34 - The Esoteric Plato feat. Earl Fontainelle

Today I speak with Earl Fontainelle of the Secret History of Western Esotericism podcast (SHWEP). 

I don’t understand Plato. Partly this is because he never writes in his own voice and partly it’s because I can’t even always tell when Socrates is joking or even what he’s talking about. The divided line? The Myth of Er? The tyrant being exactly 729 times less happy than the philosopher? These are all weird things in the Republic that are still mysterious to me. 

Earl suggests that perhaps the reason Plato is so difficult to understand is because he was writing esoterically. Perhaps the dialogues contain secret messages directed to an initiated few and the weird passages I complain about actually contain wisdom of a higher order. Perhaps. 

In this long and wide-ranging conversation, we talk about why so many readers of Plato believed he wrote esoterically, the secret meanings he may have been hiding, and a lot of the mysterious Plato math that I complained about in the Republic series. 

References:  

SHWEP episode on the Esoteric Plato

SHWEP episode with Maya Alapin on mathematical structures in Plato’s republic

Wiki on the divided line with diagram

Maya Alapin The Philosophical Implications of Interpreting Plato through Musical Analysis

James Adam The Nuptial Number of Plato 

Robert Brumbaugh Plato's mathematical imagination; the mathematical passages in the dialogues and their interpretation

Francis Macdonald Cornford (trans.) The Republic of Plato

Transcript

Clif Mark: 0:14

Today, the secret meaning in Plato's dialogues, the weird math in the Republic, and the spacey dream logic of the myth lover. I'm Clif Mark. And this is good in theory. Today's episode is going to be slightly different than usual. I've got a guest, he knows a lot about Plato, we're going to talk about that. And that's not out of the ordinary. But he takes a very different approach to Plato than I do. Earl fontenelle is the creator of a podcast called The Secret History of Western esotericism, or the schweppe. In that podcast, he refers to Plato as the father of Western esotericism. He may have changed his mind about that, we'll get into it. But that leaves us with the question, What is esotericism? It's different from philosophy. Usually, philosophers, especially nowadays, they try to understand the explicit things that people say in their texts, we analyze arguments that are on the surface, right? What did Plato say? Or in, in Plato's cases, a little bit complicated? So we might ask, What does Socrates say, but esotericism, that's all about secret messages hidden within texts that are meant only for the initiated. So think of the Da Vinci Code, or Foucault's pendulum by Umberto Eco, or one of my favorites, the illuminatus trilogy. And it may seem strange, on a theory and philosophy podcast, to bring an approach that seems more adjacent to the occult, and to conspiracies. But actually, it's not that strange, because as Earl will point out, there are plenty of clues that there's more going on in the Republic, than is apparent on the surface. And as a matter of fact, for most of history, most readers of Plato assumed that he was writing esoterically. So we'll be talking today about the esoteric reading of Plato in general, and the esoteric reading of the republic in particular, in particular, in particular, I'm going to ask him about math. Because if you remember the republic series, you'll remember that some of the most puzzling passages in the book happened when Socrates comes out with some weirdly precise mathematical argument. There's the divided line, there's the complicated baby math that governs the eugenics program in the city and speech. And there's the argument towards the end, that the philosopher is exactly 729 times happier than the tyrant. I'm going to ask Earl about all of these puzzles, and more, we go on for a pretty long time, and we get into some kind of obscure stuff. But it's all fascinating. So without further delay, all fontenelle of the schweppe v Secret History of Western esotericism podcast. Welcome to get in theory. First off, I want to say I am a fan of the schweppe. The scholarship is great. The music, which we just played is excellent. And the whole podcast has a kind of mysterious mood to it, which I really dig. So we just start off by having you tell us a little bit about yourself and the project.

Earl Fontainelle: 4:09

My I'm a para academic historian of ideas. I'm working on this thing, the schweppe, which is a chronological exploration of this historical field of complex interrelated currents, which people talk about under the rubric of Western esotericism. And it's this sort of stupidly, long term project we've been going for almost four years now we're in the third century CE II. And the end point is I guess it'll be like the year 2030 or whatever, when the project is done, and we'll bring it right up to date and then call it a call it a day or a decade. Yeah. And that's that's what it is. So what Western esotericism it is a it is a concept that's been partly invented by esoteric system selves, but it's been taken on by scholarship. And it's somewhat artificial, but also does apply to historically recognizable things that really happened and beliefs that people really had.

Unknown: 5:26

And

Earl Fontainelle: 5:29

people scholars will always disagree about, firstly, what Western means, secondly, what they mean by esotericism. But Thirdly, also just exactly what we're supposed to include in this. But if you've ever read Francis Yates, or if you've ever read Foucault's pendulum by Umberto Eco, which is kind of a satire, reception of loving satire, reception of Western esotericism that's the kind of territory we're talking about.

Clif Mark: 6:00

So secret messages, historical mysteries, that kind of thing. Yeah, in the podcast, I think you give a sort of tentative definition of esotericism as the practice of writing something that's hidden to most audiences, but is specifically for a particular audience, and only they will understand it.

Earl Fontainelle: 6:24

Yes, well, I'll give you I have a two, I have a working definition. And there's two things that we've considered for esotericism. The first is not just writing, but a speech act, in which the information being given is a represented as being only for an initiated elite of some kind. And B is knowledge of a qualitatively higher type. So the first part, the represented part is key. Because sometimes people publish things like that, that famous New Age book, The Secret, have you come across that?

Clif Mark: 7:05

Yeah, of course, but I haven't read it, though.

