Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast
Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast
26 - Plato's Republic 9: Horny for the Good
This episode covers book 7 of Plato's Republic.
Socrates is what I call a “philosopher of desire.” He cares more about the questions than the answers, the journey than the destination, the boner than the nut.
And he brings that energy to his teaching.
In this episode, Socrates tells the boys that the “form of the good” is the one thing that anyone who wants to live a good life absolutely needs to know about. So what is it? Glaucon wants to know so badly he yells out to Apollo and begs Socrates to tell him. But Socrates won’t go all the way. Instead, he teases Glaucon with the analogies of the sun, line and cave which also happen to tell us about: the invisible forms; the nature of human knowledge; and why STEM subjects should only be used as prep for philosophy.
Get your goggles on; this is a deep one.
Credits
Adeimantus: Rebecca Amzallag
Glaucon: Zachary Amzallag
Ancient music: Michael Levy
Intro theme: Clayton Tapp
Happy anniversary. It's been one year of good in theory. And I would like to take a minute to thank everyone who's helped me get this out. So thank you to our guests, our actors, Zack and Becky, you've been fantastic recording episode after episode of this stuff, set for full spectrum assistance on everything. Our musicians, Michael levy for the classical music, clay and David for our theme music, our small but devoted group of Patreon sponsors. And you, our listeners, thank you for listening to every single episode and telling all your friends about it. I appreciate you in here. It's a more Plato. Today, Plato's theory of the forms the allegory of the cave, and wife horniness is the key to good education. I'm Clif Mark. And this is good in theory. Last episode, Socrates in the boys talked about the philosopher kings, the ultra wise, virtuous, sexy, perfect leaders who are going to rule the city in speech. This episode is about their education. What does a person have to learn to become a philosopher King? And Socrates is going to answer this question in the most philosophically extravagant way possible. He immediately dives into the metaphysical deep end, and he starts talking about what's really real in the nature of human knowledge. It's Socrates is most stoner dude moment in the book. And this all makes this part of the dialogue really challenging, I've always had a tough time with it. And that includes adapting it for this episode. However, I think it's worth it. It's tough. But there's a ton of interesting stuff in here. And I think it'll be a little easier to understand if we start with some background information on Plato's theory of the forms. The ancient Greek word here is idose. And that's translated as forms or ideas. Or if you ever hear someone talking about the platonic ideal of something, they're talking about the form of it. What is a form, we'll start by thinking of any group of objects, red things, good things, just things, chairs, let's start with chairs, chairs are different from one another, they have different numbers of legs, some chairs are soft, some are hard, some are just bags of beans on the floor. But they still all have something that makes them chairs. And according to Socrates, that something is that they participate in the form of the chair, or they reflect the form of the chair, and that you can think of as chernus itself. So the contrast that Socrates is drawing is between the many empirical chairs that we can see and sit on in the abstract concept of a chair that applies to all of them. In the same contrast, applies to good things, beautiful things, everything else. For every many, there is a single form. And this would all be straightforward enough, if we could just think of the forms as concepts. But the distinctive and kind of weird part of Socrates, his theory, is that he believes that the forms are more real and true than the things that embody them. He thinks the forms exist more than empirical objects. And that's the opposite of what I think most people think today. For example, if you look at some beautiful people, I think that most people today would say, the fact that you're looking at people, that's a real and objective and true fact. Whereas the idea that they're beautiful, that's a subjective judgment that really isn't as real. And that's because any idea of beauty is just an opinion, and not really real. Socrates thinks the opposite of that. He thinks that the form or idea of beauty is the real thing. And the empirical objects that are beautiful, are just pale reflections of the form. And because the forms are more real, humans can know them better. We can only have opinions of visible objects, but we can fully understand the forms. And if this sounds strange, or abstract and hard to follow, or like it doesn't make sense, that's fine. It's weird, but that's what he's talking about when he brings up the forms and knowing that should help you understand this episode. The first section of dialog today covers two big analogies. And the first one, Socrates explains what the form of the good is by analogy to the sun. In the second one, he uses an analogy of a divided line to explain four different kinds of objects, and the ways in which we can note them. The analogy of the divided line is tricky. And if you don't get it the first time, that's fine. We're going to come back to a lot of the important points afterwards. All that said, let's get into the dialogue.
Adeimantus:Okay, Socrates, we'll let philosophers be kings of the city. Now tell us how we're going to create these philosophers in the first
Clif Mark:place? Well, first, we need to find people who are brilliant and ambitious, and have great spirits. But what's the problem? They also have to be stable and reliable, and ready for discipline. But
Adeimantus:those are opposite types of people.
Clif Mark:Well, the guardians have to be both if they're going to study, the most demanding subject, which is adamant is, you must have heard me say this 1000 times, the most important thing to study is the form of the good. All human action aims at the good. It's what we all want. It's just that we don't always know what the good actually is.
