Philosophy of Plato (Part 1: Idealism)

so last week we looked at the creator of Socrates of Athens the father of ethical philosophy a really dude who never ate anything or established a school or had official students but the other men of Athens liked to follow him around and imitate his methods one of those young men would go on to become one of the most famous philosophers in history somebody who would write some official philosophical schools of thought who would establish a school and he was somebody who was also in attendance at the trial of Socrates he's mentioned as having been there and we know him as Plato so Plato was sort of a student of Socrates and in there didn't have an official students Plato incidentally would later go on to found a school in which his most famous student would be Aristotle so the three most famous names of Greek philosophy Socrates Plato and Aristotle all had this teacher-student relationship to each other and by the way anybody know who Aristotle's most famous student was he went on to conquer most of the known world Alexander the Great for a couple of years was a pupil of Aristotle's he was his tutor any case where today concerned with Plato and Plato's great contribution to philosophy something that has been called the most important school of thought and all of Western philosophy it's been said that the whole history of Western thought is a series of footnotes on Plato and that is the philosophy of idealism now we use the word idealistic today we're talk about idealism we sometimes mean it in almost a kind of a sneering way we would dismiss somebody's just being an idealist to somebody that's not grounded in practical reality but the official meaning is this idealism is the belief that the objects of thought are the true reality we're to spend all week exploring what this means and I'll warn you at the outset that Platonism is not just a definition that you learn and then you understand it platonism is a way of looking at the world that you just have to get used to you become acclimated to platonic thought we have all week to do this so here is my crash course in Plato you could spend all semester just on platings been old scholarly career on Pluto we have a week so I'm going to start with that what's that on the board in your shirts square it's not a triangle it's not a not an octagon it's not a giraffe it's not my shoe all the things in the world this could be square it's how you identify it okay how do you know it's a square what is the definition of square okay so square has four equal sides and it has four what are these angles for 90 degree angles what else are the qualities of square any curious properties of the opposite sides of the square okay as parallel opposite sides how many dimensions does a square occupy two dimensional figure okay so very good you have defined square Euclid would be perfectly pleased with your definition anything that has four equal sides for 90-degree angles parallel opposite sides and is a two dimensional figure must be a square and nothing else than a square yes you're acting suspicious just because you know I'm setting you up but that's a square right Euclid would define a square in this way now while you define square very well that's not a swear as an ink mark that I made on the board with this pen you saw me do it let's take a look at these definitions do we actually have four absolutely equal sides here now you can tell that this one is about three millimeters longer than this side so the sides aren't actually equal are all the angles ninety degrees no you can tell that this one is ninety point zero zero one four degrees this one is a two nine point nine six degrees they're a little bit off what happens if we extend these sides out to infinity though eventually going to cross right on one side of the other so you know there's no parallel lines in nature you learned that in school too do we at least have a two-dimensional figure that's good point and now it expends about one micrometer into the third dimension the height of the ink mark on the board okay so the ink mark I made which you all pretty confidently identified as square and even defined it has actually failed every single definition of square now it's not surprising that the student or that student might have mistakenly identified it as something that it is not students make mistakes but all of you looked at this and saw squareness in the sinc mark even though there's no square on the board so how is it possible for all of you to make the exact same mistake how do all of you look at this ink mark and see squareness because if it's not on the board then where is the square you all saw in your mind well it's true you did learn in grade school somewhere but that doesn't really answer the question that just puts off the question it's an idea in your mind now but you had to learn it from your teacher who learned it from their teacher learned it from her teacher all the way back to Pythagoras or Imhotep or somebody somebody had to be the first human being to come up with the concept of square and that person never saw an actual square in their life all they've seen are crude marks so if the perfect square does not begin in the mind and if it does not exist anywhere in nature then where is the perfect square that we have come to understand and define where's the only place it can be so where is the square you recognize it's got to be in some higher realm then the mundane crude and perfect world we see with our five senses it's got to be above this world are like behind this world and only our thinking can access the idea we never experience it with our senses and all of you have the ability to perceive this idea expressed to varying degrees in the world around us I'll draw three objects on the board object a object B object C which of these three objects most participates in the concept of squareness you all agree a which one least participates in it you all agree okay now y'all are math majors that all of you instantly are able to perceive the degree of squareness present in these objects in the world around