My Full Plato Lecture From My Philosophy 101 Course!

Welcome to everybody. Yeah, it's glad. I'm glad to be back. Um, I did a lot of reading last week. We've been brushing up and a lot of stuff. You know, I did do a full I think we did an eight eight point lecture, eight part lecture years ago on the entirety of the Republic. I lectured through many of the dialogues, not all of them, because you know, of course, this is a lot of stuff. Plato has a vast amount and Ariostota has also about the same

vast amount in English that we know about. So so we're gonna try to compact it as best we can. We're gonna get get into it. This is gonna be very difficult. So again, like we did last time, right now in your questions, and I'll be happy to answer any of them when we get to the end. Um, there's a lot fewer slides this time, and but that's not because of a lack of material. That's because we're gonna spend more time on each of the pages because there's just so much

information here, so much to cover. First, we're gonna go into you guys, remember last time, the last slide we talked about some of the questions that were left open for Plato to deal with. Right, when Plato comes into the realm of philosophy, he's taught by Socrates. One thing that we want to keep in mind is that throughout the Platonic corpus, the main

character will be Socrates. Socrates, as far as we know, didn't write anything, and so it's going to be Plato that is the recorder or the author, right, who's utilizing Socrates as is key protagonist figure throughout the dialogues. This is going to be a unique approach, a new way to do this type of of a of a process of philosophy through a linktic method or through dialectical method question and answer. So most of the dialogues are going to

be a structured that way. There's going to be interlocutors, there's going to be opponents, there's gonna be people asking questions and trying to figure out get to the root of the issue in all of these matters. And this is where we get that phraseology of dialectical method, which is question and answer, cross examination and response, a link goos or a linked us, a linkedic method is this method of pedagogy. So remember we wanted distress as in the

Q and A that we had last time. Is that's different than a metaphysical idea of dialectical tensions. And if anybody did get their Coppleston text book, you'll notice that Coppleston throughout the Plato chapters mentioned that as well. He talked about Plato's dialectical considerations, and dialectics is very important in history philosophy. It's going to come up a lot. It's one of those things that we wanted to be aware of as a recurring term because this is going to come up

with marks. If you know what I'm about dialectics and dialectical philosophy, we're gonna have a hard time understanding marks when we get to krawl marks. We're not going to spend a whole lot of time on krawl marks, but we do need to understand this, you know, horrible philosophy because it did have such an impact, you know, on the world in modern philosophy. But I'm just like hegel Marks, well Hagel land Marks, both very interested in

dialectics and dialectical philosophy. And this does have its root in Greek philosophy. And so these are the questions that the Presocratics left Plato with that, I told you guys to think about and look for if you did get a chance to read the apology, you didn't have to read it. I'm not going to grade you. It's up to you. But I think everybody here wants to be here, and that's the advantage of what we're doing here. And so probably hopefully some of you did get a chance to read the apology.

I didn't expect everybody to read everything. And you know, if you did get a chance to read the complas and chapters on Plato, then you're way ahead of the game. So that's good, and you'll notice a lot about to talk about is in those chapters. But also I did go pretty deep into the Republic. I don't know how deeple get into that tonight. I do have a couple of slides on it, but we'll try to get as deep as we can. What is reality? What is man? What should

man do? Can man know? Can we give an account for what we know? What is knowledge? Is knowledge different from opinion? Is it a lower type of knowledge? Can we have objective certitude of knowledge? What about objects in the world? Do they have identity over time? Do they have identity through change. What about the problem of the one in the many, which we brought at last time, which is so prevalent in the Presocratics.

This is the question of how do we predicate of particulars commonalities that they share amongst their class of things. In other words, when I look at the dog, I say, the dog is brown. Well, I point out that's a singular dog amongst a class of things called dogs. And what is it that makes that thing particular, that unique dog in contrast to the other dogs of which it is a class. Likewise, what is the common thing

that those share amongst the class of dogs? Is it dogness? Well, we'll see pantheism, atheism, materialism, empiricism, rationalism, monism, dualism. As we saw. Those are the same issues throughout the Presocratics, still being discussed by philosophers today. In fact, I'm looking over at my shelf, my philosophy shelf over there, and I see prominently displayed a new newly

released book, The Problem of the One in the Many. So here we are two thousand and five hundred years later, academic discourse is still discussing these very prevalent topics throughout the Greek philosophers of ancient yore. Now we talked about dialectics not in a diological teaching sense pedagogical sense. We talked about it in

a metaphysical sense. And we want to pay attention here because these are gonna be very prevalent, recurring, as we said, and this came up in the Q and A, so I wanted to highlight this a little bit more. We're gonna notice that throughout the Presocratics and solemn Plato, and into the

Neoplatonists as well, and even into the debates. When we get through some of the patristic philosophers, the question of determinism versus free will will arise, the question of the one in the many which I just mentioned, the question of eternity versus time? Is it better to be an eternity? Is time of a diminished status lesser than the eternal? Right? Are these opposites? In many cases these are cashed out in a philosophy of opposites. The one

is the opposite of the mini. Some philosophers will say that the Mini is trying to get back to that ultimate unification as we saw with Empedocles. No, the Mini is more fundamental than the one, right or the seeds of the logos everywhere, Right, that's the mini that's preeminent in that idea. Perhaps eternity is something that we need to get back to. And this realm of flux, this realm of time is somehow worse, bad, lesser.

Maybe who which one? Which one is it? Maybe these are false dialectics, right, What about the notion of order matter potentia excuse me, exc gonna order, which is the connected to the principle of being eternality structure? Is that in dialectical tension with the principle of matter chaos potentia Aristotle as when we get theirsol is going to use the term premium material prime matter, which is a pure potential. Maybe that's in some sort of battle, fundamental war,

contrast contradiction, struggle with order in any sense. Right, and we get to Plato, we're going to notice that he's very clear on his view of a lot of these questions which side he falls on. And we're gonna try to be as fair to Plato as as we can, because Plato at least tries he wants to reconcile and solve some of these dialectical problems that we saw last week in the Presocratics. So whether he achieves that that, I'll

leave that up to you in your assessment of Plato. If you read the Copples some chapters, we know that a Copplison himself had the very same critique that you're going to hear me give, which helps me understand that I was glad to get into this because I had the same reading of the Republic and the same reading of a lot of those that Copplison did so and I think he's a competent thinker, and that lets me know that, you know,

I didn't have some vast misreading of these texts. There was a guy on the Twitter or some PhD guy a couple of months ago who was just going nuts on me, saying that I know you misunderstood everything. It's like you're wrong about all of it. You're totally wrong. Well, I mean, if i'm you know, basically come to the same conclusions of other, you know, competent guys who are widely used, then I think I probably on good ground. And that doesn't mean it's true. I may be wrong,

but it's it's good to find camaraderie in your readings. Now other things that pop up. This doesn't just relate to abstract metaphysics. These dialectics might relate

to the social sphere. And we're gonna see that with Plato, because Plato will have debates about how should a city be run, how should a republic be run, what's the ideal form of government so that we don't fall into anarchy on the one hand of the dominance of the many, notice that anarchy might be spilling over onto the side of you know, too much particularization, too much individuality. In Plato's view, Oh, maybe we got Antifa out

there, right, they're running there, they're going nuts. They're they're pouring piss and shit on everybody. They're throwing locks in people's faces, right, because it's chaos, anarchy, that's that's maybe that's what we need. Or no, wait a minute, what if we need the dictator to squash all the Antifa bugs going nuts out there. So if we just had a strong dictator, man who could come in, you know, a big old daddy

stalin, a big old daddy mao right now, big dong. If he comes in and lays down the law, he can squish all these petty Antifa people, or is this a dialectic and they both fall over into each other. Maybe there's some sort of intimate connection between societies that go from tyranny into anarchy, or from anarchy into tyranny. That's in fact going to be one

of the points that we'll notice in the Republic. What about this idea that stasis, permanence, invariance, eternality, is that better than change in flux? Well, we saw us on the prestocratics. One guy says permenites. Oh, everything is stasis, dude, Literally, everything is stasis. The things that you think are changing members ENO's paradox with the arrow. That's all illusions, dude. Everything is pure permanence and stasis. Or is everything flux?

The other guy right, what her clitis? All is flux? All is fire. Adams going wild, going nuts, going buck wild, going crazy. Adams are constantly just having a party. There's nothing stable. You got an Adam over here with the freaking lamp on his head. You got another atom over here, he's tripping acid. You got another atom over here he's trying to grab butts. I mean atoms are going wild. That's all that it is. There's no order which one is it? Or maybe there's

something in between rationalism versus empiricism. This is something that we said would come up. We're definitely going to see Plato taking a side in this debate. If you don't know, I think everybody probably has figured out Plato will side on reason. Reason is far superior to empirical sense. Data sense data is not totally useless. It does tell us some things. The sensible particulars he calls them, are not completely a loser. They're not completely imaginary, but

there are copies and imitation, which we'll see in a moment. But for the philosopher, in Plato's mind, reason is key. Reason is key, and Plato will take certain ideas from presocratics and modify them and change. For example, he will be interested in the one of the many questions, and he will take from both Parmenides and from Heraclitis. You said, well, wait a minute, how it's got to be either or right, I mean,

everything's got to be flux or everything's got to be permanent. Well, in Plato's either's two realms, one characterized by permanence, one characterized by flux. So Plato, as we can see, will be a kind of synthesis figure between Heaclitis and Parmenides. Another prominent dialectic that pops up here is the soul or the mind, and sometimes these are equivalent identified, especially in the

Greeks and in some of the Latin Christian theologians like Augustine. Or is the body more pre emiti should we get more of a pre eminence to bodily things since data the pleasures of the body, or are the pleasures of reason? Thought, logic? Doing math? Is that better and higher than I don't know, having sexy time. Maybe that's what we should be doing. Well.

