The Ancients: Plato

this evening the ancients Plato Wow Plato so should be easy um so I put two quotes to start this and I hope give you some sense of Plato's breadth of influence which is spectacular all true philosophy philosophy is Plato rightly comprehended all bad philosophy is Plato misunderstood so no matter what you do in philosophy you can either get philosophy correct which is Plato correct or philosophy wrong which means you've misunderstood your Plato the second quote this is this is from Alfred North Whitehead the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that a consist of a series of footnotes to Plato and once again these are not really even exaggerations much of what has come down to us that we do not recognize as being from Plato is in fact neither the plate plate nasur neoplatonist sore people who thought they were doing Plato or people forgot they were doing Plato it's really Plato and Aristotle but of course Aristotle was a student of Plato and so Aristotle is really an alt long argument with Plato and so even when you have Aristotle you have this incredible influence of platonic thinking that Aristotle often but not always disagreed with so he's just as immensely influential figure in the Western philosophical tradition so what is Plato up to um first you always have to remember when you're reading Plato is that they killed Socrates the Athenian democracy put Socrates to death and the evidence is perfectly clear that Plato loved Socrates and thought he was the model human being that if we were to be the best we could possibly be what we would be with Socrates and so many of the attitudes ideas and outlooks that influenced Plato's writing in his in his work comes from this tremendous personal interaction respect and practical deification of Socrates as a person as a living sample of greatness second he's hugely influenced by the pythagoreans as much as the personal influence comes from Socrates as much of intellectual influence probably came from the pythagoreans and they were a quasi mathematical religious cult is we don't have a real contemporary equivalent of this they were secretive so they had secret doctrines they were political they actually took over some cities had coos so there were a secretive political mathematically based religious mystical sect that was the pythagoreans and their widespread influence but the crucial element was that was the mathematize ation of thought and the abstraction and and the pursuit of abstract mathematics which we'll talk about so those are two threads we always want to keep in mind is one thread this is a Socratic model the model of Socrates who Plato knew who later studied with and then too is the intellectual tradition of the Pythagorean specifically and where they understood mathematics and the way mathematics worked in the world which was very mystical it was a quasi religious group probably nine quasi-religious probably just a religious group but it just seems strange to us to have a mathematically based religion but that seems to be a big part of what they were about now I wanted to start with a quote here to give you a sense of this of his work and this is in the beginning was the conversation and the conversation was with God and if you know your New Testament that's usually translated as in the beginning was the word and the Word was God however this is a complete miss translation Erasmus the great scholar of the fifteenth century did an early Greek version of the Bible that is considered the first scholarly accurate Greek version and in doing that he created a new transit new version and he took the word logos which does not mean word that's the word where it were it says conversation and instead of translating as in the beginning was the word he translated it much more accurately as in the beginning was the conversation and the conversation was with God this idea which is by the way this is the way it should be translated the Inquisition has a few questions about the work of Erasmus and so he did change a few things later but his original idea was was much more accurate to the tenor of the Greek original and this is pure Plato so as we read these quotes they're all out of context with just you know we've got to narrow things down but remember Plato is consistently saying let's imagine just for the sake of argument I want to tell you a story here's a poem I once heard a song Hesiod says in one of his myths in one of his tales Agathon remind us of what your father used to say when we were out by the fireside and he so his his his writings are all safe for one which we'll talk about in the form of dialogues and in the dialogues themselves there are all these stories and so we're used to someone saying right here's the truth the truth is a is derived from C D and E and if you believe C D and E then you have to have a therefore the great truth Universal Plato basically never does this it's always a story a conversation a discussion a debate some laughter so it's this in the beginning was the conversation and the conversation was with God now that comes from a New Testament not from Plato but Erasmus study of the Plato and the Greek this is the idea that Plato is running with so that's one thing another thing to keep in mind to have Socrates we have the Pythagorean and we have this notion that what he was writing comes to us in the form of conversation stories and dialogues not as a series of finger shakes or of absolute rational proofs or of necessity that he he just doesn't seem to feel like he needs to be correct he's willing to explore to challenge to to rethink to backtrack so that's what makes the debates either wonderful or tiresome it depends on where you are right sometimes you're like oh oh please just stop now but but generally they're very very engaging they're one of the great literary works of Western tradition even if they weren't so philosophically rich so as an example this from the Republic come then