you just like all of you were able to perceive harmony and dissonance even without any musical training there's something about this that is innate within us look around this room notice the tabletop in front of you in the tiles on the board in the white screen and the door and the window in the door what do they all have in common they're all rectangles exactly how does your mind do that we have Formica wood we have wood we have glass we have cork we have whatever screens are made of they all of different functions are made of different materials how does your mind go zip zip zip zip zip rectangles they're all right why does your mind do that my dog doesn't do that my dog looks at the world does stuff I can chase stuff I can eat stuff I can pee on but we look at the world and we see geometrical concepts embedded in it even though they're not really there and they're not perfectly expressed our mind still somehow for some reason apprehends these things in Plato is the first to explore why that might be the case which questions are not just those of cosmology what is the world made of how do we understand it like the nature philosophers had asked he is the first one to begin to ask a question that falls into the category called epistemology gee epistemology is the branch of philosophy it explores how we know things how do we come to have knowledge what is the the nature and organizing principles of what we hold to be our knowledge so how do we come to know things how does our mind figure stuff like this out when I look out at my audience here I see people with pale skin dark skin in between skin long hair short hair unkempt hair you all look very different from each other so why don't I get confused and think I'm looking at a dozen different species of animal sitting in front of me how do I look through all of your differences in apprehend you all share something called human even though you look so different and if a monkey comes in the room I'm going to realize almost but not quite you don't quite fit the category what's the discerning ability I have that makes these distinct one distinct distinctions in organized and classifies these things how do I organize my knowledge in this way what am i referring things to what am i accessing to make sense out of the world part of it we begin by looking at similarities and differences but we have a lot of similarities to monkeys and we have a lot of differences from each other and somehow we draw these fine distinctions Plato's answer to all these kinds of questions is that there must be more to the world than just the physical reality we see around us like the nature philosophers he concluded that the evidence of the five senses cannot be the totality of all that is real there must be more to it the nature philosophers knew this because they were trying to figure out why the world continued to exist when everything and it was temporary so they postulated there must be some eternal substance that becomes the conglomerates and the things of temporary sense experience the results back into the substance to form into other things they were the materialist philosophers they're asking what is the physical world made of Plato following Socrates is exploring ethical questions and is wondering about the nature of how we have this knowledge itself and like Pythagoras who had begun to steer philosophy towards the realm of abstract mathematics and looking at geometrical forms and ratios Plato is going to carry on with that and begin to see that there must be a whole realm of invisible concepts things he called forms that exists behind the physical world forms the capital F we live down here in this physical realm and standing down here we might see a black horse and a white horse in a big horse horses with different characteristics to them laugh at my horse but somehow our mind is able to see that despite the differences in size and color that somehow they all participate in the form of ideal horse they're all variations on this theme of horse so our eyes are going and stopping at the differences but our mind the rational component within us whatever that thing is the mind is something else and it's going the mind rises above the different things in the world to perceive the ideal form the abstract concept that they all partake of that they're all variations of and this is his answer to how we make sense out of the world we are bombarded by millions of physical objects and since experiences every day how do we make sense out of this cacophony of the experiences that we have Plato believed that the rational soul didn't know what your brain was for in the ancient world they just thought your human souls had the spark of rationality in it and he thought that our rational soul somehow had the ability to perceive the invisible realm of forms that lie behind things and that these things must be at the true reality now that's all well and good for an organizing principle we grouped together all the horses under the form of horse and all the humans under the form of human and all the rectangular shaped objects under the form of rectangle but the cosmological question began with what is real what is the universe really made of what is it all about and what's more real the idea of square in my head or the physical square I can draw on the board what has more substance to it the one on the board right where's that square now gone so I'll ask you again what has more real substance to it this crude ink mark that failed every definition of square and lasted for about ten minutes while I tormented you with this lecture or the eternal perfect concept of square which meets every definition which is existed since before you were born and will be here long after you're gone the eternal perfect concept or the crude ten-minute ink mark what is more substantially real maybe the concept in the mind is in a sense more real than the physical object I mean without the idea in my mind how do I even make a square how did I even approximate however crudely this idea of square if I didn't first have a concept to tap into to guide my hand