Adeimantus:So what is it? Is it pleasure or knowledge, like people say, or something completely different? You
Clif Mark:know, what I meant is, I shouldn't be rambling on about something I don't know about. You find someone who really knows what they're talking about us them.
Glaucon:For heaven's sakes, Socrates, you can't stop now. We're right at the end. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just tell us what the form of the good is?
Clif Mark:Well, if I tried to do that, I'd embarrass myself for sure. So if you don't mind glaucon, I'd like to start by talking about something that's like the good, but isn't the good itself. It's something I call the child of the good. All right, Socrates, go ahead. Great. Before we start, I just want to remind you of something we said earlier, what's that? That there are many beautiful things in the world. But those are not the same as the beautiful itself. There's only one form of beauty that all beautiful objects are related to. And that form is what really is not all the beautiful objects that we see with our eyes.
Glaucon:And is it the same for all the other many's just things and justice itself? Good things in the form of the good,
Clif Mark:right, exactly. In the many can be seen but not thought, whereas the forms can be thought, but not seen.
Glaucon:Okay, got it. Please go on.
Clif Mark:Well, speaking of seeing things, have you ever noticed that the sense of sight actually requires three elements, you need your eyes, you need a visible object to look at? And then you need a third thing that allows seeing to happen?
Glaucon:Are you perhaps talking about light?
Clif Mark:Yes. And what gives us light
Glaucon:the sun?
Clif Mark:Exactly. The sun is the child of the good that I was talking about. Because the form of the good, it lights up the realm of the understanding, just like the sun lights up the visible world. And when it doesn't, when you try to understand something that isn't illuminated with truth, and being from the form of the good, you're blind, it's like trying to see in the dark.
Glaucon:Wow, the form of the good.
Clif Mark:Yes, cloud Khan. And just like the sun gives life in sustenance to everything in the visible world, the form of the good gives existence to everything that can be known
Glaucon:by up Paulo, this is too much, Socrates.
Clif Mark:Well, don't blame me, you're the one who forced me to talk about it.
Glaucon:Well, don't stop. Now. Whatever you do, and don't leave anything out.
Clif Mark:I'll do my best cloud con. Here's another image for you. Picture a line that's been divided into two uneven sections. One section represents the visible world, the other represents the realm of the understanding. Got it. Now take each section and divide it again in the same proportion as the first time. So you have four sections total. Alright. Now we can rank these sections according to how clear they are. The first section represents images, shadows, reflections and water, that kind of thing. This is the most obscure section of the whole line. It has the least truth in it. Of the second section, that includes the objects that the images are images of plants, animals, manmade objects, all of Those are in the second section. Now, wouldn't you say that the actual objects are more clear and true than the images of them? Of course they are. Now these two sections together images and objects represent the visible world.
Glaucon:Got it? And what about the realm of understanding?
Clif Mark:Well, that's a little trickier. For the third section of the line. Think of math. It's sort of in between the visible world and the forms. When people are doing geometry, sometimes they refer to physical objects. But that's not really what they care about. They're interested in the square itself, not the square that they drew.
Glaucon:Right, I get that it's not really about the visible world. But how is it different from the forms? Why is math only in the third segment of the line?
Clif Mark:Well, in math, people start with some basic assumptions that they don't even argue for their three types of angles. They're odd and even numbers, things like that.
Glaucon:Sure, axioms,
Clif Mark:right. Math just assumes that it can't explain them. So it is technically part of the understanding. But it's not full understanding. I call it thinking, understanding, that only happens in the last section of the line in here. Reason also starts from assumptions. But instead of just accepting them, it uses rational discussion to question the assumptions, until we can get up to first principles and explain why they're true. Without any assumptions.
Glaucon:Okay, I think I get what you're saying. Let me try to explain it. The line has four sections, each more clear than the last. The demos section represents the guesses we make based on images. Yes, then we have actual objects and our opinions about them. Yes. Then we have thinking, which is like math, it's better than opinion, but not quite knowledge or understanding? Correct. Then in the final section, there's True Knowledge free from assumptions. And that comes from rational discussion.