and let us pass a leisure hour and storytelling and our story shall be the education of our heroes this is the tone of them hey we have some time to kill what better way to kill it then the educate how are our heroes educated let's chat about that and they proceeded to do so in the Republic for about 200 pages so they had a lot of time to kill this why it's good to be an aristocrat because you have time to kill so I want to look at two different branches one is the ideal forms and then the other one is sort of the concept of government in the Republic so if we start with the concept of government first he says this is a quote in there next page there isn't every one of us even those who seem to be most moderate a type of desire that is terrible wild and lawless you may be familiar with this you may occasionally have been there first thing to note this consistent throughout the Platonic dialogues he never backs away from just saying things pretty much straight look we have base desires we do or at least desire to do lawless things humans are imperfect we're flawed we had crazy ideas he never tries to hedge around us he just says look there it is well what are we going to do with it one of his key ideas is that we are ethically improvable we're flawed but we can improved and the whole purpose of government the purpose of Education the purpose of your friends the purpose of philosophy is not the pursuit of knowledge that's secondary it's the pursuit of your ethical improvement how do I make myself a better person less of a beast less by a less lawless how do I control my passions and the answer repeatedly is reason and so of course this is he appeals to reason and and then the triumph of the mind over the passions of the body but does not deny them he never says they're wrong per se he doesn't say they don't exist per se he says they're there so let's figure out what to do with them on how best to treat them so it's just a great quote that captures that and basically the entire republic is a meditation on that the next quote this is actually from the laws the first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself to be conquered by yourself as of all things most shameful and vile I'll ah I love that quote because I think it's just so correct right I always say you know people say oh you shouldn't lie to people I don't care if people lie to me doesn't bother me in any way I expect people to lie to me we lie all the time that's wonderful human great it's what I lie to myself right that's the one we need aw damn lying to myself again why would I do that it's me I'm lying too how is that helpful to me or when you do something that you know you should not do nicely I think you're not breaking a law or something but you died for me it's always ice cream or something of this sort right or you know oh I really like to have a cup of coffee I love coffee by the way so I'm always I'm always convincing myself that I'm drinking less coffee than I actually am ah so this is this is a repeated cycle of mine and then I go oh of course I wall just maybe just a cup of coffee and then you know three or four cups of coffee later I'm a little edgy I wonder why I can't sleep and then I go oh I conquered myself again or I didn't conquer myself I was conquered by my base desires I knew I wanted to sleep later and so I knew I should not have that coffee now and so I just failed and this seems trivial and in this case it is somewhat trivial but you know we do this so consistently and Plato really really wants us to focus on that are we making ourselves moment-by-moment more noble are we making ourselves more wise are we making ourselves more beautiful you can either do that more beautiful more wise more healthy more vibrant or you can fail less beautiful less wise less healthy there's your choices and that battle is not with the external world although it is to a certain extent it's primarily internal and so it is the pursuit of that debate between our reason or rationality and trying to guide ourselves and often our internal desires and so all kinds of things follow from this another great quote is that he that he has is it's not ignorance that is so evil or threatening or base although it's a problem what's the real problem is when we think we know something and we pursue it with a closed mind essentially we aggressively pursue something that we think we know with great fervor he says this is where trouble comes from it's when we stop the conversation when we're not willing to say oh well let's just pause and think about whether this is really actually a decent idea but really stop and pause not just pretend like you're listening and then somebody says something you go short and then you just do what the hell you're going to do anyway right but but to truly ask ourselves and ask other people to keep the conversation going let us pause and consider the education of our heroes as a way of thinking about the education of ourselves of course the downside of this is they never really get anywhere of course because you're never going to have these firm conclusions these absolute outcomes yeah some clear ideas which we'll talk about but it's important remember to keep it within this context so the thrust of it both in the laws but particularly in the Republic and all of the earlier dialogues is this concept of how do we educate ourselves to become more ethical more wise more butyl more true bio I should mention this you hear about beauty a lot when you read Plato there's a several overlap in Greek words most famously Kalon but not just Kalon that can mean Noble beautiful or true simultaneously but there's other key lines its most famous there's but there's other ones as well that have these connotations that we don't have precisely and so when they say something is beautiful it has a resonance also of being true or just or noble like we say like a noble horse we said that enters an animal that has nobility in it we mean