the mind taps into the form of square and then my mind directs my hand to replicate that thing that my mind is first tapped into what's more real you or the shadow you cast you're more real than your shadow right without you there can be no shadow you have more substance than your shadow the idea is reality that's the shadow that it casts down here in this physical realm since okay so that's essentially how play to have use the world and how we're able to make sense out of the world and come up to these abstract concepts mathematical concepts are the simplest things to comprehend geometrical forms we can think of without reference to physical things I can think about the concept of rectangle without having a physical rectangular shaped table in front of me and in my mind this rectangle has perfectly straight sides perfectly 90-degree angles the opposite sides are perfectly parallel and it is a two-dimensional form without any third dimensional intrusion whatsoever my mind can hold the concept of rectangle and triangle and circle but in the physical world I will never be able to replicate some that meets all those definitions but I don't can only make sense of the world by referring things to those concepts that it most closely resembles I organize my world my experiences in that way so it is the difference between looking at the physical Pyramids of Egypt casting shadows being beautiful but somewhat imperfect and then my mind realizing that I am making sense of this because I see how it participates in the form of triangle the geometrical concept what we see being formed here is a hierarchical structure the broad physical world full of physical things and then a small number of forms that gives rise to the things now Aristotle when he was a student of Plato's once asked him a good question said master Plato I understand that there must be more things than forms because one form can give rise to and explain thousands and thousands of things and we know that all of the horse looking things are organized under the form of force because our mind apprehends us but how are all the forms related to each other how do we know that these are all forms that they're all the same class of things upon this higher level is there some ultimate form at the top of all this some super form that gives rise to individual forms or saying give rise to individual things what's at the apex of this hierarchy of reality that we're constructing like to have an answer but this is all leading to in the allegory of the cave it talks about leaving this world of ignorance and shadows and seeing progressively higher levels of reality until outside the cave you see the actual real things remember this is symbolism it's an allegory so all of this has to be understood as being a dimension higher than what it's saying that world of shout is really the physical real world you live in so-called real world the world outside the cave are really these abstract concepts when you get to the very top what is the last thing that prisoner is able to look at when he's finally an enlightened philosopher the Sun and the Sun is a symbol what does the Sun symbolize so when the last things in the allegory the Sun represents what is the Enlightenment what is that thing we're looking for what is the essence of the being what is the nature of the universe it's a Greek word we've talked about already well you'll have it translated anyway it says that the Sun represents the good remember the good so the universe ultimately is good that's good the problem here though is that you're reading an English translation from Plato's Greek original and in the Greek original the word that it uses doesn't really have an English translation every translation I've ever read always concludes with this being called the good but that's flawed because it's limited there is another word he used a Greek word that is the real answer to his question and that word is the logos remember that word where logos means mind thought reason structure remember the logos was this almost mystical belief about a rational force that permeates the entire universe it is the origin of the universe and it is the nature of the universe itself it is the organizing principle that makes the world around us not just chaotic but actually understandable comprehensible organized in the classes in qualities of things in our soul our rational bit within us has a spark of that logos and that allows us to understand to comprehend the invisible structure of the physical world around us that's why we can look at the world and see it in terms of mathematical equations in concepts of physics things that you don't see directly but it's how you understand the world you don't see gravity as a thing but you know it's real right you don't see most of the electromagnetic radiation around you but you know it's there right you don't see atoms and electrons and neutrons but you know they're real right most of what you know to be real this stuff that your senses cannot access directly after 24 centuries since the time of Plato were a lot more comfortable were raised with the idea that a lot of what's real in the world is not directly accessible by the senses Plato is writing in a world in which this is a very very new idea and trying to convince people that the physical world around them is really just a dim shadow of a higher realm that you can't really see you might say that perhaps they'd be skeptical so this translation of the word logos you need you need all these words together to really come close to capturing what the Greek philosophers meant by logos you understand it of course also as the suffix on the sciences biology zoology paleontology anthropology that Logie on the end which means the study of whatever the prefix is meaning you're not just collecting anecdotal information about this or that subject you're understanding the universal principles that lie behind the subject that's what it means to study the science of something so here is Plato's view of the world it all emerges from this rational ordering logos which is a good thing it becomes a