Clif Mark:Very good luck on the one thing that the philosopher kings have to study, and the one thing that all of us have to know if we're going to act wisely in life is the form of the good. We talked about what forms are, what does Socrates mean by good? The first thing he says is that the good is what all human action aims at. Because he believes that whatever we do, we do it because we think that in some sense, it's good. Why do you get up and go to work? Read books, kiss your mother? According to Socrates, it's because you think it's good to do those things. And of course, the obvious objection is that people also do a lot of bad things. They go on life ruining vendors, they steal, they commit other crimes, they pollute so much it changes the climate, they commit war atrocities. Why did they do that? According to Socrates, even these bad things started out with some idea of the good. You wanted to have a nice time with your friends, you ended up on a bender, you wanted to make money and produce things efficiently. You wound up changing the climate. You want to protect your country and your comrades and your loved ones. It sounded like a good idea at the time. But then you've blown up one to many villages of civilians, and you're torturing a stranger in some kind of secret jail. And you start asking yourself, are we the baddies? Socrates doesn't think that people do evil because they want to, it's because they have flawed or contradictory ideas of the good, that lead them astray. And that's why in order to act well, in private or public life, you need to have seen the form of the good. So the good is the goal of all human action. But Socrates also talks about it in an even more grandiose kind of way. He says, it's not just the source of goodness, it's also what gives truth and existence to everything that can be known. The form of the good is the shining sun, of the realm of the understanding. To me, this all sounds very mystical and religious. It's like old definitions of God, the Creator, the source of everything, the unmoved mover. And if it kind of breaks your brain to imagine what that might mean, I think it's supposed to remember, the analogy for the form of the good is the sun. Socrates says that the sun is the most beautiful thing because it's the source of all beauty because it allows us to see but if you've ever tried staring straight to the sun, you know, it's not that beautiful. It's blinding. human eyes can Don't see it directly. And by analogy, the form of the good, which is the most beautiful, amazing thing, the ultimate source of all goodness. And the one thing you absolutely need to know. That's also something that maybe we can't fully understand directly in this idea that the thing that we most want and need to understand is something that we can never understand. That brings me to the second thing I want to discuss about this part of the dialogue. And it has to do with Socrates his approach to philosophy, and his approach to teaching. Socrates is what I call a philosopher of desire. He is more about the questions than the answers. He's more about the journey than the destination. He's more about seeking knowledge than knowing stuff. The definition of philosophy, Filo, Sophia is love of knowledge, not possession of knowledge. So if you're consumed by a desire to find the truth, if you're deeply unsatisfied, when your opinions don't fit together, or when you can't understand something, then you're a philosopher. Even if, like Socrates, you know, nothing. Socrates, his approach to philosophy is all desire, no satisfaction, all Boehner, no not. And this is also true about his approach to education. The goal of education for Socrates is not to impart knowledge. It's not to stuff people's heads with facts, it's to turn their souls to direct their attention and their desires to the good. And this is what he's doing to glaucon. In the secondary literature on the Republic, a lot of scholars refer to glaucon as an erotic man. And what they mean is that he has a lot of Eros, which is Greek for love, or desire. I call him horny cloud con, because this is the guy with the invisibility ring sex fantasy back in Book Two. He's the one who made up the creepy rule where people who are brave in battle are allowed to kiss anyone they want. He's always talking about sex and joking about young boys and the bloom of youth with Socrates. Cloud Khan is a guy with a lot of desires. And to Socrates, that's an advantage, because desire isn't necessarily about sex. horniness and young men is a kind of reservoir of latent energy that can be channeled and redirected. So a good educator, doesn't tell his students to take a cold shower, then get back to the books. He flirts with them. He inflames their desires, he teases them, he builds them up, and he channels their desires in the right direction. Socrates isn't trying to calm down, calm down. He's trying to get them horny for the good. And you can see that strategy working most clearly in this part of the book, Socrates has created this utopia populated by superhuman philosopher kings, who glaucon will want to be like, and now he's drawing these images of the sun in the form of the good, which is more beautiful than beauty itself, and the source of all truth and knowledge. And this is all supposed to be seductive. And glaucon is fully into it. He literally yells out to Apollo and begged Socrates to take him to the end of the road. But Socrates won't, because for Socrates, that's not the point. The point is the desire for knowledge itself. In the next section of dialogue, Socrates is going to stick with the theme of the Guardians education. And he's going to explore that using the most famous metaphor in all of Plato, and maybe in all philosophy, the allegory of the cave. While we're talking about education, here's another image for you. Imagine a big group of human beings living in a cave underground. And they're all tied up from a young age. So they can only face forward at the wall in front of them and they can't turn around. And behind them, and above them, there is a big blazing fire. Got it? Got it. In between the fire and the prisoners. There's a low wall. And some people walk along behind the wall, holding up objects, tools that use things like that. So they cast a shadow on the cave wall in front of the prisoners. It's like shadow puppets.
Glaucon:This is a strange prison you're describing.
Clif Mark:It's no stranger than the prison. We all live in glob con, but I'll go on. What do you think that these prisoners talk about? What do they know about? What is their whole world about?
Glaucon:I guess its shadows. If they were tied up from birth, their whole reality would just be the shadows the other people cast on the wall.
Clif Mark:Good. Now imagine one of these prisoners was unchained in be forced to stand up and turn around and walk toward the fire. And it was painful for him in the glare from the fire hurt his eyes. But they made them look at the objects and then directly into the fire. And they told him, he should forget everything that he learned when he was chained up, because now he's closer to the truth. How do you think he'd react to that?
Glaucon:I think he'd be confused and probably try to run back to where he could actually see. And what if
Clif Mark:they didn't let him go back down. But they kept dragging him up out of the cave into the sunlight,
Glaucon:I think it would hurt and he'd probably hate them. And when he got out into the light, he wouldn't be able to see a thing, at least not at first.