it's just beautiful and right and healthy and vibrant and so that notion informs them and so when they talk about wanting us to be healthy and noble and wise this includes in it the concept of being vibrant and healthy and beautiful within the context of ennobling yourself that that concept and they felt that if you are pursuing wisdom you had to become more beautiful and they meant physically more beautiful they put a very high importance on things like well in this case that's why flowers are so perfect tonight because including beauty in your life should inspire you to be a better human being ugliness damages us at the most fundamental level you need inspiration divine inspiration as it turns out from beautiful objects to raise you above your baseness animals don't have beauty is the idea we have beauty it's divine and it helps us lift our sight from the earthly from the base from the unwise from the unhealthy to what is true and great and just vibrant and ennobling I think I mentioned in the socratic like Socrates lecture this is passage I think it's the Thebans who said of course Athens is so powerful think how great we would be if we had the Parthenon if you have something that's so beautiful and so inspirational imagine how great you would be and so we just by the way we just do not believe this in any way at all right our society has no use for this concept so so if you build a school I was you school as an example because there's these big public institutions beauty beauty is way down on the list of things that are important right as if it doesn't matter the environment the kids are in you know shove them in a trailer they don't need fresh air or light right because beauty has nothing to do with knowledge Oh Plato says no no no no no it has precisely everything to do with it if you aren't inspired by the beauty in your life you become more ugly it damages you and so the reason that is there but also this tightening of reason with beauty and nobility that when you see the truth you should know it it should resonate with you by the way back to the heart of the Pythagorean it should be harmonious there's all this writing in the Republic about music flutes and harps and what chord progressions are allowed what chord progressions aren't allowed and to us is the weirdest thing in the world because you're like why is this treaty on government talking page after page after page about music and what chords you can play and what notes and what instruments and when you should be allowed to hear a man who should be allowed to play him and why and you're like ah this is only confusing if you don't believe in beauty and they're like look music has this power to stir your passions so if you listen to the wrong kind of music you're damaging yourself if you listen to the right kind of music you're making yourself better richer more noble so the long cords hurt you this is this is this is this is absolutely in their but when we hear music we know we don't have that you don't know anything about music zero when you hear a harmony or a rhythm you feel it it's not a conscious decision to go oh if I always think if you're thinking about music you're you've already ruined it right does it make you want to dance does it does it does it have you does it give you that lift that makes you want to move or makes you want to weep Beethoven's ninth I first openings move I start crying just that thing that piece just kills me every single time do you know that's power and that's the power of beauty of harmony and we just don't believe in it as a culture Plato really really believed in it now the downside of this is he believed in it so strongly as he thought I should absolutely be censored this is this is a weird thing about the Republic you get these incredible passages and then you get this like Stalinist terror Society that he wanted to Institute but but they're closely allied because he said look if you live if you believe in music and you believe in the power of music then you don't want to just have it going willy-nilly you want to control it so that can be used to ennoble people and so we we were bail against I think rightly I mean it does it has dust these whole passes we're just oh there's just wince-inducing because they're like yeah every dictator in the history of the world has wanted to use these arguments and as use them but conversely if you think about it personally which is he's always doing he uses the state as a metaphor for the individual and the individual for the metaphor for the state for him they're the same thing the state is just an individual writ large if you allow ugliness in your life if you don't self censor ugliness and if you don't include inspiration and beauty ah and and uplift then you're damaging yourself the roughly is half of the Republic is this argument whether it's music by the way gymnastics the two things you start learning most important things that every youth the foundation where think is gymnastics your physical health and music which again straight from the pythagoreans because we're all about the ratios and the harmonies that you've heard of the harmony of the spheres this is Pythagorean thinking that goes all the way through the Middle Ages so this this this this notion of creating a desire for wisdom and order and reason that comes from beauty and physical excellence is basically unending next is this concept no trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the Freeborn man no study pursued under compulsion remains rooted in the memory one this isn't this is Plato was an aristocrat always important to remember from the family of aristocrats who apparently went back to a long line of aristocrats so one reason he had limited use for democracy is because it's not aristocratic but another one is in a world of slaves he consistently says do not be a slave do not be a slave to yourself this is why you must overcome your internal issues do not be a slave to other