96 - Its All in Plato: An Introduction to C.S. Lewis

two Mythic Mind podcasts that are already running. First, there's the Mythic Mind Games podcast, which already has a couple episodes on Knights to the Old Republic, and in the most recent episode, I discuss Red Dead Redemption Tow's Arthur Morgan in relation to Tolstoys evon Iliach from his short story The Death of evon Iliach. Whether you like games, literature, or both, I think that there's something for you there. And in the next episode we're going to have a

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dismissed unnecessarily that there is. Indeed, there's a lot going on there, and I think that it's worth taking a general Christian humanities perspective into this domain and you know, hopefully having some kind of impact, but also just kind of enjoying what we're doing along the way as we

do that. Also, you can go ahead and subscribe to the Mythic Mind Movies and Shows podcast as this episode releases, the one that you're listening to right now, there's already a brief introduction over there on the Mythic Mind Movies and Shows podcast, and on Friday, June twentieth, our discussion of the Empire Strikes Back will drop over there, and so from the rest of there, we'll be doing the rest of the Star Wars movies over on the Mythic Mind Movies and Shows podcast, and then we'll just see

where we go from there. Obviously, the Star Wars series will will take us a good while, so make sure that you are subscribed to this show, to Mythic Mind Games, and to Mythic Mind Movies and Shows for all of your Mythic Mind needs. Now as I work on getting these new shows up and going and really focus on getting my book done soon. Over here, I'm going to be posting weekly content from my Fiction and Philosophy of CS. Lewis course that I ran in the summer of twenty

twenty four. Throughout we'll have some other things as well. We'll have some episodes from our book club on A. Gustin's Confessions, maybe some other book clubs along the way, wat some occasional interviews, and some other things. But the Lewis material will be the most consistent thing happening here for a while, starting with the first and introductory lesson, called It's All in Plato the World of C. S. Lewis.

I think I may have posted this here around the time that the class began back in the summer at twenty twenty four, but I'm going to provide it again now, just to keep things together. You can also purchase access to the entire course through the Mythic Mind Patreon shop, which provides the video content for all lessons, recommended secondary reader, which includes many of the PDFs wherever I could get them, and recordings of our weekly live meetings which are not

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I want to thank all my patrons, and by name, I want to thank all my Tier three patrons, So that's Mark, Amanda, Chase, Chas, Christopher Clinton, David, don Evy, Adam, Jamie, Justin, Justin, Kyle, Paul, Roger, Ross Tyler, and William We are growing the ranks here and I would love for you to join us in this venture the various things that we are doing as the Mythic Mind Fellowship. So head over to patreon dot

com slash Mythic Mind to join today. But for now, let's go ahead and get into our first video in the C. S. Lewis series called It's All in Plato The World of C. S.

a very meaningful experience for you. And even aside from a diversity in acquaintance with Lewis, I know there's a pretty big diversity in interest and backgrounds represented in the participants of this group. I know that some of you have advanced degrees in the humanities, some of you have

probably done some academic work on Lewis. I know that there are many of you who just love good stories and you recognize that there is something more than rest on the surface in Lewis's writing, and you know that range.

I mean, it kind of makes sense that you would have that built around Lewis, that would have this kind of community between those who just love stories and those who are drawn more toward the academic This because Lewis himself had a wonderful career both in the academy as well as in more popular literature, both in his stories as well as his more popular apologetics works, you know,

his mere Christianity and whatnot. And so he really had two robust careers, to the point where you know, if you had never written The Chronicles of Narnia, he still be well respected in academia, in literary criticism, in medieval and Renaissance literature. And then likewise, you know, obviously he

could have an entire career solely built off his popular works. However, the same time, his more popular works are very much rooted in deeper wells, and that is part of what I want to be doing in this course, and helping you to pass through the wardrobes that are each of his works in order to find the world that exist on the other side. So it doesn't matter if you are already a party to academic jargon or if the language of philosophy leaves you feeling a little bit confused

and a little bit anxious. My goal is to bring everybody into the mix here so that way we all benefit and we all participate in a meaningful community that is doing meaningful things with these meaningful stories. In this introductory video, I want to do a few things. First, I want to tell you a little bit about my experience with C. S. Lewis, and then I want to tell you a little bit about the structure and flow of the course so you know exactly what to expect.

And then lastly, I want to delve into some of the ideas from the classical and from the medieval world that are particularly important for Lewis, especially as we get ready for the Ransom trilogy, but even beyond. And so when we get to that part, I will let you know that this is going to be probably the most philosophically heavy video that we do. But again, I think that this is pretty important for just setting up some ideas that you're going to see again and again and

again throughout his writings. After all, if you're familiar with the Last Battle, which we'll be getting to at the end of the course, you know, Professor Kirk, who very much bears kinship to Lewis himself, you know, says it's all in Plato, and so if you're going to understand what's going on there, as well as in many of his other stories, it's gonna be helpful if you know a little bit about Plato. If that's where it all is. And so I didn't grow up reading an extensive amount

is something that I very much lamant today. I just didn't. It was not common for me to voluntarily pick up a book as a kid. Now that being said, I do fondly remember reading the Narnia books with my parents in middle school. I eventually made it through the Hobbit, but even that kind of dragged on. It didn't really connect with me yet. I wasn't yet prepared to really engage with fiction, and so that didn't really stick to

any significant degree. Now, as I got a little bit older my youth, later teenage years, I did start to read a little bit more kind of nonfiction, theology works, that sort of thing. I was sort of the mindset that if I'm going to make the time and energy investment in reading, well I need to learn something, And so I didn't see much value in picking up a novel in reading fiction. If I wanted a story, well,

I did watch a movie. Now I cringe terribly saying that, because that idea is so anathema in my current evaluation of the significance of literature. But nonetheless, that's where I was so I really was not an active reader. Now.