Again, these are questions the Plato's grappling with, and they all come out of the Presocratics, and he's not gonna reject them all or accept them all. So he's a as Copison noted, a big leap forward in the notable but limited speculations and processes of the presecratics that we covered last week. And not just in terms of the immensity of the depth, the scope, etc. But the vast amount of writings. I mean again, right,

the plato works. I don't know if I'm over here, but I mean they're big, old thick thing, right, And so oh, I'm into. The reason I have that diagram there is that this will be a fundamental to Platonic theology, and this is a triad or a triangle, but for Plato's purposes, there will be a lot of triplicities that will be present these triads. They're not all triangles. Triangles are triadic, but there's other kinds

of triads there. Will notice when we get to the republic, there's a triad of how this city should be governed in a three tiered structure that corresponds to the body of a man. Because the city, he'll say, is like a big man and it has a three tiered structure of mind, heart, body. The triads and Plato will pop up quite a bit, so

we should be looking for that. And in this system, again borrowing from Pythagorean ideas, you'll have a movement that is primarily described numerically of a movement from the monad to the diad to the triad, from one to two to three. And the reason that he thinks that is that, well, if you have a monad and then you put another circle there where if there's a movement from one point in the center to the next point in another circle center

the bestica pieces. Then you get this overlapping line where you can now start to draw a triangle in the middle of that, And so the monad produces the diad. It's not drawn there, but you could see right between one of those top halves of the bestic pieces, you could you could draw a triangle there if you connected right, if you connected them equally, speed on

the and the side's equally you know what I'm saying. So the monad, the diad, and the triad are the fundamental principles and structures that make up everything, and even in the realm of the forms, and even in the realm of the here and the now, which we'll get to in a minute. So everything in the world is constructed on the basis of these geometric archetypal forms and patterns. And again a lot of borrowing and overlap here with Pythagoras

that we talked about last time. And these triads are not just things that point us to the higher realm in Plato, they also are the fundamental structure of this realm. And I didn't have time to really get a lot of the stuff relating to the Tamaus. It can be its own really long lecture because it's a very complex, very difficult dialogue. But the Tomaus will make a lot of use of these triangles. I wanted to build up what are

called the platonic solids. So if you've you've heard of this idea in ancient Greek metaphysics or the or geometry. I think this is pretty well known. You know this. You get to the polygons, the octagon, etc. Those are the platonic solids, and those in Plato's cosmology, his idea of the structure of the universe and the origin of the universe is cosmogeny. Those

are fundamental to all of reality. All of reality is built up and structured in these mathematical and geometrical forms, everything even down to the smallest atomic level. So he will borrow from some of the atomists this idea of atomism, but he doesn't he's not a materialist, so it doesn't believe that all of it exists as atoms. But he thinks that these structures of geometric forms and order are not just at the macro scale, they also go all the way

down to a microscale. Let's look at some of the important terms that we're going to need to know for tonight and what they mean on a very basic level techne. I'm sure you've heard Richard talk about techne in this system. In this area, primarily we're looking at not the arts and crafts, but the doing of some art or the creation of some artifice. So in Plato's idea, the city needs to be run and structured in an artificial an arctifice

type of way. So, even though Plato's not strictly speaking a technocrat in that he doesn't necessarily believe in computers running everything, the idea in Plato which we'll see in the Republic very clearly about mathematics being the model for the state. That's an proto technocratic view. And thus Plato is a proto techne teacher, right. He believes in techne as a form of not just a governance. But the philosopher himself, right, is doing the art of philosophy,

which is the highest of the arts according to Socrates. And one of the dialogues that we'll talk about, and I think that's in Fieto Infieto, he says that, well, I tried to do some poetry Socrates does. He says, my poetry pretty much sucked. So then I realized that when I went to the Oracle Delphi, that I should just be a philosopher, because philosophy is way better than poetry anyway. So he kind of he says like, I tried out poetry, and then he dishes it like he negs poetry.

He's like, yeah, poetry kind of sucks. He's like it's cool, but like philosophy is so much cooler, and he's like, by the way, I'm the best at that. So the art of philosophy, the art of doing philosophy, and the reason that we're going to connect it with Techne is that in Socrates slash Plato, the art of doing philosophy for them is really close to being a mathematician, and that means structuring everything in the

most rational, most formal, most ideal, most logical way. I mean, I think we could probably call Plato a kind of a Spurg, right, I mean we think of the Zuckerbergs and these kinds of guys as the Spurgs, right, I mean, and I'm not trying to be mean. I mean I probably have a good Dosa sperg in me, Like was the Oban say I got a dose of thetism. I probably got a little bit of that. Well. Plato did too, right, and he sees he's a kind of a mechanistic style of thinker. But I'm not saying that his

philosophy is mechanistic. He doesn't see the universe as this strictly mechanistic system. Next up is the apologia. This is a defense. And if you read to Nice first lecture or Commune first dialogue, the Apology again most probably the most famous essay in the history of all philosophy, not very long, where Socrates on trial. Then you know that it's called the apology because that means

a defense. And for people who have theological views, there's a whole whole domain of debate and theology called apologetics, which is the defense of one's position. So that doesn't just apply to theology. As you can see. You know, in the in the dialogue you have Socrates. They're giving a defense

of his position and the role of a philosopher in society. And there was actually quite a few comedic parts, if you guys got to read it, there were some funny parts, and he kind of busts some jokes and busts. He makes fun of some of the people in the city, so it's a there's an element of comedy there as well. Hubris excessive pride or denying the gods with a use or function of reason. I think probably anybody who's had any courses in college or the courses on literature, you probably had the

list of the key Greek literary terms. It is relevant here because there's going to be discussions of how the philosopher needs to be to not have hubris, and Hubris did come up, I think in some areas in what Homer and Hessia too, so it's part of the poetic tradition too. But excessive pride in philosophy is dangerous because it will blind and delude the philosopher from being corrected,

and you know, the philosopher needs to be able to learn. In fact, Plato in the Republic, if I recall, he has this weird idea that like the philosopher king who's going to be running the city. He's like kind of the autocrat of the Plato's republic, the ideal city. He goes and studies geometry and math on a mountain for like, you know, twenty years, and then he comes back down to the town, and it is supposed to impress, you know, the mathematical knowledge, like onto the

city. Right, So there is this very almost ascetic view of mathematics, which who do we see that in by aggress So there's a lot of influence there as well. Next term that will pop up as useful is Idos is a Greek word that Plato uses oftentimes for the forms, and it means idea or the form. This will be central to Plato's metaphysic. The forms are the most popular and most famous, most well known, most fundamental element of

Plato's physical view. The forms aren't the only thing that exists, but the forms have the most real existence. Our world is not totally fake, it's not totally a dream, but it's not as real as the realm of the forms. We'll get to that in the moment. Archais is another term that pops up in Plato's philosophy and in other Greek philosophers and in theologians and archi Here refers to archetype, exemplar, or pattern. And if you are familiar,

for example, with Carl Jung's archetypes, same idea. Right now, Carl Young kind of does his own thing with literature and this kind of stuff. But he's getting the idea of archetypes from Plato, from Platonic philosophy, so there is an overlap there. They have a similar origin in Christian theology. A lot of theologians in early Church we'll talk about reality being created on the basis of divine ideas. Even Augustine he makes a lot of use of

this idea of divine exemplars that is also from Plato. And we'll also be present when we get to the neo Platonists. And if you guys do want to go above and beyond, there is a book that is a very small readable book by RT. Wallace, which is kind of the standard academic introduction to the neo Platonists. So and well, I'll talk about them in a little bit, but they have a specific reading of Plato into the early centuries, for second third century eighty, so this will be many centuries after Plato

and Aristotle. The neo Platonists, Middle Platonists, and neo Platinists, they will have a specific reading of Plato that's probably normative back then, but nowadays in academia have all kinds of readings of Plato. Right, So for example, some philosophers and scholars will debate, oh they played to really believe in the God that he talks about or is it just a symbolic form? So apa facis aipacis. This is another important idea in Plato or sometimes called apiphatic.

It might be used in theology, it might be used in Platonism, it might be used in other Greek philosophy. And this is referred to in the Middle Ages as a via negativa or the way of negation. And what that means is that some things, by the nature of what they are, are so difficult or impossible to define that the best attempt at definition that we

have is to do it by negation. So, for example, in the Middle Ages, some of the theologians and philosophers will talk about, well, we don't know what divine omniscience is in a strict definitional sense, so the best definition that we can give is what it is not that is by negation or apophosis. And this comes up even and I think in mathematics too. I'm not a mathematician, so don't hold me to this, but I think mathematics sometimes uses this where you have concepts like zero well, what is zero?

Can you define it? Well, you know, it's not quantity or one or two or three or four. Right, So it's kind of this abstract negation. And it's the same with for Plato, the way that we will try to speak of the highest form, or the highest one, the highest good, which is the beautiful, which is the God, and it is perhaps apyrone or beyond being and known apophetically or via negation. What does that mean? Well, it's not this thing, it's not that thing.

It's not that thing, it's not that it's not any of these things. It's the beyond of all those things. And remember, you know, a couple of the Presocratics use this idea of the oponne, the boundless, the beyond in precisely that way apatheia. This is important for the Greek philosophers and Greek thought and a view, A trait that they held highly esteemed in humans,

especially very thoughtful humans and philosophers, was to achieve apatheian. Now, this does not mean passion the sense of like, you know, my marriage is cold and we don't love each other, and it's faith. We're not talking about passionless in that sense. Passionless in the sense of you're not governed by the body's passions, you're not governed by lust, you're not governed by

your stomach, you're not governed by pride. Right, so that you can't be taught anything any of the passions, the vices that might govern us, that distract us, blind us, and keep us from focusing on the transcendent, focusing on numbers, focusing on doing our math homework, learning our time stables. Right, I mean you want to the essence of Platonic philosophy, you need to be doing your time stables and not jerking off. Okay,

that's the kind of philosphy that you would get from Plato and Socrates. And I'm being serious here. Why is he saying the sexuality is bad or that you having a wife is But no, no, he's not saying that.

