Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome a Mythic Mind, where we pursue wisdom
Speaker 1: in the path between primary and secondary worlds. I'm doctor
Speaker 1: Andrew Snyder, and I'm glad that you're here. Hey, there,
Speaker 1: and welcome back. Now, before we get going today, I
Speaker 1: want to make sure that you know about the other
Speaker 1: two Mythic Mind podcasts that are already running. First, there's
Speaker 1: the Mythic Mind Games podcast, which already has a couple
Speaker 1: episodes on Knights to the Old Republic, and in the
Speaker 1: most recent episode, I discuss Red Dead Redemption Tow's Arthur
Speaker 1: Morgan in relation to Tolstoys evon Iliach from his short
Speaker 1: story The Death of evon Iliach. Whether you like games, literature,
Speaker 1: or both, I think that there's something for you there.
Speaker 1: And in the next episode we're going to have a
Speaker 1: roundtable general discussion of Red Dead Redemption two. So go
Speaker 1: ahead and subscribe to make sure that you don't miss it.
Speaker 1: I think that this is an important venture that we're doing.
Speaker 1: It's a fun venture as we examine how ideas are
Speaker 1: communicated in various ways through the art form of video games.
Speaker 1: I think it's sometime that's often overlooked and it's often
Speaker 1: dismissed unnecessarily that there is. Indeed, there's a lot going
Speaker 1: on there, and I think that it's worth taking a
Speaker 1: general Christian humanities perspective into this domain and you know,
Speaker 1: hopefully having some kind of impact, but also just kind
Speaker 1: of enjoying what we're doing along the way as we
Speaker 1: do that. Also, you can go ahead and subscribe to
Speaker 1: the Mythic Mind Movies and Shows podcast as this episode releases,
Speaker 1: the one that you're listening to right now, there's already
Speaker 1: a brief introduction over there on the Mythic Mind Movies
Speaker 1: and Shows podcast, and on Friday, June twentieth, our discussion
Speaker 1: of the Empire Strikes Back will drop over there, and
Speaker 1: so from the rest of there, we'll be doing the
Speaker 1: rest of the Star Wars movies over on the Mythic
Speaker 1: Mind Movies and Shows podcast, and then we'll just see
Speaker 1: where we go from there. Obviously, the Star Wars series
Speaker 1: will will take us a good while, so make sure
Speaker 1: that you are subscribed to this show, to Mythic Mind Games,
Speaker 1: and to Mythic Mind Movies and Shows for all of
Speaker 1: your Mythic Mind needs. Now as I work on getting
Speaker 1: these new shows up and going and really focus on
Speaker 1: getting my book done soon. Over here, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be posting weekly content from my Fiction and Philosophy of CS.
Speaker 1: Lewis course that I ran in the summer of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. Throughout we'll have some other things as well.
Speaker 1: We'll have some episodes from our book club on A.
Speaker 1: Gustin's Confessions, maybe some other book clubs along the way,
Speaker 1: wat some occasional interviews, and some other things. But the
Speaker 1: Lewis material will be the most consistent thing happening here
Speaker 1: for a while, starting with the first and introductory lesson,
Speaker 1: called It's All in Plato the World of C. S. Lewis.
Speaker 1: I think I may have posted this here around the
Speaker 1: time that the class began back in the summer at
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, but I'm going to provide it again now,
Speaker 1: just to keep things together. You can also purchase access
Speaker 1: to the entire course through the Mythic Mind Patreon shop,
Speaker 1: which provides the video content for all lessons, recommended secondary reader,
Speaker 1: which includes many of the PDFs wherever I could get them,
Speaker 1: and recordings of our weekly live meetings which are not
Speaker 1: going to be publicly available now. Before we get to it,
Speaker 1: I do want to remind you that I very much
Speaker 1: rely on patron support to do the various things that
Speaker 1: I'm doing. The various things that we are doing. We're
Speaker 1: taking Mythic Mind all over the place right now, with
Speaker 1: book clubs and courses and three podcasts, all of which
Speaker 1: I'm hosting for the time being, and various other things
Speaker 1: in the works. And without your support, there's just no
Speaker 1: way that I'm going to be able to keep up
Speaker 1: this energy, keep up this productivity. But we have good
Speaker 1: momentum going right now, and I believe that we're going
Speaker 1: to be able to keep this going. But of course
Speaker 1: I need you to do that. And so if you
Speaker 1: want to help support Mythic Mind and to become part
Speaker 1: of this fellowship, then head over to patreon dot com
Speaker 1: slash Mythic Mind, and you can also find that link
Speaker 1: in the show notes and become a member today. Just
Speaker 1: five dollars a month gives you full discord access and
Speaker 1: an open invitation to participate in any of our shows
Speaker 1: as the topic interests you. So whether you're into games, books, movies, ideas,
Speaker 1: whatever the various things that we're doing here, you have
Speaker 1: open invitation to any of that with just five dollars
Speaker 1: a month, and if you become an annual Tier three patron,
Speaker 1: then you get full access to everything, including any of
Speaker 1: my courses that begin within that annual term. And if
Speaker 1: you want to support me without becoming a regular patron,
Speaker 1: then you can just leave a tip with the buy
Speaker 1: me a Coffee link that you can find in the
Speaker 1: show notes. Now, one more thing before we get started.
Speaker 1: I want to thank all my patrons, and by name,
Speaker 1: I want to thank all my Tier three patrons, So
Speaker 1: that's Mark, Amanda, Chase, Chas, Christopher Clinton, David, don Evy, Adam, Jamie, Justin, Justin, Kyle, Paul, Roger,
Speaker 1: Ross Tyler, and William We are growing the ranks here
Speaker 1: and I would love for you to join us in
Speaker 1: this venture the various things that we are doing as
Speaker 1: the Mythic Mind Fellowship. So head over to patreon dot
Speaker 1: com slash Mythic Mind to join today. But for now,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and get into our first video in
Speaker 1: the C. S. Lewis series called It's All in Plato
Speaker 1: The World of C. S.
Speaker 2: Lewis.
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the philosophy and fiction of C. S. Lewis.
Speaker 1: I'm doctor Andrew Snyder, and I'm delighted to be leading
Speaker 1: you in this study over the next twelve weeks as
Speaker 1: we dive into really the majority of Lewis's works of fiction.
Speaker 1: And so whether you've been reading Lewis for a long time,
Speaker 1: you know, you've been reading them on repeat for decades,
Speaker 1: or you're just now picking them up for the very
Speaker 1: first time. I hope that this is going to be
Speaker 1: a very meaningful experience for you. And even aside from
Speaker 1: a diversity in acquaintance with Lewis, I know there's a
Speaker 1: pretty big diversity in interest and backgrounds represented in the
Speaker 1: participants of this group. I know that some of you
Speaker 1: have advanced degrees in the humanities, some of you have
Speaker 1: probably done some academic work on Lewis. I know that
Speaker 1: there are many of you who just love good stories
Speaker 1: and you recognize that there is something more than rest
Speaker 1: on the surface in Lewis's writing, and you know that range.
Speaker 1: I mean, it kind of makes sense that you would
Speaker 1: have that built around Lewis, that would have this kind
Speaker 1: of community between those who just love stories and those
Speaker 1: who are drawn more toward the academic This because Lewis
Speaker 1: himself had a wonderful career both in the academy as
Speaker 1: well as in more popular literature, both in his stories
Speaker 1: as well as his more popular apologetics works, you know,
Speaker 1: his mere Christianity and whatnot. And so he really had
Speaker 1: two robust careers, to the point where you know, if
Speaker 1: you had never written The Chronicles of Narnia, he still
Speaker 1: be well respected in academia, in literary criticism, in medieval
Speaker 1: and Renaissance literature. And then likewise, you know, obviously he
Speaker 1: could have an entire career solely built off his popular works. However,
Speaker 1: the same time, his more popular works are very much
Speaker 1: rooted in deeper wells, and that is part of what
Speaker 1: I want to be doing in this course, and helping
Speaker 1: you to pass through the wardrobes that are each of
Speaker 1: his works in order to find the world that exist
Speaker 1: on the other side. So it doesn't matter if you
Speaker 1: are already a party to academic jargon or if the
Speaker 1: language of philosophy leaves you feeling a little bit confused
Speaker 1: and a little bit anxious. My goal is to bring
Speaker 1: everybody into the mix here so that way we all
Speaker 1: benefit and we all participate in a meaningful community that
Speaker 1: is doing meaningful things with these meaningful stories. In this
Speaker 1: introductory video, I want to do a few things. First,
Speaker 1: I want to tell you a little bit about my
Speaker 1: experience with C. S. Lewis, and then I want to
Speaker 1: tell you a little bit about the structure and flow
Speaker 1: of the course so you know exactly what to expect.
Speaker 1: And then lastly, I want to delve into some of
Speaker 1: the ideas from the classical and from the medieval world
Speaker 1: that are particularly important for Lewis, especially as we get
Speaker 1: ready for the Ransom trilogy, but even beyond. And so
Speaker 1: when we get to that part, I will let you
Speaker 1: know that this is going to be probably the most
Speaker 1: philosophically heavy video that we do. But again, I think
Speaker 1: that this is pretty important for just setting up some
Speaker 1: ideas that you're going to see again and again and
Speaker 1: again throughout his writings. After all, if you're familiar with
Speaker 1: the Last Battle, which we'll be getting to at the
Speaker 1: end of the course, you know, Professor Kirk, who very
Speaker 1: much bears kinship to Lewis himself, you know, says it's
Speaker 1: all in Plato, and so if you're going to understand
Speaker 1: what's going on there, as well as in many of
Speaker 1: his other stories, it's gonna be helpful if you know
Speaker 1: a little bit about Plato. If that's where it all is.
Speaker 1: And so I didn't grow up reading an extensive amount
Speaker 1: is something that I very much lamant today. I just didn't.
