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Introduction to Plato and the context of his Republic · Mahon McCann

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SPEAKER_00: Hello, my name is Mahan.
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I'm an Irish philosophy PhD researcher and a part-time lecturer
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in philosophy and ethics.
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SPEAKER_00: This lecture is the first of a series of 11 lectures on Plato's Republic,
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SPEAKER_00: arguably the greatest work of Western literature,
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SPEAKER_00: greatest work of Western philosophy,
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SPEAKER_00: first work of political science,
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SPEAKER_00: cognitive psychology,
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SPEAKER_00: and one of the main foundational texts of Western civilization.
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SPEAKER_00: Over these 11 lectures, I'm going to go through each book of the Republic
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SPEAKER_00: in detail,
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exploring the different philosophical ideas in them and the
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quest that ties it all together,
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SPEAKER_00: the nature of justice,
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SPEAKER_00: which could be translated better as our word morality.
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The Republic is Plato's attempt to ground morality in something
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other than the
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Homeric mythology and the encroaching relativism of the Greek
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scientific revolution.
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SPEAKER_00: What does ancient Athens have to do with the modern age?
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SPEAKER_00: Why should you as a modern person care about the Republic?
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philosophy itself had begun just before plato with a group of
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philosophers referred
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SPEAKER_00: to as the natural philosophers in the sixth and fifth century in greece
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particularly around ionia the natural philosophers rejected the
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homeric mythic
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SPEAKER_00: explanations and sought to explain phenomena naturalistically
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SPEAKER_00: A famous example of this was Thales,
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SPEAKER_00: who was one of the first philosophers in the West,
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SPEAKER_00: who was able to predict an eclipse.
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SPEAKER_00: And so this was a beginning of a new way of understanding nature,
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SPEAKER_00: not as imbued with gods,
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SPEAKER_00: but instead trying to focus on explaining the mechanics of things.
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SPEAKER_00: Plato understood that this burgeoning scientific revolution
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posed a threat to the myths and stories that grounded cosmic
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justice that the
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athenian morality and law was based on people were just because
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they thought there
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was an after-life that there would be consequences and that
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vice was punished and
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SPEAKER_00: virtue was rewarded by the gods
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SPEAKER_00: If there was no gods and everything was mechanical in a sense,
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then what was to stop people from behaving viciously rather
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than virtuously?
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At the time of Plato's upbringing,
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there was a lot of political chaos in Athens.
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SPEAKER_00: Athens had a great empire initially,
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SPEAKER_00: was taking over a lot of countries,
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SPEAKER_00: very powerful countries.
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and then lost to Sparta in the Peloponnesian War and became
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essentially a subjugated state.
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SPEAKER_00: It was a brutal war,
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SPEAKER_00: the Peloponnesian War,
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SPEAKER_00: that shattered many of the norms of traditional combat.
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SPEAKER_00: Post-Peloponnesian War,
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SPEAKER_00: Athens was ruled by a group called the Thirty Tyrants,
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SPEAKER_00: a Spartan-backed oligarchy.
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SPEAKER_00: Plato and Socrates actually supported,
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seeing that the decadencies of Athenian democracy had driven
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the thirst for
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conquest that ruined them in terms of their ever-expanding
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empire that got too big
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SPEAKER_00: for its own good.
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SPEAKER_00: Slightly later than the natural philosophers,
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SPEAKER_00: another breed of philosophers started to emerge in ancient Greece.
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These teachers were called the sophists,
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and they were professional teachers of rhetoric.
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Their job was to teach people the art of persuasion,
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to influence people's behavior.
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SPEAKER_00: And they weren't particularly concerned with the truth.
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SPEAKER_00: These days,
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SPEAKER_00: they'd be like professional debating coaches or bullshitters,
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SPEAKER_00: to use Harry Frankfurt's term,
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which teach people how to win at arguments without any real
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concern for whether the
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SPEAKER_00: arguments are true or false.
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The philosophy of the sophists was,
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if there's no gods and there's no cosmic justice,
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SPEAKER_00: Winners are going to win and losers are going to lose.
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SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't you rather be a winner than a loser?
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SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't you rather be a lion than a sheep?
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SPEAKER_00: We're going to teach you how to beat everybody in arguments.