He's saying that any of the pleasures have the potentiality of enslaving us to the point that we are no longer able to really control and use our reasoning faculty, which is what should govern us. So he's not being like this kind of weird ascetic in the sense that, oh you should be you know, celibate or and he's not saying that he's saying that it needs to be under

control. And there's that famous image of that from the one of the dialogues where you have the rider on the horse, and you know, Plato's saying that the horses right are like the bodily passions, and if you don't have a rider who can control and steer the horses in the chariot, then the chariot will just go wild and the gulf of cliff right. So you got to have a rider, and the rider represents reason. The rider is your

reasoning faculty. It is or use of reason, your use of logic, your use of critical thinking, to govern your life in every year of life. So the philosopher is principally the person who achieves apatheia, that is in the sense of passionless, in the sense that he is not dominated or ruled by any of the vices or the passions. Rather he is dominant and ruled by reason. Logos obviously is a very important term. As we said, that would pop up. And in the context of Plato, I think there's

a really good uh if you want. The Cambridge Companion of Plato is an excellent book. There's a whole entry in that that I read some years ago about logos and Plato, and it's really good if you want more source material, and it goes into how for Plato, logos is intimately connected not just with reason or explanations in terms of logic, but law like logic. So

there's there's a law character too. Lo ghosts as well in Plato. Going from memories a few years ago when I read that, But another term that comes up, which is might be referring to the plural. This will be very commonly used later on in Byzantine theology is loge, and that's the plural of logos, and so there this means many reasons, multiple reasons, or ideas. So we might be referring to by logoss mind or the faculty of reason mind itself, or the faculty of reasoning, or the laws of logic

in some metaphysical sense, they govern the universe. And then if we see the term loge, we might be referring to the many reasons by which this or that occurs, or the many ideas that man or God has about this or that thing. Ontology is an important term that we should know, and that is really just simply the study of being, what bees, what does it mean for an object to be? To exist? Other Sometimes ontology is

just kind of a stand in for metaphysics. But metaphysics might deal with all kinds of things like free will, the you know existence, what is love right? These kinds of things, But ontology is a little more specific domind and metaphysics where we're just concerned with being itself and that relates to the Greek

word for being too o num. Let's move to the apology. So this is where we want to start in Platonic philosophy, as we said, because it kind of kicks Platist philosophy off, and it's kind of them as we said, like the philosophical texts par excellence. And uh, it's also in a literary way, appreciated for its literary elements. Right, It's it's a well written story, it's got some humor. Uh, it's dealing with a lot of you know, high minded ideas, all of that into an excellent

presentation. And I got actually quite a bit of notes on. So this is uhum Socrates again, Plato's teacher. Here is the protagonist, and here we have the righteous man, the righteous philosopher is accused by his interlocutors here of two maybe three two main problems you got, you gotta you're doing court, dude, you're indict they indict him. Why do they indict Socrates? Well, the charge is you are teaching atheism and corrupting the youth, and

you are teaching new gods. So these are the accusations they're seeking. Are really mad, They're seeking some kind of punitive or penal damages, perhaps even death for whatever. Is this dangerous thing that philosophers do. And hence the idea of the apologia, right, the apology the defense. Okay, well let me give you my defense. Now, we notice that as we read through the defense, and this is great because we'll notice that what do we

say in Lecture one? What did philosophers do? They question things, they consider presuppositions, They cross examine and look for contradictions. Right, remember that from Lecture one? Well, guess what Socrates is going to do all the above. And he says, well, I wait a minute, let's consider your charges against me. He says, first, you say that I am an atheist, but then you said I teach new gods. Well, if I believe in new gods, then I can't be an atheist. So immediately

he points out a contradiction. So there we see the philosopher is cross examining. He's looking at the arguments that are being used against him. In this case, it really is against him, not just against his theoretical position, but again against him because they want him, they want him hung right there, really, Matt And he says, well, let me give you a defense of my lifestyle, because you seemed to be saying that you think I'm

corrupting the youth. And so if I'm corrupt, then wouldn't you expect to see a corruption in my life? And he says, but none of you can actually point to anything corrupt in my life. I didn't do this for money, he says. I taught openly. I taught not for filthy gain and lucre. And he says, don't you think if I just was in it for the money, I would have become a politician. So even in two thousand, five hundred years ago in Athens, they knew to make fun

of and laugh at the hypocrisy and corruption of politicians. And that's his principal example of a corrupt person. He says, Look, if I would really wanted to corrupt the youth. I would have become a politician. I could have done that. But did I do that? No? And he says, so I didn't corrupt your use by asking them questions. In fact, I didn't just go to the youth. He says, I went to all different strata people in society and I asked them questions. I cross examined them.

I questioned their presuppositions. And that ended up making a lot of people mad. So I went to the politician, I went to the artists and the craftsman. I went to the musicians and those kinds of people. And the funny thing is socridy, says everybody who I asked, what is wisdom? What is you know? Justice? What are these things? What's the purpose of life? Etc? These philosophical questions, they all kind of just identified their own profession with it. Oh, well, wisdom is you know,

doing politics? Oh, wisdom is being good at you know, ship building? Right? Oh, wisdom is you know whatever? And he said, you know, I would just ask a few rhetorical questions, that cross examination thing that we do as philosophers, And he said, I found that in most cases, the more questions I asked they just got mad and they couldn't really tell me what wisdom is. And he said, I don't see how I'm corrupt by seeking the truth. That's all I was doing. I

was asking and wanting to know what truth is. And he says, I didn't assume that I knew what wisdom is. So he thought, so he says, why wouldn't I just go to people that probably how are wise and probably have more wisdom than me? And I didn't restrict it to one strata or ara of society. I went to everybody, and what do we find? Well, he of course says in the defense, that nobody seemed to

know. So when I went to the oracle at Delphi, I went to this sort of religious mystical element, the oracle, and the oracle says, because you said that you didn't know Socrates, you are the wisest man in

Athens. And he says, maybe that's what's made you all mad. Right, So they're kind of like probably a little jealous, right, I mean, we don't exactly know, but probably they're a little jealous, and probably they're mad because they didn't like being asked these difficult questions which they could not give a coherent answer to And so this method of questioning, this method of seeking a good account, is very important because as we get into Plato's works,

Plato will be one of the first philosophers to raise the question of what counts as real knowledge. It can't just be opinion. It's got to be something more than that. And in saying that we need more than mere opinion to have true knowledge, we begin to ask the questions that are known as justification. Now that's not used at this time per se, but later on philosophy develops these branches in these terms, remember last time, under the domain

of epistemology. In modern philosophy, especially after the Enlightenment, the question of justification for our epistom logical belief or commitments is going to be very important, but it's already anticipated in Plato. Plato will be the first to talk about justified true belief and what that entails in terms of giving an account or grounding for our beliefs. We'll also notice that here we have something unique to Western thought, in Western philosophy, which is the rise of the individual. And

some think mini thinkers actually have pointed this out. This is the idea that the individual is present here in a unique way that we may not have seen in other previous philosophical discussions and traditions. The individual here is is able, we see here to determine and come to truth in an objective way that is not determined by social consensus or by the court. Right. So, maybe prior to this most people would have thought, well, what's true is just

simply what the authorities decide. If the court in Athens says that Socrates is guilty and a bad man, then it's got to be true, because they're the authorities, and who are we to go against the collective or whatever. Right. Well, here we have a notion that no, actually an individual can be right and everybody else wrong. That's one of the implications and one of the early notions of Western philosophy that will be unique and will characterize Western

philosophy for minutes. Not in every philosopher, obviously, mal obviously Marx. Some of the philosophers will completely reject that idea or they don't like that idea. The philosopher questions, and he does not just go along with the collective or with the mob. Again, this is something important to Plato, the philosopher King the ideal philosopher, the ideal man, the just man is somebody who's committed to what's true and not just to pragmatic practical just get ahead.

Oh, I'm just gonna go along with everybody. I mean, And let's think of an example where this was necessary. I mean, didn't quite a few people take the stabby in the last couple of years just to go along and get along. Well, we'll keep my job, so they're good. You stabby, he'll do something my dub. But I want to keep my job. Okay, Well, what's why are you gonna do? You gonna do your job when you're dead? Well more dub, But I want to lose my job. I mean, I'm not trying to be mean. I

don't. I'm not hating on the people, but I'm saying this is illustrative because you know, if you had been into philosophy, you would have known, well, hey, well maybe I shouldn't just go along with what everybody else is doing. Right? Did Socrates just go along? Now? He didn't. Because whether we disagree with everything he taught or agree with everything you taught, the point is that here what he's doing is illustrative for us.

The lesson here is that we should critically think, we should not live the unexamined life. And he's setting that example here by living and examined life and saying, oh, wait a minute, let's examine your accusations against me. You said I'm a corruptor of the youth, I'm an atheist teaching new gods. Those things don't make sense. Those are contradictions. If they're contradictions,

then they can't be true. And I think what we're now some people might read this as an arrogant claim, right, because when he went to the oracle, the oracle says, you're the wisest man attens, right, because you didn't know, and you knew that you didn't know, so you were

wise enough to try to ask and learn from everybody. And so I read this as a treatise against and critiquing humorists, because the politician, the artisan, the poets, the accusers in the courtroom, they're possessed with pride and humorists. And why is that Well, because they're not committed to what's true. They're simply out for their objective, for their ends. We've got to get this Socrates guy. You know, whatever it takes right, And so

I read this as an attempted critique of Hubrists. The philosopher is the one that is truly humble. Why because he wants to be corrected, He wants to learn. He's the one saying, I don't know, teach me, hey, teach me hey, teach me right. He wants to be corrected, and that a continual process of wanting to be corrected in the dialogue, I think is what leads him to the attainment of truth. That's the point

of the dialogue. Then he says and gives a defense. And this will get more and more controversial in terms of the readings that scholars have of both the apology and Socrates and Plato in terms of the theology. So another argument that Socrates makes is that you know, I wasn't commissioned to do all of this on my own. He appeals to a deity. The deity, he says, sent me to do this mission to teach philosophy to you people in

Athens, and that is I'm impelled to do that by my damon. Now this doesn't mean a demon in the sense a Christian sense of a you know, malicious spirit that makes your head spin and you split up PCU. This is a damon in the sense of a higher guide, sort of a guardian entity. Amused, right, these are these are the ways that the Greeks viewed decided of damon. And he says, I have dreams and visions from a damon. Uh, that is a damon sent to me by God.