I studied philosophy in my undergrad at college, and then my experience or my relationship with literature really started to change in grad school when I took a course on Saint Augustine, and so during that course I read the Confession City of God, on Christian Doctrine, on the Trinity, his anti Pallasian writings, and that was really a formative time for me philosophically, intellectually, but more to the task

at hand. The Confessions in particular awakened something within me, something about the way Augustine laid out his life narrative, you know, even though since it is nonfictionary, he's telling his own intellectual rather his own spiritual biography, his own

spiritual narrative as he understands it. Well, that very much mapped onto my own experience, and so that's when I first started to get this idea that when you're reading a narrative, whether it's biograph, whether it's fictional, or whether it's nonfictional, something about narratives play a significant role that more didactic texts simply are not fit to do. And so that's when that started to sort of sync in

that there is power in narratives. And then that really got deepened as I started to read and to study Soaring Crecguard, who became the subject for my doctoral dissertation, and all during this time my study of Augusted, my study of Carecguard, I started to kind of get opened up to some of these figures who are doing psychological analysis of fairy tales and myths and you know, bringing

out the insights that are embedded in these narratives. And so these ideas continue to work on it continue to work on me until about twenty twenty one, when I was dealing with one of the most difficult seasons of my life. And those of you who've been connected with me for quite a while probably already knows something about what I'm talking about. But anyways, it was during this time of great suffering when I started to become more real, when I started to develop a greater sense of desire

for something that can carry me through the brokenness. And this is when I really started to get this strong sense of desire, it kind of broken longing for something real, and I didn't even know exactly what I meant by that. I mean, on one hand, you know, it was a time of deepening of faith. I learned what it means to press into the wounds of Christ with the hope that they could hold every faithful sorrow and would redeem them in the fullness of joy. And so during this

time my faith is deepening, I'm pressing into Christ. I'm learning what it means to not just no truth, but to experience truth. And something about all of this my philosophical, intellectual development, my spiritual development. I was primed now to appreciate stories. Now, I'm very grateful that also during this time, I was connected with some solid people on Twitter who were really into Tolkien, and so I kind of just started to get pulled in through some of the content

that they were putting out. A started listening to podcasts, despite the fact that up to this point my relationship with Tolkien was pretty nominal. I mean, like I said, I made it through The Hobbit in middle school. I watched the movies as a kid and enjoyed them, but that's pretty much where it ended. Well, during this time, thanks again to some of these people who were producing some worthwhile content that was getting my attention, I finally

ordered the books and I started reading. Now, this was a definitive turning point in my life, not just in my literary pursuits, but in my life. From the very beginning of reading The Fellowship of the Ring, I knew that I was reading something real, that this wasn't made up. Now, obviously we don't live in a world with Hobbits and elves and dwarves and all this stuff, but at the same time, Tolkien is communicating something that is true. At the same time it might be different kind of truth,

there's still nonetheless true. And you know, at the time, I didn't have the categories for understanding exactly what I even meant by that, but I knew is true. And one thing that really pulled me in and caused me to particularly attach to Tolkien was the way that he brought sorrow together with beauty and love and joy. This is a common theme throughout his legendary and writings, this

idea that faithful sorrow and joy are directly connected. He has this great line in the Silmarilion that is something like, if joyful is the fountain that rises in the sun, it's springs are in the wells of sorrow. Unfathomed at the foundations of the earth. That might not be exactly right, but that's the basic idea, the idea that the Cross of Christ ultimately is the world tree that brings heaven

to earth, but it also reaches down into Hell. And so it's this idea that the worst that we can experience is brought up to the best that we could experience when it is following this redemptive, crystological direction. And ultimately, I mean, that is the Christian message, but it's something that really was It's something that I really learned how to experience even better through Tolkien's writings, as well as many other things that I could talk about as well,

but this is not a Tolkien class. And so I finish out Lord of the Rings, immediately go to Silmarillion and The Great Tales Baron and Luthian Falled, Gondolin, Children of Huron, as well as some other Tolkien writings, and then aside to switch to Lewis, and that's the natural next step, and I jumped right into Till We Have Faces, which once I got to the end, that absolutely just

blew me up. And I just knew I needed to read everything that Lewis had to write, and so Rowly's ran through and I have not stopped running through as much Lewis as I can get my hands on. And so I say all that to say that I'm a pro this from kind of a unique perspective. On one hand, Yes, I came to Lewis later in life, relatively recently, right I started this, I mean started Lewis probably a couple

of years ago. But I approach him with an academic background in philosophy and theology, which I think gives me a unique perspective of dealing with Lewis. Also, I approach him with a passion. Right, this is not a slow simmering interest. This is something that I'm passionately invested in, and it's something that I've been filling my mind with continually, in text, in audio. Lewis very much lives in my mind at this point, and I'm delighted to be sharing

some of that passion with you. I'm delighted to be sharing some of my research, some of my thoughts, some of the ways that I've appropriated Lewis. But this is not fundamentally about me. This is about Lewis. And I hope that in this study that you, if you don't already have it, that you will develop a passion for his writing. Not in the sense that you have to agree with everything he has to say, but I mean you should probably agree with most of what he has

to say. And that's because, you know, he's often understood as being a stage of swords, a kind of profit in that he had penetrating insights into his times in ways that have really come to even greater fulfillment in our time. And the reason why he had such insight is not simply because he was a naturally remarkable man,

although I'm sure he was that. But one reason why he was able to have such brilliant insights, why he had such a keen grasp on kind of what is going on in the world of ideas, in the world of human experience, is because he was deeply rooted in another time. C. S. Lowist was very much a medieval

man in the way that he thought. Now that doesn't mean that, you know, the medieval mind is full only of wisdom, but what it does mean is is full of a different kind of wisdom, for certain, than the kind of wisdom you would get from a modern man. Ciez Lewis talks about this in his introduction to athanasiuses on the incarnation. When Lewis talks about the value of reading old books, it's not because books are good just because they're old. Old books create the mistakes that were

common during the time that they were made. However, those mistakes are going to be different than the mistakes that we make today. Two heads are better than one, and so if we can use the strengths of the past to correct the weaknesses of today, well, also again not missing the mistakes of the past, well would that not

be better? And so Lewis stands apart as somebody who's able to operate under the auspices of medieval wisdom to understand what's going on in the modern era, to find our blind spots, and to give us warnings about some of the trajectories that we are on. Okay, so now let's talk a little bit about the structure and flow of this study so you know exactly what to expect. Well, each week is going to have typically a couple of videos.

The first one will be a short introductory video that It's going to be short because I don't want to give any spoilers for those of you who are reading the stories for the first time, nor do I want to put too many preconceived notions in your mind as you encounter these stories, because I want for you to be able to explore these strange worlds as the narrative develops. I think that's important. And so the initial video is

really just going to get at some major themes. I'm going to tell you what some companion text might be. I'm going to give you some basic ideas that you should look out for, but they're not going to be very comprehensive, because again I don't want to ruin anything

for you. And then at the end of the week, there will be a longer video in which we go back and do a deeper analysis, pointing out some of the ideas that are play, some of the implications, as ideas have some connections to other literature and that sort of thing. Now, I should say that in this course we are doing a lot. We're covering a lot of ground in twelve weeks, and so what I can't do

a chapter by chapter analysis. I can't look at every single detail because well, if we're going to do that, then any one of these books could easily take well

more than twelve weeks. And so as far as the pre recorded videos, go, I'm really going to focus on big picture and looking at some of the details as they point out some of these big pictures or you know, a few of these major angles that we should look at that I think will play an important role in helping us to get more significance, more substance out of the text that will help us go further up and further in, which obviously is a phrase that many of

you will recognize. Now in our ongoing discord chat, that's when we can really get into more of the details, more of the particular things that interest you, questions that you have, things that you see as particularly significant on the smaller scale level. And so you can find the link to the discord in the first module, and so follow that link over to the Mythic Mind discord server that's going to land you in the general chat over there.