Earl Fontainelle: 7:09

It's this cheesy New Age book. And it's called the secret. So you think, Oh, it's a secret. But the thing has been published, you know, sold 10 million copies, right? 40 languages, whatever it is, that ain't a secret, right? So that's an example of the rhetoric of esotericism. And it's higher knowledge. So it's, it's not just a secret, like, you know, a computer password, it's a secret, it's knowledge that's been given by God or by divine mediators, or through a state of enlightenment. In the case of Buddhism, it's, it's qualitatively higher knowledge. So that's the esoteric. Now, the other thing you want to talk about is the actual practice of socialist esotericism practice of exclusion. And this, this does exist. So you get, you know, for example, Freemasonry, this is the famous example that everyone knows, the Masons don't allow just anyone in, you have to become a member, you have to be invited, then you become a member, then you learn the secrets, the secrets have been published, that doesn't matter. That's not the point. The point is the is the kind of enactment of social esotericism, the ancient mystery cults is another well known example.

Clif Mark: 8:21

So it still counts as a mystery if everyone knows the mysteries they've been published, but you still go and you do the, you know, the rituals?

Earl Fontainelle: 8:30

I'd say. So, it certainly it certainly fits my definition of the esoteric right. We have a lot of evidence, for example, that the eleusinian mysteries, which is the the mysteries that for the ancients, and for Plato, were the kind of gold standard by which all mysteries should be judged because they were the Athenian cult. Right? We have a lot of evidence that these that the secrets, if there were secrets were revealed on numerous occasions in public, and this was a criminal offence to do this. You could get punished for it, but it happened. So it's like if it's if we're really talking about secrecy. The secret's out. Sorry, guys. But that's not right. We're talking. We're talking about something performative. Right.

Clif Mark: 9:16

So you call Plato the father of Western esotericism? Yeah.

Earl Fontainelle: 9:23

I in in doing the podcast? I would. My thought thinking on this has changed. I would now call him the grandfather of Western esotericism.

Clif Mark: 9:35

Okay, okay.

Earl Fontainelle: 9:38

Because he's not really Western. He's pre Western. If that makes sense. The West I think the West as a meaningful, historiographical right construct, yes, doesn't yet exist in Plato's time.

Clif Mark: 9:53

He might not be Western yet, but he still may have fathered Western esotericism, or at least grandfather But why do you think that? So what are the signs that Plato is hiding messages for an initiated crowd that is of a higher order, as you were saying,

Earl Fontainelle: 10:10

so I'll get to that in a second. But the the reason for him being the grandfather Westerners a terrorist ism isn't just that it's not just because he exercises the the esoteric, if he does, it's also because he is, in many ways, the father of macrocosm microcosm, construction of the human self and the cosmos, he's the father of the immaterial, immortal soul which reincarnates he's the father of a intangible, invisible world, which is sort of separate from our world of everyday coming to be, but which is intimately connected to and indeed, is the foundation of our world. So this idea of thinking about forms thinking about underlying realities, which is runs right through Western esotericism. And a lot of ways. Not in all cases, like the alchemists, for example, that's a different kind of stream. But, but did you see what I mean? So it's his ideas,

Clif Mark: 11:13

right? So like, even if Plato isn't writing esoterically himself, his ideas in the themes that he talks about, like the forums and stuff that inspires eco terraces that come after him. Yeah,

Earl Fontainelle: 11:26

so those themes I've just given are some ones that are really important, right through. Yeah. And you'll see this in esoteric currents in the Abrahamic traditions in the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, where you'll have you have mainstream Christianity, God creates the world symbol, there's god, there's the world. And then you keep seeing these little movements popping up here and there that are talking about forms as ideas in the mind of God, and God doesn't just create the world, first, the forms exist. And then you have this sort of Emma natori cosmology. So this is like a kind of platanus stick strand within Christianity that keeps popping up. And it often is expressed through more esoteric currents of Christianity. Now, maybe that's not what you want to talk about, you want to talk about? Was Plato writing esoterically. Right? Yeah. Interestingly, the majority reading of Plato, from the first century BCE, at least, if not earlier, until the 19th century. So the vast majority of people reading Plato have read him as an esoteric author, including the platanus themselves. So the idea that he isn't an esoteric author is modern. Everyone, up until now, recently found videos. And you can even talk about writing in the platonic mode, modal platonic go in Latin. And that means writing with a secret hidden meaning subtext.

Clif Mark: 12:55

Hmm, that is so interesting that for most of history, writing in the platonic way, means writing esoterically. And with that in mind, I'd like to get on to the Republic, because I did a 13 part series on the Republic, it is an adaptation, there's commentary. It's pretty in depth for a podcast. But still, even in that amount of time, I can only really sell across the surface of the book, I get a bit into interpretation. But I certainly didn't get into the deeper esoteric, possibly hidden meanings of the book. And you are obviously just the guy to tell us about that. So without saying for sure, what Plato himself might have been doing. Why do people think why do his readers think that the republic might have more to it, then is on the surface?

Earl Fontainelle: 13:58

Okay, well, there's the first reason, which is that a lot of people think everything in Plato has more to it, than is on the surface, which we've just talked about. And secondly, and you know, that's not a crazy standpoint, let me just say this. In the analytic study of Plato, it's seen as a bit of a fringe position, especially in the Anglo American world. It isn't crazy guys. Plato is choosing to write these Apple retic dialogues that intentionally mess with your head, right? Yeah, it sometimes seems to me that even if he wasn't writing esoterically, in the sense we've talked about, he's doing his damnedest to make you think he's writing esoteric. Do you see what I mean? Okay, like, vexing us on purpose, and leaving them open ended on purpose. So we have to at least deal with that in some way. Okay. Let's talk about the republic specifically. You know, we have going back to antiquity, we have lots of commentaries. The Republic practices being one of the probably I gonna say the longest that survives, I could be wrong about that. But we have an enormous commentary by propolis, the late platanus on the Republic, and he preserves loads of people's opinions on the Republic, and it's very clear from propolis. And also the tradition that he's drawing on that in antiquity. Not only did everyone think this, this dialogue was absolutely chock full of hidden meanings and crazy symbols and and, you know, weird structural games. Alright. But if you read it, you kind of think yeah, I think I think there must be something in this. That's my read. Now, then,

Unknown: 15:48

there's, uh, let me let me let me just.