And I've been commissioned to teach you people these things. That's his claim. So whenever you think of that, that's one of the claims of the defenses that he offers in his apologetic he also says, now, if you kill me and I am who I say I am, and I'm telling you the truth, it's worse for you, not for me. So you may think you're getting at me and you're taking me out, and you're this troublesome gadfly who is asking all these annoying questions will be gotten rid of. But this

is going to be actually worse on your soul for doing this. And so Socrates notes that for the sake of philosophy and truth, he is willing to be a martyr. And this is because he he says, I thinking if iedo the other one of the other dialogues, he says, well, I have to be willing to accept the death, because if I don't willingly accept death without fear, then it kind of undermines all the philosophy that I've been

teaching all these years, which is that we shouldn't have fear death. The righteous man, the just man right, And we'll see who the righteous just man is in Platonic philosophy in a minute. He should not fear death. And so Socrates has these buddies who are trying to convince him to run away. I will sneak you out of here. Come on, let's bring of jail like a you know, Ted Bundy. He says, I'm not breaking

out. In fact, I'm willing to go to my death because it would undermine and would make me a hypocrite, because I've been saying all these years that the just man has nothing to fear in death, and even says stuff like why would I fear death? I get to go hang out with Homer and all these you know, cool poets and people. So it's like I'm happy that he's like, that would be cooler than hanging out with these you know, hubrist filled, boring ass Athenians are trying to get me. You

know, put in jail or whatever. And Socrates sort of goes on to point out that, you know, my goal was just to help you guys think rightly and live rightly. That's supposed to be live right, not life right. But so in other words, again we see that for Plato, put On and philosophy, metaphysics, and ethics are intimately bound up together. You can't separate these their distinct things in terms of our considerations and the way

that we live and do these things. But in philosophy these things cannot be divorced because we're again we're going to see, for example, the just man is the man who participates in the form of justice. And I forgot to put that term a texas etche x i s, which is important Greek term in Platonic philosophy for participation. So it's not just the forms, it's not just humans that participate in the forms. All of reality in this world is

in a participatory relationship to the forms. The forms do not come into this world. We partake of that realm of the forms, but we are in a lower diminished status than the realm of the forms. We'll get to that in a minute. Truth is objective, is another thing we learn here. That's one of the points that the apology is that it's not a social construct. Right, what's true is not determined by the majority. Even if all the Athenians decide that what Socrity is teaching us false, it doesn't make it

false. It may be false, but it doesn't make it false by some majority opinion. So truth is objective. Truth is not a social construct. It's discovered and it's also not the creation of the Athenian state. The state doesn't just get to make up truth right now in our days, right in our day, it's really no different, is it. I mean, the state believes that it can decide and determine truth. Right. Richard quotes the

Richard the Karl Rove quote a lot. Right, we will say what's what is, and you will go in diligently study, and we will continue then to keep making history, and you will study what we do because it's what we make it and to be and what we say it is. That's the opposite of what Socrates is saying. Right clearly, and obviously too, it should be the case, it should be obvious that truth is not a social

construct. Right, This is ridiculous I mean, just think about how and this is again something that we're going to see that you know, Plato rejects when he goes against the Sophists, where the Sophists are a kind of relativists, and they're gonna say, well, I mean, you know, truth is whatever anybody individually thinks it thinks it is. It's relative to every person.

And for Plato this would be absurd. So you think that the laws of logic, the principles of geometry are just what anybody wants them to be, or they're just a social So if we all got together and decided in a social constructor that you know, the number seven is now the number ten like that, wouldn't it would actually change? I mean, you see how silly this is. Right, But there's quite a few people who believe this

truth is relative truth and social construct whatever. And the state, by the way, the corporate state that we live in today, is more than happy to have people believing this, because that is a belief that enslaves you. If you can't come to truth, if you can't reason, you're not going to be able to reason about and figure out what's going on in the world. You're going to be a tool of the propaganda, and you're going to be that guy saying, well, good get to big Stein, so I

can do my job even though I might dot right, that's illogical. Yeah I might die, Yeah, I might die a job. Or my favorite example of the last few years, this one. I'll never forget this one. Two thousand scientists sign a statement that the coronavirus doesn't affect Black Lives Matter

demonstrations, but it does affect Trump rallies. This is the greatest example of like the most ridiculous magical thinking from so called scientists and propagandists, I mean, unbelievable, right, What better example of the absurdity of this magical thinking of so that that truth and science can be somehow a social construct, utter insanity. Next important dialogue we want to look at is the fiat um um. And I've chosen a couple of these just as selections, because there's many

dialogues there's and there's many that are very important. Some of them are not so important. Ion is a funny one because they're he just has this brief dialogue with poets and musicians and he basically says, you guys are nuts, and he says, we're not going to have poets and musicians, you know, running wild in the republic. We're gonna shut you guys down, he says, because you guys inflame the passions, and if you let you guys

go wild, you're going to destroy society. Now, I think that's a little ridiculous, you know, his idea, And it's also contradictory because I mean, here he's saying that he's guided by his dame on, but then he says that the poets and the musicians are possessed by the muse and so they're not you know, they don't listen to reason. So it's a little

a little contradictory and hypocritical there on the part of Plato Socrates. But also at the same time, I mean, Plato himself is using poetics, using literary devices in his dialogues as he's saying that, oh, we're gonna censor the arts in the republic. So you see how this is again a little shaky ground here, a little contradictory. But well, we're gonna set that a cybermum. We're gonna look at the Pieto because it is one of the

more important dialogues that's that's great to get into the metaphysics of Plato. And there's a few of these dialogues that are really important for the forms. So there is Parmenides, there's Sophist, there's Fiato, there is uh Meno. I think the or maybe I'm thinking of Phato. But these in the Republic and part of the Symposium really and the toma Us deal with the forms. So you want to get into Plato's forms doctrine, those are the of the

dialogues that we want to be familiar with. Those are the ones that pretty consistently treat the doctrine of the forms. And that's why we're picking Fiato, because we're going to start again with the most difficult area, which is Plato's metaphysics. Now we don't have we in the in the Apology, we didn't have a lot of metaphysical stuff, And that's why it's typically an easier introduction to Platonic philosophy because there it's this you know, sort of I'm using entertaining

read regarding his trial. But in these other dialogues, we're getting into other territory. It's gonna get difficult, it's gonna get more technical, it's gonna get more speculative, more abstract, and even though they're dialogues, they're still difficult. And I want to stress to everybody too that even plato experts,

okay, struggle with areas of Plato. If you read the Coppleston text, there was that crazy page I don't know what's he's and Coppleston even says, I don't know what he means by this, Okay, So if you read pages one oh four, one oh five, there is this wild discussion of mathematical proofs for contingency and non being. I don't know. I don't know what that means. I mean, I think I understand what he's getting at.

But even Coppleston says, you know, we'd have to ask some high level mathematicians or you know, people that are specialists in Plato to help us, because this is hard to understand, and there's a lot of areas of Plato that are hard to understand. There's a lot of areas in Aerosola they're gonna be hard to understand. And keep that in mind because even academics and school today struggle with understanding and grasping some of the arguments some of the texts

and some of the mathematical postulations and claims doesn't mean they're not true. It just means that it's hard to understand at times what they mean. And in some of the other philosophers that we read, we're gonna we're gonna encounter hard parts. So what I'm saying is, don't get discouraged, because even though I put a lot of time into this, I've read a lot of Plato over the years, I'm not a Plato expert, and I still encounter difficult

texts. So the Fieto is interested in some of these metaphysical questions, such as the immortality of the soul, and we have some arguments here which you know, we had seen in the Apology. He said, you know, I have these dreams and visions, and that's where this entity, this damon, speaks to me. And he says, you know, dreams and visions kind of suggest to me that the body is not all there is. There's also a soul, and I think that soul, because it's a higher form

of reality he's saying, is immortal. And this leads him to the famous Platonic doctrine of the transmigration of souls or reincarnation. So he says to me, it looks like dreams teach us that there is a transmigration of the souls. There's more than just bottle existence, because whatever the dream realm is or wherever it is, it connects to some ideal realm or some formal realm,

the noetic realm. Some Floster's letter call it the mental realm, the idea realm, and dreams seem to connect to that, and they show us then that there's a distinction between physical body and mind or soul. The Fieto is interesting and unique too, because we won't just get an obsession on, you know, like the Timaeus. Is this really wild discussion of the origin of

the universe and how the universe is structure. The apology is about, you know, defending his positions as a philosopher and argument everybody, Okay, but this is interesting because I Pieto is an epistemological, metaphysical, and psychological dialogue explaining all of these views. In Plato slash Socrates, we have a mentioning of the positive in terms of religion, where there are positive approbations given to

the Apollonian religion. The Appollonian religion is characterized by the priests of Apollo, who had devotion to the Son, and not just the physical son, but the physical son is symbolic of the intellectual son, which is the Logos, which is the One, the God, the monad, the divine mind.

And so there's an approbation here, and later neo Platonists of the same view that you know, religion is an inherently bad religion teaches us that the Logos of the universe is kind of like of the spiritual mental realm, is analogous to the Son of the physical realm. So hence the Apollonian Sun religion is something that Socrates and Plato make use of, as well as later neo Platonists.

And it's going to be very clear in the Republic. I mean, he's gonna basically say that the God is the One and is the light of the universe, and he or it because he doesn't really conceive of it as personal per se. This God force basically shines its rays into the created order, and these rays are kind of like the forms, and then that gives rise to the physical reality. This is not a docrine of creation, it's

a doctione. More so, perhaps of emanation, so the difference being that creation, for example, if you're a Christian, Christian theology posits that God created the world at Exnlo out of nothing. No Greeks taught that. The Greek philosophers thought that the existence of the world in the play, in the Platonic and neo Platonic view is kind of a never ending eternal begetting or an

eternal coming forth from the One, or an emanation from the One. In the Pieto, we learn that, as we said, poetry is kind of dumb, but it seems to be dumb because he's not good at it. He says, which is funny, And he says, and by the way, but philosophy is actually better than poetry, because philosophy is the universal art. It is more universal, and so therefore it is better. And so we see even in this argument about the premisee of philosophy over poetry, that

universality, the more universal thing is, the higher it is on. Plato's hierarchy, and Plato's metaphysical view is a chain of being view, and it is a hierarchical chain of being view. We'll get to the chain of being in a little bit very important not just to Plato, Aristotle, and the Church Fathers, but into the Middle Ages as well. The chain of being will be crucial to the entire medieval world view, in paradigm, in philosophy.