people so it is wrong to have compulsory education because that's slavery you must make education desirable Pleasant inspiring to draw people in not composed we have what we call a compulsory education system and Plato would say yes that we call that slavery we have slaves to do you have slaves that's nice right why do we feel that we have to feed it into them why do we call it compulsory because we make it undesirable another way to think about it is if the elementary school consisted primarily of gymnastics which is to say playing around outside and music which is to say playing around inside you wouldn't have to make it compulsory you don't put big fences up to keep the kids out right no can't go to school today and they're like ah I want to go to school cuz I loved your master what kid doesn't want to play around and play music I mean is it's a roughly zero I would you know most think great and then you build on that you build on that foundation of this is great this is wonderful I feel good I feel inspired I feel the know you know of making more noble oh well let's start talking about you know a little to this let's talk about a little but that I will learn to read all look these people are making great speeches would you like to go here yes I would you know and it was this notion of making it desirable something that inspired you that drew you on that made you want to pursue it but even if you didn't want to pursue it that was fine because you basically cannot force people to learn was Plato's argument because you can't force someone to be inspired be inspired narrow I'll hit you again right I mean it's just it is it's not it's a non-functional approach if you actually believe that someone should be bringing stuff inside of them by the way another aspect of this is because Plato believes like the pythagoreans he believes in transmigration of the souls your soul goes on living your body dies your soul goes away and then comes back reincarnated transmigration of the souls this is going on all the time and so what education is at its foundation is what's called an omni sasai love this concept and am nieces what's happened is we forgot what the soul knew so that's why we're stupid and we do dumb things when you learn something it's not coming from outside in you're overcoming your own forgetting you're going oh that's right do that or I should have known that look when you read a great passage to me and you go that's something I've thought but articulated more clearly was more right that's why it resonates so strongly right it's because because like oh that feels like me that feels like something that I've experienced or I've thought or some emotion I've had that had been able to articulate it's not out there in the world that you find it it's in here right again music music is not out there in the world I mean theory it is and practice though the music that I like or at least that moves me it moves me inside beautiful paintings they hang them on a wallet but they're not there they're somewhere that when it comes inside of me is like hull now it's alive now I'm alive it makes me better bigger scared whatever it does it lives with me and so that is that what in played platonic plato's theory that experience is the work of art helping you overcome your forgetting it's not even the work of art that's doing it it's the work of art working on you pointing you towards the wisdom that you had forgotten that you already had and am nieces it's all there within you you're super great you just forgot my case I forget repeatedly right over and over and over again right that's that that's the not overcoming of the self so amidst all the Stalinist horror and censorship combined with all the beauty and love and joy we have the first sustained argument for the total equality of women in there in the Republic by the way important to note this nothing can be more absurd in the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strength and with one mind for thus this day instead of being whole is reduced to half this is not something you're going to read a lot and works written about 300 BC by the way you've got to look a long ways you're not going to find another one as far as I know Plato really believed this he believed it so much that in the Republic the first is Socrates by the way is the spokesman the Republic but it's clearly Plato's ideas Socrates says yeah now my next argument I know this is gonna be a tough one but let's just hold with me just wait how about we let women participate in gymnastics and the audience is like no I don't know about that one Socrates like that wait hold with me and he goes through the whole argument and they go okay we'll let women compete in gymnastics but you know they're women this is going to be a problem and this is a great example again of the passions and how you approach them because gymnastics of course we're done naked and so what this means is naked men and women now are participating in public is all public so we'll this will arouse base desires and the response is that is the problem of the person because the beauty and the health of the woman who is now being a noble that's what's important we can't overcome someone's baseness only they can overcome that is it so it's this moment where all these arguments come together and then he goes well you know once we've sort of decided they can do gymnastics well why couldn't they also do and he just walks him really slowly until I mean after a hundred pages he just lets it out and says well then they can be Kings they can run the joint right and everyone kind of goes and yeah maybe sure if you say so but it takes it he just peaced by he pieces this out and he look then he goes on to something else and he comes back to it then because he comes back to it if he sort of eases this in but by the end entities like look women are totally equal to men they can rule they can be wise they can be philosophers this is what's