Once you get there, just post something about who you are and that you're part of the course, and then I'll make sure that you get permissions to join the course channel. Now, in that course channel, the discord channel, that's when you can said get into the various things that interest you. You can ask questions, you can have free flowing conversation with the other participants in the course.

I strongly encourage you to participate in this. I think that this is going to be in a very important component of this of this experience that we're doing here together. It's an important way to build some community, and it's an important way to get more out of it, to kind of choose your own adventure and to focus on

the things that are most important to you. And also, the discord conversation will play an important role in helping me to shape the live conversations that we're going to have on a weekly basis for those of you who are able to join, because I don't want the live conversations to just be more of me talking about the

things that interests me. I want those conversations to be based on the things that interest you, and so kind of mining that discord conversation is going to help me to structure those live conversations to be most meaningful, to be most valuable to you, the people who are actually participating in the course, and exactly what those live conversations will look like will largely depend on how many people

are able to join live. But I think that that's going to be a good component of the study, and if you're not able to make it, I'll make sure that they are recorded and posted. That way you can watch the recording. And so that's basically how this course is going to run. Now I'm going to go take a coffee break and then I'm going to come back and we'll talk a little bit about some of the philosophical ideas that shape Lewis's thought. All right, So, as I said, this is going to be the most extensive

philosophical conversation that we have. And really what we need to do is we need to introduce you to Plato, and we need to introduce you to the medieval view of the cosmos. But before we even get to Plato, we need to go a little bit before Plato. And so we're still in ancient Greece, but we're going to go to the pre Socratic period, which simply means the

philosophers who came before Socrates. Now, this is when we get the beginning of a very important conversation for the Greek philosophers as well as for really the entire history of philosophy, and that is the conversation between being and becoming, between movement and stability, and really the question at play here is is ultimate reality, this world that we experience with our senses, the material world, which is always moving. Right, We are always in a process of change. The world

around us is in a process of change. That's what it means to be creatures of time living in a world of time. Time is change or is there a stable truth? Is reality something more than the material world, something that we access with our minds, right, that we're able to use reason to grasp, to latch onto, to gain some sense of stable identity and purpose and meaning that transcends this moving world around us. And so that really is the question that's at play here. And so

firston we're going to talk about Heraclitis. Now, Heraclitis was very much a philosopher of becoming, meaning he focused on the change that we experienced, the fundamentally unstable reality that we experience. And so he famously said that all of existence is like a ripper, and you can never step into the same water twice. And so we are always moving. The world around us is always moving. There's no such thing as repetition. We are always moving down the river.

Now this creates some problems. For one thing. It kind of means that there's really no me across time. Right, everything is moving, then whatever it is that I identify as myself is also constantly changing. And so when I think of myself existing across time, when I think of my own past, present, and potential future, really that itself has to be some kind of illusion. If everything is in a process of change, that means there's no meed that

endures across time. Furthermore, there's a problem regarding our conceptions of truth, because if I'm always changing, the world is always changing, then any thought, any impression that I have in my mind never truly correlates with the way things actually are. If for no other reason, there's always a delay in representation between the way things are and the way things are image in my mind, and so I lose any kind of sense of identity if everything changes.

Also I lose any sense of enduring truth if everything changes, and so I'm kind of lost with nothing more than sense experience. This was Heraclitus's focus, the idea that everything

is in a process of change. However, it is worth noting that even Heraclitis recognized that there's one thing that does not change, and that is the process of change itself, and so the river might always be moving, but the river always moves in a consistent manner, and you understand the forces at work here, the process of change itself, then you're actually able to predict where the river goes.

And so this source of this one source of consistency for Heraclitis is the process of change itself, or that which causes change. And this is the idea that he identified as the lagos, which is obviously where we get our word logic. But the word lagos literally means word, and so the word is the one stable reality that gives some sense of order, that gives that allows us

an ability to have something like understanding. The more we understand the lagos, the more we understand the process of change, and in turn, the more we even understand ourselves. And so this logosper Heraclitis, is a kind of a divine or at very least a semi divine reality that structures and maintained order amidst this world of change. So why would the word be this principle of order. Well, imagine that you had a bag of scrabble tiles that you

poured out randomly. You have this just random arrangement of letters. Well, what do those letters mean, And by themselves they mean nothing. You just have a cacophony of sounds. There's no inherent meaning there. However, when you take those tiles and then you give them the form of a word, well, now the otherwise discordant sounds are brought together into something meaningful, something ordered. And so a word gives form to discordant sounds,

discordant letters. That then allows them to have meaning. And now each particular letter now has meaning within this form that it would not have by itself. And so a word brings form, a word brings order, a word brings meaning, and I mean of course this should sound familiar if you're familiar with John's Gospel, which begins in rk henhold Lagos. In the beginning was the word. John is going to identify the Word with Christ. He is the one through whom all things are made. He is the one in

whom all things hold together. And so if we're going to understand proper order within the New Testament framework, we have to understand the Lagos. We have to understand Christ, the one in whom, to whom and through whom are all things. And so anyways, herot Kleidis, he doesn't have a what I would call a fully developed idea of stability, but he's starting to get there. Nonetheless, he's principally identified as a philosopher of becoming. He gives us the world

of change. Well, on the other side, we have a philosopher of being named Parmenides. Parmenides believed that Reason says that movement is impossible. Therefore the change that we experience with our senses is ultimately an illusion. It's not the real world because again Reason dictates that change must be impossible. His disciples, Eno gives us a couple of parables that help us to understand this. So he says that, imagine

there's a race between Achilles and a tortoise. Now, obviously Achilles has the advantage, and so the tortoise is can get a head start we'll say one hundred yards, and so the tortoise is at one hundred yard mark when Achilles starts at the beginning, and they're off to the races well before Achilles can catch up even where the tortoise began at the one hundred yard mark. First Achilles has to go fifty yards well before he can hit