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SPEAKER_00: One of the most famous sophists,
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SPEAKER_00: Protagoras,
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SPEAKER_00: summed up the philosophy of the sophist in his phrase,
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SPEAKER_00: man is the measure of all things.
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SPEAKER_00: Essentially, there's no reality.
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SPEAKER_00: Everything is subjective.
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SPEAKER_00: And so we make it up as we go along.
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SPEAKER_00: This opens the door to relativism.
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And this was a big problem for Plato in that the people who are
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training the most
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SPEAKER_00: powerful people and becoming very powerful themselves
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SPEAKER_00: didn't care about the truth at all.
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They were becoming more and more influential,
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but less and less rational and wise.
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SPEAKER_00: So combining these two types of philosophy for Plato,
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the natural philosophers that were essentially undercutting the
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Homeric and Hesiod myths,
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SPEAKER_00: the sophists that were arming people with very powerful arguments,
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SPEAKER_00: but didn't care about the truth at all.
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Very dangerous situation coupled with the political chaos of
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ancient Athens.
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In summary,
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ancient Athens was undergoing what John Vervakey calls a
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meaning crisis.
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The old gods were being called into question by a scientific
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revolution that
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SPEAKER_00: threatened the foundations of morality,
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SPEAKER_00: truth and knowledge itself.
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The political chaos was leading to questions about governance,
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democracies versus tyrannies.
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Moral relativism had led to a very Machiavellian culture in the
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sophists in that
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SPEAKER_00: people weren't concerned about truth.
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They were more concerned with becoming powerful and influencing
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other people's behavior.
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SPEAKER_00: not unlike our own internet society.
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SPEAKER_00: Part 2.
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SPEAKER_00: The Meaning Crisis This is about our current context in the 21st century,
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SPEAKER_00: philosophically,
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SPEAKER_00: theologically.
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We're living in this post-God world that Nietzsche announced at
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the end of the 19th century.
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SPEAKER_00: The Aristotelian Christian worldview that was...
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The dominant framework for the last 2,000 years has been
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undercut by a mechanistic
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SPEAKER_00: model of the universe,
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SPEAKER_00: one that doesn't include things like value,
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SPEAKER_00: consciousness,
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SPEAKER_00: or ethics,
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and has created a version of reality in which human beings are epiphenomenal,
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that we are not made in the image of God and destabilized sense
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of human value.
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SPEAKER_00: Arguably,
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the ideological wars of the 20th century are wars for political
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supremacy in a
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SPEAKER_00: world without a unified account of reality.
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Big picture ideologies that clash and claim to offer solutions
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to our very
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SPEAKER_00: existential problems politically or economically.
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Plato's solution to these problems isn't a specifically
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political or economic solution,
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SPEAKER_00: although he does certainly.
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talk about politics,
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more so it is a theological,
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an ethical,
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psychological solution.
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SPEAKER_00: So what is a meaning crisis?
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A meaning crisis is a collapse of a worldview that makes sense
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of our lives.
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It gives us a sense of purpose and ability to normatively
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evaluate our progress.
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SPEAKER_00: The idea originates from Canadian cognitive scientist John Berbeke,
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SPEAKER_00: in his Awakening from the Meaning Crisis series,
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literature on the psychology of meaning in life has three
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dimensions in coherence,
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SPEAKER_00: purpose,
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SPEAKER_00: and significance.
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SPEAKER_00: As we dive into this tripartite model of meaning in life,
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it'll be easy to see how these three very significant
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dimensions are under threat
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SPEAKER_00: in the modern world.
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SPEAKER_00: The first is coherence, which is that your life makes sense to you.
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SPEAKER_00: It's very hard to have a coherent worldview in such a
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SPEAKER_00: Multicultural,
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SPEAKER_00: multi-faith,
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SPEAKER_00: multi-religious,
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SPEAKER_00: globally connected,
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SPEAKER_00: instant communicating to have a coherent model of reality.
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SPEAKER_00: Everybody says one thing and other people say something else.
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SPEAKER_00: Coherence is very difficult under the current paradigm.
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The second dimension is purpose,
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higher order goal or narratives to pursue in your life.
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The question of narrative now is really reified in a
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distinction between fact and fiction,
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that there's a world of mind independent facts and then
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fictional things that
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SPEAKER_00: aren't real,
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SPEAKER_00: which would be very alien to an ancient culture.