Just as we said there's a higher principle, hierarchically ordered metaphysical structure to the universe, there's also a higher order in man himself. The body is lower baser, it's subject to decay, flux, sickness, corruption, pain, attachment to vice, addiction, and the mind, for the reasoning, is better to a higher ontological status. Higher on this chain of being, we could say, because it reasons about, and perceives and talks about,

thinks about, contemplates the eternal and variant forms of things. So this is where we get introduced to the forms doctrine. This is the fundamental metaphysical doctrine of Plato, and this is that everything that exists is it exists on the basis of some form, pattern, principle, or archetype, or exemplar, all words us used to mean the same thing that exists in the one or

in the mind of the one. These forms are the true reality. They are truth proper, they're truly truth, and even they are kind of underneath the one, right, so you have the One, the God, the monad, the mind, whatever. All of these terms are used. Sometimes even uses weird terms like the captain. The Father is used at least one time by Plato. That's the god thing, and from the God thing come these many forms. And these many forms are the patterns, principles and archetypes

behind the many particulars in our world. And that's all of the particulars. All differentia of our existence are patterned on these forms. So there's a form of every particular. But it's hierarchical because amongst the forms, they kind of point you up to higher level forms, and the higher level forms point you up to the one, which is the good, the beautiful, the God,

the Light, etc. All in one. So you can begin to see how if you know anything about, you know, ancient medieval theology, a lot of this term the terminology will be used by Christian, Jewish and Muslim theologians. Now they for in their theological views that a lot of the terms are going to be used by a lot of these especially medieval philosophical and theological thinkers. Right when we get to Mimenides, if we talk about Mimenides,

Aquinas and salm Scotus. Right, A lot of these terms of medieval philosophers and theologians are coming out of this tradition as well, this Greek tradition. All right, So the forms here we are, we're getting into the forms another thing that we should I don't. I don't know why I sucked

us in there. I think I was just going through my notes. But this is important to remember too that there are differing disputes amongst the Platonists and historians of Greek philosophy or whatever, that what is the real Platonic tradition.

And if we take the Timaeus at face value, we have this story that Solon, who was a statesman who knew Socrates, went to Egypt, and when he went to Egypt, he was taught the mysteries of Egypt by the priests of the Egyptian religion, and when he came back to Athens, he taught that to Socrates. Socrates taught that to Plato. So quite literally, in the Tomaus we have this claim, this perspective that the mysteries of Greek philosophy come from Egypt. Again, many debate this, Oh, that's not

true. It's just a myth. I don't know, but that's what it says. Okay, so you can interpret that however you see fit. It does seem possible to me. It's very interesting. We do have throughout Plato's writings this tendency towards the mystical. We even have tendencies towards secret societies. So it is very possible that Solon really did go and learn and was initiated into the mysteries of Egypt. Now, let's not be crass and silly here,

not equating that in a one to one correspondence with modern Freemasonry. Yes, modern Freemasons. If you read Albert Pike's Morals and Dogma, he will talk about Pythagoras, he'll talk about Plato, he'll talk about soccer, He'll talk about a lot of this stuff. But that does not mean that necessarily than therefore there is a direct continuity from ancient Egypt to sol On, to Plato to Albert Pike. Okay, that that does not follow. So philosophy,

though, is a tradition. So this is something that's again controversial. It's it's it's it's fascinating because a lot of people pass over this if you if you, I've had many college classes on Plato grade classes that discuss this stuff. Do you know how many of those classes mentioned anything to do with

the Tamaus or the Fieto. Absolutely zero. None. Now, if you were specializing in Plato, if you were doing a PhD study in Plato or writing your thesis on Plato, maybe then you would be exposed to the Pieto or what's in the Tamaus or whatever. But it just kind of amazes me that, you know, you got all these professors who again, in the academic setting, especially nowadays. I mean I was in a college twenty years

ago, but nowadays it's way worse. I feel like the only reason that anybody is in philosophy classes and today's university setting is to become a purple haired social justice where you're a freak. I mean, that's all you're getting pretty much now, I think, in these crazy state universities. But I'm sure there's some private Catholic schools or something that if you did a PhD you might get into these really esoteric elements of Plato. But they're there, so whatever

you make of them. And even Coppleston in the last section of the chapter on Plato's forms was very explicit. This is pages we'll get to this in a minute, pages one oh seven and eight. That Plato is very clearly still a mystical and theological teacher. There is this element very clearly throughout many of the dialogues, especially the ones to deal with the forms, and that is because possibly he is saying that this is a theological tradition that comes to

us Greeks from Egypt. So philosophy here is a tradition. It is not merely speculative. But again we don't know whether you know, Let's say we went to Plato's academy back in the day that Plato was alive and walking around. Does this mean that literally Plato would have inducted us into a secret society or is this a teaching device and a symbolic thing in the dialogues and we would have just been sitting around and doing math problems. Nobody knows. So

these are areas of speculation regardless. What we do know is that in Plato's philosophy he does adopt the Pagorian idea that the forms are numbers. The forms are principally mathematical because mathematics can describe everything. And because mathematics is invariant, it's abstract, it's unchanging, it's clearly higher than the here and the now. But everything that exists right is dimensions, right, planes, surfaces. That's all geometry and numbers. This is one book with four sides and right.

So number goes into all of these things and helps explain and give form to order to anything. Form orders, matter, and the discovery of truth in Plato's system is strictly speaking, discovery of form, the forms, the ideal forms of everything. It is not primarily knowledge of sense data. This is the most important point here. Plato does not think that sense data is totally useless. He does not think that everything in their sense data experience is

an illusion. But it is not the real reality. It is dream like, it is an imitation. It is a copy of the aetos. The ideas which are more real, have more being. They are truth, and they ground knowledge, not sense data particulars. Not this cup versus this cup, but the cup, the God cup, worship the God cup. I think, if you when we get to David Hume, I'm going from memory

here. But he has this discussion where he kind of laughs at this this idea where he critiques the causal chain argument of like er Statle and Aquinas, and he talks about the great pumpkin. All right, and maybe this is something that you know, Charlie Brown is joking about, right, the great

pumpkin. And you know, David he was making this argument that well, you wouldn't look from look at a pumpkin patch and think that because pumpkins come from other pumpkins pumpkins, that back in history there is the great pumpkin. And that might be a play on Plato as well, because Plato thinks, he really does think that the forms the ideas are self subsisting causes. The forms of the things that exist are self subsisting causes of the particular objects that

we experience. So quite literally, there is a form of cup. It really exists. In fact, the form of cup is more real than these cups. These cups participate in the cup with a capital C, but these are not capital C cup. And yes, presumably in this idea, your jockstrap cup would also have a form. There would be a form of that cup. And we do have critiques where this does get a little odd.

So is there the form of poop is there the form of penis? I mean, these are some of the criticisms the Ariosotle will give this idea that, well, so wait a minute, so everything has a form, to the forms have a form. This will be known as Arisotle's classic infinite regress critique of the form doctrine. The other a critique that Aersolo gives famously is

that he says, quote, Plato separated form from object. But if you read Coppelson, you know that even Coppelson says that this isn't really fair to Plato because Plato didn't consider the realm of the forms completely separate. In fact, that doctrine of methexas m e t h xis in the Greek means participation. So it's not the forms that are like coming into our realm, it's our realm that is sort of grasping for and participating in that realm of the

ideal forms, because that's more real. So what kind of a philosophy characterizes Plato and Plato's doctrine the forms? Idealism? Plato is an idealist par excellence. Many other philosophers will also be considered idealists. Hagel is an idealist. Hegel is influenced by Plato, but he's not identical to the system of Plato. But for example, one of the things that Hagel will try to solve in Plato's idealism is Plato's difficulty with change. Plato has a difficulty accounting for

how flux occurs. Why is there flux and change? And why is there the many of objects? If the objects are ultimately geared towards and participate in the one, why do we have many at all? If the one is the good and it's self sufficient, etc. Then why do we even have

the many? And if you read Coppelson, Coppelison pointed that out that this has never explained, and probably Plato didn't know right, so there were areas where he just couldn't deal with or solve these, probably consider them insoluble, or he thought maybe later philosophy people will solve it, And so you get people like Hegel who will try to, in his kind of Platonic process philosophy, give an account for change, thesis, sentenis, etc. The process

of the world historical moving towards the Omega point. All of these are ways for Hegel to try to account for change. In his idealist philosophy. But note as well that we do not mean idealism in some colloquial sense, like a twenty year old who wants to convert everybody to Marxism. Okay, we're not talking about an idealistic youth. We're talking about a metaphysical doctrine that all

that exists fundamentally or that truly exists or that really exists is idea. But we got to be fair to Plato that he's not saying that this world is not real or is a simulation. Dude, we lusimulation in that is a kind of bastardized version of Platonism. But that's not really Plato's view, right, I mean, he does talk about this world as if it's dreamlike, as if it is a pale imitation and copy of the real world. But clearly there is a premisee given to the hierarchy in the ideal realm to unity.

So it's better to be ideal in the realm of the forms. It is better to be one than many. But why well, as Coppolison noted as well, we don't know that there's never really any answer as to why unity is superior to multiplicity, but it is assumed to be the case, and he would probably give arguments from numbers. Right, Well, all the numbers come from the number one, so one has some primacy and superiority to two, three, four, five, right, Because remember a lot of

this will rely on mathematics. It is a mathe mysticism. It is, as a Coppolison called it, a form of pan mathematicism all his math, much like Pith Aggresson. Thus moving on to Intitus, numbers are discovered number and form, which the forms are versions of numbers in different numerical constructs.