the fifty yard mark. He first has to go twenty five yards, and then twelve and a half, and then six and a quarter, and so forth, and so forth and so forth into infinity. Now, if you can divide distance into infinity, then what that means is that there is an infinite amount of space between any two distances. Well, how long does it take you to cross an infinite amount of space an infinite amount of time, which is another way of saying that it's impossible, right, you can

never cross an infinite space. And so what this means is that there's an infinitemount of space between any two points. Therefore, movement is rationally impossible. And so Parmenides emphasize the fact that all reality is fundamentally stable because reason dictates that it must be, and that our sense experience of the world around us is simply an illusion of this reality that we know by reason. And so now we have our philosopher of becoming, and now we have our philosopher

of being, we start to get a synthesis in Plato. Now, the best introduction to Plato is probably going where introductions to Plato usually begin, and that is his allegory of the cave, which comes from the Republic. In the Republic, Plato's teacher turned character Socrates, tells a story about these people who spent their entire life chained up in a cave. They can't even turn their heads to look behind them

or to the side. All they can do is look at this wall that is in front of them, which is illuminated, and shadows periodically pass across this wall, across this illuminated space that they can look at. Now they start to develop this hierarchy system where the wisest among them are able to pick up on the patterns and they can detect which shadow is going to pass next. And so they get this whole value system based around the right detection of shadows, the figuring out of the pattern. Well,

eventually one of the prisoners is set free. We're not really told how, but that doesn't really matter. So he gets out of his chains. He looks behind him and he sees this roaring fire. Now, at first, he's blinded by the light because he's never seen light that directly before.

But eventually his eyes adjust and you see what's really going on here, that this fire is burning in the cave, and in front of the fire are passing these two dimensional cutouts of these animals that are then casting shadows on the wall. And so now he sees a glimpse of what is really going on here, that the entire world that he's known before was nothing but a shadow.

It was a pale imitation of this more real reality. Well, he continues to explore the cave, he eventually finds his way out into the open world, and at first he's blinded again now by the light of the sun, but eventually his eyes adjusts and he starts to look around and he sees all of these realities that he had never known before. He actually even sees the animals that were imaged in the cutouts, which then created images on the wall. And so now he's able to see the

real world for the very first time. And so he gets this paradigm shift in his mind and he recognizes that everything that he experienced before was but a pale imitation of this grander, more real reality. Well, remembering his fellow prisoners back in the cave, he wants to go back and share the good news of what he's experienced, this new revelation, and so he goes to them and he starts to explain to them all the things that he's seen, and that this world that they know is

built fundamentally on a lie, it's not real. Well, they don't take kindly to that at first, they think he's mad, and eventually they just get so angry because he's disrupting their value system that they actually end up killing him. And that's how the parable ends. And obviously when player's telling the story, he very much has his own teacher, Socrates in mind, who is executed by the court of

Athens for corrupting the youth. Now in this parable we get being and becoming brought into relation, and so the world of shadows is the world of becoming. It's this world that's constantly moving. It's not stable, right, This is the river of Heraclitis is constantly moving, and so to that degree, in many ways, it's not real because to be real, to have actuality, well there has to be something that you're being actualized into, otherwise you are constantly moving.

And so these shadows are the world of move In many ways, they're not real, they're simply reflections of reality. As the prisoner progressed, you know, with each stage, first seeing the fire and then eventually seeing the light of the sun. You know, he's temporarily blinded. That's because you know, whenever you're getting to a new paradigm, you have to develop the tools for understanding what it is that you're looking at. In fact, there's a great line out of

the side of the planet where it rans them. The main character is, you know, in this strange new reality. And he makes the point that you really can't see something until you know what it is. And so the prisoner is going on this blinding journey toward greater vision and eventually finds his way outside where he's able to see things by the light of the true light. He's able to see things by the light of the sun. Now, the sun, in this allegory represents the highest reality for Plato.

This is the good. Perhaps it wouldn't even be wrong to say that this is God for Plato. Now, as with the sun, right, the best way study the good is not staring at it directly. You don't study the sun by looking at it directly. You study the sun by looking at its effects. You look at its heat, and most importantly, though, you look at that which it illuminates. So too, the good for Plato is really not something that we can clearly define. It's not something that we

fundamentally look at. It's that by which we see everything else. In Plato's Dialogue Uthifhro, Socrates encounters this guy named Euthifro outside the courthouse and Socrates ask Euthifro what he's doing, and Euthuphro says that he's bringing charges of murdered against his father for killing one of their servants. And Socrates says, all right, Eutheriro, you're bringing charges of murder against your

own father. Clearly you are somebody who understands piety. You have some ethical expertise, and so tell me, Eutherifhro, what is good? And Euthipro says, what I'm doing right now is good. Obviously that didn't really answer his question, and so they go back and forth a little bit, but it becomes evident the question that Socrates is asking is what is it that makes good things good? And Eutheriphro

tries a couple of times to answer this question. He says, well, it's what the gods love, and Socrates says, okay, what Obviously the gods in the Greek system they don't all agree with each other, and so is it what some of the gods love, and Etherophroo says, okay, it's whatever, all the gods love, that twas good, and then Socrates says, okay, we're seeing to be getting somewhere, But it doesn't really answer the question because is goodness what the gods happen

to love? Or do the gods loving something make it good? And Eutherophra at that point pretty much says I've got to wash my hair and then runs off scene and that's the end of the dialogue. But really that question of what makes good things good is very important for Plato, and ultimately what makes good things good is the good. However, we can only say but so much about what the

good is. And that's because if we're gonna say that reason itself is good, then what that means is whatever this goodness is that is implicit in reason, stands above and beyond reason. Right reason participates in the good. The good doesn't participate in reason. And so because reason as a good thing is nested within this grander reality, we're talking about something that stands above reason is something that

reason itself cannot see. It's interesting to note that in the Psalms sometimes God is portrayed as residing in unapproachable light. Other times you portrayed as residing in impenetrable darkness. And that's because once you get above the level of finite reason, your categories of understanding entirely fall apart. It's so whether talking about blinding light or absolute darkness, it's more or less the same thing. We can't find our ways around anymore.