Clif Mark: 15:51

Yeah, I'm just about the idea that Plato is a vexing us on purpose, or is writing these open ended confusing dialogues? Now? I think it is quite obvious that, you know, he's provoking a Perea. They are confusing, they are open ended, and you can't solve them. So I wouldn't try to guess that Plato has this like, very clear, explicit message. They are confusing. But they might be. What is the difference between them being confusing in the sense that we don't know a Shakespeare's message, right? Or the message of a certain film? And he's terrorism where there's actually like this higher order hidden meaning. Whereas there might not be in a play, right? It's just Yeah, the art is the interplay of all these confusing different strands of thought, yeah.

Earl Fontainelle: 16:46

What's the difference between those two, it would be I guess, in Plato's intention, which we can never truly access. However, I would say that it as a thought experiment. Straightforward philosophic prose. Yeah, just saying this is what I think definitely existed by Plato's time. Aristotle wrote it in extremely dry and grueling fashion. For him did as well. That was an option on the table. And Plato didn't choose it. Why? Right. Well, I

Clif Mark: 17:20

mean, maybe because he thought it was more stimulating to write plays. So I guess what I'm saying is why do you think that he's doing these Oh, terrorism instead of just like, being a playwright? I'm,

Earl Fontainelle: 17:31

I'm agnostic about it. I study the platanus tradition.

Clif Mark: 17:36

So I'm stuck. Why did the platanus think that?

Earl Fontainelle: 17:39

Why did they think it we don't know? Well, we do know. For some we have to explicit statements of why Plato wrote esoterically. In Plato lists. So Plutarch writing in the first century, says he did it, basically, for reasons of philosophic elitism. So is not to cast pearls before swine. Paraphrasing. Right, right. Which is something that appears in Plato as well. He does talk about this, like in Sophos, for example, he says, you know, you can't just throw philosophy out in front of anyone, because they're going to just sort of like, get it mucky. And in the Republic, he talks about, you know, MIP, definitely not everyone is going to be a philosopher, right, there is an elite. And absolutely, in numenius, about the mayor, a personal favorite of mine and second century CE II, he has a wonderful bit in one of his fragments, where he says, Why did Plato write esoteric? He did it because he saw what happened to Socrates roar, you know, basically stating uncomfortable truths to power, what happens you get, you have to drink the hemlock. Therefore, Plato, hid himself by writing between clarity and obscurity, which is a very interesting way of haha. So those are the only two explicit reasons for Plato's sort of choice to write esoteric Lee found in platonism that I'm aware of, and the second one is clearly fully in line with layoffs, houses reading, right. It's It's cozy and esotericism. You write unclearly on purpose, it keeps the herd away because they can't really get what you're doing because they're not philosophical and they don't have the time and the energy, but then the truly philosophical student is going to find it. And they're the ones who aren't going to try to poison you with hemlock for saying uncomfortable truths, because they're philosophers. So everyone's safe, you can publish openly, but esoterically using this sort of Gaussian methodology.

Clif Mark: 19:49

Right, and so to get to the Republic,

Earl Fontainelle: 19:52

yeah. Let me just say one more thing about the Republic. There is a short there's a report in antiquity, this is getting back to what you said earlier, about Yeah, why should we think the Republic is full of esoteric stuff? There's a report in antiquity that Plato upon his death, they found a bunch of wax tablets, on which he'd rewritten and rewritten the opening line of the Republic over and over some others. Now, this is probably not literally true for various reasons. But I think what it bespeaks is an understanding on the part of the reading public that Plato like nothing in the Republic is accidental. It's so finely tuned and constructed with such care. So it's like ridiculous, self referential structural care that it has, you know, every word has to be weighed. So the fact that it starts with the word cut edain, I went down, and it has this whole series of ascent and descent motifs throughout the whole thing. And then it ends with the myth of Earth where he goes down, and then he comes up again, this is all on purpose. And that, obviously, the that ascent and descent themes play into the divided line, the cave, which you've talked about, I'm sure on your podcast, yes. So this is all on purpose. And it gets worse. In a minute, we're going to talk about the mathematical stuff, I'm sure and then we'll see more of like this kind of structural stuff in action and what he's doing.

Clif Mark: 21:28

Well, yeah, just when you were when you were talking about how carefully This is constructed, you know, down to the word of the syllable. That I think is a great segue into the first passage and Republic that I want to talk to you about, which is the the analogy of the divided line. Yeah, so just to remind the listeners, this is from book six in the Republic, and for good in theory, it's in the part nine of the Republic series, horny for the good. And in this in this part of the story, Socrates and the boys have planned out the city, and they put the philosopher kings in charge. And now they're talking about how to educate the philosopher kings. And then Socrates gets into these three really famous metaphors, which are the sun, the line, and the cave. And so the sun is Socrates is talking about what the philosopher kings will be studying, he talks about the form of the good, which is this transcendent, beautiful thing that's realer than everything else in lens, reality and truth to everything else. So I find the sun a really vivid image. And the last one is the cave, which is also another really vivid meme metaphor. But in the middle, he drops in the divided line. And he pays a lot of attention to it. It's supposed to be very important. But to me reading this as an undergrad, it was always so much less memorable and evocative than the the sun and the cave. So maybe you could just bring us through what the divided line is on the surface, and how that links into some of these hidden meanings and patterns that people have found. In the Republic.