Clif Mark:But he get used to it. Eventually, he could start by looking at shadows and reflections in the water. And then he could start looking at actual objects and then at the sky. And last of all, he'd be able to look directly into the sun. And when he did that, he'd see that the sun causes all the seasons and years and governs everything in the visible realm.
Glaucon:This sounds a lot better than a cave.
Clif Mark:Absolutely. And what do you think he'd say, if you ask him about his old life back in the cave, where they would all compete over who could name the shadows on the wall? And who could guess which ones would come next?
Glaucon:He wouldn't miss it much. I'm pretty sure about that.
Clif Mark:No, you don't think he'd envy the people who were powerful and admired in the cave? Not at all?
Glaucon:I think you'd feel sorry for them and would do anything to avoid going back.
Clif Mark:Interesting. And now suppose that he did come back down into the cave where he used to be chained up? Don't you think it would be hard for him to make up the shadows in the darkness?
Glaucon:It would be impossible, at least at first.
Clif Mark:And what if, for some reason, he had to defend himself and argue about whatever shadows they called justice down there.
Glaucon:He would make a total fool of himself. Everyone would laugh at him, and they'd say, going above ruined his eyes.
Clif Mark:And how would they react if someone tried to set them free? And take them up there to
Glaucon:not? Well, Socrates? I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to kill anyone who tried that.
Clif Mark:I wouldn't either. glaucon. Now, can you see how this image of the cave fits with what we said earlier about the sun and the light?
Glaucon:You said the prisoners are just like us. So is it that the cave is the visible world. And the fire represents the sun? Very good.
Clif Mark:And what happens when the man escapes the cave?
Glaucon:That's the soul moving up from the visible world to the realm of understanding,
Clif Mark:right? And the sun in the story is the form of the good. The form of the good is like the sun because it's the last and most difficult thing to see. But it's also the cause of everything. That's right and good. And that means that anyone who's going to act wisely, in private or in public life, needs to have at least glimpsed it.
Glaucon:I agree, Socrates. I have a question, though. If I understand what you're saying, it's that the people are in the cave, and the ones who are going to be rulers have to leave the cave and see the sun?
Clif Mark:Yes. But once they experienced life in the sun, why would they ever go back to the cave, because we'll force them glaucon. Our job as founders of the city is to find the best natures, to force them out of the cave to see the good. And when they've learned everything they need to learn. We forced them to come back to the cave and live with the prisoners.
Glaucon:But that's so unfair. If they can live in the sun. Why would we want to force them back into the cave?
Clif Mark:Did you forget cloud con, we're not building this regime to make the best people happy. We're building the best people to make the whole city happy.
Glaucon:Yeah, I guess I did forget about that.
Clif Mark:It's not unfair to them, will tell them that they owe it to the city for their education, that they're the only ones who've seen what beauty and justice in the good are really like. So they're the only ones who can rule.
Glaucon:It's fair, I guess. But they're not gonna like it.
Clif Mark:No, they probably won't. Ruling will be a chore for them. But that's true for all good rulers. When people start fighting over who gets to rule, it ruins them in the whole city too.
Glaucon:Then it's settled. When they're ready, we'll send our philosophers back into the caves.
Clif Mark:The allegory of the cave is one of the most famous images in philosophy. Partly because the imagery is just so evocative. It's much more vivid than in unevenly divided line. But it's also because it carries a pretty relatable and resonant message. This is a story about enlightenment. It could be about philosophy, religious conversion, falling in love, a new identity. Anything that makes you see the world with new eyes can be related to the allegory of the cave. It's any red pill that wakes you up from the matrix. But even though this idea is familiar to most people, there's still a couple of things about the way Plato does it that I find interesting, and I want to talk about. And the first is what we might call the social nature of human ignorance. In the cave, it's not just that people are ignorant, they have an entire worldview that's based on shadow puppets cast by other people who they don't know are there. Now, it is possible to go with conspiracy theory interpretation of this. And say Plato is saying that we're all being manipulated by a secret cabal of people who control the media, or we're in the matrix being fed hallucinations by a robot AI. But I like to think of this more prosaically as an observation about the nature of human learning. I think we're all in the cave. And there's not necessarily a conspiracy. One way to look at how we learn about the world, is that we're all independent individuals who go out and discover the world and draw our own conclusions. And yes, we can be influenced by others. But that's secondary. Mainly, we're deciding for ourselves. I think this is the most easy, intuitive way to think about learning. It's how it feels, this is how I feel. I feel like I know stuff about the world. And I learned that from interacting with it. However, if I reflect on it for just a second, I realize that it's totally false. And in fact, nearly everything that I think I know about the world, I learned from someone else telling me my opinions on politics, history, what food is good for me how gravity works, the roundness of the earth, all come from other people, I didn't do the experiments myself. Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't trust what you learn. I have reasons for trusting some sources more than others, I've read a fair bit, I have opinions of what kind of methodologies yield more reliable information and therefore are worthy of more trust. But when it comes down to it, the fact remains that nearly everything I know, is what someone else told me. It's shadows on the wall. And the social nature of all of my so called knowledge goes even deeper than that. Because even the things that I do have direct experience of are framed and concepts that I learned from other people. And that's why I find this whole shadow puppet image so compelling. Because I've heard so many passionate arguments in seeing people expressed strong opinions about news events. And they were things that nobody in the conversation had ever experienced directly. People are fighting over social media posts, and news items. And that often makes me think of a mob of chained up cave, people screaming at each other, over some shadows. So that's what I meant when I said, the social nature of human ignorance, most of what we think we know what we feel we've learned from the world, we actually have just heard from other people. The second neat thing about this allegory that I want to talk about is how leaving the cave changes the philosopher's relationship to other people. According to this story, enlightenment is alienating. And for both sides. Personally, I think I would hate ruling the cave, especially if it was some kind of democracy. And especially if I'd spent some time above ground. I imagine being one of these disease scientists and epidemiologist or something. And obviously, scientific research is very different from beholding the form of the good. But I think the basic dynamic holds true for all kinds of knowledge. So I'm going to go ahead. I imagine I'm a disease researcher, it's 2019. Life is good. I'm in a lab with some test tubes. And I go to conferences with my scientist friends, and we talked about discoveries. And I published my research so people can understand how to be safer. But if no one really listens, I don't really care. And when I do, sign on to Facebook or something, and look at how people's opinions about disease and health and homeopathy are actually being expressed, and how worked up people are getting about it. I just don't get involved. It seems too wacky to engage with. But then 2020 hits, there's a damn pandemic and I have to go back into the cave, because all the prisoners are drowning in their own lungs. And so I tell them, whatever research found, I tell them to put on masks and not stand too close to each other and to take this vaccine that we invented with all our sunlight, science. And then the people instead of just listening to us, they scratch their heads. They start asking questions aren't masks bad for us? What's your political agenda? Isn't this vaccine you're talking about made of aborted fetuses and tiny robots? What is your relation to the Antichrist Bill Gates, in some of these cave, people get downright hostile. And this is all enormously frustrating. I just want to go back out of the cave, and do my science with people who actually get it. And this doesn't have to be about a pandemic. I think this is true. If you're trying to spread the word about anything that you've learned. Most people won't listen. But sometimes, if it's really important, and maybe they need to change their behavior, they'll not listen to you and get angry at you. This feels to me like the model for every public consultation, Town Hall forum, or even Twitter debate I've seen, there's a grab bag of crazy opinions and very highly heat emotions that do not seem tuned to the question at hand. And I know this sounds very elitist. And I guess it is, but I was trying to tell it from the philosophers perspective. My point is not to say, Oh, these poor experts, please trust everyone in a lab code. No, I'm not a philosopher, I've never gazed upon the form of the good. I'm a cave guy. And if you're not doing all your research yourself, and interacting directly with the world, and nobody can do all the research themselves, then you have to trust other people. But how do I know who to trust? What if experts disagree? And even if these so called experts do agree, I know that the history of science is the history of mistaken scientific consensus. So how can I tell the experts from the bullshitters, from the people who are just mistaken, none of this is easy. Without being an expert yourself, it's not even easy when you are an expert. So if someone comes and tells me that everything I've learned from the existing consensus is wrong, there's a good chance I'm going to ignore them unless they have very compelling evidence. And this is especially true if they can't speak the language of the shadow world. And if they start trying to force me to act differently, there's a good chance I'll resist. And I think this is a reasonable response. Because even if I genuinely want to trust people with more knowledge, it's impossible for me to tell who really does have more knowledge, and who has my best interests at heart. So I can fully understand why the cave people don't want to listen to these philosophers. And this mutual alienation between the philosophers and the cave people sets up a political problem. Because the city only works if you have enlightened rulers, that's the whole plan. But the prisoners, they don't want these rulers, or even if they did want enlightened rulers, they wouldn't be able to tell the people who are actually enlightened from the people who just pretend to be enlightened. And the actually enlightened people, they don't want to rule. They'd rather just stay outside in sunbathe in the light of the form of the good, then go through the thankless chore of running a city. Which means that the philosophers need to be forced rule, and the people need to be forced or manipulated into obeying them. Socrates has now given this metaphor for education, it's a journey from underground captivity into the light of the sun. And now he's going to get concrete and explain what specific curriculum that journey represents. Well, if we agree on all that, then we probably agree that education is not what most people think it is.
Glaucon:What do you mean? Well,
Clif Mark:it's not about stuffing people's heads with facts. It's about turning them towards the light.
Glaucon:Right? Because the prisoners in the cave aren't blind. It's just that they've been staring at shadows on a wall their whole life.
Clif Mark:Yes. And that's why so many bad people are actually pretty clever. They've got a great eye for what they're interested in. It's just that they're interested in the wrong things.
Glaucon:So we just have to figure out how to turn them to the light in the first place.