Speaker 1: It was not common for me to voluntarily pick up
Speaker 1: a book as a kid. Now that being said, I
Speaker 1: do fondly remember reading the Narnia books with my parents
Speaker 1: in middle school. I eventually made it through the Hobbit,
Speaker 1: but even that kind of dragged on. It didn't really
Speaker 1: connect with me yet. I wasn't yet prepared to really
Speaker 1: engage with fiction, and so that didn't really stick to
Speaker 1: any significant degree. Now, as I got a little bit
Speaker 1: older my youth, later teenage years, I did start to
Speaker 1: read a little bit more kind of nonfiction, theology works,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. I was sort of the mindset
Speaker 1: that if I'm going to make the time and energy
Speaker 1: investment in reading, well I need to learn something, And
Speaker 1: so I didn't see much value in picking up a
Speaker 1: novel in reading fiction. If I wanted a story, well,
Speaker 1: I did watch a movie. Now I cringe terribly saying that,
Speaker 1: because that idea is so anathema in my current evaluation
Speaker 1: of the significance of literature. But nonetheless, that's where I
Speaker 1: was so I really was not an active reader. Now.
Speaker 1: I studied philosophy in my undergrad at college, and then
Speaker 1: my experience or my relationship with literature really started to
Speaker 1: change in grad school when I took a course on
Speaker 1: Saint Augustine, and so during that course I read the
Speaker 1: Confession City of God, on Christian Doctrine, on the Trinity,
Speaker 1: his anti Pallasian writings, and that was really a formative
Speaker 1: time for me philosophically, intellectually, but more to the task
Speaker 1: at hand. The Confessions in particular awakened something within me,
Speaker 1: something about the way Augustine laid out his life narrative,
Speaker 1: you know, even though since it is nonfictionary, he's telling
Speaker 1: his own intellectual rather his own spiritual biography, his own
Speaker 1: spiritual narrative as he understands it. Well, that very much
Speaker 1: mapped onto my own experience, and so that's when I
Speaker 1: first started to get this idea that when you're reading
Speaker 1: a narrative, whether it's biograph, whether it's fictional, or whether
Speaker 1: it's nonfictional, something about narratives play a significant role that
Speaker 1: more didactic texts simply are not fit to do. And
Speaker 1: so that's when that started to sort of sync in
Speaker 1: that there is power in narratives. And then that really
Speaker 1: got deepened as I started to read and to study
Speaker 1: Soaring Crecguard, who became the subject for my doctoral dissertation,
Speaker 1: and all during this time my study of Augusted, my
Speaker 1: study of Carecguard, I started to kind of get opened
Speaker 1: up to some of these figures who are doing psychological
Speaker 1: analysis of fairy tales and myths and you know, bringing
Speaker 1: out the insights that are embedded in these narratives. And
Speaker 1: so these ideas continue to work on it continue to
Speaker 1: work on me until about twenty twenty one, when I
Speaker 1: was dealing with one of the most difficult seasons of
Speaker 1: my life. And those of you who've been connected with
Speaker 1: me for quite a while probably already knows something about
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. But anyways, it was during this
Speaker 1: time of great suffering when I started to become more real,
Speaker 1: when I started to develop a greater sense of desire
Speaker 1: for something that can carry me through the brokenness. And
Speaker 1: this is when I really started to get this strong
Speaker 1: sense of desire, it kind of broken longing for something real,
Speaker 1: and I didn't even know exactly what I meant by that.
Speaker 1: I mean, on one hand, you know, it was a
Speaker 1: time of deepening of faith. I learned what it means
Speaker 1: to press into the wounds of Christ with the hope
Speaker 1: that they could hold every faithful sorrow and would redeem
Speaker 1: them in the fullness of joy. And so during this
Speaker 1: time my faith is deepening, I'm pressing into Christ. I'm
Speaker 1: learning what it means to not just no truth, but
Speaker 1: to experience truth. And something about all of this my philosophical,
Speaker 1: intellectual development, my spiritual development. I was primed now to
Speaker 1: appreciate stories. Now, I'm very grateful that also during this time,
Speaker 1: I was connected with some solid people on Twitter who
Speaker 1: were really into Tolkien, and so I kind of just
Speaker 1: started to get pulled in through some of the content
Speaker 1: that they were putting out. A started listening to podcasts,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that up to this point my relationship
Speaker 1: with Tolkien was pretty nominal. I mean, like I said,
Speaker 1: I made it through The Hobbit in middle school. I
Speaker 1: watched the movies as a kid and enjoyed them, but
Speaker 1: that's pretty much where it ended. Well, during this time,
Speaker 1: thanks again to some of these people who were producing
Speaker 1: some worthwhile content that was getting my attention, I finally
Speaker 1: ordered the books and I started reading. Now, this was
Speaker 1: a definitive turning point in my life, not just in
Speaker 1: my literary pursuits, but in my life. From the very
Speaker 1: beginning of reading The Fellowship of the Ring, I knew
Speaker 1: that I was reading something real, that this wasn't made up. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously we don't live in a world with Hobbits and
Speaker 1: elves and dwarves and all this stuff, but at the
Speaker 1: same time, Tolkien is communicating something that is true. At
Speaker 1: the same time it might be different kind of truth,
Speaker 1: there's still nonetheless true. And you know, at the time,
Speaker 1: I didn't have the categories for understanding exactly what I
Speaker 1: even meant by that, but I knew is true. And
Speaker 1: one thing that really pulled me in and caused me
Speaker 1: to particularly attach to Tolkien was the way that he
Speaker 1: brought sorrow together with beauty and love and joy. This
Speaker 1: is a common theme throughout his legendary and writings, this
Speaker 1: idea that faithful sorrow and joy are directly connected. He
Speaker 1: has this great line in the Silmarilion that is something like,
Speaker 1: if joyful is the fountain that rises in the sun,
Speaker 1: it's springs are in the wells of sorrow. Unfathomed at
Speaker 1: the foundations of the earth. That might not be exactly right,
Speaker 1: but that's the basic idea, the idea that the Cross
Speaker 1: of Christ ultimately is the world tree that brings heaven
Speaker 1: to earth, but it also reaches down into Hell. And
Speaker 1: so it's this idea that the worst that we can
Speaker 1: experience is brought up to the best that we could
Speaker 1: experience when it is following this redemptive, crystological direction. And ultimately,
Speaker 1: I mean, that is the Christian message, but it's something
Speaker 1: that really was It's something that I really learned how
Speaker 1: to experience even better through Tolkien's writings, as well as
Speaker 1: many other things that I could talk about as well,
Speaker 1: but this is not a Tolkien class. And so I
Speaker 1: finish out Lord of the Rings, immediately go to Silmarillion
Speaker 1: and The Great Tales Baron and Luthian Falled, Gondolin, Children
Speaker 1: of Huron, as well as some other Tolkien writings, and
Speaker 1: then aside to switch to Lewis, and that's the natural
Speaker 1: next step, and I jumped right into Till We Have Faces,
Speaker 1: which once I got to the end, that absolutely just
Speaker 1: blew me up. And I just knew I needed to
Speaker 1: read everything that Lewis had to write, and so Rowly's
Speaker 1: ran through and I have not stopped running through as
Speaker 1: much Lewis as I can get my hands on. And
Speaker 1: so I say all that to say that I'm a
Speaker 1: pro this from kind of a unique perspective. On one hand, Yes,
Speaker 1: I came to Lewis later in life, relatively recently, right
Speaker 1: I started this, I mean started Lewis probably a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. But I approach him with an academic
Speaker 1: background in philosophy and theology, which I think gives me
Speaker 1: a unique perspective of dealing with Lewis. Also, I approach
Speaker 1: him with a passion. Right, this is not a slow
Speaker 1: simmering interest. This is something that I'm passionately invested in,
Speaker 1: and it's something that I've been filling my mind with continually,
Speaker 1: in text, in audio. Lewis very much lives in my
Speaker 1: mind at this point, and I'm delighted to be sharing
Speaker 1: some of that passion with you. I'm delighted to be
Speaker 1: sharing some of my research, some of my thoughts, some
Speaker 1: of the ways that I've appropriated Lewis. But this is
Speaker 1: not fundamentally about me. This is about Lewis. And I
Speaker 1: hope that in this study that you, if you don't
Speaker 1: already have it, that you will develop a passion for
Speaker 1: his writing. Not in the sense that you have to
Speaker 1: agree with everything he has to say, but I mean
Speaker 1: you should probably agree with most of what he has
Speaker 1: to say. And that's because, you know, he's often understood
Speaker 1: as being a stage of swords, a kind of profit
Speaker 1: in that he had penetrating insights into his times in
Speaker 1: ways that have really come to even greater fulfillment in
Speaker 1: our time. And the reason why he had such insight
Speaker 1: is not simply because he was a naturally remarkable man,
Speaker 1: although I'm sure he was that. But one reason why
Speaker 1: he was able to have such brilliant insights, why he
Speaker 1: had such a keen grasp on kind of what is
Speaker 1: going on in the world of ideas, in the world
Speaker 1: of human experience, is because he was deeply rooted in
Speaker 1: another time. C. S. Lowist was very much a medieval
Speaker 1: man in the way that he thought. Now that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that, you know, the medieval mind is full only
Speaker 1: of wisdom, but what it does mean is is full
Speaker 1: of a different kind of wisdom, for certain, than the
Speaker 1: kind of wisdom you would get from a modern man.