Earl Fontainelle: 23:09

Yeah. So that's, that's a great example, for this kind of structural stuff, which can be read as intentional esotericism or intentional, just ridiculous craftsmanship on Plato's part, or can we read in other ways? The divided line, Socrates says that Socrates is expressing this with what seems to be intense irony to glaucon in saying, like, you still don't understand glaucon Let me put it to you this way this will explain. And then he comes with the divided line and, and blah, Khan's gonna like thanks for that explanation, Socrates, which is something you've brought out nicely in your in your podcast, this sort of where glaucon is kind of saying, Oh, yeah, that's very clear, Socrates, but it's quite obvious, totally unclear. So as it before we even get into the divided line, let's just say with all these things that are sometimes referred to as the mathematical puzzles

Clif Mark: 24:07

of the Republic.

Earl Fontainelle: 24:10

They are surely surely in my interpretation made to make the reader work and maybe draw a diagram and try to nut it out, do some geometry and mathematics while reading or while having it read to you because it was probably recited in its initial Athenian context, right. That in itself could be seen as a bit of straussian esotericism. So if you're Cornford, for example, Francis McDonald Cornford, the translator of Plato's Republic, who does a very serviceable translation into English, you skip these bits, not the divided line, it's to essentially get but you skip the natural number and the number of the tyrant which we'll talk about in a minute, because you just can't see what possible relevance they have to the text as a whole That's because you're not the initiated elite, Francis Cornford, so,

Clif Mark: 25:04

or you or you can't just make sense of it. So you're afraid your translation is wrong? And which is I mean, look, I gotta say I have at least some sympathy for that feeling to when encountering these passages.

Earl Fontainelle: 25:13

Well, when we talk about these passages, you will see that I am not of the philosophical elite, I can at least be in Appalachia, maybe in an educated way. But I'm not out of my aporia about those passages, but the divided line is a line that shall be divided. I'm going to paraphrase Socrates here and tell me if I'm getting everything, yeah, all the essentials, it's a line that should be divided according to a certain ratio into two pieces, then each of those pieces will again be divided by the same ratio, giving us four segments of line. Now, each of these segments will correspond to a certain type of human cognition. And each type of cognition will have its appropriate objects of cognition. So the lowest one is a kaseya, which is sometimes translated as conjecture. It's a it's a term that Plato's basically coined for the ad hoc for this passage, which is normal practice for him. It's like a kind of shadow we knowledge of secondary artificial things. So it's like, it's like, a bit like the shadows knowledge of the shadows in the cave. Right? Then you go up, then the, the, and it's very much an up and down thing. Now the top two tiers of the divided line, are extending scientific knowledge or knowledge of, well, it's usually translated as scientific knowledge, not in the sort of modern term of science, but in terms of a body of knowledge based on proven axioms that is not is based on sort of deduction, it's not just purely guesswork, and the highest one, which all the commentators want to say, applies to gnosis, this very peculiar Greek term. But Socrates doesn't come out and say that he just kind of says, oh, in the highest one, I can't really express it to you tell you what it is. Let's move on. So another piece of what might be platanus esotericism there. Anyway, that is knowledge of the forms, or rather, that is doing the forms encountering the forms directly, no possibility of error, because the forms are right there. And you're right there with them. And you're encountering reality, in its in its most naked form, right?

Clif Mark: 27:42

Yep. And that's the largest section of the line?

Earl Fontainelle: 27:45

Well, because you tell me, no one can decide it. Socrates certainly doesn't say that. Socrates never says which which ones are the highest and the lowest and Brumbaugh in his book, Plato's mathematical imagination, which is a very in depth investigation of all of these things in Plato, which I highly recommend to anyone, but don't think that by reading it, you're going to come out with a solution, since he points out that this idea that biggest must be best, is actually a really modern way of approaching the line. And for the pythagoreans. It's the lower numbers that are the most important 123, you know, up to 10, who cares about, you know, 5862. So the idea that the biggest part of the line is going to be the best part is maybe maybe exactly the opposite of what Plato meant.

Clif Mark: 28:38

The fact is, we don't know from the text, which is the biggest bit and which is the smallest bit? Do we not know, which is the biggest a bit? Or which is the smallest bit? Or do we not know if biggest means important? Or we don't know, either?

Earl Fontainelle: 28:49

We don't know, either? For sure, Socrates, does.

Clif Mark: 28:53

Everyone's drawing the same diagrams, you know, and all the translations. I know,

Earl Fontainelle: 28:56

I know. And it's silly. Now, if you ask me, and this is so Socrates doesn't really tell us what the ratio, he says there's a ratio, it's really important to use this ratio. And just like in the tomatoes, it's important, it's clear that ratios are really important to Plato. Now. We can look at the discussion of music and the Republic and see maybe where he's coming from on that, right, because his music theory is based on whole number harmonic ratios. Right? Pythagorean was so called Pythagorean music theory. So, five over four, one over two, that's your octave, all this kind of stuff. Right? Right. Um,

Unknown: 29:43

this is

Clif Mark: 29:43

the other parts of the Republic. Over years and years, I just kind of skimmed over it. Yes, I do not know. modern music, much less ancient Greek music.

Earl Fontainelle: 29:52

Yeah. Um, like with astronomy. So astronomy and music theory are both really important for education. of the The ruling class in this in the Republic, right? Why are they important? And how are they to be done? Well, they're not to be done. For example, astronomy is not to be done, Socrates tells us by actually stargazing because then things get messy, what we have to do is a kind of perfect, a strong mathematical astronomy, whereby the messiness of reality is not there, and you have some kind of pure mathematical,

Clif Mark: 30:25

we want astronomy without stars and music without sound harmony without sound.

Earl Fontainelle: 30:29

There you go. So it may be that that's where he's coming from with this ratio business. There's other possibilities.