Our categories of understanding have fallen apart. This is why when you read the medievals right, even the very reasoned based medieval thinkers, you eventually reach a point where they start to fall into a kind of mysticism idea that as you approach that by which you reason, your reason can no longer carry you. So any distance that you're going to progress beyond reason has to be something that's

not necessarily irrational but superrational. That something that's able to carry you the rest of the gap from the from the bounds of reason up to the ultimate, namely to the dwelling place of God. And so there is a kind of mysticism that is implicit in this idea that we see very clearly in Plato. And so we never can clearly see the good, but we see things by the good, and in getting a better understanding in might

and soul, in affections and appetites. By cultivating our soul to move closer and closer to the good, we are moving on the path of wisdom, even though ultimately we're moving towards something more real than we can actually know through our use of reason. Now, even though we can never understand the good fully through our reason, what we can know through reason is what he calls the world of the forms. This is the ideals, right, This is the world of being. This is the world that doesn't change.

And so just as we have down here in the changing world, we have appearances. We have what it looks like to be human. We have what it looks like to execute justice. We have what it looks like to be a horse, we have what it looks like to love. But all of these appearances are imitations of the reality, the things that they could be if they were fully themselves. And so, according to Plato, we have never experienced the ideal of love in this world. We've always experienced some

corrupted form, some kind of shadow. So two, none of us have ever fully actualized our ideals as humans. The ideal of human nature resides in this world of being. But as soon as the world of being enters into material reality, it enters necessarily into a world of change. And if you're changing from better to worse, what that means is that the material world is not just a place of change, it's ultimately a place of corruption within

the platonic mindset. And so there's something inherently inferior. It's something inherently corruptible about material reality. And so nothing that we experience with our senses is the ideal is what it could be, what it perhaps should be if it were being ethically responsible. And so the idea of love, the ideal of justice, the ideal of what it means to be human, even the ideal of what it means

to be a horse or whatever. Everything that we see with our eyes is an imperfect copy of the ideal unmoving reality of what it could be and what it should be. And so what we need to do is to figure out what true justice actually is, what true love actually is, what it truly means to be human.

And then we continually cultivate not only our understanding that our appetites are affections, and so that all of what we are is increasingly being conformed to this world being, to the ideal, to the form, the way that things should be, the way that things could be. And as we move increasingly toward this reality, the more real we in turn become. And so wisdom in the platonic mindset is very much based off the orientation of your soul. Which way are you facing? You know, are you facing

yourself toward the shadows? And if so, then you are increasingly moving toward the shadows, and you are really approaching nothingness. And that's what evil is, right, It is a lack of goodness, and so evil and nothingness are really more or less the same thing. That's not a way of saying that, well, I guess it is a way of saying that evil isn't real. Evil doesn't exist, and that's because it is a movement away from reality, away from

the actuality of things. You're moving toward becoming, away from being. Whereas an orientation toward wisdom, toward the ideal, toward the way that things should be, means that you are facing reality and you are increasingly moving toward it, seeking to participate in reality as it exists in this stable world of the forms, and you're trying to nursure the world around you, so that it is kind of cultivated into

something real, something stable, something true. And I think that there's a lot of wisdom in this right, whether or not you do it or don't take Plato as a whole, I mean, I certainly don't take Plato as a whole. I think that there is wisdom in the fact that wisdom itself is not only a matter of the mind, although it absolutely involves the mind, it is also a

matter of the affections. It's a matter of moving towards something that we principally cannot grasp with our minds because ultimately, I mean, as we're pursuing the ideal, pursuing the world that we can do through the reason. Ultimately, we're doing that because we're pursuing something we can't know by reason, right, we're pursuing the good ultimately. And so for Plato philosophy, the path of wisdom very much is an act of love. It is not simply a cerebral matter. And that's what

the word philosophy means, philosophia. It's the love of wisdom. And this really plays an important role in his dialogue the Fato. Now the Pato takes place after Socrates is sentenced to be executed for corrupting the youth and he asked too many questions. So now the city of Athens is going to silence him. And so while he's awaiting his execution, some of his friends come to him, and I mean, for one thing, they've already said that, you know, we can get you out of this. You know the

right persons willing to take a bribe. You can just go off into exile. It'll be fine. Socrate says, no, I'm going to go through with this. I would not be who I am without the city of Athens. The least I can do is subject myself to her laws. And so part of what this Fato is is Socrates giving an apology or a defense for his willingness to

go through with his execution. And so its focuses around this idea of the immortality of the soul that perhaps, at least for the wise, for the philosopher, death might not be a terrible fate. And so I'm not going to get into all these arguments he provides about the immortality of the soul. That's just kind of outside of

the purview of where I'm trying to go. But in the midst of this he does bring up some important ideas that can be very important for Lewis, and that is this idea that all true knowledge is ultimately recollection, meaning it's kind of the coming to mind of things that we principally know already. For example, I told you that, according to Plato, we have this idea of the good, even though we can never truly understand what this idea is.

And so the question is, how do we get this idea of the good if it's something we've never experienced, nor is it even something that we understand At the same time, if we are properly attuned to wisdom, it's something that all of us can recognize as the principal object of desire, And so how do we have this

understanding of the good? Or another thing he brings up is we have all these ideas of fixed realities right the forms that we've never experienced with our senses, and the question is how do we actually know about them? For example, he brings out the idea of equality or like sameness. So, for example, the room I'm in right

now is kind of junkie. You can see these two chairs behind me, and you could say that they are the same or the very least, that they have very similar attributes to them, very similar properties, and so they are both chairs. They both fit within this form of chair. However, as soon as we say that things kind of belong within a common category, we're saying is that one chair is similar to the other chair, and they participate in

some of the same realities, some of the same properties. However, where did I get my idea of similarity idea of equality. One hand, you might say, well, I can look at those two chairs, and because they have so many things in common, we can perhaps then pull through reason the fact that they are similar. But the problem is, how would I recognize them as being similar if I didn't

first have an idea of similarity in my mind? And so it brings up this idea that the idea of equality or idea of similarity is actually not something we got from our sense experience of the world around us. It's actually an idea that was already in our minds that then is brought to our attention when we recognize things that are similar, things that bear you know, however

imperfectly equality. And so the idea of equality is not something I got from the world around me, but it is something that is almost innate within my mind that then I used to properly understand the world around me. He talks about some elements of geometry.