Clif Mark:Good idea. glaucon. What about their education so far? Well, the music and gymnastic help?
Glaucon:Well, that's not enough Socrates. Gymnastics is all about the body. So that's not going to turn anyone towards the forms. And the musical education was about shaping their taste without reasoning. So that won't work either.
Clif Mark:Good point cloud con. If we're going to turn our students away from the visible world, towards what really is. We're going to need something a little more confusing. confusing. Why? Because to awaken the mind, you need to confuse the mind. Look at your finger. glaucon What do you see?
Glaucon:a finger
Clif Mark:Exactly. You didn't look twice you ask any questions, you didn't even have to think about it. Your finger is obviously a finger. But there are things that aren't so obvious. There are things in this world that make you go Hmm.
Glaucon:things that make you go, Hmm.
Unknown:things that make you go Hmm. Is that finger you were looking at small or large?
Glaucon:Well, compared to what I mean, my other fingers or something else a tree?
Clif Mark:See, your senses can't give you the answer. They're confused. So your reason wakes up and you start asking questions about the meaning of large and small.
Glaucon:So we want to confuse the students. We want to teach them arithmetic. Why arithmetic?
Unknown:Think of the army of our city. Okay. Now, is it one or many?
Glaucon:It's one. It's the one army.
Clif Mark:But it's many soldiers, isn't it? So is it one or many?
Glaucon:Well, it's
Clif Mark:Hmm. That's it, is the sound of your soul turning towards reason. And that's why arithmetic will be the first subject for guardians.
Glaucon:Makes sense. It's also useful for assembling and organizing armies to,
Clif Mark:it'll be useful if they use it to study the meaning of numbers, instead of using it like a businessman.
Glaucon:Okay, sure. What's next geometry?
Clif Mark:Yes, we'll start with plain geometry. And then the third subject will be solid geometry.
Glaucon:So we have math, math, and math. Anything else?
Clif Mark:astronomy? And can you guess why?
Glaucon:Of course, important things like sailing and farming and commanding an army and all kinds of other things.
Clif Mark:glaucon the point of education is to help the soul see the truth. So why are you telling me about wins in crop yields?
Glaucon:Right, right. Right, right. Let me try again. The Guardians study astronomy, because it directs their gaze upwards away from the earthly realm of becoming to the eternal heavens above.
Clif Mark:Nice, triglav Kahn, but you're still not quite getting it. Visible objects don't lead to knowledge. And that's true. Whether you're looking at the starry heavens above, or at your own two feet. At best, the night sky is a kind of diagram, a diagram of what astronomy is really about
Glaucon:Socrates, if it's not stars and planets, what is astronomy about?
Clif Mark:movement, eternal patterns, the meaning of velocity, not some dots in the sky. True astronomy is grasped by reason and thought, not by your upturned eyeballs.
Glaucon:Okay, I get it.
Clif Mark:What else? harmonics? The study of harmony is just like astronomy. It could be really useful, but most people do it all wrong.
Glaucon:How's that? They spend too much time listening to music instead of listening to what harmony is really about?
Clif Mark:Exactly. Our students will stop with the twisting the strings and straining their ears. And they'll make harmonics, a pure study of ratios.
Glaucon:So you want them to study harmonics without the sound? That's right, cloud Khan.
Clif Mark:And when they're finished, they'll look into what all those subjects have in common, and how they're connected to each other.
Glaucon:Wow, this education is no small job,
Clif Mark:is it? And we're just getting started. Because all of that was just preparation for the main subject, which is dialectic Lacan. Question and Answer, giving and receiving accounts of things defending against objections. Because only rational discussion can ever lead to true understanding.
Glaucon:Why is that?
Clif Mark:Would you say that someone understands a subject if they can't even explain its basic assumptions? No, of course not. Well, math and astronomy, and all those other subjects we just talked about. They can't. They're built on assumptions. And that means that even though they can help lead the prisoner out of the cave, they can show him shadows and reflections of things that exist up there. They can't help him look at the things themselves. Only dialectic can do that. And only dialectic can help the prisoner Finally, look into the sun.
Glaucon:Wow. Tell us how this works. Socrates. How can dialectic take us to the end of the journey?
Clif Mark:I'd love to lap on but you wouldn't be able to follow me. Oh, but I can tell you that dialectic is the only way there. And that's why our students are going to study the art of question answer at the very highest level. Of course, they have to.
Glaucon:What's the program?
Clif Mark:Well, the first step is to choose only the best people to study philosophy. They should all be brilliant and ambitious and good looking, of course good looking not like the Ugly Bastards who call themselves philosophers these days. And from a young age, we'll teach them all the subjects we talked about using game Instead of regular lessons, why games, when we're not raising slaves cloud con, and nothing you teach using force ever sticks. So they'll study those subjects till they're 18, then they'll have a couple years of physical training. And after that, they graduate. No, after that they spend 10 more years studying how all the subjects are connected. And then when they're 30 that's when we have to be really careful, because that's when we choose who gets to start studying dialectic.