necessary we've got to do it because otherwise we're wasting half of our best people now today this just seems obviously true but that was 2,300 years ago it was less obviously true and we still haven't quite got it into practice right we're still struggling with this concept and yet there it is so again a mix of wonderful hey we've got a oh by the way he says the leader needs to be able to lie to the people because that's good but only the leader can lie we've got to pretend we've got to rewrite our myths so that they're so that they're helpful to the people will know the real ones but let's just give the fake ones the people because they're just idiots right and then they don't know what's good for them and we do so you know it's this mix of just horrible censorship and repression and then this great beauty and joy but again flip it back onto the individual and again it makes a lot more sense one the individual woman can now say in platonic world I can be an I can be known I can be as noble as anyone but it seems to be the case by the way is that he did not believe souls had sexes which would be again a sort of seems like a Pythagorean idea and if the souls don't have sexes and the souls transmigrate then the concept has to be we all have equality of greatness because we all have souls and they they're not gendered and so this seems to be the driving concept that he has there so but it's important crushed one another one here again excess of Liberty whether it lies in state or individual seems only to pass into excess of slavery now this for us is baffling but it should not be because we are a democracy again Plato no use for democracy will read the big section here is about that which is worth exploring I think partly the reason is what is Liberty for if you do not rule and control your passions then what you're going to lose your Liberty for is necessarily going to damage you so giving somebody Liberty before they can all themselves think rationally and make sound decisions is a recipe for disaster so freeing everybody in your society to do what they want as far as Plato was concerned was absolutely guarantees chaos because he says people are just gonna do crazy and the outcome of that will be the demagogue the demagogue who becomes a tyrant and this is the worst thing that can happen to you and here's the equation people pursue their liberties things start to get a bit sketchy and chaotic and so and this is the long quote the people have always some champion who they set over them and nurse into greatness I've become afraid there's chaos there's instability so I need someone to protect me this and no other is the root from which the tyrant Springs when he first appears above ground he has a protector but when he has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty and there was nothing to fear from them then he is always stirring up some war or other either internally or externally in order that the people may require a leader I need to keep you afraid I need to keep stirring up enemies keep you uneasy so that you need protection the more protection you feel you need the more tyrant I can become he says this is a necessary progression for him now he begins to grow unpopular because of course he's having to do all kinds of terrible things then some of those who joined in setting him up and who are in power speak their minds to him and the tyrant if he means to rule must get rid of them he dare not stop while he has a friend or an enemy who is good for anything he must look about him and see whom his valiant who is high-minded who is wise who is wealthy he is the enemy of them all and must seek occasion against them whether he will or no until he has made a probation of the state democracy leads necessarily to the demagogue which leads to the tyrant Plato has no use for this he saw the demagogues kill Socrates and again there's a lot of arguments being made against Plato but notice this strong this this this this theory has played out several times in our history in the history of the 20th century when democracy has been about in the world and it seems that he does have a certain amount of accuracy there it may resonate with you to a certain extent but this is not the only this has happened repeatedly and again he wrote this twenty three hundred years ago it's always important to remember this it's astonishing to read through there and you just kind of go wow that seems prescient but it's not prescient it's an outgrowth of his theory of people people have talked about for the last 50 or 60 years old we have the neoliberal world order in which free trade and wealth is going to bring people together and that liberalizes people have played it was like that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard what people do when they get a little money a little freedom and a little power is they try to get more the only way to avoid that is to have sort of perfect people ruling your society these would be the philosopher Kings by the way it's not clear he ever thought you could really do this he tried a little bit he actually tried to put some of these things in practice with it with a tyrant of his age and this is not go well he got imprisoned he had to be rescued one of his friends got killed but but you know it's not even clearly really thought this was that you could pull this off and so the optimistic reading is that Plato really thought that you could introduce the sort of Stalinist society in which everybody is under the rule of these philosopher kings and Guardians or the pessimistic one is he thought that would be great but we're so stupid we're never going to pull it off so yeah these are a great choices when you read Plato but the important thing in why started with these are conversations is it's not about Plato being right point by point by point it's about Plato making us think and when you read a passage like this 2,300 years later it does give one pause to go huh maybe