variety of forms in the forms or what our mind is able to access to make sense of the multiplicity of things around us it makes sense of it all to organize them into groups into categories this is also Plato's answer to why it is that human knowledge grows why we improve upon the past why we learn more Plato's philosophy has been the most optimistic intellectual jolt in the arm of Western civilization the belief that the objects that we think about the ideas that we hold to are a truer reality and since they are the true reality we ought to spend our time down here trying to make this world more in accordance with it it's what would for Plato explain progress right look at the chairs you're sitting in it fairly comfortable all right although flexing on the backs up how did the chair get invented do you think what's the first evidence that the human species has invented the chair because we know they didn't have it back in the Paleolithic right there were nomads they lived on the move why would you build a chair you can't carry around with you everywhere so we know that there was a time in which the human race did not have chairs but now we do how do we come up with this idea what's the first chair you saw the evidence in this class remember the yeah very good the lady of the beasts of shuttle Hayek exactly so we have this eight thousand nine thousand year old little stone carving of terracotta image of this fertility goddess Queen where she is sitting on a throne which means that shuttle high up they have invented chairs now how did they come up with that we can speculate how they perhaps came up with this they've just moved down from their hunter-gatherer lifestyle they do in the farming or building more permanent structures and they're thinking to themselves you know what I'm tired to sitting on the ground I need I need something to sit on now I don't think that the first chair was made by some craftsmen with a bunch of sticks just randomly throwing them together until totally morally I'll bet I could sit on that thing I don't think that's how that happened I think you must have been thinking about the idea of something I can sit on and he knitted around with until he found something to approximate it and so maybe he invented the first whole three-legged stool that's fairly comfortable better than sitting on the floor then I remembered you know what back before we left our hunter-gatherer days there was that flat piece of rock outside the cave I used to be able to lean back on that on the cave wall behind it me that was comfortable I wonder if I could maybe I could in some way and then maybe he and then it's a little back to his chair and with a bit of experience he starts making four-legged chairs and our Lady of the beasts gets her throne that she sits on and a taller back be a better head support and on and on it goes when your grandparents went to college they sat in wooden chairs with four legs and backs on them but you're not sitting in one of those are you what you're sitting on look at that tubular steel construction and ergonomically formed plastic to hug up under your hindquarters so that you can sit comfortably during this lecture why didn't we content ourselves with this this was a perfectly functional chair for your grandparents but we didn't do that did we we continue thinking how can I make a better chair how can I improve upon the concept of chair to make it more ideal more comfortable and then we start making them a little more ergonomic design to arm and then we start figuring out ways to simplify the manufacturing process alright at some point we began attaching a little desk tablet to the chair and how many all are left-handed okay remember going into the classroom when trying to look for the one or two left handed desk somewhere and so a lot of the classrooms you're in today instead they have simply a central tablet here that you can then access from either side ambidextrous nesting you can come in either way and fit in there so what I have to specialized anymore or now we can have something that's even more ergonomically formed comfortable for you keep improving and improving upon the chair if you grow up and become the professor look at this bad boy you get to sit in look at this amazing product of ergonomic engineering five legs on wheels upholstered cushioned it can go up and down I can move back and forth I can zip over and chat with this guy go over here talk to Reggie I spin around in it it's awesome is this the final chair we're going to continue improving on the chair aren't we maybe one day we'll have little little levitating pads and as soon as we go to sit down you know the holographic machines will solidify some matter around us to perfectly catch us and respond every little movement to motion that we make for the ideal of comfort sitting down what drives that why do we keep improving and improve how do we know what direction to improve in now the modern world you probably have little more sophisticated understandings of this we identify shortcomings in what we have we find ways to improve it we make incremental advances but Plato's answer would have been more along the lines of we're getting closer and closer to the ideal form of chair and there's something that draws us onwards because the real part of us is not this meat sack we live in this will come to an end after enough decades go by but the rational soul part of us the real thing the part of us that understands the world that is the part that taps into these forms and is able to keep pursuing it and getting closer with more practice and experience we make things a little better and a little better and a little better this process will continue well till we're all spiritual forms of some sort all right now so far I've been talking about simple things horses and chairs and square-shape things and so forth this isn't really the kind of thing that's on Plato's mind these are simple examples to make the idea clear and to make it convincing but far more important or other kinds of forms like justice truth beauty fairness courage concepts and qualities