Glaucon:Socrates, why do we have to be so careful with dialectic?
Clif Mark:Because it's dangerous cloud con? Haven't you ever noticed what happens to the young men these days who study dialectic, we?
Glaucon:They get better at arguing? No. glaucon?
Clif Mark:I meant that they turn into skeptics. How does that happen? everyone learns about what's good, and just from our parents in the laws in tradition, that's how we start out. And these beliefs, they help us resist a lot of tempting things. But when the young man starts setting dialectic, the first thing that happens is he hears all his traditional beliefs getting questioned and refuted. And if he can't respect the beliefs he was brought up with, and he also can't find true beliefs to replace them. What do you think he's gonna wind up believing?
Glaucon:Nothing. Exactly.
Clif Mark:He'll either believe nothing, or he'll just take on whatever opinions happened to match his desires at the time.
Glaucon:It's so sad when this happens to people.
Clif Mark:And that's why we have to be so careful with dialectic Lacan. You know how these immature adolescence are, they're like little puppies, he's arguments to tear apart anything they can reach, until they have nothing left to believe in. And that makes them look bad. And it makes philosophy look bad.
Glaucon:They can really overdo it sometimes,
Clif Mark:of course, a mature man uses dialectic only to search for the truth, and not to contradict people for fun. That's right.
Glaucon:As far as I'm concerned, these are the only people who should be allowed to study philosophy. So when our students get to 30, we'll pick the best ones, then what happens to them
Clif Mark:five more years of pure dialectical training, and then we send them back down to the cave to hold a military command or some other job,
Glaucon:and how long will that stage be?
Clif Mark:15 years, 15 years. And then when they're 50, the ones who passed all of our tests and who proved themselves to be the best, they go on to the final goal, which is to understand and contemplate the form of the good. And when they've grasped the form of the good back to the cave. I'm afraid so. But it's not permanent. Well, let them spend most of their time contemplating the forms, but they still have to take turns running the city. And since it's such a chore for them, there'll be eager to train new philosopher kings to take over.
Glaucon:These are incredible men, you've sculpted Socrates, men
Clif Mark:and women glaucon.
Glaucon:Of course,
Clif Mark:the women too. And it's only possible if we have philosophers ruling the city, according to justice,
Glaucon:a great but how does this all get done? How does this all happen?
Clif Mark:If we want to raise the children as we planned, then I think the quickest way to make our city happen is to round up everyone in the city over the age of 10, and send them away to the countryside. Well,
Glaucon:it would certainly be the quickest. And I guess that gives us a good idea of what it would take to make this happen.
Clif Mark:Then our discussion of the best city in the corresponding individual is complete. The curriculum for philosopher King prep school is math, math, math, astronomy, without stars, and harmony without sound, both of which sound like math. And what I like most about this very mathy program is how different it is in spirit, from the emphasis that you get today on STEM subjects. Today, people say it's very important for young people to study math and science, because it's practical. It will give them the hard skills that they need to trade for money. And even if you want to be high minded about it, it's still about being productive, contributing to progress in society. And by the same token, young people today are often discouraged from studying philosophy because what are you going to do with that? For Socrates, it's the opposite. Every time Glau Khan brings up the practical applications of the subjects he mentions, Socrates shoots them down. Because the last thing that Socrates wants is for talented young people to waste their minds, thinking about things like profits and bow seats. He's got bigger plans for them. And I find this contempt for practical results. Very refreshing. Forget getting a job. For Socrates. The one true goal of education is to turn souls from the darkness and confusion of the empirical world and opinions to the abstract realm of knowledge and eventually to the form of the good. So how do you turn souls around? First, you have to awaken people's minds by puzzling or confusing them. The Greek word here is aporia, or aporia and that translates as puzzlement, or being stuck or being baffled. And the idea is, once you reach a state of aporia or bafflement, you'll be forced to start using your reason and calculating to figure out what's really going on. And that's why Socrates says that he's always going around stumping people in the marketplace. He's trying to awaken their minds. Now, what does that got to do with all that math? Well, one, math can help us see contradictions and paradoxes in our regular thinking, and in our sense perceptions. But also, mass can help give us the tools to work through those contradictions. When we get confused, we can count and calculate to find out what's going on. And of course, all this math is just preparation for the ultimate subject of study, which is dialectic. dialectic is just philosophy in the Socratic style, question and answer, rational discussion, that kind of thing. In the city in speech, you don't study math instead of philosophy. You study math as preparation for philosophy. dialectic is superior to math and science because the Matthew disciplines make unproven assumptions, and rely on them to draw their conclusions. dialectic, on the other hand, explores its own presuppositions and gives you a full understanding of the subject. Take economics, for example. A lot of economics is based on the assumption that human beings are rational, self interested beings, also known as homo economic, as everyone knows, the actual human beings aren't like that. Even economists know that, but they assume it so they can draw conclusions. So in this way, economics is like one of these mathematical disciplines that depends on prior assumptions. Now a dialectical economist would have a conversation to determine if people really are rational utility maximizers. And if they're not, they talk about what they are like. And they tried to develop a