Plato's onto something it's certainly incorrect about some things but look women's liberation a pretty damn good description of the functioning of dictatorships in the 20th century and their origins right he can't be entirely wrong not entirely right but not he wouldn't expect to be entirely right by the way hence the dialogue hence the conversation and this is the invitation for you to debate with him this is what the forum that he wrote in was all about could the possible exception of the laws by the way which we want to turn to about now but but keep this in mind we're so used to reading somebody who says this is the truth here you go you can either agree with me or disagree with me here's my evidence it's going to be pretty convincing okay I'm convinced or I'm not convinced Plato says hmm let's kick this around what do you think would happen if we did this Agathon says oh I don't know or yeah that seems like an okay idea famously in one of the dialogues is is the one where Socrates actually seems to just most angry where I can't remember the interlocutor but he just keeps Socrates says no the best life is the life that preserves virtue and this guy's talking is like no it's not it's its wealth and friends and power don't be silly and Socrates does all that Socratic tricks and the guys like look I don't know what you're talking about its wealth and friends in the pursuit of power and the Socrates just basically starts yelling at him at the end of the dialogue and the guys like look you can yell at me all day I am NOT going to be convinced look I have friends I have power I'm wealthy life is great I don't know what your problem is and that's the end of the dialogue right so there's actually a dialogue where these people are just completely unconvinced by them which is okay so it is this invitation it's not correct it's not right it's an invitation to think to ponder to reflect on your own again you can't force people and you should not try to force people to believe things you should invite them to consider it and see if within themselves it resonates if it does well pursue that thought this is your thought now by the way this is not Plato's thought this is your thought when you do that and you pursue it with your own heart with your own mind the possible exception of this is a probable probably probable exception is the laws it's the only work that that does not have Socrates in it it's a great loss because we miss Socrates and it really is an older Plato we think it's the last thing he wrote and he's like right forget everything I wrote in the Republic because people are just hopeless I thought we didn't need a society of laws what we needed was a society of really good people it doesn't seem like we're ever going to get that so let's shoot for some really good laws and so he goes through a mind-numbing detail by the way like don't stack your pomegranates with your apples if you're shipping a Crimea so some of this stuff is just crazy but but it's interspersed with very good observations by the way so the laws does drag on a bit but I should mention it that he is much more prescriptive in the laws and it seems to just come from this place of frustration he seems to realize that the vast majority of people really aren't going to turn their lives towards wisdom and philosophy any time soon and so what can you possibly do in that environment so the best you can do is try to come up with some good laws that keep the essentially hopelessly wild animals in check and make the world livable while we struggle with all of our demons and problems so that's the Republic and the laws and the theories of beauty all of this is also informed by the way if you know anything about Plato is probably this notion of the world of the ideal forms the parable of the cave right that we're in a cave we see shad when you turn towards the actual true world the light will blind you and then you have to learn and so there's this other true world of absolute forms now the first time I encountered this and maybe the first time you guys have encountered if you're familiar with this it sounds a bit nuts but that's because we're not pythagoreans but if you think about it it's actually a very sensible idea and give you a couple of examples why this world we know is fallible right we've all made mistakes you've misapprehended we've misunderstood and yet it's not completely wrong we survive we live we make headway we have realizations so where does the consistency the comprehensibility the systemic nature of the world come from despite the fact that it's overlaid with so much incredible chaos right it's this weird mix and the idea of the forms is that the chaos is just a surface manifestation of the world that misleads us there is as eternal forms underneath or behind or outside of this chaos that is where you want to look for truths and this idea really comes powerfully from the pythagoreans because it's the Greeks with the context with other civilizations who started doing abstract mathematics and an important idea is here earlier mathematics even pretty sophisticated mathematics was always for a function how do we find the area of the field if it's got a curvy river through it so if you want to plant crops so you don't die that's a very important question it's also tricky because curves and fields you know how much rye do we have to save to plant a field how big is it I don't know so they came up with ways to solve quadratic equations but there are always things like we'll take a rope and tie it around an ox I was crazy stuff and get a duck and you know and then just you know and you're like what and if they've over time mathematicians have worked out that hey no that actually solves the particular problem what the Greek started to do was go no no no we want to solve every possible case number theory geometry abstract mathematics we're not interested in triangles we're interested in every possible triangle and weirdly this