Speaker 1: Ciez Lewis talks about this in his introduction to athanasiuses
Speaker 1: on the incarnation. When Lewis talks about the value of
Speaker 1: reading old books, it's not because books are good just
Speaker 1: because they're old. Old books create the mistakes that were
Speaker 1: common during the time that they were made. However, those
Speaker 1: mistakes are going to be different than the mistakes that
Speaker 1: we make today. Two heads are better than one, and
Speaker 1: so if we can use the strengths of the past
Speaker 1: to correct the weaknesses of today, well, also again not
Speaker 1: missing the mistakes of the past, well would that not
Speaker 1: be better? And so Lewis stands apart as somebody who's
Speaker 1: able to operate under the auspices of medieval wisdom to
Speaker 1: understand what's going on in the modern era, to find
Speaker 1: our blind spots, and to give us warnings about some
Speaker 1: of the trajectories that we are on. Okay, so now
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about the structure and flow
Speaker 1: of this study so you know exactly what to expect. Well,
Speaker 1: each week is going to have typically a couple of videos.
Speaker 1: The first one will be a short introductory video that
Speaker 1: It's going to be short because I don't want to
Speaker 1: give any spoilers for those of you who are reading
Speaker 1: the stories for the first time, nor do I want
Speaker 1: to put too many preconceived notions in your mind as
Speaker 1: you encounter these stories, because I want for you to
Speaker 1: be able to explore these strange worlds as the narrative develops.
Speaker 1: I think that's important. And so the initial video is
Speaker 1: really just going to get at some major themes. I'm
Speaker 1: going to tell you what some companion text might be.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you some basic ideas that you
Speaker 1: should look out for, but they're not going to be
Speaker 1: very comprehensive, because again I don't want to ruin anything
Speaker 1: for you. And then at the end of the week,
Speaker 1: there will be a longer video in which we go
Speaker 1: back and do a deeper analysis, pointing out some of
Speaker 1: the ideas that are play, some of the implications, as
Speaker 1: ideas have some connections to other literature and that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Now, I should say that in this course
Speaker 1: we are doing a lot. We're covering a lot of
Speaker 1: ground in twelve weeks, and so what I can't do
Speaker 1: a chapter by chapter analysis. I can't look at every
Speaker 1: single detail because well, if we're going to do that,
Speaker 1: then any one of these books could easily take well
Speaker 1: more than twelve weeks. And so as far as the
Speaker 1: pre recorded videos, go, I'm really going to focus on
Speaker 1: big picture and looking at some of the details as
Speaker 1: they point out some of these big pictures or you know,
Speaker 1: a few of these major angles that we should look
Speaker 1: at that I think will play an important role in
Speaker 1: helping us to get more significance, more substance out of
Speaker 1: the text that will help us go further up and
Speaker 1: further in, which obviously is a phrase that many of
Speaker 1: you will recognize. Now in our ongoing discord chat, that's
Speaker 1: when we can really get into more of the details,
Speaker 1: more of the particular things that interest you, questions that
Speaker 1: you have, things that you see as particularly significant on
Speaker 1: the smaller scale level. And so you can find the
Speaker 1: link to the discord in the first module, and so
Speaker 1: follow that link over to the Mythic Mind discord server
Speaker 1: that's going to land you in the general chat over there.
Speaker 1: Once you get there, just post something about who you
Speaker 1: are and that you're part of the course, and then
Speaker 1: I'll make sure that you get permissions to join the
Speaker 1: course channel. Now, in that course channel, the discord channel,
Speaker 1: that's when you can said get into the various things
Speaker 1: that interest you. You can ask questions, you can have
Speaker 1: free flowing conversation with the other participants in the course.
Speaker 1: I strongly encourage you to participate in this. I think
Speaker 1: that this is going to be in a very important
Speaker 1: component of this of this experience that we're doing here together.
Speaker 1: It's an important way to build some community, and it's
Speaker 1: an important way to get more out of it, to
Speaker 1: kind of choose your own adventure and to focus on
Speaker 1: the things that are most important to you. And also,
Speaker 1: the discord conversation will play an important role in helping
Speaker 1: me to shape the live conversations that we're going to
Speaker 1: have on a weekly basis for those of you who
Speaker 1: are able to join, because I don't want the live
Speaker 1: conversations to just be more of me talking about the
Speaker 1: things that interests me. I want those conversations to be
Speaker 1: based on the things that interest you, and so kind
Speaker 1: of mining that discord conversation is going to help me
Speaker 1: to structure those live conversations to be most meaningful, to
Speaker 1: be most valuable to you, the people who are actually
Speaker 1: participating in the course, and exactly what those live conversations
Speaker 1: will look like will largely depend on how many people
Speaker 1: are able to join live. But I think that that's
Speaker 1: going to be a good component of the study, and
Speaker 1: if you're not able to make it, I'll make sure
Speaker 1: that they are recorded and posted. That way you can
Speaker 1: watch the recording. And so that's basically how this course
Speaker 1: is going to run. Now I'm going to go take
Speaker 1: a coffee break and then I'm going to come back
Speaker 1: and we'll talk a little bit about some of the
Speaker 1: philosophical ideas that shape Lewis's thought. All right, So, as
Speaker 1: I said, this is going to be the most extensive
Speaker 1: philosophical conversation that we have. And really what we need
Speaker 1: to do is we need to introduce you to Plato,
Speaker 1: and we need to introduce you to the medieval view
Speaker 1: of the cosmos. But before we even get to Plato,
Speaker 1: we need to go a little bit before Plato. And
Speaker 1: so we're still in ancient Greece, but we're going to
Speaker 1: go to the pre Socratic period, which simply means the
Speaker 1: philosophers who came before Socrates. Now, this is when we
Speaker 1: get the beginning of a very important conversation for the
Speaker 1: Greek philosophers as well as for really the entire history
Speaker 1: of philosophy, and that is the conversation between being and becoming,
Speaker 1: between movement and stability, and really the question at play
Speaker 1: here is is ultimate reality, this world that we experience
Speaker 1: with our senses, the material world, which is always moving. Right,
Speaker 1: We are always in a process of change. The world
Speaker 1: around us is in a process of change. That's what
Speaker 1: it means to be creatures of time living in a
Speaker 1: world of time. Time is change or is there a
Speaker 1: stable truth? Is reality something more than the material world,
Speaker 1: something that we access with our minds, right, that we're
Speaker 1: able to use reason to grasp, to latch onto, to
Speaker 1: gain some sense of stable identity and purpose and meaning
Speaker 1: that transcends this moving world around us. And so that
Speaker 1: really is the question that's at play here. And so
Speaker 1: firston we're going to talk about Heraclitis. Now, Heraclitis was
Speaker 1: very much a philosopher of becoming, meaning he focused on
Speaker 1: the change that we experienced, the fundamentally unstable reality that
Speaker 1: we experience. And so he famously said that all of
Speaker 1: existence is like a ripper, and you can never step
Speaker 1: into the same water twice. And so we are always moving.
Speaker 1: The world around us is always moving. There's no such
Speaker 1: thing as repetition. We are always moving down the river.
Speaker 1: Now this creates some problems. For one thing. It kind
Speaker 1: of means that there's really no me across time. Right,
Speaker 1: everything is moving, then whatever it is that I identify as
Speaker 1: myself is also constantly changing. And so when I think
Speaker 1: of myself existing across time, when I think of my
Speaker 1: own past, present, and potential future, really that itself has
Speaker 1: to be some kind of illusion. If everything is in
Speaker 1: a process of change, that means there's no meed that
Speaker 1: endures across time. Furthermore, there's a problem regarding our conceptions
Speaker 1: of truth, because if I'm always changing, the world is
Speaker 1: always changing, then any thought, any impression that I have
Speaker 1: in my mind never truly correlates with the way things
Speaker 1: actually are. If for no other reason, there's always a
Speaker 1: delay in representation between the way things are and the
Speaker 1: way things are image in my mind, and so I
Speaker 1: lose any kind of sense of identity if everything changes.
Speaker 1: Also I lose any sense of enduring truth if everything changes,
Speaker 1: and so I'm kind of lost with nothing more than
Speaker 1: sense experience. This was Heraclitus's focus, the idea that everything
Speaker 1: is in a process of change. However, it is worth
Speaker 1: noting that even Heraclitis recognized that there's one thing that
Speaker 1: does not change, and that is the process of change itself,
Speaker 1: and so the river might always be moving, but the
Speaker 1: river always moves in a consistent manner, and you understand
Speaker 1: the forces at work here, the process of change itself,
Speaker 1: then you're actually able to predict where the river goes.
Speaker 1: And so this source of this one source of consistency
Speaker 1: for Heraclitis is the process of change itself, or that
Speaker 1: which causes change. And this is the idea that he
Speaker 1: identified as the lagos, which is obviously where we get
Speaker 1: our word logic. But the word lagos literally means word,
Speaker 1: and so the word is the one stable reality that
Speaker 1: gives some sense of order, that gives that allows us
Speaker 1: an ability to have something like understanding. The more we
Speaker 1: understand the lagos, the more we understand the process of change,
Speaker 1: and in turn, the more we even understand ourselves. And
Speaker 1: so this logosper Heraclitis, is a kind of a divine
Speaker 1: or at very least a semi divine reality that structures
Speaker 1: and maintained order amidst this world of change. So why
Speaker 1: would the word be this principle of order. Well, imagine
Speaker 1: that you had a bag of scrabble tiles that you
Speaker 1: poured out randomly. You have this just random arrangement of letters. Well,
Speaker 1: what do those letters mean, And by themselves they mean nothing.
Speaker 1: You just have a cacophony of sounds. There's no inherent
Speaker 1: meaning there. However, when you take those tiles and then
Speaker 1: you give them the form of a word, well, now
Speaker 1: the otherwise discordant sounds are brought together into something meaningful,
Speaker 1: something ordered. And so a word gives form to discordant sounds,
Speaker 1: discordant letters. That then allows them to have meaning. And
Speaker 1: now each particular letter now has meaning within this form
Speaker 1: that it would not have by itself. And so a
Speaker 1: word brings form, a word brings order, a word brings meaning,
Speaker 1: and I mean of course this should sound familiar if
Speaker 1: you're familiar with John's Gospel, which begins in rk henhold Lagos.