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SPEAKER_00: In a scientific society that's non-teleological,
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SPEAKER_00: there isn't an overarching narrative or goal to pursue to human life.
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SPEAKER_00: Existentialism philosophically was a project kind of
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weld a goal onto life that we could pursue meaning making like
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Jean-Paul Sartre.
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But a lot of that ends up just like Camus' Sisyphus of rolling
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a boulder up a hill.
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A mechanistic account of the universe precludes a transcendent
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purpose or any
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SPEAKER_00: teleological explanations.
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SPEAKER_00: So purpose is another dimension under threat.
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SPEAKER_00: The third dimension of meaning life is significance,
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SPEAKER_00: that your life is connected to something real and valuable.
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SPEAKER_00: Under a materialist reductionist paradigm,
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SPEAKER_00: what is real is what is reducible to the lowest level of reality.
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It's very hard to account for the value of human lives under
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that worldview.
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SPEAKER_00: What are the consequences of the meaning crisis?
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Not having a stable worldview leads to increased volatility and
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chaos experienced
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SPEAKER_00: as stress and difficulty,
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SPEAKER_00: a rise of existential issues such as nihilism,
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SPEAKER_00: alienation,
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SPEAKER_00: despair,
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SPEAKER_00: anxiety,
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SPEAKER_00: purposelessness,
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SPEAKER_00: addiction.
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fuels a mental health crisis and creates a market for many
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pseudo-religious
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SPEAKER_00: ideologies that make sense of one's life,
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SPEAKER_00: provide a sense of purpose and a path of progress,
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SPEAKER_00: but often turn into manipulative,
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SPEAKER_00: weird sex cults that aren't good for people.
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SPEAKER_00: Arguably,
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SPEAKER_00: this is our context,
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and it's as chaotic as Plato's was at the fall of the Golden
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Age of Athens.
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SPEAKER_00: Plato's quest to root morality in something
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SPEAKER_00: Solid can offer us some insights into our own reeling worldview.
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SPEAKER_00: In summary,
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SPEAKER_00: in the West,
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the dominant Aristotelian Christian worldview is undercut by
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the scientific revolution.
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Science provides a mechanistic account of the universe that
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does not explain consciousness,
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SPEAKER_00: value,
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SPEAKER_00: action,
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SPEAKER_00: or ethics.
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SPEAKER_00: Hence, we get a split between science and mythology.
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The wars of the 20th century were about the dominance of a
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particular ideology,
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SPEAKER_00: a low-resolution story of reality.
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We're still in that competing space where different ideologies
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are fighting one another.
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SPEAKER_00: The divide between science and mythology,
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SPEAKER_00: fact and value is not healed,
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SPEAKER_00: and bad actors sell pseudo-religious ideologies to offer value.
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the dimensions and meaning to people that are ultimately
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self-destructive part
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three the greek solution socrates plato and aristotle had a
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solution to the meaning
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crisis which is to become rational and wise socrates at his
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apology speech where he
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was defending himself when he was put on trial for charges of
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corrupting the youth
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and worshiping false gods said are you not ashamed citizens of
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athens to be
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pursuing money reputation and honor placing no value at all
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upon wisdom and truth
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SPEAKER_00: and the care of your souls
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SPEAKER_00: and ensuring that your souls will be as good as they can be.
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The alternative to the pseudo-religious ideologies is moral self-cultivation.
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It's taking on the responsibility of becoming transformed,
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of your character.
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SPEAKER_00: And Plato provides a roadmap.
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for that very much integrated with his moral philosophy with
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his psychology with
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his theology in a way that's incredibly powerful once you
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understand it in this
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section we're going to delve into the greek solution a little
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bit to introduce you
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to one of our main characters of this story is socrates
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socrates lived from 471 bc
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to 399 bc his father was a stone mason his mother was a midwife
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he was not very
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SPEAKER_00: good looking he was kind of fat
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SPEAKER_00: He had bulging eyes, but he was a very brave man and he was very honest.
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SPEAKER_00: He was a veteran of the Peloponnesian War.
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He saved up and bought his own hoplite armor so he could fight
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in the infantry and
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SPEAKER_00: proved himself as a hero,
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SPEAKER_00: saving the life of one Alcibiades.
