon and processes. But you know,
I think, and again people welcome to disagree. We're not
talking about philosophy, philosopher kings. We're talking about a culture
bearing stratum that is self consciously aware of, you know,
the manner in which conceptual ethics and historical mandate deteriorates
over time as people simply take the the configuration of
the Polas for granted and believe that you know, justice
and truly cosmic terms. You know, whether we're talking about
you know, in the midst of the Peloponnesian War, a
bunch of Athenian assemblymen residing themselves, the fact that well,
this is in the hands of fortune under the gods,
or whether we're talking about you know today where people
just have this kind of faith and peoples have this
kind of faith and like endless material prosperity, whereby uncertainty
is by way of technological innovation and the regularization of
of commerce and things at scale. You know, well, you know,
we can we can just kind of we we can
just sort of rely upon like the internal logic of
these systems too, you know, sort of guard note of prosperity,
but a way of life that sort of cows within
priamters of reason, even if only because you know, the
systems that facilitate the informental prosperity. You know, we're derivative
of reason, and that means that, you know, it would
be self defeating for anybody to step verbally or literally
outside of those things or try to sabotage them. You know, this,
this is a really very real thing. And it's not
just it's it's not just affluentza or the malaise of
of you know, success or whatever people like to assign
whatever cause people like to assign to uh, crisis crises
of of morals in uh the modern state, you know,
or as they extrapolated those same phenomenon to Asian conditions
and trying to interpret what exactly was underway during the
Peloponnesian War. You know, this is the this is this
is fundamentally important. But moving on, you know, Socrates goes
as far and again this is this is key because
and this is you know again I realized, I'm coming
back a lot to Carl Popper, who was a very
sinister personage, but uh, the key to understanding a lot
of the president regimes ideological fetishes as well as its priorities.
You know, Popper was famously a huge proponent of scientism
that was the valuum of the open society and its
enemies that deals with Plato. I think it's volume two.
I gotta check that I actually have it on my bookshelf.
But his big what he viewed as his kind of
big trump card, was declaring that and he borrowed from
a lot of the same canon that John Rawls did,
suggesting that, well, you know, anybody who's interested in devising
an equitable social paradigm realizes that, you know, we can,
we can plan society. If not down to the most
minute discrete detail, you know, we can we can basically
plan in economic and sociological terms, you know, to eliminate
the most egregious injustices. And you know, one of the
reasons why all these people like Plato and all these
Christians and all these you know, conservatives, one of the
reasons why, you know, they were unable to improve upon
you know, human well being was because they were operating
according to myths that weren't falsifi biable. And this was
a lot This was what renee Yon was talking about.
When you talk about scientism, you know, people like Popper
weren't talking about science. They were talking about beliefs and
these sort of mythological postulates, which is ironic because their
whole their whole raison. Detro is going on declaring that
everybody else was sort of taken in by this retrograde mythology.
But like scientism isn't science. What scientism is is it's
a belief structure based on certain scientific postulates, which from there,
you know, the adherence of this declare that, well, the
only way of knowing is truly, you know, the methodology
of science, and anything outside of that, well you're drawing
upon things other than bare matter or you know which, Again,
the existence which can't be proven according to these criteria
that I or we have assigned is the only way
of you know, acquiring absolute knowledge. So you know, this
is this is just a recipe for tyranny, because the
only way we can know anything is to this methodology
that you know was just aforementioned, and there's so many
problems with that, it's almost difficult to discern where to begin.
It's like it's like playing with them all the role
playing games where it's like you're fighting a hydra or
something with like a thousand hit points, and it's like
which head do you try to cut off first? You know,
but people find that superficially really persuasive. That is changing now,
I might add, and uh, I'm the first to uh
point out that anybody, anybody who goes around saying like, oh, well,
religion is dead and now you know, we understand that
these progressive postults were correct. People like that are totally
out of touch. I mean, just like an objective terms,
either spend all their time on Reddit or they haven't
read a book of fresh Vintage in the last twenty
five years, like like nobody believes in that anymore, and
that's dead. Like whether whether everybody likes that or not,
that's totally dead, like the current paradigm. I mean, first
of all, what one of the things that shocked everybody
as the Cold War was ending was that it was
it was it was negatively theological imperatives that were taking
down the socialist community and nations as they call themselves.