Speaker 1: In the beginning was the word. John is going to
Speaker 1: identify the Word with Christ. He is the one through
Speaker 1: whom all things are made. He is the one in
Speaker 1: whom all things hold together. And so if we're going
Speaker 1: to understand proper order within the New Testament framework, we
Speaker 1: have to understand the Lagos. We have to understand Christ,
Speaker 1: the one in whom, to whom and through whom are
Speaker 1: all things. And so anyways, herot Kleidis, he doesn't have
Speaker 1: a what I would call a fully developed idea of stability,
Speaker 1: but he's starting to get there. Nonetheless, he's principally identified
Speaker 1: as a philosopher of becoming. He gives us the world
Speaker 1: of change. Well, on the other side, we have a
Speaker 1: philosopher of being named Parmenides. Parmenides believed that Reason says
Speaker 1: that movement is impossible. Therefore the change that we experience
Speaker 1: with our senses is ultimately an illusion. It's not the
Speaker 1: real world because again Reason dictates that change must be impossible.
Speaker 1: His disciples, Eno gives us a couple of parables that
Speaker 1: help us to understand this. So he says that, imagine
Speaker 1: there's a race between Achilles and a tortoise. Now, obviously
Speaker 1: Achilles has the advantage, and so the tortoise is can
Speaker 1: get a head start we'll say one hundred yards, and
Speaker 1: so the tortoise is at one hundred yard mark when
Speaker 1: Achilles starts at the beginning, and they're off to the
Speaker 1: races well before Achilles can catch up even where the
Speaker 1: tortoise began at the one hundred yard mark. First Achilles
Speaker 1: has to go fifty yards well before he can hit
Speaker 1: the fifty yard mark. He first has to go twenty
Speaker 1: five yards, and then twelve and a half, and then
Speaker 1: six and a quarter, and so forth, and so forth
Speaker 1: and so forth into infinity. Now, if you can divide
Speaker 1: distance into infinity, then what that means is that there
Speaker 1: is an infinite amount of space between any two distances. Well,
Speaker 1: how long does it take you to cross an infinite
Speaker 1: amount of space an infinite amount of time, which is
Speaker 1: another way of saying that it's impossible, right, you can
Speaker 1: never cross an infinite space. And so what this means
Speaker 1: is that there's an infinitemount of space between any two points. Therefore,
Speaker 1: movement is rationally impossible. And so Parmenides emphasize the fact
Speaker 1: that all reality is fundamentally stable because reason dictates that
Speaker 1: it must be, and that our sense experience of the
Speaker 1: world around us is simply an illusion of this reality
Speaker 1: that we know by reason. And so now we have
Speaker 1: our philosopher of becoming, and now we have our philosopher
Speaker 1: of being, we start to get a synthesis in Plato. Now,
Speaker 1: the best introduction to Plato is probably going where introductions
Speaker 1: to Plato usually begin, and that is his allegory of
Speaker 1: the cave, which comes from the Republic. In the Republic,
Speaker 1: Plato's teacher turned character Socrates, tells a story about these
Speaker 1: people who spent their entire life chained up in a cave.
Speaker 1: They can't even turn their heads to look behind them
Speaker 1: or to the side. All they can do is look
Speaker 1: at this wall that is in front of them, which
Speaker 1: is illuminated, and shadows periodically pass across this wall, across
Speaker 1: this illuminated space that they can look at. Now they
Speaker 1: start to develop this hierarchy system where the wisest among
Speaker 1: them are able to pick up on the patterns and
Speaker 1: they can detect which shadow is going to pass next.
Speaker 1: And so they get this whole value system based around
Speaker 1: the right detection of shadows, the figuring out of the pattern. Well,
Speaker 1: eventually one of the prisoners is set free. We're not
Speaker 1: really told how, but that doesn't really matter. So he
Speaker 1: gets out of his chains. He looks behind him and
Speaker 1: he sees this roaring fire. Now, at first, he's blinded
Speaker 1: by the light because he's never seen light that directly before.
Speaker 1: But eventually his eyes adjust and you see what's really
Speaker 1: going on here, that this fire is burning in the cave,
Speaker 1: and in front of the fire are passing these two
Speaker 1: dimensional cutouts of these animals that are then casting shadows
Speaker 1: on the wall. And so now he sees a glimpse
Speaker 1: of what is really going on here, that the entire
Speaker 1: world that he's known before was nothing but a shadow.
Speaker 1: It was a pale imitation of this more real reality. Well,
Speaker 1: he continues to explore the cave, he eventually finds his
Speaker 1: way out into the open world, and at first he's
Speaker 1: blinded again now by the light of the sun, but
Speaker 1: eventually his eyes adjusts and he starts to look around
Speaker 1: and he sees all of these realities that he had
Speaker 1: never known before. He actually even sees the animals that
Speaker 1: were imaged in the cutouts, which then created images on
Speaker 1: the wall. And so now he's able to see the
Speaker 1: real world for the very first time. And so he
Speaker 1: gets this paradigm shift in his mind and he recognizes
Speaker 1: that everything that he experienced before was but a pale
Speaker 1: imitation of this grander, more real reality. Well, remembering his
Speaker 1: fellow prisoners back in the cave, he wants to go
Speaker 1: back and share the good news of what he's experienced,
Speaker 1: this new revelation, and so he goes to them and
Speaker 1: he starts to explain to them all the things that
Speaker 1: he's seen, and that this world that they know is
Speaker 1: built fundamentally on a lie, it's not real. Well, they
Speaker 1: don't take kindly to that at first, they think he's mad,
Speaker 1: and eventually they just get so angry because he's disrupting
Speaker 1: their value system that they actually end up killing him.
Speaker 1: And that's how the parable ends. And obviously when player's
Speaker 1: telling the story, he very much has his own teacher,
Speaker 1: Socrates in mind, who is executed by the court of
Speaker 1: Athens for corrupting the youth. Now in this parable we
Speaker 1: get being and becoming brought into relation, and so the
Speaker 1: world of shadows is the world of becoming. It's this
Speaker 1: world that's constantly moving. It's not stable, right, This is
Speaker 1: the river of Heraclitis is constantly moving, and so to
Speaker 1: that degree, in many ways, it's not real because to
Speaker 1: be real, to have actuality, well there has to be
Speaker 1: something that you're being actualized into, otherwise you are constantly moving.
Speaker 1: And so these shadows are the world of move In
Speaker 1: many ways, they're not real, they're simply reflections of reality.
Speaker 1: As the prisoner progressed, you know, with each stage, first
Speaker 1: seeing the fire and then eventually seeing the light of
Speaker 1: the sun. You know, he's temporarily blinded. That's because you know,
Speaker 1: whenever you're getting to a new paradigm, you have to
Speaker 1: develop the tools for understanding what it is that you're
Speaker 1: looking at. In fact, there's a great line out of
Speaker 1: the side of the planet where it rans them. The
Speaker 1: main character is, you know, in this strange new reality.
Speaker 1: And he makes the point that you really can't see
Speaker 1: something until you know what it is. And so the
Speaker 1: prisoner is going on this blinding journey toward greater vision
Speaker 1: and eventually finds his way outside where he's able to
Speaker 1: see things by the light of the true light. He's
Speaker 1: able to see things by the light of the sun. Now,
Speaker 1: the sun, in this allegory represents the highest reality for Plato.
Speaker 1: This is the good. Perhaps it wouldn't even be wrong
Speaker 1: to say that this is God for Plato. Now, as
Speaker 1: with the sun, right, the best way study the good
Speaker 1: is not staring at it directly. You don't study the
Speaker 1: sun by looking at it directly. You study the sun
Speaker 1: by looking at its effects. You look at its heat,
Speaker 1: and most importantly, though, you look at that which it illuminates.
Speaker 1: So too, the good for Plato is really not something
Speaker 1: that we can clearly define. It's not something that we
Speaker 1: fundamentally look at. It's that by which we see everything else.
Speaker 1: In Plato's Dialogue Uthifhro, Socrates encounters this guy named Euthifro
Speaker 1: outside the courthouse and Socrates ask Euthifro what he's doing,
Speaker 1: and Euthuphro says that he's bringing charges of murdered against
Speaker 1: his father for killing one of their servants. And Socrates says,
Speaker 1: all right, Eutheriro, you're bringing charges of murder against your
Speaker 1: own father. Clearly you are somebody who understands piety. You
Speaker 1: have some ethical expertise, and so tell me, Eutherifhro, what
Speaker 1: is good? And Euthipro says, what I'm doing right now
Speaker 1: is good. Obviously that didn't really answer his question, and
Speaker 1: so they go back and forth a little bit, but
Speaker 1: it becomes evident the question that Socrates is asking is
Speaker 1: what is it that makes good things good? And Eutheriphro
Speaker 1: tries a couple of times to answer this question. He says, well,
Speaker 1: it's what the gods love, and Socrates says, okay, what
Speaker 1: Obviously the gods in the Greek system they don't all
Speaker 1: agree with each other, and so is it what some
Speaker 1: of the gods love, and Etherophroo says, okay, it's whatever,
Speaker 1: all the gods love, that twas good, and then Socrates says, okay,
Speaker 1: we're seeing to be getting somewhere, But it doesn't really
Speaker 1: answer the question because is goodness what the gods happen
Speaker 1: to love? Or do the gods loving something make it good?
Speaker 1: And Eutherophra at that point pretty much says I've got
Speaker 1: to wash my hair and then runs off scene and
Speaker 1: that's the end of the dialogue. But really that question
Speaker 1: of what makes good things good is very important for Plato,
Speaker 1: and ultimately what makes good things good is the good. However,
Speaker 1: we can only say but so much about what the
Speaker 1: good is. And that's because if we're gonna say that
Speaker 1: reason itself is good, then what that means is whatever
Speaker 1: this goodness is that is implicit in reason, stands above
Speaker 1: and beyond reason. Right reason participates in the good. The
Speaker 1: good doesn't participate in reason. And so because reason as
Speaker 1: a good thing is nested within this grander reality, we're
Speaker 1: talking about something that stands above reason is something that
Speaker 1: reason itself cannot see. It's interesting to note that in
Speaker 1: the Psalms sometimes God is portrayed as residing in unapproachable light.