that we know we want human beings to embrace and to participate in but how we become that way is what he really is after here and remember Plato was at the trial of Socrates and Socrates was not lynched by an angry mob it wasn't a bunch of pissed off parents who were tired of their kids SAS and back in the style of Socrates that dragged him out and hung him he had a trial he went to court he had a legal trial they followed all the legal proceedings of Athens he was legally sentenced and legally put to death so the sentence of Socrates was legal but do any of you think that Socrates received justice at his trial no how is it possible that the world's first democracy in the home of philosophical and rational speculation could sin their wisest albeit you know somewhat cranky and you know strange little dude how could they have sent this guy to his death I mean I can see some Triana chol King doing this they don't like people that are smarting off and asking questions but this is a democracy how can we have the letter of the law followed and yet the spirit of law so grossly violated that's what's really on Plato's mind ever since the trial of Socrates is absolutely vexed with this problem of what is wrong with people why can't they see how to behave in a way that is truly just in fair and courageous why do they fall into so many errors in their actions and how do we get people to stop doing that if you've ever gotten a speeding ticket that you felt you didn't deserve it was a speed trap ever found yourself losing some arguments some case where you felt like the principal have been violated even though legally you lost then you understand Plato's position the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law the whole purpose of having law is to enforce justice make laws to keep just sentences occurring in and society and yet here it went horribly awry so this philosophy was largely triggered by that his presence of the trial of Socrates the memory of that never left Plato and he maintains the memory and the tradition of his master Socrates and all of the dialogues that he wrote and that is one reason why Plato wrote dialogues for Plato philosophy wasn't just for a bunch of beady-eyed scholars and libraries philosophy was for everybody every citizen who votes and therefore you know plays a role in deciding the actions of their country every one of them must be a philosopher you must think rationally and carefully about why you hold the opinions you do and whether or not these opinions are just and if you have not subjected yourself to careful honest questioning and found that you have a rational defense for all of your positions that you can support with clear evidence in proper moral principles those things that you hold to be your opinion did you not really thought them through it all in the first place and unfortunately it seemed like most people really hadn't thought through their opinions most people just kind of go along with the crowd most people just sort of do it seems to be popular scene who or what feels good at the time remember Socrates was just barely found guilty on the charges my very thin little margin and then more people voted to put him to death than had voted him guilty in the first place how can you vote that this guy is innocent and then 15 minutes later vote to put him to death what happened in that interim Socrates made a mad with his Cavalier response what do I deserve for what I've done you how about a life pension though the work I've done on your behalf Athens they were pissed off and they responded with their anger their emotions rationally we can look back at a safe distance of history and realize that Socrates you know simply got a got rooked at his trial because we don't have our emotions invested in it this is the hard thing have you ever have been in a position where emotionally you felt one way but rationally you felt differently and if you ever decided to just go with your gut feeling in your emotions and did it maybe turn out not so good you know it's harder to put your rational mind in control we have debates periodically in this country about whether or not it should be legal to burn the American flag when I see people burning an American flag on television angers me love this country this country is awesome I think I could live the life I live anywhere else in the world Western civilization America best place to be said irritates me makes me angry but if we made it illegal to burn the American flag what rational principle would that violate freedom of speech in freedom of expression what I value about this country partly is that we have freedom of speech and expression so you've got to give yourself a heart example like this obviously you know we're all going to agree it should be illegal to you know torture a puppy or something like that okay mentally rationally emotionally you know no part of us wants to do that but when you have a case where you feel one way in your gut but your mind is telling you something else that's when courage is required to go with your rational mind instead of your gut feeling this country we live in is in many ways a product of platonic optimism of the belief that the objects of thought are the true reality our founding fathers lived in the 18th century in the Enlightenment they were philosophical most of them read Latin many of them read Greek they were thoroughly versed in Roman his during Greek philosophy they studied the classics it was a 18th centuries a popular time for studying the classics and think about it when they went to design this country what made him think that they could do something that would be better than what they had had before I mean with you have a rebellion and overthrow your king how do you know you're not going to just get another worse King afterwards look it's happened in the Middle East after the Arab Spring they ever throw all their tyrant dictators now they got worse dictators that's usually what happens so what gave our founding fathers the confidence that they could rebel against the King of England and then just invent a form of government