Unknown: 30:39

But other the divided line isn't a specific ratio. It must be, but what is that ratio? No,

Earl Fontainelle: 30:45

I I personally have no doubt that the ratio in question is the so called fi in both modern mathematics, also widely known as the golden section of the golden mean, which is a ratio of one to 1.618033, blah, blah, repeating, it's an irrational number that repeats forever. Now, this ratio has some certain qualities, which make it very interesting, it appears in nature all the time, it appears in the way living things grow, it appears in shells, it appears in, you know, like in nature, it's just the way it's the sort of fundamental to the way organisms grow. But it also has mathematical properties. Have you talked about the golden section at all in your podcast? Yeah, I did not. Okay, cool. So let's just quickly get into it. Um, it's the only way to divine a line. whereby the short, let's say you divide a line by you have a line A, A, C, and you divided at B, such that A, B is the short piece, it's one, and BC is 1.61. A bit a bit a bit, that is the only possible way of dividing a line such that A B is to BC, as BC is to AC, in other words, that the short piece is to the large piece as the large piece is to the whole.

Clif Mark: 32:12

Okay, I'm going to put a diagram of this in the show notes. But this is the this is the ratio of the divided line, we're saying.

Earl Fontainelle: 32:19

That's my guess. And that's what we think. Why should we think that? Well, it's got to be a pretty important ratio for Plato to be going on about it. And as Maya, elephant's recent PhD thesis, the philosophical philosophical implications of interpreting Plato through musical analysis, University of New Mexico 2021, has shown without a shadow of a doubt, because she does quantitative number crunching digital analysis of the text. If you were to take the entire text of the Republic, and stretch it out as Greek letters with no spaces between them, right, so with a line, in other words,

Clif Mark: 33:01

one giant line of text one

Earl Fontainelle: 33:03

giant line of text, and you were to, to divide it exactly at the Golden cut, of that text, that cut would fall precisely within the discussion of the divided.

Clif Mark: 33:19

This, you know, this is reminding me of that movie pie that came out in the 90s. This is some very serious, mysterious stuff. So just to clarify, we're talking about a divided line that we think that Socrates is describing, it's divided in a specific ratio. Now, if we turn the text of the entire Republic into one line of letters, a giant string of letters, you're saying that the cut in the divided line, the discussion of divided line, happens in the same place as a line divided that ratio would be like if the text was divided?

Earl Fontainelle: 33:55

Yeah, if you were to divide the line, according to the golden section, the heart would fall, kind of in the middle of the discussion of the divided line, not right at the beginning, like right in the middle there for sure. So that's why is that an accident? Some people would just say, yeah, it's an accident, who knows that but it's a hell of an accident. It's a hell of an accident, especially in a piece of writing, which is famous in antiquity for being the one that Plato took the most time in writing and rewriting instruction, right? So we should expect if we expect anywhere in Plato to have some something like this, this is the dialogue expected in and actually Plato does stuff like this in lots of dialogues. So I think there's a strong reason to think about the golden section. The Golden section is something that we know the Egyptians and in a geometric way use the knew about we know that Near Eastern peoples knew about in a more mathematical like arithmetical way but we also know that the Greeks found irrational numbers hard to deal With and maybe even kind of unholy in the Pythagorean context. But it's really hard to get back to what the pythagoreans really thought about this stuff. It's all kind of lore. But certainly these kinds of important mathematical structures that had really interesting qualities like the platonic solids that are discussed in the timaeus, that Plato was really interested in these right, really interested in them. So why he brings up all this divided line as a kind of model for consciousness or cognition? I don't know. But it's, it's very clear that for Socrates in the Republic, it's really important that has to be this line with with a certain ratio. And he's clearly inviting us to figure out what the ratio is. I think the golden section is the is the obvious candidate, the obvious, standout candidate? What else would it be? I mean, I certainly can't think of any other obvious candidate for what this ratio might be. Although Why would there be an obvious candidate?

Clif Mark: 36:13

Right, what I'm saying is, but let's say let's say that is the ratio. Yeah. But then from what else will?

Earl Fontainelle: 36:20

How does that change our reading of the Republic? Good question.

Clif Mark: 36:23

I have to say, you know, oh, he's done this really neat trick?

Earl Fontainelle: 36:26

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. That to answer that question would be the answer. Why does Plato think geometry is so important? Yeah. And I don't know. I don't know. Socrates tells us some stuff about why geometry is going to be important for education of the rulers. But it has to do with the harmonies of the sole. Right. And it has Well, yeah,

Clif Mark: 36:51

it has to and that's also as as as mysterious as the geometry stuff.

Earl Fontainelle: 36:55

Yeah. The soul has to be made musical. So what does that mean? Exactly? Okay, we have to get back into a certain understanding of music, which is I mean, it's often called Pythagorean, but that's a historical, but let's call it based on whole number ratios, not based on actually playing the guitar, but based on

Clif Mark: 37:15

perfect whole number ratios in a kind of idealized scale system. And when he's giving, he's giving the curriculum, right and describing the study of music and astrology, and all that. He's saying, Well, look, you don't want to have all these people looking silly, twisting, they're torturing their strings and holding their ears up to sounding boards, right? We're, we're, we're not in the harmony for the sound, we're into harmony for the perfect proportions.