really any number of things. Right, And so there's reality to the idea of a line, despite the fact that we've never experienced a line in this world with our senses. And even if I ask you to draw a line, all you would actually be doing is drawing the representation of a line, but you would not actually be drawing a line. However, through that representation, you would know what you mean by line, and I would know what you

mean by line. Despite the fact that neither of us would actually be looking at a line, and so we have these ideas in our mind that are real that makes sense of the world around us, but that we've never actually experienced in the world around us. And so takes the same argument to apply to things like, you know, justice, that rightly thinking, we don't get justice from seeing justice in the world. We're able to recognize justice because we already have this idea of justice in our minds that

we can recall when we are thinking clearly. And so all of our true knowledge, for Plato, there are knowledge of stable reality, of the world of being, the world of the forms, that all of this reality, or all this knowledge rather is imprinted in our minds. And so then the question that Socrates raises is why is this? Why do our minds seem to be naturally related to reality as it actually is? You know, I find it very interesting that you know, we were able I say

we like I did it. But you know, we were able to predict the existence of Neptune based off gravitational calculations before we were able to observe it with our senses, with the you know, with the instruments, and so our minds properly thinking, are able to use these kind of immaterial codes, these immaterial realities, to predict things that we would eventually observe with our senses. Well, that's not insignificant. Something about the human mind is naturally related towards the

way that things are. And so Socrates ask why is this? Well, one idea he throws out is this idea of reincarnation that perhaps you know, we go through these cycles of life and death, that life gives way to death and death gives way to life, but that between these cycles we had unmediated access to the forms to real reality, which then we kind of forget as we are brought

back into the corrupting material reality. But we don't forget it entirely, right, We have these dim recollections, and so it's kind of like if you've ever been dreaming, but in your dream you start to get this inkling that you are dreaming and that there is a greater reality that you'll experience upon waking. Well, this is very much the platonic mindset that we get here in the phato The idea is that we knew true reality, but then

we forgot it through incarnation. But in the path of wisdom, we can start to recollect that which we once knew. Now Platonic Scholarsh will debate exactly what Plato was really getting at here. Did he literally believe in reincarnation or is he just kind of putting it forward as a myth of source to get this idea that ultimate reality is something that we're acquainted with even when we don't

recognize it. And so did he literally believe for incarnation or is it just sort of a myth he's proposing. That's not really something I feel like we need to get into the important part for what we're doing right now is that ultimate reality is something that we know, that we've received directly from ultimate reality, but that for

whatever reason we've largely suppressed, we've largely forgotten. And so real knowledge is a matter of remembering that which we already know, and that I can tell you right now. It's going to be particularly important when we get to the silver chair, but also elsewhere. Now, continuing with the Fatom toward the end, Socrates gives us what he even calls a myth or a tale, meaning he's not suggesting this is literally true, but it is communicating something that

is he believes is real, something that is true. And this is his tale about what happens after people die. So he says that when you die, your damon, which is kind of perhaps a loaded term, but it's something like a spirit at least semi divine reality that lives in the air. And notice I said daemon, which is not the same thing as demon, although you can probably figure out how this idea developed into Christian thought. And so you're daemon. The spirit is going to ultimately bring

you through judgment and land you at your destination. And so those who are truly wicked get tossed into Tartarus at the center of the earth, which is essentially Greek hell. A lot of people will end up in this lake where they kind of swirl around and purgatory sorts for a while, getting their wickedness out, and then they're going to enter back into the life cycle, get reincarnated into an animal or a human. Some people are going to be raised up to the top where they dwell on

the true surface of the earth. Because Socrates suppose that perhaps what we think of as the surface of the earth is not actually the true surface. It's not the real reality, it's not the real earth. He says that, Okay, imagine if you spent your entire life living in the ocean, and so the water's murky, most of it's very dark, it's very dim, but for your entire life, that's the only reality that you knew, and so you didn't know

that your vision was dim. Well, eventually you're able to rise to the top and explore the surface world, the surface world as we know it. And at this point, your entire vision is radically altered, because now you're able to see things clearly. You see new shapes, you experience a new kind of solidity, you see a more vibrant

array of colors, maybe even see new colors altogether. So everything that you once thought to be normal life, everything that you thought to be vision, you now recognize as a pale imitation, perhaps even a mockery, of this new

reality you're able to perceive. Well, he says, what if when you look up at the big blue sky above you, that that is simply another ocean of sorts, and that if we could get to the top, we would discover the true surface world, a world that has again more vibrant colors, that has a higher resolution than we could ever know we're able to see things absolutely clearly, and we're able to recognize the fog that we once thought

to be. And so this is the real world where we live amongst the gods directly, no longer speaking through oracles, but now we have direct fellowship with the gods, because we, like them, have direct access to reality as it is.

And perhaps every single good, every beautiful thing that we've experienced down here in the valley is simply the runoff of this higher reality with you know, mountains made of precious stones, and you know, again, all these just kind of glorious realities which in many ways kind of read like some of the images we get of heaven in revelation. And so it's idea of the more real reality that to which our hearts are naturally drawn when we are rightly directed, when we are operating in the cord with

our nature. And so he says that when you die, you know, perhaps you go into hell, perhaps you get reincarnated, perhaps you rise up to the surface or in the ultimate reality, the ultimate reward for the wise, for the true philosophers, you live as an immaterial reality. With immaterial reality, you live in the world of being, and you know, living up here in this surface world, and living in

this the true surface. Well, now, your sky is actually what we downe here tend to call the ether, or what we call space, which is a word that we'll be talking about a good bit. But up on the surface world, your sky is the clear realm of the stars, of the moon, of the planets. And so in the cosmology here that Plato gives us, you have Tartarus is at the center of the earth. As you move up, you eventually get to the surface world as we know it, which itself is really a valley looking up to the

true surface, above the sky as we know it. And so the progression from the worst to the best, the most, the least real, to the most real, really goes from Tartarus, and then really, I suppose the ocean to the surfaces we know it, to the true surface, which then looks out on the heavens. Well, now let's jump a generation to Plato student Aristotle, who's going to continue this conversation

regarding being and becoming. And Aristyle is going to look around and he's going to see with Heraclitis that this world as we experience it is indeed moving. It's in the state of flux. It is becoming. However, you look up on a clear night and you see things that don't move. You see the stars that are fixed, as well as the wanderers, namely the planets. However, even the planets,

although they're moving, they moved in a fixed and predictable pattern. Well, in Aristotle's book The Metaphysics, he notices that as I said that the world around us is in a state of flux, it's always changing. However, even that change happened in a logical and orderly way. And so you know, effects have consequences. That when a domino falls, it falls

because the domino before it knocked it over. Well, if you follow that chain of dominoes back far enough, then eventually you have to get to the beginning domino, that first domino that's able to kick over the entire sequence. Well, this is a very simplified argument for the idea that at the beginning of the sequence of change, there has to be one thing that causes change but is not

itself changed. This is Aristotle's prime mover. Now, for this argument, it's very important that the prime mover itself does not change, meaning it doesn't actually take action, because it is fully actualized. There's nowhere for it to go, nothing for it to do. It's always doing everything that it can do. That's what it means to be fully actualized. It has no potential, and so what it means is this God doesn't act okay. And so when we talk about Aristotle's Prime Mover causing motion,

it's not in even necessarily an intentional way. The way that it causes motion and this is in the same way that a beloved attracts a lover. And so, as the only fully actualized being, the only truly eternal, unmoving reality, the only true good, the Prime Mover is supremely lovable, and this is how it causes the cosmos to move in continual imitation of the changeless reality of the Prime Mover.