Speaker 1: Other times you portrayed as residing in impenetrable darkness. And
Speaker 1: that's because once you get above the level of finite reason,
Speaker 1: your categories of understanding entirely fall apart. It's so whether
Speaker 1: talking about blinding light or absolute darkness, it's more or
Speaker 1: less the same thing. We can't find our ways around anymore.
Speaker 1: Our categories of understanding have fallen apart. This is why
Speaker 1: when you read the medievals right, even the very reasoned
Speaker 1: based medieval thinkers, you eventually reach a point where they
Speaker 1: start to fall into a kind of mysticism idea that
Speaker 1: as you approach that by which you reason, your reason
Speaker 1: can no longer carry you. So any distance that you're
Speaker 1: going to progress beyond reason has to be something that's
Speaker 1: not necessarily irrational but superrational. That something that's able to
Speaker 1: carry you the rest of the gap from the from
Speaker 1: the bounds of reason up to the ultimate, namely to
Speaker 1: the dwelling place of God. And so there is a
Speaker 1: kind of mysticism that is implicit in this idea that
Speaker 1: we see very clearly in Plato. And so we never
Speaker 1: can clearly see the good, but we see things by
Speaker 1: the good, and in getting a better understanding in might
Speaker 1: and soul, in affections and appetites. By cultivating our soul
Speaker 1: to move closer and closer to the good, we are
Speaker 1: moving on the path of wisdom, even though ultimately we're
Speaker 1: moving towards something more real than we can actually know
Speaker 1: through our use of reason. Now, even though we can
Speaker 1: never understand the good fully through our reason, what we
Speaker 1: can know through reason is what he calls the world
Speaker 1: of the forms. This is the ideals, right, This is
Speaker 1: the world of being. This is the world that doesn't change.
Speaker 1: And so just as we have down here in the
Speaker 1: changing world, we have appearances. We have what it looks
Speaker 1: like to be human. We have what it looks like
Speaker 1: to execute justice. We have what it looks like to
Speaker 1: be a horse, we have what it looks like to love.
Speaker 1: But all of these appearances are imitations of the reality,
Speaker 1: the things that they could be if they were fully themselves.
Speaker 1: And so, according to Plato, we have never experienced the
Speaker 1: ideal of love in this world. We've always experienced some
Speaker 1: corrupted form, some kind of shadow. So two, none of
Speaker 1: us have ever fully actualized our ideals as humans. The
Speaker 1: ideal of human nature resides in this world of being.
Speaker 1: But as soon as the world of being enters into
Speaker 1: material reality, it enters necessarily into a world of change.
Speaker 1: And if you're changing from better to worse, what that
Speaker 1: means is that the material world is not just a
Speaker 1: place of change, it's ultimately a place of corruption within
Speaker 1: the platonic mindset. And so there's something inherently inferior. It's
Speaker 1: something inherently corruptible about material reality. And so nothing that
Speaker 1: we experience with our senses is the ideal is what
Speaker 1: it could be, what it perhaps should be if it
Speaker 1: were being ethically responsible. And so the idea of love,
Speaker 1: the ideal of justice, the ideal of what it means
Speaker 1: to be human, even the ideal of what it means
Speaker 1: to be a horse or whatever. Everything that we see
Speaker 1: with our eyes is an imperfect copy of the ideal
Speaker 1: unmoving reality of what it could be and what it
Speaker 1: should be. And so what we need to do is
Speaker 1: to figure out what true justice actually is, what true
Speaker 1: love actually is, what it truly means to be human.
Speaker 1: And then we continually cultivate not only our understanding that
Speaker 1: our appetites are affections, and so that all of what
Speaker 1: we are is increasingly being conformed to this world being,
Speaker 1: to the ideal, to the form, the way that things
Speaker 1: should be, the way that things could be. And as
Speaker 1: we move increasingly toward this reality, the more real we
Speaker 1: in turn become. And so wisdom in the platonic mindset
Speaker 1: is very much based off the orientation of your soul.
Speaker 1: Which way are you facing? You know, are you facing
Speaker 1: yourself toward the shadows? And if so, then you are
Speaker 1: increasingly moving toward the shadows, and you are really approaching nothingness.
Speaker 1: And that's what evil is, right, It is a lack
Speaker 1: of goodness, and so evil and nothingness are really more
Speaker 1: or less the same thing. That's not a way of
Speaker 1: saying that, well, I guess it is a way of
Speaker 1: saying that evil isn't real. Evil doesn't exist, and that's
Speaker 1: because it is a movement away from reality, away from
Speaker 1: the actuality of things. You're moving toward becoming, away from being.
Speaker 1: Whereas an orientation toward wisdom, toward the ideal, toward the
Speaker 1: way that things should be, means that you are facing
Speaker 1: reality and you are increasingly moving toward it, seeking to
Speaker 1: participate in reality as it exists in this stable world
Speaker 1: of the forms, and you're trying to nursure the world
Speaker 1: around you, so that it is kind of cultivated into
Speaker 1: something real, something stable, something true. And I think that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of wisdom in this right, whether or
Speaker 1: not you do it or don't take Plato as a whole,
Speaker 1: I mean, I certainly don't take Plato as a whole.
Speaker 1: I think that there is wisdom in the fact that
Speaker 1: wisdom itself is not only a matter of the mind,
Speaker 1: although it absolutely involves the mind, it is also a
Speaker 1: matter of the affections. It's a matter of moving towards
Speaker 1: something that we principally cannot grasp with our minds because ultimately,
Speaker 1: I mean, as we're pursuing the ideal, pursuing the world
Speaker 1: that we can do through the reason. Ultimately, we're doing
Speaker 1: that because we're pursuing something we can't know by reason, right,
Speaker 1: we're pursuing the good ultimately. And so for Plato philosophy,
Speaker 1: the path of wisdom very much is an act of love.
Speaker 1: It is not simply a cerebral matter. And that's what
Speaker 1: the word philosophy means, philosophia. It's the love of wisdom.
Speaker 1: And this really plays an important role in his dialogue
Speaker 1: the Fato. Now the Pato takes place after Socrates is
Speaker 1: sentenced to be executed for corrupting the youth and he
Speaker 1: asked too many questions. So now the city of Athens
Speaker 1: is going to silence him. And so while he's awaiting
Speaker 1: his execution, some of his friends come to him, and
Speaker 1: I mean, for one thing, they've already said that, you know,
Speaker 1: we can get you out of this. You know the
Speaker 1: right persons willing to take a bribe. You can just
Speaker 1: go off into exile. It'll be fine. Socrate says, no,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go through with this. I would not
Speaker 1: be who I am without the city of Athens. The
Speaker 1: least I can do is subject myself to her laws.
Speaker 1: And so part of what this Fato is is Socrates
Speaker 1: giving an apology or a defense for his willingness to
Speaker 1: go through with his execution. And so its focuses around
Speaker 1: this idea of the immortality of the soul that perhaps,
Speaker 1: at least for the wise, for the philosopher, death might
Speaker 1: not be a terrible fate. And so I'm not going
Speaker 1: to get into all these arguments he provides about the
Speaker 1: immortality of the soul. That's just kind of outside of
Speaker 1: the purview of where I'm trying to go. But in
Speaker 1: the midst of this he does bring up some important
Speaker 1: ideas that can be very important for Lewis, and that
Speaker 1: is this idea that all true knowledge is ultimately recollection,
Speaker 1: meaning it's kind of the coming to mind of things
Speaker 1: that we principally know already. For example, I told you that,
Speaker 1: according to Plato, we have this idea of the good,
Speaker 1: even though we can never truly understand what this idea is.
Speaker 1: And so the question is, how do we get this
Speaker 1: idea of the good if it's something we've never experienced,
Speaker 1: nor is it even something that we understand At the
Speaker 1: same time, if we are properly attuned to wisdom, it's
Speaker 1: something that all of us can recognize as the principal
Speaker 1: object of desire, And so how do we have this
Speaker 1: understanding of the good? Or another thing he brings up
Speaker 1: is we have all these ideas of fixed realities right
Speaker 1: the forms that we've never experienced with our senses, and
Speaker 1: the question is how do we actually know about them?
Speaker 1: For example, he brings out the idea of equality or
Speaker 1: like sameness. So, for example, the room I'm in right
Speaker 1: now is kind of junkie. You can see these two
Speaker 1: chairs behind me, and you could say that they are
Speaker 1: the same or the very least, that they have very
Speaker 1: similar attributes to them, very similar properties, and so they
Speaker 1: are both chairs. They both fit within this form of chair. However,
Speaker 1: as soon as we say that things kind of belong
Speaker 1: within a common category, we're saying is that one chair
Speaker 1: is similar to the other chair, and they participate in
Speaker 1: some of the same realities, some of the same properties. However,
Speaker 1: where did I get my idea of similarity idea of equality.
Speaker 1: One hand, you might say, well, I can look at
Speaker 1: those two chairs, and because they have so many things
Speaker 1: in common, we can perhaps then pull through reason the
Speaker 1: fact that they are similar. But the problem is, how
Speaker 1: would I recognize them as being similar if I didn't
Speaker 1: first have an idea of similarity in my mind? And
Speaker 1: so it brings up this idea that the idea of
Speaker 1: equality or idea of similarity is actually not something we
Speaker 1: got from our sense experience of the world around us.
Speaker 1: It's actually an idea that was already in our minds
Speaker 1: that then is brought to our attention when we recognize
Speaker 1: things that are similar, things that bear you know, however
Speaker 1: imperfectly equality. And so the idea of equality is not
Speaker 1: something I got from the world around me, but it
Speaker 1: is something that is almost innate within my mind that
Speaker 1: then I used to properly understand the world around me.