works this is but this is an outstanding question by the way in philosophy and mathematics nobody knows why this works why is it that math is so damn effective why is it that Einstein can sit and do a set of equations and when they come out he can announce this is how the universe works and when they go to test those equations they go he's right how is it that mathematics works for Plato and the pythagoreans it was well there must be this underlying eternal structure to the universe that we can tap into this is why mathematicians don't tend to say oh we didn't create a formula or an idea or a theory we discovered it it was already there it's just we're just waiting to be found and wherever it is that math exists so that's the big idea this is what we get from the particular pythagoreans but you can even make this smaller if we think of something it's always an apple I don't know why it's an apple of know when I use that I use a candle cantaloupe I like Caleb so we're with a cantaloupe example so why is it always an apple but a cantaloupe cantaloupe we're looking at a cantaloupe we see a cantaloupe we know what a cantaloupe is now we know the word cantaloupe is arbitrary that some culture far away can call it a Mugwump but we know it's the same thing so the word doesn't matter but if we travel around the world and we see another cantaloupe even if it's smaller and a little different we think oh that's a camel but where does that concept of cantaloupe exist right it exists in our minds wow that's weird how is it that we carry these concepts around with us that fit into the world and the world fits into our minds part of it of course experiential but part of the ideas we have where I mean it is strange we recognize things it's a table at the table this table is not a table it's a chair right and these forms we're constantly applying the world to them and going I recognize that even if it's really a strange version of something now that form does not exist in the world there is no such thing as a cantaloupe in the world there is a skinned fruit that has Julian but there's but the concept must exist because it exists in our minds is that less existence to the world on one hand we want to say sure that's less say 6 it doesn't matter as much until you start thinking about it I was thinking about today my brother who I haven't seen in a while where does he exist I haven't seen him I haven't touched him I didn't talk to him what where is he I can either say well he doesn't really exist for me because I have no physical interaction with him but this would just completely Balai the entire experience of my life things that are absent from us cease to exist now we carry the form and concept of that person or that thing or that idea the most abstract around with us where does one live or 3 or 7 or PI with pi day yesterday where where does where does pi exist well they're up to like 20 trillion digits right of Pi and of course not closer to finding all of them that's the great thing about doing I don't know why you do 20 trillion digits when there's just an infinite number more there's not even less more which is me right this is this is the this is the thing with infinity as it doesn't get less even with 20 trillion where can that possibly exist this is the concept of the world of forms so while it might have seemed odd at first if you ponder it some version of this we we do intuitively all the time what played on the Pythagorean said particularly on the influence of the power of mathematics is this is an important context in fact the most important context it's not important that my brother is someplace it's important that he's in my mind where does your love for a person live in that person if they leave the room you don't love them anymore you know and is that or is that just not a thing is that not real ephemeral in some ways if that's truly ephemeral then essentially the entirety of human experience is truly ephemeral so this this notion of platonic forms that there is this sort of permanent eternal world that that we experience when we have our enemies a moments when we recognize beauty in something when we carry someone around with us that is as real or more real as far as Plato is concerned then the real physical world which again I think we know it's the famous passage in improved when a little encounter with some tea and a biscuit launches an unbelievably long and dreamlike passage of memory what's more real that this is one of the central questions of Plato he believes that the world the eternal forms is the most real but he always gives it as a let me tell you a story so whether it's truly real in the way Plato says it or not it does invite serious reflection on how we actually experience the world not how we imagined we experienced the world right that's the that's the he's always he's always got us to know sort of try that again think about it again reflect on again what about this ponder that and so he says when we see somebody that we love what happens is their beauty our attraction to them incites us towards wisdom towards greatness towards inspiration this is the idea of the muse or the person that inspires artists or the power of beauty and it's always attached to a rawness ISM right beauty and eroticism are always just right there because it is the inspirational desires that the what it stirs up in you and Plato is completely torn about this because on one hand he wants to control our desires on the other hand he thinks they're necessary and so he vassal Isis he's always trying to censor poetry but he loves poetry always writing about how great poetry is and he says we have to censor it and then at one point I think it's in the laws he says poetry is that woman that I fell in love with when I was young and I decided it was not healthy to be with who now later in life I think I could be back together with her but I'm not sure I should right so he's got this just incredibly like torn experience