And so on the outer level of reality, here we have the heavenly spheres which are moving, right, the planets move. And the way this attraction works is the cosmos itself moves through the cycle of spheres that are moving in imitation of the unchanging reality of the Prime Mover. How did Aristotle get here? Well, he believed that love tends to imitate, and the best way for moving realities namely

the moving cosmos. To imitate the unchanging reality of the prime mover is to move in a spherical shape, right. I mean, imagine you had a perfect sphere that was rotating. Well, if you have a perfect sphere rotating that in many ways, you wouldn't even be able to tell that it's spinning, because movement in the sphere is a way of imitating stability, it's a way of imitating unchanging reality. The first kind of movement that you have here is not even really

a physical movement. This outer sphere is called the primamobile. It's the idea of the first thing that's moved, but in it itself isn't really moved physically. It's more of a spiritual movement. It's the movement of love, which then starts to turn the next sphere, which at this point start to get associated with the planets. And so the planets in the Oristilian mindset are either moved by divine realities,

or perhaps they themselves are divine realities. This is not entirely clear, kind of gets debated, but nonetheless there's some kind of divine reality associated with the spheares that's causing them to move in imitation of the sphere before it, which itself is moving in imitation of the sphere before it, which is eventually going down the line, we get to the outer sphere that is moving in imitation of the

prime mover of God himself. Well, as we follow these spheres down further and further and further to the Earth, eventually we get to the Moon, which also moves in a regular and predictable pattern. It has order. However, this is also where order starts to break down. You can look at the moon with your naked eye and see what we recognize as craters. It has imperfections, and also

it changes, it goes through these cycles. It has a light side, it has a dark side, And so basically the moon is still orderly, but it is the place where order starts to break down, where being really starts to turn into becoming, where corruption starts to play out.

And now at this point I'm actually starting to already combine kind of Aerostyle's thought with Ptolemy and moving into the medieval world and kind of bringing all this together this point, so, the planets as we know them, they're named after the Roman gods, and that's because the planets themselves, which Aristotle recognize as divine realities, are at least associated with divine realities, became identified with the Greco Roman pantheon.

It's worth noting at this point that how the gods of the philosophers, namely those who are wise in power and wise in true understanding, are a more sanitized form of the Olympian soap opera, where now the gods are reaching their ideal state and literally reside in the heavens, and it is from the heavens that they exert their

influence down here on Earth. Now, these planets are going to be played a very important role in the medieval understanding of the cosmos, and especially in the Ransom series that we'll be beginning with. And so, like I said, each of these planets actually at this point are probably best to give you a diagram of the cosmos, and then we'll go back and carry some of these thoughts

that I've started here. And so at the very center of the cosmos, at the center of the Earth, even you have Hell, then you have Earth, Then you have the air above the Earth. Then you have the moon Mercury, Venus, the sun, Saturn, Jupiter, Primum Obila, imperiod of God. Right, this is where God dwells. This is the highest reality, that which is most real, that which is most fixed, that which is most unmoving. And then we progress further further.

The heavens themselves are perfect, but they are moving, but they're moving in order, moving in harmony, in direction of God. Well, once you get to the moon, this is where things start to break down. And so the moon is this transitory element. It's looking toward the earth which has fallen, but it also has a face out toward the heavens. It has a light side, it has a dark side. It is orderly, yet it also goes through these monthly transitions.

And so the moon as Luna has its correlation with the water, which also emphasizes its kind of liquid nature. It's given over to change to inconsistence. And so the moon itself is good and in fact it produces silver in the earth, which is good. However, it also is an influence that can easily go wrong, and so lunacy

gets its name from the moon. From Luna. It's the idea that you're given over to change to chaos because you have a misrelation with the influence of Luna, which is inherently good, but also perhaps the easiest to go wrong.

And you know, it's for this reason that we get, you know, your werewolf stories, in which a particular misrelation to Luna leads to such a degradation of order, such a reversal of the movement that our soul should take, that instead of our souls rising upward toward the more rational, the more virtuous, they actually go downward, and our beastly

in state instincts take over as well. And of course the only way that werewolf can be killed is with silver, and so so very poetically we get this image that the only way that Luna can repent of her sins is through her tears. And so a lunatic is somebody who has a misrelation to the influence of the moon. However, a positive relation to the lunar influence takes the form of a traveler, a wanderer, perhaps ironically, like the way I just said, even a hunter, right, And so it's

somebody who has an appropriate relationship with the influence of change. Well, all the seven planets, so Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Jupiter, Saturn, exert some kind of influence that radiates out through the spheres. Now, these influences themselves are good, right, they operate in an

unfallen reality, they operate in the heavens, they are perfectly ordered. However, it's when these influences enter into our atmosphere that is not only given over to corruption in light of our material nature, but also in a more theological sense, right in our fallen earth, these influences tend to get twisted into corrupted versions of what they are meant to be. And so I think it's probably worth talking just very briefly about what each of these planetary influences tend to do.

So Mercury is the fastest planet. Mercury is associated with speed, with speed of wit, with speed of feet. It's especially with movement, and so a positive relation with Mercury can lead to you being quick witted. But also it can lead to you being perhaps a thief of a pickpocket, you're quick with your fingers, or maybe even you're a sophist. Right, you have a quick tongue, but not always for a

wise and good and noble purpose. And so Mercury tends to be associated with the idea of speed of quickness, a kind of fluidity. Lewis talks about this in the Discarded image that the way to get understanding of what mercury is is to look at someone a dish and the way that it kind of moves and swirls around. Next, you have Venus, obviously a feminine ideal, very associated with love, with that which is nurturing, that which is motherly, and so you have a a kind of a sweet influence.