Speaker 1: He talks about some elements of geometry.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 1: If I asked you to draw a line, all of
Speaker 1: you would know exactly what to do. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, you wouldn't actually be drawing a line, nor
Speaker 1: likely would you be thinking of a line, because a
Speaker 1: true line is one dimensional and extends into infinity in
Speaker 1: both directions. Well, you've never seen anything that's one dimensional
Speaker 1: and extends infinitely into two directions. At the same time,
Speaker 1: we know the lines are real, right. If the line
Speaker 1: was unreal, then we couldn't do architecture, or navigate, or
Speaker 1: really any number of things. Right, And so there's reality
Speaker 1: to the idea of a line, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: we've never experienced a line in this world with our senses.
Speaker 1: And even if I ask you to draw a line,
Speaker 1: all you would actually be doing is drawing the representation
Speaker 1: of a line, but you would not actually be drawing
Speaker 1: a line. However, through that representation, you would know what
Speaker 1: you mean by line, and I would know what you
Speaker 1: mean by line. Despite the fact that neither of us
Speaker 1: would actually be looking at a line, and so we
Speaker 1: have these ideas in our mind that are real that
Speaker 1: makes sense of the world around us, but that we've
Speaker 1: never actually experienced in the world around us. And so
Speaker 1: takes the same argument to apply to things like, you know, justice,
Speaker 1: that rightly thinking, we don't get justice from seeing justice
Speaker 1: in the world. We're able to recognize justice because we
Speaker 1: already have this idea of justice in our minds that
Speaker 1: we can recall when we are thinking clearly. And so
Speaker 1: all of our true knowledge, for Plato, there are knowledge
Speaker 1: of stable reality, of the world of being, the world
Speaker 1: of the forms, that all of this reality, or all
Speaker 1: this knowledge rather is imprinted in our minds. And so
Speaker 1: then the question that Socrates raises is why is this?
Speaker 1: Why do our minds seem to be naturally related to
Speaker 1: reality as it actually is? You know, I find it
Speaker 1: very interesting that you know, we were able I say
Speaker 1: we like I did it. But you know, we were
Speaker 1: able to predict the existence of Neptune based off gravitational
Speaker 1: calculations before we were able to observe it with our senses,
Speaker 1: with the you know, with the instruments, and so our
Speaker 1: minds properly thinking, are able to use these kind of
Speaker 1: immaterial codes, these immaterial realities, to predict things that we
Speaker 1: would eventually observe with our senses. Well, that's not insignificant.
Speaker 1: Something about the human mind is naturally related towards the
Speaker 1: way that things are. And so Socrates ask why is this? Well,
Speaker 1: one idea he throws out is this idea of reincarnation
Speaker 1: that perhaps you know, we go through these cycles of
Speaker 1: life and death, that life gives way to death and
Speaker 1: death gives way to life, but that between these cycles
Speaker 1: we had unmediated access to the forms to real reality,
Speaker 1: which then we kind of forget as we are brought
Speaker 1: back into the corrupting material reality. But we don't forget
Speaker 1: it entirely, right, We have these dim recollections, and so
Speaker 1: it's kind of like if you've ever been dreaming, but
Speaker 1: in your dream you start to get this inkling that
Speaker 1: you are dreaming and that there is a greater reality
Speaker 1: that you'll experience upon waking. Well, this is very much
Speaker 1: the platonic mindset that we get here in the phato
Speaker 1: The idea is that we knew true reality, but then
Speaker 1: we forgot it through incarnation. But in the path of wisdom,
Speaker 1: we can start to recollect that which we once knew.
Speaker 1: Now Platonic Scholarsh will debate exactly what Plato was really
Speaker 1: getting at here. Did he literally believe in reincarnation or
Speaker 1: is he just kind of putting it forward as a
Speaker 1: myth of source to get this idea that ultimate reality
Speaker 1: is something that we're acquainted with even when we don't
Speaker 1: recognize it. And so did he literally believe for incarnation
Speaker 1: or is it just sort of a myth he's proposing.
Speaker 1: That's not really something I feel like we need to
Speaker 1: get into the important part for what we're doing right
Speaker 1: now is that ultimate reality is something that we know,
Speaker 1: that we've received directly from ultimate reality, but that for
Speaker 1: whatever reason we've largely suppressed, we've largely forgotten. And so
Speaker 1: real knowledge is a matter of remembering that which we
Speaker 1: already know, and that I can tell you right now.
Speaker 1: It's going to be particularly important when we get to
Speaker 1: the silver chair, but also elsewhere. Now, continuing with the
Speaker 1: Fatom toward the end, Socrates gives us what he even
Speaker 1: calls a myth or a tale, meaning he's not suggesting
Speaker 1: this is literally true, but it is communicating something that
Speaker 1: is he believes is real, something that is true. And
Speaker 1: this is his tale about what happens after people die.
Speaker 1: So he says that when you die, your damon, which
Speaker 1: is kind of perhaps a loaded term, but it's something
Speaker 1: like a spirit at least semi divine reality that lives
Speaker 1: in the air. And notice I said daemon, which is
Speaker 1: not the same thing as demon, although you can probably
Speaker 1: figure out how this idea developed into Christian thought. And
Speaker 1: so you're daemon. The spirit is going to ultimately bring
Speaker 1: you through judgment and land you at your destination. And
Speaker 1: so those who are truly wicked get tossed into Tartarus
Speaker 1: at the center of the earth, which is essentially Greek hell.
Speaker 1: A lot of people will end up in this lake
Speaker 1: where they kind of swirl around and purgatory sorts for
Speaker 1: a while, getting their wickedness out, and then they're going
Speaker 1: to enter back into the life cycle, get reincarnated into
Speaker 1: an animal or a human. Some people are going to
Speaker 1: be raised up to the top where they dwell on
Speaker 1: the true surface of the earth. Because Socrates suppose that
Speaker 1: perhaps what we think of as the surface of the
Speaker 1: earth is not actually the true surface. It's not the
Speaker 1: real reality, it's not the real earth. He says that, Okay,
Speaker 1: imagine if you spent your entire life living in the ocean,
Speaker 1: and so the water's murky, most of it's very dark,
Speaker 1: it's very dim, but for your entire life, that's the
Speaker 1: only reality that you knew, and so you didn't know
Speaker 1: that your vision was dim. Well, eventually you're able to
Speaker 1: rise to the top and explore the surface world, the
Speaker 1: surface world as we know it. And at this point,
Speaker 1: your entire vision is radically altered, because now you're able
Speaker 1: to see things clearly. You see new shapes, you experience
Speaker 1: a new kind of solidity, you see a more vibrant
Speaker 1: array of colors, maybe even see new colors altogether. So
Speaker 1: everything that you once thought to be normal life, everything
Speaker 1: that you thought to be vision, you now recognize as
Speaker 1: a pale imitation, perhaps even a mockery, of this new
Speaker 1: reality you're able to perceive. Well, he says, what if
Speaker 1: when you look up at the big blue sky above you,
Speaker 1: that that is simply another ocean of sorts, and that
Speaker 1: if we could get to the top, we would discover
Speaker 1: the true surface world, a world that has again more
Speaker 1: vibrant colors, that has a higher resolution than we could
Speaker 1: ever know we're able to see things absolutely clearly, and
Speaker 1: we're able to recognize the fog that we once thought
Speaker 1: to be. And so this is the real world where
Speaker 1: we live amongst the gods directly, no longer speaking through oracles,
Speaker 1: but now we have direct fellowship with the gods, because we,
Speaker 1: like them, have direct access to reality as it is.
Speaker 1: And perhaps every single good, every beautiful thing that we've
Speaker 1: experienced down here in the valley is simply the runoff
Speaker 1: of this higher reality with you know, mountains made of
Speaker 1: precious stones, and you know, again, all these just kind
Speaker 1: of glorious realities which in many ways kind of read
Speaker 1: like some of the images we get of heaven in revelation.
Speaker 1: And so it's idea of the more real reality that
Speaker 1: to which our hearts are naturally drawn when we are
Speaker 1: rightly directed, when we are operating in the cord with
Speaker 1: our nature. And so he says that when you die,
Speaker 1: you know, perhaps you go into hell, perhaps you get reincarnated,
Speaker 1: perhaps you rise up to the surface or in the
Speaker 1: ultimate reality, the ultimate reward for the wise, for the
Speaker 1: true philosophers, you live as an immaterial reality. With immaterial reality,
Speaker 1: you live in the world of being, and you know,
Speaker 1: living up here in this surface world, and living in
Speaker 1: this the true surface. Well, now, your sky is actually
Speaker 1: what we downe here tend to call the ether, or
Speaker 1: what we call space, which is a word that we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about a good bit. But up on the
Speaker 1: surface world, your sky is the clear realm of the stars,
Speaker 1: of the moon, of the planets. And so in the
Speaker 1: cosmology here that Plato gives us, you have Tartarus is
Speaker 1: at the center of the earth. As you move up,
Speaker 1: you eventually get to the surface world as we know it,
Speaker 1: which itself is really a valley looking up to the
Speaker 1: true surface, above the sky as we know it. And
Speaker 1: so the progression from the worst to the best, the most,
Speaker 1: the least real, to the most real, really goes from Tartarus,
Speaker 1: and then really, I suppose the ocean to the surfaces
Speaker 1: we know it, to the true surface, which then looks
Speaker 1: out on the heavens. Well, now let's jump a generation
Speaker 1: to Plato student Aristotle, who's going to continue this conversation
Speaker 1: regarding being and becoming. And Aristyle is going to look
Speaker 1: around and he's going to see with Heraclitis that this
Speaker 1: world as we experience it is indeed moving. It's in
Speaker 1: the state of flux. It is becoming. However, you look
Speaker 1: up on a clear night and you see things that
Speaker 1: don't move. You see the stars that are fixed, as
Speaker 1: well as the wanderers, namely the planets. However, even the planets,
Speaker 1: although they're moving, they moved in a fixed and predictable pattern. Well,
Speaker 1: in Aristotle's book The Metaphysics, he notices that as I
Speaker 1: said that the world around us is in a state
Speaker 1: of flux, it's always changing. However, even that change happened
Speaker 1: in a logical and orderly way. And so you know,
Speaker 1: effects have consequences. That when a domino falls, it falls
Speaker 1: because the domino before it knocked it over. Well, if
Speaker 1: you follow that chain of dominoes back far enough, then
Speaker 1: eventually you have to get to the beginning domino, that
Speaker 1: first domino that's able to kick over the entire sequence. Well,
Speaker 1: this is a very simplified argument for the idea that
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the sequence of change, there has
Speaker 1: to be one thing that causes change but is not
Speaker 1: itself changed. This is Aristotle's prime mover. Now, for this argument,
Speaker 1: it's very important that the prime mover itself does not change,
Speaker 1: meaning it doesn't actually take action, because it is fully actualized.