Earl Fontainelle: 37:38

Yeah. And the soul itself seems to be something that is proportional right? Here in the Republic, it's the threefold soul, of course, but also in the tomates, when when the demiurge constructs the soul stuff into the cosmos, he does it according to this ratio that's expressed in the famous platonic lambda diagram. And there's a lot of ratio stuff going on here, which is not the relevance of which to Plato's philosophy is not

Clif Mark: 38:16

obvious, at least not to Well, let me let me try out my very lazy theory on you, please, which is that? I, I totally buy that there are these sort of mysterious mathematical patterns? And that there are these puzzles that Plato is, you know, teasing us and making us do the work and trying purposely to affects us? I completely agree with that. But then the question is, is why and this is why I've been pressing on, like, what is the deeper meaning once we know this? Once we've seen part of the answer to this puzzle, or think that we have? What else? Does it tell us? And if? If the answer is nothing, then he might just be putting brain teasers in the work just because he likes brain teasers. And it may be that, you know, like, there's puzzles here, and yeah, there's a solution to them. And they're a fun little like side quest, when you're when you're reading or the book or hearing it recited, but it might not bear on like, a deep message of wisdom, or necessarily a change in what we might overall think is the like, ethical message of the Republic, whatever we think it is. I see what you're saying.

Earl Fontainelle: 39:27

I don't think it's fair to assume that the ethical message is the main message of the Republic. Right? Or of Plato, even though everyone talks about the Socratic turn toward ethics, in Greek philosophy. Here's why I think that are you familiar with the testimony to the the lecture on the good? Yes, but please, refresh everyone. So there's a student, we have testimony from Aristotle, and one of the His students that Plato gave this lecture, and this is also at the heart of the whole esotericism debate because it's so weird, this historical report that it's hard to know what the hell to make of it. But allegedly, he he announced, there was gonna be a lecture in Athens on the good. And everyone came, like just kind of all comers, right? It's just an open lecture or public lecture, and he baffled everyone, because they all came, this is what Aristotle says they all came thinking, they were gonna hear something about, you know, sort of the good in the normal Greek sense, the term like,

Clif Mark: 40:39

How To Make Money family, or how

Earl Fontainelle: 40:42

to politics, how should we live? Where How do you get a damania? How do you become live a blessed life, which is something, you know, everyone is really interested in, in this period, from Socrates onwards. And instead of that, what they got was the good is one and a bunch of mathematics.

Clif Mark: 41:07

And Plato,

Earl Fontainelle: 41:10

I think, that Plato in some way that I definitely do not claim to understand, and which may indeed change over time, because I'm not a unitary reader of Plato, I think he, I think reading Plato for a unitary messages is to take the example you gave earlier, it's like reading Shakespeare for a unitary message, expecting him always to say the same thing, you know, I'm probably not a clever way of reading a dramatist. But, um, you can certainly read him as someone who has some themes that he's really interested in. And I think he has some kind of map mathematical, esoteric ontology, and metaphysics like he really thinks that numbers are somehow deeply related to the structure of reality. And he's exploring that. And so when he says the good is one, he's none. I mean, that's, that's like a, he's like dropping a bomb. And then everyone great, Plato, you're nuts and walks out. And he's like, haha, this proves, but I was always thinking that, you know, very few are suited to be true philosophers, and then kind of off in a huff or whatever. But so I think that's what's going on, I think that's what's going on with the one or with the form of the good in the Republic, which doesn't seem to make any sense. If we're trying to look for like, an ethics of goodness. I mean, all kinds of analytic philosophers read this and say, oh, like, this isn't, this is a practical ethic. And this is how you would live it and always have reference to the good, but like, he's talking about something that's transcends all knowledge. It trends, it's a pain a taste to see us it's beyond essence, you can't be cognized in any way. What the hell is it? Right? Well, it's, well, it's one.

Clif Mark: 43:08

And well, it's you know, it's just funny, because Socrates says to glaucon, right, like, Listen, listen, I can't really explain this to you wouldn't get it. And then there's this lecture that Plato gives. And he says, Okay, I'll explain it to you. And then at the end, See, I told you, you didn't get it. Yeah, yeah.

Earl Fontainelle: 43:26

Now, what's the chronology? Did the republic come up first and then the electron the good happen? Did the electron the good happened, then know how to come up? No one knows why the hell Plato would have given this lecture in public when he has all these if he's supposed to be this esoteric guy who doesn't test those before swine? That's just a complete question. beggar that is, every time you think you know what's going on, it's kind of poking you in the eye and going, Oh, yeah, what about this? So it's a really tough one to make sense of, but anyway, for what it's worth, that's my feeling on Plato, I'm, you know, sort of agnostic about pretty much everything Plato is actually trying to say, but I do get the sense that he has this really deep obsession, stroke interest in the relationship between mathematical realities and the rest of reality.

Clif Mark: 44:20

Right. Okay, so so when I mean, I, I think like, again, I see that but then I don't know what to make of it, because maybe I just don't know enough about math in ancient Greek music, maybe

Earl Fontainelle: 44:32

you need to do 40 a 40 year education devoted to you know, kind of step by step introduction to these disciplines and then you would maybe be able to see the

Clif Mark: 44:41

stories. The stories I heard in childhood have already ruined my soul. So I'm not sure it's worth the worth the 30 year investment in solid geometry and so on.

Earl Fontainelle: 44:53

Yeah, we've, we've missed the window.