Number forms are discovered by reason, and particularly through this purification process that the loss for goes through, whereby over the years, as he gets older of doing philosophy, doing reason, and getting habituated to that, he is no longer enslaved to the bodies, to the passions, right, and so he's purified, perhaps a quasi ascetic endeavor, and then he's much more able to

align his mind with the realm of the forms. And Plato will say that basically the same thing in the Republic, where he talks about something to the effect of, uh, you know, potential philosophy students in the Republic will be you know, basically doing math problems on a mountain for twenty years, and then they'll come back right and do civics. So so again, I mean, this sounds like on the one hand, it sounds reasonable. Well, yeah, it does make sense, So we want to, don't We

want a mathematical or a logical guy running the city. But then it sounds like a nightmare because like the mathsburg who comes down from the city is going to be like Zuckerberg running every day. Everybody needs to be on a coumpine,

right, That's what we're gonna get. Plato thinks that this he is at least partially resolving the one of the mini problem, and as we know in Coppleston, couples gives grants him that Okay, well, maybe in the domain of epistemology, he is solving the one of the mini problem with the doctrine of the forms, because we have many that share in commonalities essences or universals through the forms, and the particulars are the sensible objects that we you

know, I'm sensing and touching and learning about this cup, and then I'm sensing and learning about this cup. These are sensible particulars, and they share a compness, which is an ideal essence or form common to both. And so they these objects share in multiple forms in Plato, and that will be something that Arisotle will completely disagree with. Arisotle will say, no, no, these two things they don't share in multiple forms. They can only have

one common substance between them. That is a doctrine that Arisotle will reject in Plato. So the compass and grants that will perhaps just in the domain of epistemology, Plato has offered a step forward from the pre Socratics and a kind of solution to the problem of the one in the many, with the doctrine of the forms, with the doctrine of the divine ideas. However, metaphysically

they're still problems and they're not solved. We don't ever get an explanation in Plato as to what's the real notion of this participation of our realm with that realm? Why do we have this realm? Why do we have the many? If the perfect monad one was self sufficient and perfect on its own. Of these kinds of questions ever get answered or solved, and clearly a complisent

argued of you. If you guys read that he was struggling with these problems, his whole life knowledge then, according to Plato and the Faeto, cannot be identified with sense data, and so empiricism then is the opposite position to this, which is that all knowledge comes through sense data. All we know is the empirical sense data. Plato and Socrates would deride this. They would say, you are a low iq euratard because empirical sense data is only telling

you about the realm of flux. And so if you think that's knowledge, you're an idiot. That's that's what he would say. Right, you are a sophist, You are not a good philosopher. The sense domain is in flux. How could that ever tell you truth? Right? And this is where we get these classic exam I don't know if you guys saw my debate with stuff on mol and you. I'm not dissing on stuff on or anything like that, but we had a debate where we sort of started kicked off

the debate with this very question. I was making this argument which is in the Fieto, which is that you cannot identify the number seven with seven coconuts. And this is the argument in the fieto. Now they don't make the coconut argument, but that's the it's the same principle that's being argued in the fieto. So let's look a little bit more at the doctrine of the forms, and we have there as a diagram. Pythagoras is tech tractus, right,

the ten point pyramid. Illuminate confirm. Look at that diers illuminate if he's good, the pyramid. Look at the words auci and I. Dude, it's just a geometry diagram. Dude, it's not illuminate confirm. But the Greeks talk about the Pythagoras talks about this attractus. And you'll notice there let me move you guys out of the way, and Mona the one in the top diad triad. And then of course, in Pythagoras is to attract

us. He argues that the rest of the numbers also proceed from those prime those beginning principle one, two in three, right, everything else comes from that. And thus you can see that everything in reality is built up from these kinds of triads. And this is also applicable and useful, useful in Plato's doctrine the forms as well, because we want to be very precise here, not just on Plato's views of free will or whatever Plato's ontology. What

is Plato's doctrine of being? Well, the forms are numbers. So again this is from Pythagoras. The forms are ideal in that they are not purely in the physical realm. They are not identified with physical things or physical objects or what he calls sense particulars. In fact, the forms exist transcendently as self subsisting causes of the world. Now again this does not mean creation in

some biblical sense of creation x neilo. It just means that whatever exists and has being derives that existence and that being in a causal sense from the forms. The great cup in the sky causes all the cups to be. The world of objects participates a texas in et xis in this ideal world in some

weird unitive way. But it is not a perfect unity, because we're still distanced from We're still lower on that pyramid, on that chain of being, which will see in a minute away from the God form at the top of the pyramid, at the top of the chain. And in the Neo Platonists, and I think probably in Plato two. You have this idea that all of the many that's down at the sort of the fractal body of this pyramid, which is think of it like a fractal that kind of like spins out

from the one. All of those minis are trying to get back to the one. They want to be reunified with the one. And this is I think partly why, for example, Plato will say that, I think the phrase is soma sama. The body is a prison. The body, the physical body, it is a prison, and it is in the way of you getting back to the realm of the forms. So even though Plato is

not a he doesn't hate the world. He's not a sort of a Hindu yogi who's like rolling around and shit to get away from the world, right and starving himself or whatever, there is still this idea that this world is sort of a prison. This world is a kind that's a prison, right, this kind of The forms are transcendent, but they are not only transcendent, which would cut us off from them. They are imminent in a lesser way, because our realm is grasping and participating in some diminished way in the

forms. The forms are eternal and unchanging. They're not subject to time, they're not subject to change, they're not subject to flux. And thus they are in contrast to what character what are the key features and characteristics of time, temporal existence, physicality, matter and the here and the now, solidity, etc. The forms and Plato reconcile the one of the many, as we just saw, and they become a ground for knowledge in an epistemic sense.

So again we just covered that true knowledge, knowledge specifically, is not of material objects primarily, but of the forms. So remember, just as we have light which enters our eye, that comes from the sun, and

this gives us knowledge of things. This is an allegory or an analogy that's used by the Platonic philosophers, that the mind is that the eye of the mind truly sees the essences of things, in the forms of things, and thus they are ultimately moving in their mental movement towards the one, the son or the logos of the mind, the universal mind, the universal reason. Do you see this analogy here? In these two worlds, the one, the highest form is beauty. So this reconciles his esthetics. Is the good,

which reconciles and unifies his metaphysics is the God. It is the ultimate unifying principle. It is Father, and it is cause of the forms, which are the cause and the structuring and ordering of our world. So again do you see this, there's another triad Father, God calls beauty one. This thing is the cause of the forms, forms, cause of our world. So we've talked then about that is that's the essence. To be more confusing with more philosophical term, that is the the locusts. That is the

primary things that we want to know about Plato's ontology. What about Plato's epistemology is view of knowledge. Well, guess what it's intimately bound up with his doctrine of ontology. This is doctrine of being. And we've talked about those dialectics. That little diagram is just kind of illustrating that between being and non being, there is becoming. And so these are in dialectical tension. The things in our world which are subject to change becoming. They're striving to get

back to being proper, which is the realm of the forms. But we're also kind of always teetering over into non being. Think about Marty McFly right when he's uh, you know, they have the picture and Marty's disappearing, right, Marty, Oh, Marty, Marty Right, He's going back into non being in Plato's epistemology because it's intimately bound up with the ontology. We need to understand that metaphysics first. For most of the ancient medieval philosophers,

guess what, metaphysics comes first. This is going to be a big departure when we get to the Enlightenment, because the Enlightenment guys they flip it. They say, you know what, all this metaphysical stuff that's secondary, if even at all possible. In fact, we might not even do it. David Hume says, throw out all this metaphysics gibberish. It's all garbage and gibberish, committed to the flames. He says. They flip it, and they say, first, you got to tell me about your pistemology and justify

your pistemology before you tell me any of this metaphysical jibberish gobbledegook. That's what the Enlightenment guys will say. But for the ancient medieval guys it's the other way around. No, no, no, no. Philosophy is essentially first and foremost metaphysics. Then we can talk about epistemology, then we can talk about psychology, then we talk about ethics and aesthetics or whatever. Knowledge must be grounded. It cannot be mere opinion. This is a very important section

in the Republic where we have these discussions. It's in other dialogues as well as to what counts us true knowledge? Well, in Plato and Socrates, mind, it can't just be opinion. That's what the sofist said. Your opinion, your opinion, man, We're all toil doing all knowledge merely opinions. Dude. Everybody who's a relativist, guess what they have their analog in

the ancient world. The Sophist and Plato and Aristotle, as we said, have quite a bit of debate with the sofists, and they think the sofist are terrible. They they're destructive. They're caught in that bodily existence of the here and the now. They're attached inordinately to matter and sense data, and they can never rise above the sense data. Thus they are relativists. Just like the flux of this world. All is change, all is flux.

They never get above it. And so if you identify knowledge with sense data. Plato and Urso will say, your knowledge will not be grounded, it will be like shifting sands, and these people cannot give an account for knowledge. So here we have the first idea that will characterize epistemology and justification for the next two thousand plus years of justified true belief. What it is to give an account for our knowledge, and how it cannot be identified to or

reduced to in a reductionist way, to sensible particulars. Sensible particulars are not true knowledge, and thus empiricism as a in other words, not just empirical data because Plato. Of course Plato would not deny that you learn things through sense data, but he says the knowledge that you learn through sense data is intended to direct you to the higher levels of the forms. So we're not saying that there's no such thing as empirical knowledge. It's just an empirical particular.

Knowledge of the sensible particulars is the lowest level of knowledge, so it kind of corresponds to opinion. But you can through the rational process rise up to the next level, which is knowledge of math and the universals, and they point you to the knowledge of the forms and so in that way you're moving upwards. Right. The intention is to constantly move up towards the forms, and that will grant you a justified true belief and not mere opinion.