Here's something that brings images of gardens and life. But obviously a misrelation can look like somebody who gives themselves over to their passion, someone who's overly amorous and doesn't maintain wisdom in their amorous pursuits, or or perhaps even the mother that will counter in the Great divorce, who has a possessive relationship with her child. That would also be a negative association with Venus's influence. Okay, Now, the sun or a soul is the source of wisdom, is

seen as the eye of the cosmos. And notice the sun is the central of the seven planetary spheres, and so in one way you can say the Earth is at the center, but another way you can say that the Sun is at the center of the medieval cosmos. They just mean that a little bit differently. And so, like I said, the sun is the eye of the cosmos, it is the light of divine reason, particularly associated with philosophers and theologians. Also, the sun produces gold in the earth.

But the same time, the sun is associated with liberality, with generosity, and so an appropriate relationship with the sun would look like wisdom, it would look like a right use of wealth, whereas a negative relationship with the solar influence would actually lead to greed, to not giving away wealth, but actually giving yourself away to wealth and being consumed by it. If you've read Voyage of the Dawn Treedder already, perhaps you can see some ways that that can play

a part. Next, you have Mars, obviously, the Roman god of war, and so the Mars is associated with the martial influence, and so in a positive sense this can look like the noble knight who is fighting injustice. It can also look like the noble martyr who is maintaining a steadfast spirit will injustice is done to him. And so Mars associated with martyrs, associated with the noble knights,

with the good warriors. Now, a negative relation to the martian influence obviously looks like a tyrant, someone who's bloodthirsty, somebody who engages in combat for the sake of combat rather than for the sake of a higher ideal. Now side note, and this is going to be important, there are also some older connections between Mars and vegetation. This

the idea of Marsilvanis. And so it's the idea that Mars is not only associated with war and with destruction, but that Mars also has some less known associations with life, with vegetation and with nature. Hence March at the beginning of springtime. Now, next you have Jupiter, which is of course the king of the gods, or in this case, the king of the planets. And so this is the idea of the true king who is enthroned in justice

and serenity. He not only properly orders the world the spheres around him, but he also orders his own passions. And so this is the magnanimous king, enthroned in peace, in serenity, and enjoy. In fact, another name for Jupiter is Jove, hence joviality, or even the English expression by jove. Pay attention to that, And so Jove is the enthroned king sitting on high. Next you have Saturn Now, Saturn

is the most sluggish of the planets. Its influence tends to lead to things falling apart, toward corruption, disease, aging. Saturn is also associated with the Titan Chronos time. It's this idea, it's associated with things kind of wearing down. Know that this is the first planet that moves, and so there is this connection with movement, and the way that this gets received in Earth's atmosphere tends to be movement for the worst things running down, things losing both

their potentiality and their actuality. However, despite the fact that Saturn is generally seen as the least desirable influence, a right relationship with Saturn is a kind of penitential wisdom. It's the kind of wisdom you can only find by going through sorrow. This is the wisdom of mementomori. Remember that you will die, and there is real wisdom and real good to be found in that, even if it's not that which we might most desire. And so all

of these planetary influences are inherently good. I don't they exist in the heavens, but tend to fall into corruption in the way that we relate to them as they enter into our fallen material atmosphere. Now you may be asking the question, Okay, what are these Roman gods doing in a medieval Christian context? And that doesn't seem to be something that particularly troubled theologians at the time. However, I mean, obviously they're not serving Roman deities, but the

names themselves I mean tended to stick. However, they got repurposed and instead of recognizing them as Roman gods, I mean, they were seen at divine realities something like angels, which the Medievals believed, I mean, actually filled the atmosphere. But you know, I think that I'm going to pause right there. We've already covered a lot of ground. I'm going to

return to some of this. I'm going to emphasize certain elements and even talk a bit more about angels as well as other things that might exist within the medieval world. But I'll get to that in the next video. I think that if I went any further now, I would end up ruining some of the mystery of out of the Silent Planet, which I will briefly introduce in the next video. And so we did a lot in this video.

Like I said, moving forward, we're not going to spend so much time doing these big philosophical overviews, but I wanted to lay out some important ideas that you should keep in mind. Perhaps we'll turn back to as you do your reading. We'll get more into some of this, but like I said, moving forward will be more focused on the actual text. But I hope that this was enjoyable. I hope that you've got something valuable out of this.

If you have any questions, then please hop on over to the discord chat and let me know, and otherwise I will talk to you next time. Plato Stoicism until we have faces a brand new eight week course by doctor Andrew Snyder coming in July twenty twenty five. I have always, at least ever since I can remember, had a kind of longing for death. It was when I was happiest that I longed most. It was on happy days when we were up in the hills, the three of us, with the wind and the sunshine, where you

couldn't see Gloam or the palace. Do you remember the color and the smell, and looking across at the gray mountain in the distance, and because it was so beautiful, it set me longing, always longing somewhere else, there must be more of it. Everything seemed to be saying, Psyche, come, but I couldn't come, and I didn't know where I was to come to. It almost hurt me. I felt like a bird in a cage when the other birds

of its kind are flying home. And now I will make answer to you, oh my judges, and show that he who has lived as a true philosopher has reason to be of good cheer when he was about to die, and that after death he may hope to receive the greatest good in the other world. For I deem that the true, rue disciple of philosophy is likely to be misunderstood by other men. They do not perceive that he

is ever pursuing death and dying. And if this is true, why, having had the desire of death all his life long, should he regret the arrival of that which he has always been pursuing and desiring. The longing of Plato and the control of the Stoics pervades Lewis's retelling of the Cupid and Psyche Myth until we have faces with this

incredible novel, which he believed to be his best. Lewis demonstrates the tensions in ancient thought, and even more significantly, the limits of rational philosophy, which can only go as deep as the foxes can dig. Beyond that, under that and providing the life of that thought, we find the dark and holy places that blind our faculties of reason. What, then,

shall we do? This is a topic that we will explore after first surveying some important philosophical contributions in the ancient world that have had some significant bearing on Lewis's great novel. To this end, we will begin with Plato's Phato, which discusses the immortality of the soul and what those who love wisdom might expect in the life to come. And then we'll spend four weeks with some of the

great stoics, including Epictetus, Emperor, Marcus, Aurelius, and Seneca. Finally, we will turn our attention to till we have faces for the final two weeks with original content, and so this will not be the same as what you may have seen in the fiction and philosophy of CS. Lewis course. Each week of this eight week study will include readings from primary sources that will be provided as PDFs. Although these are all texts that belong in your personal library.

You'll be provided with recommendations for secondary readings. You'll have recorded presentations for you to watch at your leisure, ongoing discord chats, and weekly life meetings to discuss the readings enrolled today by going to patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind and checking out the job or, you can gain access to all courses, past, present and future this year by purchasing a Tier three annual subscription. I hope to see you there.