Clif Mark: 44:57

Let me ask you then about a couple have other of these mathematical things. So, as I came across some of them, I did know enough that I think Plato was being quite precise in his numbers. So I kept a lot of these specifics in in the podcast. But I didn't go deeply into the interpretation for, you know, all of the big questions that we're talking about now, which is that, look, if I'm doing half an hour, hour long episodes, I'm trying to get through a book or so of a republic. This is a deep rabbit hole to fall down. Yeah. So I'd like to play you a couple of clips from the podcast in maybe you can, I'll tell you what we said in the podcast, and maybe you can shed some, any other insight that you might have on them. So the first one is the nuptial number clip. And so this is book eight of the Republic. It's our episode called degenerate cities, degenerate souls, and glaucon and Socrates, they're discussing why the regimes degenerate Glau Khan's asking, we designed this perfect regime, why would it ever get worse? And this is Socrates, his explanation? Sounds good, Socrates. But how does their perfect regime fall apart? Shouldn't it last forever, nothing lasts forever. When the regime changes, it's probably because the rulers start making mistakes in their calculations for breeding new citizens. What do you mean, you know that for the birth of a divine being, you need a period of a perfect number. Sure, and for a human. For that, you need to take the first number where the power of roots combined with squares, with three dimensions and for defining limits of the numbers which create likeness and unlikeness, in which wax and wane make all things conversable and rational with one another. Of these, the ones that form the basis of the musical fourth, when coupled with five and three times increase produce two harmonies, the first harmony is a square the product of equals so many times 100. The second harmony is of equal length one way but a rectangle, one side is the square of a rational diagonal of a five by five square minus two times 100. The other side is three cubed times 100. taken as a whole, this geometrical number is what controls better and worse births. Of course, everybody knows that. Yes, they do. But the calculations still aren't easy. And when the guardians don't get the baby math perfect, the babies aren't perfect. I love how you put that together.

Earl Fontainelle: 47:27

you've captured beautifully. The the what I think is doubtless intentional comedy of that of that scene, where it's like, oh, yes, of course. That's perfectly clear. Socrates, you know?

Clif Mark: 47:40

Absolutely. Yeah. I don't think anyone can follow that. That's why.

Earl Fontainelle: 47:46

That's That's why I found that funny, but also puzzling, because I knew it's like, it's it jumps out at you as something no one can follow that too, for a number of reasons. One, mathematical terminology, like the terminology for arithmetic, like saying, odd and even add, subtract, and stuff like that isn't standard in Plato's time yet? So first of all, you don't always know what he says what he means when he says, like, is he saying the square of or is he saying the harmonic progression of you know this kind of these kinds of questions. Secondly, the text is almost certainly corrupt to some degree. And the reason we know this? Well, because all of Plato has been transmitted through sort of curated by Byzantine, medieval script Toria, and lots of errors crept in. But if you don't really know the terminology, it's hard to correct the text because why is he saying hecka toss or heck castoffs in this particular passage and this sort of thing? And thirdly, we have lots of Scalia to this, this and also the number of the tyrant passage from different manuscripts, which is, you know, people explaining what they think Plato means, and no one agrees on it. There's no right, there's tons of different end, including among the platanus tons of different construals of what the number is supposed to be. Now Brumbaugh, in Plato's mathematical imagination takes this the 345 thing to be referring to the 345 triangle, which is, of course, brings us to the famous Pythagorean theorem, which isn't that green and which was known about at least, you know, hundreds of years before Protagoras in the Near East. That can be demonstrated. But there is something special about this triangle, because it's a whole number triangle, right triangle. And as we know from geometry class, Pythagoras theorem tells us that the the three and four sides squared and added together will be the same number as the square of the hypotenuse, which is five, and there's this whole thing About the figurines having called Five, the number of marriage because it marries the three and the four. And so that's why Plato was referring to this. But all our evidence for this Pythagorean saying is extremely late comes way after agrarianism. So I don't know what the hell's going on in this passage. And I don't think we even necessarily can establish a text, there's, there have been lots of attempts to decode the right. The idea is that and yeah, it just says a bunch of stuff that I find quite unintelligible about Plato's, because Plato's talking about maybe genetics here, right? He's talking about how the human bloodlines kind of decay over time. And how it's impossible to predict exactly what the good strain is going to be. You know what I mean? Well, I

Clif Mark: 50:56

think it's more the latter than the former. Right. So I, the glass that I gave on it in the, in the podcast is that, look, this is obviously very complicated, and we don't have a solid text for it. And nobody agrees. But we do know for sure that it's really difficult. And so what he might be saying is that it's impossibly difficult to actually, in practice, run a perfect eugenics program, because you're not gonna be able to predict ahead of time, you know, which will make good births.

Earl Fontainelle: 51:25

I think I think it's safe to say that's one of the things that he's definitely saying, right? Yeah. But it's hard to avoid the idea that he really thinks that the numbers themselves are significant. And

Clif Mark: 51:39

ones. That's why I'm like Sudoku for Sudoku is saying, What's going on?

Earl Fontainelle: 51:45

Yeah. It's, it's a really good question. It's a really good question. I don't have the answer.

Clif Mark: 51:50

So okay, and let me let me play you one more. And this is one of my favorite number things in in Plato, because I used to even use this as a as a bonus question on exams. But this is when in book nine glaucon, in Socrates are talking about the life of the tyrant, and how unhappy he would be. And so they get into how you're going to be really happy if your soul listens to reason. But if you let one of the other kinds of desires, like spirit, or your appetites take charge, then you're going to be unhappy. And then they get into how much happier is the philosopher than the tyrant? Here's a clip. And that's why the tyrant is so unhappy. He's got the wildest desires. Exactly. And do you know how much less happy the tyrant is? No, tell me. It's simple. There are three kinds of pleasures and the tyrant is the third remove from the oligarchic man and the oligarchic man is at the third remove from the king, which was the tyrant at three times three removes from true pleasure. So based on the number of its length, the Phantom of the tyrants pleasure would be a plane. So the squaring the cube shows the exact difference. It sure does. It's a lot. It's 729 o'clock on the king lives 729 times more pleasantly than the tyrant. Wow, that is a lot. Beautiful. And yeah, I mean, simple. Right.

Earl Fontainelle: 53:20

Yeah. Again, nicely done. Bravo, the thing bring out that you bring up the comedy very well.

Unknown: 53:29

The

Earl Fontainelle: 53:31

so what do we make of that number? Do you have any theories?

Clif Mark: 53:35

No, it's a lot. I just, I mean, this is another one that just it's it's stuck in my brain because it was so like, aggressively and flamboyantly incomprehensible.