But the way to understand things these days a mystic globalism,
aside from the fact that the primary loci resistance are
in in places that are are animated by my theological
principles like for Riley, for better or worse, whatever many
thinks about this, the Russian Federation, they view themselves as
being a vanguard of Christian doome against a profoundly evil secularism,
you know, diddo like Daryl Islam. Okay, like this is reality.
Whatever people think about either the you know, discrete belief
systems that predominate in some of these territories, or what
do people think about religion generally, Like this is reality.
Anybody doesn't understand that doesn't understand the last forty years
in terms of world historical phenomenon. But you know, that's
this entire sort of It's not just that Roman Catholicism
became this formative you know, aspect of Knoll Europe, that
Plato sort of became the starting point of Western metaphysics
as we think of it. It's it's because that's fundamentally,
you know, a highly sophisticated theological worldview and the synchronism
of Christianity of the kind that uh, you know, the
mur of our Ingians and the early I thought in
political terms. Okay, to be clear, all right, I'm not
saying that you know, the what the I'm not saying
these political cultures somehow were more theologically sound or sophisticated
in the early Church fathers. But there's a reason why
there was this sort of ready acceptance of the syndredism
between Platonism in the early Roman Church, you know, and
it wasn't just a matter of men who coveted power
and the ability the sort of mold like a nascent,
uh political culture that spanned literally a continent into you know,
something that was coherent and in a line with their
own peculiar vision of what constituted you know, the good
and human life at organizational scale. You know, it was
way more historically situated than that and frankly profound. But yeah,
it looks like we're gonna write about an hour man
that was rambleing. You'd forgive me, like it's, uh, there's
a lot here, and we'll, uh, I'll be more focused
in the next episode and we'll get into kind of
more of what's significant about Plato, especially as regards you know,
the Christianization of the continent, without getting ahead of ourselves.
But yeah, we'll uh well, we'll we'll finish up playo
next time. Man. I hope this wasn't too scatter shuff.
Speaker 1: No, no, please tell everybody where they can find you.
Did you have you had another incident with another platform, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, discord nuked us. I kind of anticipated that the
Discord thing was an experiment, like I know, discords run
by like gay Fees and stuff like I, but I
I want to find us a short form like chat
home where I can also like live stream discords kind
of the the normy sort of a platform like that.
And I wanted to get habituated to those kinds of
servers because honestly, I haven't like really used them before.
But I I'm going to continue with our Saturday night
streams This Saturday. I'm probably just gonna stream from substack
and I'll shout it out tomorrow when I decide where
I'm gonna shout it out from. But I I've got
a bunch of the fellas I've been suggesting other platforms.
I'll turn it into discord where the hosting isn't this
problematic in terms of sorious actors and what have you. Well,
i'll have this figured out in the next several days.
I just I had a busy week, like preparing for
the OGC kind ofly even you know, working on my
manuscripts and other things. But I promise i'll have it
figured out by this weekend in a semi permanent capacity.
But yeah, the best places to find me My online
home is Substack. It's real Thomas seven seven seven. That's
substack dot com. That's what the podcast is. That's a
lot of like my short to medium length form stuff is.
You know, I'm on I'm on Instagram, I'm you know,
our friends like like Pete here and and like Jay Burden,
they're kind enough to offer me a platform regularly. But
you know, I've got my own podcast and I do
a bi weekly current events show with Jay Burden called
Radio Free Chicago. Yeah, check out check out the substack
and from there you'll kind of get a sense of
where to find all my content. And I this is
a period of transition for giving me the fact that
things are kind of up in the air, but it's
I promise this will be for the best man and
in the coming days and weeks like well, we'll be
more accessible, all
Speaker 1: Right, And so Part five, thank you,