Opinions are like flux. They're unstable, they're tied to sense data. True knowledge goes beyond the senses to the mind, seeing the form in a direct sort of perceptive intuitive flash. I think he says something like that in the Republic. He uses that language. And as we said already, the analogy is to the sun and its rays coming up down to us giving our eyes sight to the soul or the mind's eye, seeing the forms in an intellectual,

rational sense. Purification of the philosopher from the passions is what allows this process, and that's why you have to learn about a math. Opinion must move from no grounding to being grounded in a knowledge of the forms. Plato's ethic will also flow from the metaphysic and from the epistemology. Who is the just man? What is justice? As we said, those are going to be questions that we came up with earlier from Plato. Well, the just

man is the rational philosopher who ponders. There, you see the meme. I like that meme of pondering my orb. If you're if you're a fan of memes, and I'm sure you've seen that. There you go, right, Plato's ethic is the meme pondering man who ponders his orb right and right. So you got to look into that, uh that Palatier ball there and stare at it for a long time before you I'm joking at me, silly, But the just man is the rational philosopher who doesn't just ponder, but

ponders rightly right towards the forms. Um, there's no surprise that these philosophers think that the best and most just man is a philosopher. And so who should who should run society? Well? Philosophers shit, right, I mean obviously who else are going to be? All right? I mean we're the best thinkers. Don't you want us philosopher kings running shit? Well, of course you do. Now I'm being kind of silly, but I mean this

is really essentially what the teaching is. Well, why would we want philosophers? I mean, these guys, these guys are annoying, their nerdy, you know, they spurk out. Why do we want them running shit? Right? Don't we want Joe Biden and running? So I wouldn't we want Judge don Trump running things? Or don't we want I don't know? Why do we want philosopher kings? Well, in Plato and Socrates, the philosopher

king is the most rational. And so if reasoning is the higher faculty in man, above the body and even above the heart, right heart might correspond to courage and valor, body corresponds to physicality and movement, but higher than both of those is the rational faculty. And what did we see was the definition of the philosopher, the man who lives the examined life, the man

who seeks wisdom. The unexamined life is not worth living. So clearly you want a philosopher king ruling, because the philosopher is the one who's closest to the realm of the forms, because he's governed by reason. And to be just is to participate in the form of justice. And who does that better than a philosopher who sits around and ponders his orb, who ponders the justice orb. The just man is just because of his purification process that he's gone

through. In terms of Ian, we're talking about the philosopher here the just philosopher man, not just the just man. But for any man who is just, who may not be a strict well, I don't really know if that's even possible. But for a man who is not so much philosophical, we'll say he's a just man. He at least has some degree of participation in the form of justice. I think is what Plato Ariosola was a Plato's argive to say. The body is, as we said, characterized by the

passions and must be controlled by reason. And so this is not just for the philosopher king, but for everybody. This is what everyone needs to strive for. This is how we get just a just society and justice in society. Since data empiricists are bound by the passions, and thus our sophists have their opinion, and so they're not fit to rule. We'll notice if you read the Republic there are several areas where argumentation is given that, look,

not everybody is fit to rule. Some people are fit to be balms, okay, some people are fit to be janitors, some people some people are not the philosophers, they're not fit. They're not bred to these things. And guess what guess what that leads to. In both Plato and Aristotle, absolutely they are eugenesis. They believe that there is a kind of breeding in uh um. I'm trying to remember. Ariosol has a specific term where he

may just be bred. But you know, he talks about people bred to be noble, bred to be statesman, bred to be to lead the Polish, and I don't think he thinks it's completely biological, but he doesn't think it's separable from biology and upbringing. And I think Plato thinks something probably pretty close to that as well, because he does, if I recall, have this discussion in the Republic that look, you know, some people are just

gonna be bombs, some people are gonna be janitors. Uh. Some people are fitted to be in the second tier society, the guardians aka the warriors, and then some people are more fitted beyond that to be the philosopher kings.

So know your place. I don't think that Plato's ideal republic is I mean, it is a kind of a strict kind of tier, but he does discuss the possibility of you know, people being promoted to a tier like the guardian class is recruited right and raised in that way to be the guardian soldier class, for example, and you might have somebody recruited out those into something higher. I mean the philosopher king. You know, he may come out of one of those classes, or he may just be raised and bred

from birth to be a philosopher. Right, But it is a fairly strict strata caste society. I guess you could say when we get to the republic in a minute. Thus, laws in a society, justice in a society, order in a society must be based on the forms. If you're going to have laws or justice at all. Thus you have to have philosophers running

society. Now, there's a little bit of a dispute and a debate between Plato's Republic and what we get later in Plato's Laws in the Symposium, there's some weird changes where he comes with this idea of the Council of Night, which is weird. So maybe he doesn't think that society needs to be run by one philosopher king. Maybe we get more of a counsel. I mean, uh, well, that's a different topic. We're not going to go into the symposium and the laws. But um, for our intensive I mean,

for our intents and purposes. I mean, the republic is what influences everybody anyway, right, I mean, for example, communist dictatorships, all the all the Marxists and communists, they don't look to the Symposium, they don't look they look to Plato's Republic. Okay, so the Republic will be very influential, not just on Marxists and communists, but also on Enlightenment thinkers who want to have a republic. Enlightenment revolutionary republicanism looks to Plato. Fascist

dictators look to Plato. Imperial philosophy, and various empires will look to Plato. Marxist communists will look to Plato. What is the USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, They will also look to Plato. So any system of state governance that is intended to be ideal, clearly will necessarily have some relation to public two Plato's Republic. All right, let's go to the Republic. Now, The Republic is a very difficult book. If we want to

go into a lot of specifics, we can. I do have my copy here. I've lectured, as we said, through it. I know it pretty well. I'm not an expert in the Republic. Look again, it's very difficult. There's there's areas that people are still debating, like magic rings. I'm not joking, like we get these stories about it's it's a it's a teaching device. Okay. I don't think Plato literally is saying that there's

a ring that makes you invisible. But we do have a magic ring that makes you invisible, and it's there in this story, I think, to teach about virtue, right, Like, well, let's hear here's a story about a guy who has a magic ring, and well, what would you do if you had a ring that made you invisible? Well, a lot of people would abuse that power. And quite a few people have said, yeah, Tolkien was clearly influenced by this story, and yeah, I think

that's probably the case. But we're not primarily concerned with the one ring. And mister Frodos, so don't worry about that. Who's got the ring? He's So the republic is more or they've taken the Hubbut to the republic, as my legalist, their um the ideal city. What is the ideal city? How should the ideal city, the republic be governed and ruled? How do we structure a city, what's the right way to do it? So Plato is our first city planner. It's if you've the nightmare of city planners,

right, well, Plato is the first city planner. He said, I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you how to plan the ideal city. Now, the ideal city, as we said the forums all right there, So this is the form of a city. Plato doesn't think that you're in this world ever gonna get the perfect city. Okay, I don't. I don't think he thinks that. So I think he's, you know, he knows enough about human nature to know that, yeah, okay, humans are always going to be, you know, messing up, and you're gonna get corruption,

and so you're never gonna have this. But this is what we want to shoot for. And the idol city is kind of like there's gonna be a lot of triadic models, triads right that that are that are gonna pau up kind of like three medals, right, Copper, silver, gold. Everybody agrees that there's a you know, levels to this. Copper's good, but silver's battle better and gold's the best. Likewise, the city is kind of like a big man. The city itself is a collective guy. It's like

a big body of a macrocosm. Sometimes in Greek philosophy this is called the macro prosipis. This will pop up in other philosophers as well. And Plato says, think about it like a man, and the whole city has to kind of be governed like a good just man governs himself. And if a good just man can't govern himself, well he sure as heck can't govern a

city. And if we you know, what would Plato say about you know Biden, these people, Well they're corrupt and you know they're not good governors, right, He would say that, you know, these are primary examples of people because they're enslaved to their passions in various ways. And Plato's answer, of course is reasoning and logic and mathematics. If Joe Biden had just done his time stables and he'd had just gone further into mathematics, he would

have been a great president. I'm joking, but I mean this is I think, you know, along the words of what Plato would say. So the ideal city is not just likened to either of these three three tiers of metals or the metallurgical analogy which is very famous from their public It's also kind of like the three elements of a person. Humans human beings are kind of tripartite in Plato's vow. And that's because we have a body, right, a boom doing I don't know what I'm doing, but this is the body,

if you didn't know. And then we have our heart, which is a little better than the body, and that might correspond to courage, valor bravery. And then there's an even higher faculty above that which is up here, which is reason. So I think we have this three tiered structure. And Plato says, you know what, society maybe should be structured like a dude, because it's like basically like a big guy. And the head of society. I wonder who that's gonna be. Well, that's gonna be the

philosopher king, because he's closer to the realm of the forms. Because he's closer to the realm of the forms, he participates in a greater sense in the forms, and he's going to be there for more just because he's closer to the form of justice and to mathematics and to consistent logical reason, and he'll be able to govern the body of society like a reasoned man governs his

passions as an individual. But he says, we're going to have this second class of society who performs a specific function and are bred and fitted to do that. That is these these guardians. The guardians correspond to the heart, the second tier, and they are brave, their warriors, their soldiers. And it gets even weirder their men and women, So women on the front line. Plato who wants his women on the front line, But only the

guardian women. Only the badass amazonian you know, Scarlett Johansson him kay, ultra assassin chicks. Right. They're bred for this guardian role, just as men in the guardian role are. And it gets even weird. Or guess what, they share all things in common, including each other. So no husbands and no wives. The guardian class pumps whoever they want. Now, the guardian class can't go totally crazy with this because they have to in some

way be a little better than the proles and the working class. They can't be completely controlled by their passions. But we got to have a little more of that going on with the guardian class. And so because they're bred for war and for policing and for you know, being soldiers. We're not going to have them tied down to the things that the working class, the body

of the society is going to be tied down too. So you have the introduction of both a feminist idea and an egalitarian idea and a communist idea with the guardian class. And then that lowest tier of the pyramid is the workers. In Plato's system, the workers correspond to the body that is the lowest tier of this hierarchy here of this pyramid. And this is you got to have these people, right, We gotta have a bunch of low iq dumb workers out there. And in Plato's view, yes, they have to have

their population controlled, they have to be eugenically regimented. We have to know you can't breathe with that dude, You're gonna breathe this guy. So all of these, again sort of communist technocratic ideas, they find their route here in Plato's republic. Now, I think for Plato's vantage point, um, he's not intentionally trying to create a dystopia. I think he really thinks that

this is going to be the best way to run society. But but you know, good intentions can do That doesn't mean that necessarily, I mean, this can lead to hellish things, right, So just because he has good intentions, right, but I think that trying to have the best understanding of Plato in his system as we can. And remember when we started this all this lecture or yesterday last week's lecture, we said, we want to try

to grant to somebody as much as we can to understand their system. So as much as we might be angry about the eugenics and the population control, which I don't believe in, um, we want to understand his system and why he thinks that. So just keep that in mind, so don't get triggered by the fact that he's a eugenesis. There's some other interesting elements that

we don't have time to I'm getting ahead of myself. So it's so, as we said, the Republic is structured in a three tiered way, in a triad, like a man is structured and like metals are structured in a three tiered way. And as we said, the universe itself is kind of also a perhaps a three tiered structure, where we have this world, this realm, we have the realm of the forms and then we have the one at the top of that, the god, the monad, the father or