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SPEAKER_00: Socrates isn't famous for his military career.
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SPEAKER_00: The aspect of philosophy,
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which we know him best for as the father of Western philosophy
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and really of
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SPEAKER_00: changing the nature of philosophy.
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SPEAKER_00: And so Socrates began this quest to understand wisdom.
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whenever the oracle of delphi told a friend of his that
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socrates is the wisest of
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all men and socrates was very thrown by this because he knew he
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didn't have any
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wisdom so why would the oracle of delphi which directed the
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greek world from its
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SPEAKER_00: centre delphi the umphalamus which is literally the navel of the world
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Why would she say that Socrates was the wisest of all men when
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he in fact knew he
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SPEAKER_00: had no wisdom?
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This started a quest for Socrates to go and speak to people who
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were considered to
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SPEAKER_00: be wise because he knew he didn't have any wisdom,
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SPEAKER_00: so maybe somebody else did.
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And then he quickly found out as he spoke to the supposedly
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wise people of his day
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SPEAKER_00: that they didn't know any more than he did.
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Whenever he would question a military general about courage,
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he would find out that
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He didn't really know a definition of courage or he would ask
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someone about piety
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SPEAKER_00: and it turns out they don't know what piety is.
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Socrates realized that the reason he was the wisest of all men
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was that he knew he
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SPEAKER_00: didn't know anything,
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whereas these other people thought they knew something and
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actually didn't.
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they had a kind of double ignorance whereas socrates had a
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single ignorance in the
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sense that he at least knew that he didn't know anything this
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socratic method of
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questioning people to almost strip away their assumptions to
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get to a state of
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what's called aporia a just completely hitting the wall
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intellectually was actually
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an improvement for socrates he thought that was his job in
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athens to go around
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SPEAKER_00: asking people questions to get to the bedrock of their assumptions
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show people that we didn't really know the things that we
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thought we knew that was
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actually moral progress socrates came between the ancient greek
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philosophers the
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natural philosophers who wanted truth without wisdom and the
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sophists power without
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truth he wants power and knowledge combined francis bacon's
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famous quote you know
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SPEAKER_00: knowledge is power
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SPEAKER_00: For Plato and Socrates, knowledge is not power.
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SPEAKER_00: Knowledge is knowledge, power is power.
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SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes the people in power don't have knowledge,
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SPEAKER_00: and the people in knowledge don't have any power.
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SPEAKER_00: Socrates transforms philosophy.
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SPEAKER_00: He focuses on ethics,
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SPEAKER_00: how best to live,
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and his solution to the chaos of Athens is to become rational
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and wise and
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SPEAKER_00: criticize science and mythology properly.
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SPEAKER_00: to understand reality, to self-realize.
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SPEAKER_00: This is his third way between the obstacles faced in ancient Greece.
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SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately,
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he didn't get very far with it because he was put to death by
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the Athenian democracy.
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SPEAKER_00: In ancient Greece, there was a clash of values at the time.
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Because the 30 tyrants had been overthrown and the Athenian
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democracy restored,
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SPEAKER_00: they wanted order.
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SPEAKER_00: They wanted to really consolidate their power.
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SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately,
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SPEAKER_00: this guy Socrates,
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SPEAKER_00: the gadfly of Athens,
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SPEAKER_00: was going around asking very inconvenient questions to people.
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Socrates was essentially put up on charges of corrupting the
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youth and atheism,
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SPEAKER_00: of worshipping false gods,
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SPEAKER_00: which he denied very famously.
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SPEAKER_00: You can read it in Plato's Apology.
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SPEAKER_00: And so he's put on trial and the trial was a fix.
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SPEAKER_00: It wasn't meant to kill Socrates.
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SPEAKER_00: It was meant to scare him,
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to stop him from doing philosophy and potentially get him to
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leave Athens.
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SPEAKER_00: Socrates refused.
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SPEAKER_00: He said, I'm not going to leave.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to stop doing philosophy.
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SPEAKER_00: He said, the unexamined life is not worth living.
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a very famous quote,
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which makes Socrates a kind of philosophical martyr.
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SPEAKER_00: Socrates' friends tried to convince him to leave.