Speaker 1: There's nowhere for it to go, nothing for it to do.
Speaker 1: It's always doing everything that it can do. That's what
Speaker 1: it means to be fully actualized. It has no potential,
Speaker 1: and so what it means is this God doesn't act okay.
Speaker 1: And so when we talk about Aristotle's Prime Mover causing motion,
Speaker 1: it's not in even necessarily an intentional way. The way
Speaker 1: that it causes motion and this is in the same
Speaker 1: way that a beloved attracts a lover. And so, as
Speaker 1: the only fully actualized being, the only truly eternal, unmoving reality,
Speaker 1: the only true good, the Prime Mover is supremely lovable,
Speaker 1: and this is how it causes the cosmos to move
Speaker 1: in continual imitation of the changeless reality of the Prime Mover.
Speaker 1: And so on the outer level of reality, here we
Speaker 1: have the heavenly spheres which are moving, right, the planets move.
Speaker 1: And the way this attraction works is the cosmos itself
Speaker 1: moves through the cycle of spheres that are moving in
Speaker 1: imitation of the unchanging reality of the Prime Mover. How
Speaker 1: did Aristotle get here? Well, he believed that love tends
Speaker 1: to imitate, and the best way for moving realities namely
Speaker 1: the moving cosmos. To imitate the unchanging reality of the
Speaker 1: prime mover is to move in a spherical shape, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, imagine you had a perfect sphere that was rotating. Well,
Speaker 1: if you have a perfect sphere rotating that in many ways,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't even be able to tell that it's spinning,
Speaker 1: because movement in the sphere is a way of imitating stability,
Speaker 1: it's a way of imitating unchanging reality. The first kind
Speaker 1: of movement that you have here is not even really
Speaker 1: a physical movement. This outer sphere is called the primamobile.
Speaker 1: It's the idea of the first thing that's moved, but
Speaker 1: in it itself isn't really moved physically. It's more of a
Speaker 1: spiritual movement. It's the movement of love, which then starts
Speaker 1: to turn the next sphere, which at this point start
Speaker 1: to get associated with the planets. And so the planets
Speaker 1: in the Oristilian mindset are either moved by divine realities,
Speaker 1: or perhaps they themselves are divine realities. This is not
Speaker 1: entirely clear, kind of gets debated, but nonetheless there's some
Speaker 1: kind of divine reality associated with the spheares that's causing
Speaker 1: them to move in imitation of the sphere before it,
Speaker 1: which itself is moving in imitation of the sphere before it,
Speaker 1: which is eventually going down the line, we get to
Speaker 1: the outer sphere that is moving in imitation of the
Speaker 1: prime mover of God himself. Well, as we follow these
Speaker 1: spheres down further and further and further to the Earth,
Speaker 1: eventually we get to the Moon, which also moves in
Speaker 1: a regular and predictable pattern. It has order. However, this
Speaker 1: is also where order starts to break down. You can
Speaker 1: look at the moon with your naked eye and see
Speaker 1: what we recognize as craters. It has imperfections, and also
Speaker 1: it changes, it goes through these cycles. It has a
Speaker 1: light side, it has a dark side, And so basically
Speaker 1: the moon is still orderly, but it is the place
Speaker 1: where order starts to break down, where being really starts
Speaker 1: to turn into becoming, where corruption starts to play out.
Speaker 1: And now at this point I'm actually starting to already
Speaker 1: combine kind of Aerostyle's thought with Ptolemy and moving into
Speaker 1: the medieval world and kind of bringing all this together
Speaker 1: this point, so, the planets as we know them, they're
Speaker 1: named after the Roman gods, and that's because the planets themselves,
Speaker 1: which Aristotle recognize as divine realities, are at least associated
Speaker 1: with divine realities, became identified with the Greco Roman pantheon.
Speaker 1: It's worth noting at this point that how the gods
Speaker 1: of the philosophers, namely those who are wise in power
Speaker 1: and wise in true understanding, are a more sanitized form
Speaker 1: of the Olympian soap opera, where now the gods are
Speaker 1: reaching their ideal state and literally reside in the heavens,
Speaker 1: and it is from the heavens that they exert their
Speaker 1: influence down here on Earth. Now, these planets are going
Speaker 1: to be played a very important role in the medieval
Speaker 1: understanding of the cosmos, and especially in the Ransom series
Speaker 1: that we'll be beginning with. And so, like I said,
Speaker 1: each of these planets actually at this point are probably
Speaker 1: best to give you a diagram of the cosmos, and
Speaker 1: then we'll go back and carry some of these thoughts
Speaker 1: that I've started here. And so at the very center
Speaker 1: of the cosmos, at the center of the Earth, even
Speaker 1: you have Hell, then you have Earth, Then you have
Speaker 1: the air above the Earth. Then you have the moon Mercury, Venus,
Speaker 1: the sun, Saturn, Jupiter, Primum Obila, imperiod of God. Right,
Speaker 1: this is where God dwells. This is the highest reality,
Speaker 1: that which is most real, that which is most fixed,
Speaker 1: that which is most unmoving. And then we progress further further.
Speaker 1: The heavens themselves are perfect, but they are moving, but
Speaker 1: they're moving in order, moving in harmony, in direction of God. Well,
Speaker 1: once you get to the moon, this is where things
Speaker 1: start to break down. And so the moon is this
Speaker 1: transitory element. It's looking toward the earth which has fallen,
Speaker 1: but it also has a face out toward the heavens.
Speaker 1: It has a light side, it has a dark side.
Speaker 1: It is orderly, yet it also goes through these monthly transitions.
Speaker 1: And so the moon as Luna has its correlation with
Speaker 1: the water, which also emphasizes its kind of liquid nature.
Speaker 1: It's given over to change to inconsistence. And so the
Speaker 1: moon itself is good and in fact it produces silver
Speaker 1: in the earth, which is good. However, it also is
Speaker 1: an influence that can easily go wrong, and so lunacy
Speaker 1: gets its name from the moon. From Luna. It's the
Speaker 1: idea that you're given over to change to chaos because
Speaker 1: you have a misrelation with the influence of Luna, which
Speaker 1: is inherently good, but also perhaps the easiest to go wrong.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's for this reason that we get,
Speaker 1: you know, your werewolf stories, in which a particular misrelation
Speaker 1: to Luna leads to such a degradation of order, such
Speaker 1: a reversal of the movement that our soul should take,
Speaker 1: that instead of our souls rising upward toward the more rational,
Speaker 1: the more virtuous, they actually go downward, and our beastly
Speaker 1: in state instincts take over as well. And of course
Speaker 1: the only way that werewolf can be killed is with silver,
Speaker 1: and so so very poetically we get this image that
Speaker 1: the only way that Luna can repent of her sins
Speaker 1: is through her tears. And so a lunatic is somebody
Speaker 1: who has a misrelation to the influence of the moon. However,
Speaker 1: a positive relation to the lunar influence takes the form
Speaker 1: of a traveler, a wanderer, perhaps ironically, like the way
Speaker 1: I just said, even a hunter, right, And so it's
Speaker 1: somebody who has an appropriate relationship with the influence of change. Well,
Speaker 1: all the seven planets, so Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Jupiter, Saturn,
Speaker 1: exert some kind of influence that radiates out through the spheres. Now,
Speaker 1: these influences themselves are good, right, they operate in an
Speaker 1: unfallen reality, they operate in the heavens, they are perfectly ordered. However,
Speaker 1: it's when these influences enter into our atmosphere that is
Speaker 1: not only given over to corruption in light of our
Speaker 1: material nature, but also in a more theological sense, right
Speaker 1: in our fallen earth, these influences tend to get twisted
Speaker 1: into corrupted versions of what they are meant to be.
Speaker 1: And so I think it's probably worth talking just very
Speaker 1: briefly about what each of these planetary influences tend to do.
Speaker 1: So Mercury is the fastest planet. Mercury is associated with speed,
Speaker 1: with speed of wit, with speed of feet. It's especially
Speaker 1: with movement, and so a positive relation with Mercury can
Speaker 1: lead to you being quick witted. But also it can
Speaker 1: lead to you being perhaps a thief of a pickpocket,
Speaker 1: you're quick with your fingers, or maybe even you're a sophist. Right,
Speaker 1: you have a quick tongue, but not always for a
Speaker 1: wise and good and noble purpose. And so Mercury tends
Speaker 1: to be associated with the idea of speed of quickness,
Speaker 1: a kind of fluidity. Lewis talks about this in the
Speaker 1: Discarded image that the way to get understanding of what
Speaker 1: mercury is is to look at someone a dish and
Speaker 1: the way that it kind of moves and swirls around. Next,
Speaker 1: you have Venus, obviously a feminine ideal, very associated with love,
Speaker 1: with that which is nurturing, that which is motherly, and
Speaker 1: so you have a a kind of a sweet influence.