he's like oh it just because it raises so much up in him and then he's like oh no no no meanwhile why he's writing beautiful poetic Greek it the entire time right so he's just torn and so these core ideas of the world of the perfect forms of the importance of beauty being associated with nobility of inspiration of reason controlling all this in various forms is just wow comes shooting down to us it's always important remember that the New Testament was written in Greek by the way is written in really bad is a bad Greek embarrassingly bad Greek this is one of reasons that the the the early scholars were so nervous they wanted translated into Latin as fast as possible because if you read the Greek classics and you read the New Testament you're like oh that's not very good Greek I mean it's just like not very poetic when you compare it to of course some of the greatest poetry that's ever been written and so it's sort of much better in translation by the way oddly because the translators like well we've got to fix this up a bunch but so all of these Greek concepts come down to us often through the neoplatonist s-- and the neoplatonist do this thing where they they sort of put soul in there they inject a lot of soul and so a lot of the concept that we have of what a soul is or what spirituality is is actually this neoplatonist interpretation of Platonism so when you hear people use the word soul or spirit or something like this often they mean it even if they don't know anything about neoplatonism blindness and porphyry and the boys it's it's it's really that's where this ideas come from you also see this by the way in our governing structures why are we as to say we always say this we're a society of laws not men but if you've ever heard that phrase this was this is this is not Plato's answer but this is his struggle he wrote a society of men called the Republic and went god I think that's gonna work let's have a society of laws but the suspicion of men that is very platonic he's like look be suspicious of people because for instance they killed Socrates don't trust them right just be wary judge them a lot if you've ever heard oh don't judge people that is not platonic played it was all about judge judge judge because these people are dangerous that's that I mean he's just absolutely right there you want quality people in your life because they help you be noble nobility helps you become wise wisdom helps you become beautiful you make right decisions you become more healthy and you get this positive feedback cycle people who do not do that for you are dangerous they're poisonous they're actually kill you and in fact in the grand scheme if you believe in the reincarnation or transmigration of the souls as Plato does they make your life worse for eternity right it's not just for like a bad weekend or a terrible dinner or something it is it is like they're there they're pulling you down out of the range of the eternal forms and perfect knowledge and the beauty that can be achieved with immortality the land by the way beyond the gods Plato thought this was beyond the Greek gods he thought the Greek gods were a big mess which I think every week all agree is true right he thought there was that's not a model for how people should behave they're just animal they're just very big scary animals so there must be something better and that was the world just beyond the gods was the world of true beauty of wisdom of greatness that's where we want to go and the way to get there is just where we started which is self-control reason nobility beauty health gymnastics music philosophy reflection exercise you know it's just an interesting from conversation never-ending inquiry you have to continually inquire because you might be wrong and if you go pursue the wrong path this is not helping me so you always have to be ready to go oh that was good then now it's not so good now ready to adjust so that's why I started with you but with an Erasmus quote that I that I like so much which is in the beginning was the conversation the conversation was with God because that is really what he means we can converse with other people and we can converse with ourselves and because we carry with us eternal souls that have had contact with the immortal that's who we're talking with and when we have our little breakthrough when things resonate with us when beauty comes to us and we feel inspired that we've touched it there it is we've got a little bit of it and it should drive us he says to get more and that is more of that and more of that let everything else fall away and in a way it makes sense found those people will talk about the Guardians who ran the old that his ideal state was run by the Guardians but the top of the Guardians was to be the philosopher king they were not allowed to have material possessions they were not allowed to even touch money that's how that's how much he disrespected money merchants he thought were just sort of horrible because they're pursuing the wrong ends but no possessions no money not allowed to travel that these incredible restrictions placed on them and we look at that we go wow if that's what being the leader looks like that doesn't look very good but for them is like no because you the way you become a Guardians you let everything you want all this stuff fall away and you pursue that which is best for you that which makes you great most noble most wise most beautiful and Plato does not think this is money does not things as his power per se he thinks it is in fact the pursuit of wisdom and then if we can get that into our minds we'll start this feedback loop and then you know we'll be potentially the philosopher kings so thank you very much Plato [Applause]

Channel: Wes Cecil

Views: 41,067

Rating: 4.7675214 out of 5

Keywords: Humane Arts, Plato, Greeks, Philosophy, Wes Cecil, Beauty

Id: MghSXEvg734

Length: 57min 58sec (3478 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 15 2018