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SPEAKER_00: He explained to them that he had a daemon,
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SPEAKER_00: a voice that told him when not to do something,
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SPEAKER_00: and that he'd always listened to this voice.
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SPEAKER_00: Maybe that was the thing that separated him from other men,
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that he was guided by this higher order angel or guardian
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spirit of some sort.
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Whenever he asked the daemon if he should run away from the trial,
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it said that he shouldn't.
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his conclusion was he'd had a good life that you know it was
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going to end at some
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point he was seventy years old and so this was the end of the
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road for him he was
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put to death by drinking hemlock somebody was present at this
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time one of his
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SPEAKER_00: students who loved him very dearly in the form of plato
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plato was twenty-five and he was so traumatized by the death of
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socrates that he
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left athens altogether a city which he loved and went traveling
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in we can see that
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he comes back to this again and again the main body of his
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dialogues features
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SPEAKER_00: socrates as the main character
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And Socrates is,
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for him,
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the epitome of a wise and just and good person.
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SPEAKER_00: He is the ideal.
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And so he's trying to grapple with the issue of how the city
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that he loved could
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SPEAKER_00: put to death the guy who was the best.
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A theme that we'll see played out in Christianity later as well
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with the death of
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SPEAKER_00: Christ in Rome.
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SPEAKER_00: that the most virtuous,
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the most just person can be put to death in the most unjust and
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cruel ways.
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SPEAKER_00: And how can you square this?
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How can you square that the people in power put to death the
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guy with the knowledge?
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SPEAKER_00: And we see this in the Republic again and again.
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SPEAKER_00: How do you get the people in power to have knowledge?
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SPEAKER_00: How do you get the people at knowledge to be in power?
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SPEAKER_00: The solution Plato comes up with is the philosopher Kings,
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which we'll obviously discuss later in book five and book six
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of the Republic.
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SPEAKER_00: To introduce Plato,
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SPEAKER_00: Plato lived 427, 428 BC to 348.
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SPEAKER_00: He was born named Aristocles, meaning best reputation.
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SPEAKER_00: He gets the nickname Plato from his wrestling coach,
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SPEAKER_00: which means broad,
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SPEAKER_00: because he was very big and he broad-head,
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SPEAKER_00: which was good for wrestling.
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SPEAKER_00: He came from a very wealthy family.
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SPEAKER_00: He was a descendant from kings.
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SPEAKER_00: Initially,
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SPEAKER_00: as a youngster,
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SPEAKER_00: he wanted to be a dramatist,
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SPEAKER_00: but burned all his plays after meeting Socrates.
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SPEAKER_00: He really wanted to be like Socrates.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean, he thought Socrates was the best.
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SPEAKER_00: And he was a committed follower of him,
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SPEAKER_00: so that's why his death had such a profound effect on him.
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And really,
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I think,
15:56
motivates a lot of us,
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his quest to understand in the dialogues.
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SPEAKER_00: At the age of 40,
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SPEAKER_00: he started the first university in the world,
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SPEAKER_00: the Academy,
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SPEAKER_00: where he trained Aristotle,
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SPEAKER_00: who then later went on to train...
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SPEAKER_00: Alexander the Great, quite a legacy.
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But after Plato's death,
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really,
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there's a lot of conflict around Plato's legacy.
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SPEAKER_00: Share this quote from Olympodorus,
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SPEAKER_00: where he says,
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SPEAKER_00: when he was about to die,
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SPEAKER_00: Plato saw in a dream that he had become a swan,
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SPEAKER_00: moving from tree to tree,
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SPEAKER_00: and in this way caused much trouble to the bird catchers.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: Simeas,
16:27
SPEAKER_00: the Socratic,
16:28
judged from this that he would not be captured by those
16:31
desiring to interpret him.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: Plato writes in dialogue form,
16:35
He doesn't write treatises or monographs like a lot of modern
16:38
philosophers or essays.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: These are both literary and philosophical.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: He wrote nearly 40 dialogues.
16:44
Some would argue that these dialogues form a system and that
16:48
Plato's making
16:49
arguments in them and that you can logically evaluate these
16:52
arguments in and of
16:53
SPEAKER_00: themselves like modern philosophy.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: And this is what
16:56
SPEAKER_00: first wave Platonism pretty much did with very little success.