Speaker 1: Here's something that brings images of gardens and life. But
Speaker 1: obviously a misrelation can look like somebody who gives themselves
Speaker 1: over to their passion, someone who's overly amorous and doesn't
Speaker 1: maintain wisdom in their amorous pursuits, or or perhaps even
Speaker 1: the mother that will counter in the Great divorce, who
Speaker 1: has a possessive relationship with her child. That would also
Speaker 1: be a negative association with Venus's influence. Okay, Now, the
Speaker 1: sun or a soul is the source of wisdom, is
Speaker 1: seen as the eye of the cosmos. And notice the
Speaker 1: sun is the central of the seven planetary spheres, and
Speaker 1: so in one way you can say the Earth is
Speaker 1: at the center, but another way you can say that
Speaker 1: the Sun is at the center of the medieval cosmos.
Speaker 1: They just mean that a little bit differently. And so,
Speaker 1: like I said, the sun is the eye of the cosmos,
Speaker 1: it is the light of divine reason, particularly associated with
Speaker 1: philosophers and theologians. Also, the sun produces gold in the earth.
Speaker 1: But the same time, the sun is associated with liberality,
Speaker 1: with generosity, and so an appropriate relationship with the sun
Speaker 1: would look like wisdom, it would look like a right
Speaker 1: use of wealth, whereas a negative relationship with the solar
Speaker 1: influence would actually lead to greed, to not giving away wealth,
Speaker 1: but actually giving yourself away to wealth and being consumed
Speaker 1: by it. If you've read Voyage of the Dawn Treedder already,
Speaker 1: perhaps you can see some ways that that can play
Speaker 1: a part. Next, you have Mars, obviously, the Roman god
Speaker 1: of war, and so the Mars is associated with the
Speaker 1: martial influence, and so in a positive sense this can
Speaker 1: look like the noble knight who is fighting injustice. It
Speaker 1: can also look like the noble martyr who is maintaining
Speaker 1: a steadfast spirit will injustice is done to him. And
Speaker 1: so Mars associated with martyrs, associated with the noble knights,
Speaker 1: with the good warriors. Now, a negative relation to the
Speaker 1: martian influence obviously looks like a tyrant, someone who's bloodthirsty,
Speaker 1: somebody who engages in combat for the sake of combat
Speaker 1: rather than for the sake of a higher ideal. Now
Speaker 1: side note, and this is going to be important, there
Speaker 1: are also some older connections between Mars and vegetation. This
Speaker 1: the idea of Marsilvanis. And so it's the idea that
Speaker 1: Mars is not only associated with war and with destruction,
Speaker 1: but that Mars also has some less known associations with life,
Speaker 1: with vegetation and with nature. Hence March at the beginning
Speaker 1: of springtime. Now, next you have Jupiter, which is of
Speaker 1: course the king of the gods, or in this case,
Speaker 1: the king of the planets. And so this is the
Speaker 1: idea of the true king who is enthroned in justice
Speaker 1: and serenity. He not only properly orders the world the
Speaker 1: spheres around him, but he also orders his own passions.
Speaker 1: And so this is the magnanimous king, enthroned in peace,
Speaker 1: in serenity, and enjoy. In fact, another name for Jupiter
Speaker 1: is Jove, hence joviality, or even the English expression by jove.
Speaker 1: Pay attention to that, And so Jove is the enthroned
Speaker 1: king sitting on high. Next you have Saturn Now, Saturn
Speaker 1: is the most sluggish of the planets. Its influence tends
Speaker 1: to lead to things falling apart, toward corruption, disease, aging.
Speaker 1: Saturn is also associated with the Titan Chronos time. It's
Speaker 1: this idea, it's associated with things kind of wearing down.
Speaker 1: Know that this is the first planet that moves, and
Speaker 1: so there is this connection with movement, and the way
Speaker 1: that this gets received in Earth's atmosphere tends to be
Speaker 1: movement for the worst things running down, things losing both
Speaker 1: their potentiality and their actuality. However, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: Saturn is generally seen as the least desirable influence, a
Speaker 1: right relationship with Saturn is a kind of penitential wisdom.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of wisdom you can only find by
Speaker 1: going through sorrow. This is the wisdom of mementomori. Remember
Speaker 1: that you will die, and there is real wisdom and
Speaker 1: real good to be found in that, even if it's
Speaker 1: not that which we might most desire. And so all
Speaker 1: of these planetary influences are inherently good. I don't they
Speaker 1: exist in the heavens, but tend to fall into corruption
Speaker 1: in the way that we relate to them as they
Speaker 1: enter into our fallen material atmosphere. Now you may be
Speaker 1: asking the question, Okay, what are these Roman gods doing
Speaker 1: in a medieval Christian context? And that doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: be something that particularly troubled theologians at the time. However,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously they're not serving Roman deities, but the
Speaker 1: names themselves I mean tended to stick. However, they got
Speaker 1: repurposed and instead of recognizing them as Roman gods, I mean,
Speaker 1: they were seen at divine realities something like angels, which
Speaker 1: the Medievals believed, I mean, actually filled the atmosphere. But
Speaker 1: you know, I think that I'm going to pause right there.
Speaker 1: We've already covered a lot of ground. I'm going to
Speaker 1: return to some of this. I'm going to emphasize certain
Speaker 1: elements and even talk a bit more about angels as
Speaker 1: well as other things that might exist within the medieval world.
Speaker 1: But I'll get to that in the next video. I
Speaker 1: think that if I went any further now, I would
Speaker 1: end up ruining some of the mystery of out of
Speaker 1: the Silent Planet, which I will briefly introduce in the
Speaker 1: next video. And so we did a lot in this video.
Speaker 1: Like I said, moving forward, we're not going to spend
Speaker 1: so much time doing these big philosophical overviews, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to lay out some important ideas that you should
Speaker 1: keep in mind. Perhaps we'll turn back to as you
Speaker 1: do your reading. We'll get more into some of this,
Speaker 1: but like I said, moving forward will be more focused
Speaker 1: on the actual text. But I hope that this was enjoyable.
Speaker 1: I hope that you've got something valuable out of this.
Speaker 1: If you have any questions, then please hop on over
Speaker 1: to the discord chat and let me know, and otherwise
Speaker 1: I will talk to you next time. Plato Stoicism until
Speaker 1: we have faces a brand new eight week course by
Speaker 1: doctor Andrew Snyder coming in July twenty twenty five. I
Speaker 1: have always, at least ever since I can remember, had
Speaker 1: a kind of longing for death. It was when I
Speaker 1: was happiest that I longed most. It was on happy
Speaker 1: days when we were up in the hills, the three
Speaker 1: of us, with the wind and the sunshine, where you
Speaker 1: couldn't see Gloam or the palace. Do you remember the
Speaker 1: color and the smell, and looking across at the gray
Speaker 1: mountain in the distance, and because it was so beautiful,
Speaker 1: it set me longing, always longing somewhere else, there must
Speaker 1: be more of it. Everything seemed to be saying, Psyche, come,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't come, and I didn't know where I
Speaker 1: was to come to. It almost hurt me. I felt
Speaker 1: like a bird in a cage when the other birds
Speaker 1: of its kind are flying home. And now I will
Speaker 1: make answer to you, oh my judges, and show that
Speaker 1: he who has lived as a true philosopher has reason
Speaker 1: to be of good cheer when he was about to die,
Speaker 1: and that after death he may hope to receive the
Speaker 1: greatest good in the other world. For I deem that
Speaker 1: the true, rue disciple of philosophy is likely to be
Speaker 1: misunderstood by other men. They do not perceive that he
Speaker 1: is ever pursuing death and dying. And if this is true, why,
Speaker 1: having had the desire of death all his life long,
Speaker 1: should he regret the arrival of that which he has
Speaker 1: always been pursuing and desiring. The longing of Plato and
Speaker 1: the control of the Stoics pervades Lewis's retelling of the
Speaker 1: Cupid and Psyche Myth until we have faces with this
Speaker 1: incredible novel, which he believed to be his best. Lewis
Speaker 1: demonstrates the tensions in ancient thought, and even more significantly,
Speaker 1: the limits of rational philosophy, which can only go as
Speaker 1: deep as the foxes can dig. Beyond that, under that
Speaker 1: and providing the life of that thought, we find the
Speaker 1: dark and holy places that blind our faculties of reason. What, then,
Speaker 1: shall we do? This is a topic that we will
Speaker 1: explore after first surveying some important philosophical contributions in the
Speaker 1: ancient world that have had some significant bearing on Lewis's
Speaker 1: great novel. To this end, we will begin with Plato's Phato,
Speaker 1: which discusses the immortality of the soul and what those
Speaker 1: who love wisdom might expect in the life to come.
Speaker 1: And then we'll spend four weeks with some of the
Speaker 1: great stoics, including Epictetus, Emperor, Marcus, Aurelius, and Seneca. Finally,
Speaker 1: we will turn our attention to till we have faces
Speaker 1: for the final two weeks with original content, and so
Speaker 1: this will not be the same as what you may
Speaker 1: have seen in the fiction and philosophy of CS. Lewis course.
Speaker 1: Each week of this eight week study will include readings
Speaker 1: from primary sources that will be provided as PDFs. Although
Speaker 1: these are all texts that belong in your personal library.
Speaker 1: You'll be provided with recommendations for secondary readings. You'll have
Speaker 1: recorded presentations for you to watch at your leisure, ongoing
Speaker 1: discord chats, and weekly life meetings to discuss the readings
Speaker 1: enrolled today by going to patreon dot com slash Mythic
Speaker 1: Mind and checking out the job or, you can gain
Speaker 1: access to all courses, past, present and future this year
Speaker 1: by purchasing a Tier three annual subscription. I hope to
Speaker 1: see you there.