that would be better than what they'd had before what made them believe they could do it I would say that a lot of this has to do with the optimism that platonic idealism gives you that the objects of thought are the true reality because they work in a form a country based on divine right monarchy they didn't form a country based on the Bible or religion they formed a country based on ideas and you can see those ideas right there in the preamble to the Constitution of the United States now back in my day nobody left junior high school without being able to recite the parameter the Constitution of the United States how about you kids today can you do it I'll start you off we the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union pause in order to form a more perfect union let that line sink in for a minute did they think they were going to make a utopian paradise no they're more pragmatic than that they're more realistic than that they were simply trying to make a country that would be a little better than what it we'd had before a more perfect union and they designed a flexible document that we'd be able to continue to revise and work on and improve upon as we march forward in the process of civilization and this was going to be a country that was based on philosophical concepts let's go through the whole thing and listen for the forms okay we the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union establish justice insure domestic tranquility provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare to secure the blessings of liberty ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America so what were the forms you just heard what concepts justice tranquility domestic tranquility okay you need common defense okay these are the ideas that our country was based on and what made our founding fathers believed that they could overthrow a divine right monarchy rebel and create a country based on ideas is things in their head because they were idealists in the best sense of the word they believe that the objects of thought are the true reality and these objects of thought things like justice and fairness in the pursuit of happiness these things are what are real and it is our duty down here as thinking intelligent beings to work to make our life here more in accordance with that higher world that only the mind can tap into with the objects of thought tell us that's what we need to be pursuing so you live in the product of platonic idealism whether you knew it or not all right few more details on Plato first of all a very difficult question all of this is very uplifting philosophy the world is just and true we just have to focus our minds and achieve it they know what the reality we live in down here it's full of really crappy people in it people they do bad things if I see a Boy Scout push a little old lady out of the way of a car coming at her I'm going to say well that was courageous or I can see a soldier throw himself on a grenade and save his comrades I'm gonna say that was courageous I'm gonna look at two totally different things and recognize the form of courage that was participating in their actions their actions have taken this form of courage but what about people that do things that are cowardly and cruel and unjust and ugly how do we explain that are there like negative forms pulling on us from the other direction like for all these high and noble things there's also negative ones and they pull on us in either way let me all think that that evil is a substantial force that tugs on you with the same strength as goodness and you're caught in the middle nobody that's because you're not a duelist that idea that there's negative powers and positive powers pulling in either direction it's called dualism and there were some really Christians who were duelists but it was eventually declared heretical and you know they went away into history but no Christian is actually going to borrow a whole lot of this and what they're going to borrow is something else that they liked about it the explanation for evil if people's bad actions are not explained by bad forms pulling on them what's the only other way to explain it Plato's way how would Plato explain this in simple language that participates in the form of triangle right to some degree what's that called a bad triangle a form that very weakly participates in triangle it's an untried it lacks triangular triangular enos within the thing so you either going to push that a little old lady out of the way of that Mack truck about to lower down and participate in courage or if you don't do it and you run away scared you're not participating in cowardice how would Plato put it louder you simply were not engaged with courage there's courage and then there's a lack of courage and we can call lack of courage cowardice but cowardice isn't a real thing courage is a real thing in the lack of it makes the bad results Plato his argument to this question about evil which every philosophy and every religion has to grapple with at some point if there is a good God up there why is the devil exist you've got to come up with some kind of explanation for this in plato's answer is that evil is not a substantial thing it's not anything that's real evil what we call evil is simply a lack of the good you either participate in the higher forms or you're ignorant of the higher forms so for Plato there's not really good and evil in the world there's good in ignorance of the good and people who act in ignorance of the good are the ones who cause the problems and do the things that we call evil for example think about all those Wall Street executives in their wild speculations that crash the economy several years ago people lost their life savings your grandparents who are just about to retire comfortably suddenly had to keep working and living much you know humbler ways and they had planned on you got grandparents eating cat food because the economy crashed do you think those Wall Street executives were consumed with demons greed motivated them right the desire for money so here they were down here