17:00
If you take out the arguments out of their context,
17:02
a lot of the times they don't make sense.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: They're not really very good arguments.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: You really miss the point of what Plato is actually talking about.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: This kind of led to second wave Platonism,
17:10
SPEAKER_00: which is the dialogues are purely skeptical,
17:13
SPEAKER_00: rhetorical,
17:13
SPEAKER_00: literary.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: They're not actually meant to be like philosophy.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: You shouldn't evaluate them for truth claims.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: And this kind of, again, I think lowers it to just
17:22
SPEAKER_00: Some slightly dodgy literary works by Plato that,
17:26
SPEAKER_00: you know,
17:26
SPEAKER_00: plays that if you put them on stage,
17:28
SPEAKER_00: put people to sleep.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of questions about interpreting Plato.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: The frame that I'm going to use for this series is third wave.
17:36
Third wave Platonism argues that Plato's philosophy is not
17:39
separable from the dramatic form.
17:41
The fact that a character blushes is just as important as what
17:44
the character says.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: So Plato's dialogue is an argument.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: It's not just in each line of dialogue or in each scene or in each beat.
17:52
The dialogue demonstrates the dialectical method,
17:55
the journey we have to undertake ourselves.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: This dialectical method is summed up in the myth of the cave,
18:01
SPEAKER_00: which is a myth of enlightenment,
18:03
SPEAKER_00: which we'll meet in book seven.
18:05
The point is that you can't separate the literary from the
18:08
philosophical in Plato.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: The fact that it's a story, that's a dialogue, is very important.
18:12
the interpretation of it and so throughout the series we're
18:15
going to pay attention
18:16
to that to the bits of dialogue and the essential narrative
18:20
quality of the story
18:21
I'm going to rely a lot on this book by DC Schindler Plato's
18:25
Critique of Impure
18:26
SPEAKER_00: Reason as a secondary source it's a
18:28
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely amazing book.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps after reading The Republic,
18:31
SPEAKER_00: it would be good to go on to study it because it is really brilliant.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm using this copy of The Republic by Alan Bloom,
18:38
SPEAKER_00: but also the GMA Groob edition,
18:42
SPEAKER_00: which is the most typical one you find in the complete works of Plato.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: It was a very good translation.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: So in summary,
18:47
SPEAKER_00: in part three,
18:48
the Socratic solution to the Athenian meaning crisis is to
18:51
become rational and wise,
18:53
SPEAKER_00: criticize both myths and science properly.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: But then Athens puts him to death.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: This guy was on track to sort us out and you killed him.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: So Plato takes on the Socratic educational mission.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: but also with this problem of politics,
19:06
SPEAKER_00: of the polis,
19:07
SPEAKER_00: and the conflict between truth and power,
19:10
SPEAKER_00: which obviously comes to fruition in the Republic.
19:13
As Plato searches for a cosmic grounding for truth to refute
19:16
moral relativism,
19:18
but then also the old polytheistic tradition of Athens to
19:21
introduce a kind of
19:22
SPEAKER_00: monotheism beyond that.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: In summary,
19:25
my argument for the relevance of Plato's Republic is that
19:28
Athens was undergoing a
19:29
SPEAKER_00: meaning crisis at the same time.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: We are undergoing a meaning crisis where we have this powerful scientific
19:35
revolution that's undercut a lot of the mythologies that were
19:38
grounding virtue and vice,
19:40
SPEAKER_00: character,
19:41
SPEAKER_00: justice and morality itself.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: We can learn from this Platonic dialogue a way out to become wiser,
19:48
SPEAKER_00: more rational in order to understand science and mythology in its place.
19:52
And so what I would argue is that Plato offers us a way out of
19:56
the meaning crisis
19:57
SPEAKER_00: that is a return,
19:58
SPEAKER_00: but also is probably new to most people.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: So over the next 11 lectures,
20:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to go through the Republic book by book,
20:05
SPEAKER_00: introduce the main ideas for you.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: If you go to the Wisdom Dojo Substack in the introductory email,
20:11
I have a PDF copy of the book that you can use to recommend
20:16
getting a hard copy of it.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
20:18
SPEAKER_00: over the next 10 lectures after this one,
20:20
SPEAKER_00: we're going to explore all of the aspects of the Republic.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: So hopefully see you there.