whatever. So again, triads are constant in Platonic philosophy. And if you read my book Meta Narratives, you know that even there were triads even in the poets. Achilles shield is triadic. It's a triplicity, and it represents the whole history of the Greek people. So it's a recapitulation on the shield of Achilles itself of all of the Greek people and their history and their essence or so to speed. And it has a three tiered layer on purpose,

because there's the underworld, there's this world, and there's the gods. So there's triplicities in the poets. There's triplicities in Plato as well, or triads or whatever terms you want to use. So, as we said, reason, math and forms are also necessary to govern society, just like reason and math and forms govern the individual. Just man. The just man unfortunately does

have to engage in the noble lie if he's the philosopher king. So the state has to utilize noble mythological lies to control the citizens and to have order. Yes, this is part of Plato's Republic, it's called the noble lie. Now what exactly that is in terms of various societies could be different things. I mean, for our purposes, I think everybody can probably figure out

some of the noble lies. The war on terror, right, probably many neo cons would justify awards War on Terry, semester Gash dominant a noble laf. That's my that's my dub right, I think I think to a lot of geopolitical power players, right, if we were to talk to the big Brazinski life, I think they would they would definitely say that sure, yeah, well you have to have these lies to govern and control society. Where does this come from? It comes from Plato's Republic. So let's be clear,

this is a statist text. Plato's Republic has basically the state as God on earth pretty clearly, and other philosophers will follow in this train. Hagel Hegel is also notoriously a guy who says that the state is the march of God in history and the deification of the state, the state is God. It is a status treatise, and so we get other odd elements that are

subjects to dispute debate. A interpretation it's very difficult the myth of Earth that there's this really wild story at the end about this vision of the afterlife and this sort of the universe is a big clock and souls are like going up into the afterlife, but they're coming back down if they choose to come back to this life reincarnation. I mean it's wild. I mean this is like

Joe Rogan DMT trip type stuff. Okay, So I don't know exactly what the myth of our means other than it is perhaps too again bring in that religious mystical element within Plato relating to the transmigration of souls, which is part of the way that Plato thinks he can account for, Um, how we have access to the forms in this life right, Well, we're remembering our past life in the realm of the forms. Uh, and when we go on and die, we go back into this mystical realm. I mean it's

wild. I mean it's like again, there's hard, difficult passages in plato um, and a lot of the scholars are debating and and we just don't know how literal it does Plato mean this Is this just a teaching device or does he really actually literally believe that you know, when you die, you go into this giant universal clock, mysticism or whatever. I mean, we don't know so, but that's what's there. I think also secret societies come

up. I think that there's this implicat I'm going from memory, but there's I think it there's an implication at one point in regard to I think maybe maybe the noble lie that you know, will the noble like kind of requires the Republic having this sort of secret society involved in its rulership as well. But regardless, a lot of that sort of speculative and debatable. The philosopher

King, though studies geometry math for many years. When he is ruled by reason and not governed by his passions, he is then fit to rule. He comes down from the mountain, and so we see that. You know, sometimes Plato's philosophies is characterized as overly mystical and it's about the escape into the beyond, or it's just about the transcendent. Actually it's kind of practical.

Surprisingly, now, I don't think he's right about this, but it's Plato's intent to have the philosopher King go get his PhD on the mountain. Do all of his times tables and then come back down to Earth, to the city from the mountain and impress those times tables onto the city and make this damn city run. So the philosopher King imposes form upon the city. It's a kind of art, a kind of craft. Thus, truth, form, essence, justice are discovered. They're not created. They're discovered by

the philosopher King and imposed on the republic. Intimately connected with this idea of Plato's triadic structure is the chain of being. This is going to be very important in Plato. Excuse me an Aristotle. Aristotle will be a Plato's most famous student, and Aristotle will have significant disagreements with his master, and we've already alluded to some of those disagreements. Plato ariosol is not a complete denier of the beyond or the higher realms, the celestial spheres of God. He

does believe in those things. However, he's much more emphatic about the importance of the here and the now. The deity in that system is primarily a causal agent, not a governing agent or something that you try to strive to participate in. But he will retain, as Plato does, a form of the chain of being, and as some of the pre Socratics did, which is that the chain of being being the ontological structure of the universe, whatever

that is, is common to all. There's a continuous chain of being where the gods, man, animals, rocks, etc. They all exist on this continuous chain, but in different gradations. So what's at the top of the chain of being? What's the realist being? For Plato, it is the God. It is the God form, which is mind, which is thought, which is the one, which is the good, which is the

beautiful. So that God duded up there at the top of that chain in Plato's system, is the one that's the highest, most real form of being. Below that, in Plato's system there wouldn't be angels, but there would be sort of forms. And it's unclear and debated whether Plato believed that the

quote gods were actual deities or just symbolic of various forms. So, for example, in the Timaeus he speaks of the gods, but it's unclear and debated as to what actual status the gods have as sort of personal beings, or whether they are just forms. Underneath that would be the rulers. This picture here is more of a medieval idea of the kings and the queens. But for Plato, obviously it would be the philosopher king. Under the philosopher

king would be the guardians. Under the guardians would be the commoners, the proles, and then you would have have animals, plants and rocks, and then non being. So that's the chain, right, And the further you go down the chain, you're moving towards non being. The further you go up the chain, you're moving towards being or true bearing being. And as we know, in Plato's system, because it is a participatory system, true

being is thought, is idea reality. And Plato's system in an Aristotle and in the Presocratics, as we saw, is still unfortunately plagued with a monistic or a dualistic tendency. Plato is famously a dualist, and that whole idea of the myths of Earth and the transmigration of souls is primarily concerned with how do we relate this immaterial, invariant realm of the forms to this realm of the here and the now. Even though we're saying the here and the now

participates in the forms, it's still a dualistic system. So there's fundamental problems there about reconciling these two domains and explaining the origin of our domain from that higher domain. But regardless, Plato still structures reality in this hierarchical form, and this hierarchical structure will continue not just into Plato or to Aristotle and into the Church Fathers, into Christian theology, and into it will go all the

way up into the medieval philosophers as well. This chain will not be significantly rejected until we get to certain medieval philosophers who are nominalists like Akam, and then more explicitly in his descendants, who are the empiricists. So the enlightenment empiricists will draw directly from the medieval nominalists, and they will essentially throw this thing out. Now, get that out of here. This is dumb.

Plato's forms, as we said, are hierarchical as well, and so they descend in this triadic structure from the one who, which is the divine mind, which in some way gives rise to or causes these forms. But there's actually a contradiction, to be really precise here in Plato himself, because in the Timaeus, the one is subordinate to the forms, and so he structures reality, our reality on the principle of the forms that he's subordinate to.

But in other passages we have Plato speaking as if the one causes the forms. So how Plato reconciled this, no one knows, and it's still debated to this day. And perhaps he couldn't. Perhaps it is still a problem. So coming to the end of this, we got almost wrapping up here. I don't know how long we've been going, but I feel like we've been going for a long time, that we can keep going for for a

long time, but we gotta we gotta encapsulated at some point. Coppleston admits on page one, nine, six and seven, as we alluded to earlier, that Plato is still a mystical theologian. Remember that when we talked about Pythagoras, he disagreed with quite a few of his forbearers who were pre Socratics, who were not theological or religious thinkers, and so there was this sort

of religious revival amongst the Ionians, the Milesians represent representing in Pythagoras. And I do think that pretty clearly Plato being influenced by Pythagoras continues this mystical and theological notion. Now, many modern philosophers do not read Plato this way.

They read him in more of a anti theistic rationalist way. It is possible to read Plato that way, but even those people who have that reading do admit that there are quite a few mystical and theological passages throughout the Platonic corpus. And so Coppison goes into that and admits that on pages one ninety seven. And so the reading that I take, which when I read a lot of these texts, and yes, it's true that I could have just been

influenced by my theological subpositions. But as I'm reading a lot of these Platonic texts, I'm like, well, this sounds like a kind of a theology text. And so when we essentially what I'm getting a Zycoplison admits that. And that's relevant because the specific school that will come out of Platonism later on, the neo Platonists, they are known for reading Plato in this way. They will say, yes, this is a religious text, and Plato should

be read as a religious and theological mystic. The path of the philosopher as we said, is one of pure one of pure speculation, not of flighty without a reason speculation, but reasoned, theological speculation. So for Plato, theology and reason are not antithetical. They're the same thing. And that's how I understand him. So he doesn't see mysticism as antithetical to reason. He

sees them as the same. And this is a very difficult especially if we think in terms of post Enlightenment thought, because the Enlightenment will hinge quite a bit on feediism. Faith is antithetical to reasoning and logic. That is not Plato's view, and it's not the view of a lot of Church fathers. Now there's a few of the people in the Patristic period who do think that. For example, a famous a guy who was a Christian apologist for many

years who ended up leaving Christianity, Tertolian. Tertolian, ironically, who was a famous apologist, had this view that no faith theology, it's the opposite of reason. Okay, So there will be a pretty consistent debate later on as we moved through philosophy as to this relationship between reason and rationality and divine revelation or dogma and doctrine in the Bible. But at least in the neo Platonic reading of Plato, which I think is correct, Plato does not see

this as a kind of divide reasoning is theology in Plato. In fact, the path of the philosopher is not just pure ratiocination and speculation. It is to raise the mind to divine truths and divine realities. It is a contemplation of a higher mystical order. And there is perhaps this idea of religious initiation in Plato. What exactly that is we don't know, but it is there.

The Timaeus, the Symposium, and the Republic do contain many theological and mystical elements and references, and so, as Compelson admits, this is a break from pre Socratic atheism and materialism. However, it's not a total break, because Plato does retain Heraclitus's view of sensible reality as flux, but he doesn't have reductionist view that all that exists is sensible reality in flux. He also has Parmenite's view that that realm of permanence is just a higher realm.

Thus Plato is attempting to solve and reconcile some of the dialectical tensions and issues, and probably first and foremost it is that question of the one in the many. All right, So I hope you guys enjoyed tonight's introduction to Plato. Obviously it's a lot. We can go way deeper. It goes way way crazy. There's many, many dialogues, but we got to start somewhere. We had to focus on something. So let's open it up to Q and A.