manipulating things in this world to make more money happen for them now if they'd been a little more philosophical they might realize that domestic tranquility and fairness and opportunity mean you have to deal aboveboard not lie about the value of some stocks not let other people get roped on it while you sell all your shares because you know things they don't know you know that that's not fair or you should know but they were driven by an ideology that says the more money I can make for myself the better they were pursuing the things of this world rather than pursuing higher truths and so it wasn't that they were possessed by evil forces they were simply ignorant of the good that would have somewhat tempered their desire for wealth in light of your enlightened self-interest of the good of the society you live in and so it causes the problems ignorant of the good not just being driven by evil this was what Christianity liked about platonism early Christianity absorbs a huge amount of platonic thinking they needed like a philosophical backbone for the religion based on the moral teachings of Jesus and this is where they found it because this works perfectly you still have this in your pop culture today can the devil just grab you by the throat and drag you into hell now how's it how's the devil get you in his clutches and how does he get you to do that that seems like a foolish thing to do it gives you to do it he offers you zillion temptations and what does the devil tempt you with the things of this world the things that in your shortsightedness you desire right when the devil went down to georgia and he's looking for a soul to steal he's in a bind he's way behind he's willing to make a deal what does he offer Johnny a fiddle made of gold right what does he offer the aspiring rock star when they meet at the crossroads I'll make you famous in that Keanu Reeves movie The Devil's Advocate what does he offer the lawyer success juries will bend to your will you'll never lose a case the devil offers you power and wealth in Fame he offers you the things that are of this world to get you to choose to turn away from these high things and towards this stuff here in the world that also means that Judgment Day is fair because if the devil really was equally powerful as the good angels and stuff then it's really not your fault when you do bad the little angel and demon on your shoulders whispered in either ear and stuff right if you get tugged where in the other hapless mortal in the middle but this the church light because it means that you really are responsible for your actions you either know the good and pursue it or you act an ignorance of it you turn away from it towards the lower things st. Augusta an early church father said that I realized that evil is not a substance evil is the perversion of will away from the supreme substance and towards the lower things that was very platonic speaking that he was doing you know find the early Christianity is saturated with it some of you might know some famous lines in the Gospel of John in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and the Word was made flesh okay the Gospel of John is very different than the other three Matthew Mark and Luke are all historical memories but John is a very theological interpretive description of the meaning of the life of Jesus so Jesus says things in there they doesn't say in the other Gospels it's a whole different species of writing and it also absorbs this idea anybody want to guess what language the Gospels are written in originally Greek turn in Greek Greek was the international language of the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus so if you want a lot of people to read your stuff here I didn't Greek and in the Greek original you want to guess where that line actually reads as in the beginning was the logos the logos was with God the logos was God in the logos was made flesh Gospel of John uses the same Platonic philosophical term because he's trying to communicate this message to Greeks and Romans who grown up studying Greek philosophy this is their cultural touchstones is the framework they understand things from and so it's explained in those terms they're basically saying that the mind and reason and thought of God was made flesh and that was Jesus so it's language they could comprehend so this is one of the reasons that platonic thought has so permeated Western culture keeps getting revived over and over again the early Christians absorb it as Christian Platonism the italian renaissance revives a study of it as Neoplatonism our founding fathers in the Enlightenment were just imbued with the study of the classical world plato all through Western civilization has given us the optimistic belief that those things that we think about aren't just irrelevant fantasies those concepts which we get through by rational philosophical speculation they are real things and they are the ultimate reality the true reality this world is just passing your time away unless you're focused on pursuing that a meaningful life is the life of the philosopher that it's thinking about what is true and what is valuable and shapes their life in accordance with it not just filling it with you know cheese pizza and television nothing against cheese pizza by the way can a vampire just fly into your bedroom and suck your blood how they get in your room you have to invite them in exactly your post-christian pop-culture references to the forces of good and evil just like a Charlie Daniels song are saturated with platonic thinking all of this is largely made sense to you this whole lecture is wrong true because you've grown up thinking platonic thoughts without realizing that you were doing so this is so basic to the whole Western approach to reality that all of this made sense along the way and it's basically just the organs where it came from

Channel: George Brooks

Views: 321,636

Rating: 4.795424 out of 5

Keywords: Plato, Brooks, Valencia, Humanities, Idealism

Id: GCEoJvNYQIo

Length: 54min 38sec (3278 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 28 2016