theory of human nature that could actually be defended. dialectic discusses and justifies and explores the basic assumptions that science and math just assume. But mathematical axioms, are not the assumptions that Socrates is mostly concerned about. The most important prior assumption of all studies in need of philosophical examination is the form of the good ethical questions, morality, justice, beauty, stuff like that. These are the things that we most need to know about. Because even if you completely master engineering, and farming and military science, and you can produce things as fast as you want, and win any war, if you don't know anything about the form of the good, you're as likely to use your power for evil. As for good, and math can't give answers to these questions. dialectic is the most important subject of study, because it's the only one that can address questions of ethics and morality. It's the only one that examines the form of the good. And this is also why Socrates says dialectic is dangerous, because examining our fundamental ethical beliefs involves examining our fundamental ethical beliefs. And all that questioning has a weird way of turning otherwise nice young men into little edge. Lordy, contrarians who use argumentative techniques to debunk everything in sight. And they wind up believing in nothing. And this is why Socrates says that, in the city and speech, they have to be super careful with who is going to be allowed to study dialectic they have to wait till they're 30 and only let the most responsible people do it. You may be surprised to hear Socrates make this particular argument because, after all, questioning fundamental ethical beliefs with men under 30 is Socrates his whole life. And back in apology Episode Three, I talked about this exact argument and suggested that it's the kind of thing that Socrates his enemies might have said about him. So what's going on here? Is Socrates contradicting himself is he being a hypocrite? I don't think so. And I want to spend a couple of minutes saying Why? Because I think it's important for generally understanding what's going on in this book, and why a lot of the policies seem so off the wall. Socrates in the boys have been inventing the best city that they can imagine. It has superhuman leaders, a perfect division of labor, a literature with no swears. But it doesn't exist in Greece right now. And maybe it never will. But that's not the point. The city in speech is a utopia. It's a thought experiment. And what you do in a utopia is not necessarily the same as what you should do in an actual fallen city that you live in, like Athens. If you applied the policies to Athens that they described for the city in speech, they'd be catastrophic. For example, the last thing that Socrates says In this episode, is that they should separate all the parents from their children and exile them to the countryside, which I do not believe Socrates was suggesting anyone actually tried. The city in speech is not a policy guide. What does this have to do with corrupting the youth in dialectic the point I was just talking about, the aim of education is turning souls making people into real philosophers. But the risk is, once you start questioning basic ethical ideas, it's easy to become unmoored, unbeliev, in nothing. So in the ideal city, you deal with this problem by constantly watching and testing people from birth to see who has the right nature to study philosophy. You prepare them with a musical education, and then a math education and so on. And you only let the most serious and mature men even start dialectic. And even then they're not allowed to start to live 30. In this way, you can turn as many of them as you can delight, without taking too many risks. But Socrates doesn't live in the perfect city. He lives in Athens. And he hasn't got musically educated little philosopher princes in front of them. He's got out of Mantis, and glaucon and the other posh boys of Athens, these guys grew up on unedited Homer, which is the opposite of the musical education. And a lot of them were already studying dialectic. Socrates didn't invent questioning traditional values. A lot of the people of Athens were studying with Sophos, like Thrasymachus, who would encourage them to ignore justice, to use rhetoric and deception to get whatever they want. Remember, glaucon and Adam antas started this whole conversation by arguing that the unjust life of the tyrant was the best life for human beings, if you could get away with it. These guys are already contrary and edge lords. So how does Socrates turn these guys to the light of reason? telling them to go work on their geometry for 15 years isn't gonna cut it? So instead of math homework, Socrates is using this combination of argument and rhetorical seduction. He's painting this beautiful utopia and talking about these fantastic philosopher kings that hopefully, the boys will identify with and want to be like, and it seems to be working. Because when Socrates says to glaucon Oh, you know, those immature little kids who always debunk everything, cloud, Khan's right there with them, he wants to be a real man who only cares about the truth. This is the guy who started off saying that tyranny wielding political power was the best way of life. And when Socrates sends the philosopher kings back into the cave to rule the city, glaucon stands up for them and says, do they have to? Can't they just stay up here and keep studying philosophy. And that's because all of glucans, horny energy has been redirected from his tyrannical fantasies to the beautiful form of the good. And this discussion of the form of the good is, in a sense, the high point of the book, I don't see it's a climax, because there's no relief for glaucon. He still doesn't know what the form of the good is, and he's more desperate than ever to find out. But it's the high point in the sense that they started in the cave of common opinion in book one. They reached a state of aporia, or bafflement. And then went on to reason through the meaning of justice build a perfect city. And they work their way all the way up to the form of the good, which is high like the sun in the sky. And next episode, they're going to take a step back down from this utopian vision, and return to the visible world to talk about the different kinds of regimes that exist, and the kinds of people that inhabit them.
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