Earl Fontainelle: 53:46

Yeah. Now, one thing that is, I think, certainly going on here is some kind of astral thing. And the reason that was my next guest. The reason I think that is because what we know that Plato is really interested in astronomy, and no, nowhere is that better shown than in the Republic. And astronomy is just an a fledgling science in Greece in his time there, they're absorbing all this new knowledge from the Near East. Send centuries and even millennia of astral observations and stuff like this and kind of number crunching the numbers and coming up with this new science and trying to model things mathematically. Plato was definitely concerned with that project, right. And then we have tons of evidence that I won't get into about that. And 729 is 364 and a half, plus 364 and a half. So in other words, the number of days and nights in a year and why do we think That would have any significance because right at the end of the passage, Socrates says something like. So this is obvious, right? cloud Khan and globe, Khan response is obvious. Well, he says something like, it's as clear as night and day would be. But actually, he said something more along the lines of this is clearly true as long as day and night and months and weeks and years hold sway over mankind or something like that. So he makes a reference to time as a kind of astral phenomenon, as you know, something that's marked out by the movement of, well, the stars and planets, what we would call the earth. And so that's that references makes it very clear that we're supposed to look toward time. And this value happens to have the exact value of a year, it nights and days in a year. Right. So that's clearly some part of it. But what that means is another question.

Clif Mark: 56:06

Right? Well, so I mean, that's, this is why I'm loath to say, I have any theories, because I've read the 729 the number of days and nights. And I'm like, Okay, cool. Interesting. I'm like, What is it? What else does it tell me? Except that there's like, it just points to this entire kind of below surface mathematical subtext that I can't fully get to grips with it just like it. It hints that it's there. Yeah.

Earl Fontainelle: 56:35

Yeah, I'm with you there. That's that's my position as well. That's my considered position. I have no idea what he's on about.

Clif Mark: 56:44

Well, you know, look, I guess, I guess, I guess over the years, we've we've come some distance from not knowing what he's on about to like,

Earl Fontainelle: 56:52

knowing that you don't know what he's on. And still don't know, maybe that brings us to the second level of knowledge that Socrates talks about in the apology, right. It's not just pure ignorance. It's knowledge that you don't know. That's the kind of informed knowledge of your ignorance, which is better

Clif Mark: 57:06

known unknowns as we had from another epistemologists.

Earl Fontainelle: 57:09

Yeah, well, maybe a slightly lower grade epistemology. So yeah, I think that's where any safe bet is in platonic interpretation is any, we at least can kind of intelligently say, I have no idea what he's on about. And I would go so far as to say he's, he's on about something astronomical. And because he said, because of the hints in the tech because of the kind of playful hints about the days and nights and that kind of thing?

Clif Mark: 57:39

Do we like, do we know a lot about Greek astronomy? Are there scholars out there who are like experts in Greek astronomy and puzzling this together? I'm sure there must be

Earl Fontainelle: 57:46

Yeah, absolutely. We know, much less than we would like to know, largely because so much is lost. But we really do know a lot. We don't know, for example, we don't know how the exact mechanisms of knowledge transfer from the Near East to Greece, have all this astronomical, observational knowledge. But we know what happened for what happened. We know Plato is interested in it. We know Plato's associates, Aristotle, and your doctors of needles both put forth mathematical models of the cosmos, that kind of work for observational prediction and stuff like that. We know Plato's interested in that problem. And indeed, in the myth of Earth, which I don't know if you've talked about this, but one of the really weird bits about the myth of her and that that's already saying something right, because the myth of her is very weird. Earth is traveling in this plane, with all the other with all these souls, which are dead people who are on their way to being given the next lot, their next incarnation. Basically, they're sort of traveling through this

Clif Mark: 58:56

other world. So just as a refresher for the list of the myth lover is the closing myth of the entire Republic that Socrates tells the glaucon it's the one about the afterlife. Sorry, go go on our author about to choose their next life.

Earl Fontainelle: 59:08

Yeah. Well, here's another example of where, you know, he is ostensibly giving a kind of myth with an ethical message, which is like something along the lines of you fundamentally are responsible for your lot in life and virtue is its own reward. And those who live virtuously will be rewarded for it with a better

Clif Mark: 59:30

the actions you choose determine the person you become.

Earl Fontainelle: 59:32

Yeah, and he is saying that, but he's also saying some crazy Astro geometrical because as they're walking along, they see in the distance, this giant kind of rainbow column, and it's all very kind of psychedelic and you don't know where you are. There's kind of they're supposed to be in the traditional underworld, but it's very suddenly they're not anymore. And they walk they keep walking and they come to this place where they see the spindle of heaven. Which is a spindle, you have to think of an ancient Greek spindle, which is this sort of whirling stick with a round bit at the bottom. That is like acts like a flywheel kind of keeps it spinning like a top. And it's being spun by address data, who is a personification of necessity or an uncanny? Sorry, it's, it's being spun by a non head like so necessity. And when Earth then suddenly can look down on the world of the spindle, he sees that it's cut out. It's a bit difficult to explain, but if you imagine a,

Clif Mark: 1:00:47

I explained it in terms of like, concentric, like balls sitting within one. Yeah,

Earl Fontainelle: 1:00:51

exactly. So it's like, it's like, it's a spherical model of the cosmos has been cut in half. So you can look down into it and see each ring within it, with the earth at the center. And Plato hints at all these different planetary spheres, and he gives different sizes for them and different colors for them. But it's all very unclear. And proclus, in his commentary, says, oh, there's at least two different versions of this. And the planetary ordering doesn't match any planetary ordering, we know from another source, which in itself doesn't disqualify it. Because we have other planetary orderings from it to antiquity, which are just one offs, you know, there's a lot of planetary orderings out there, the mithraic ones, and so on. So he sees this model of the cosmos, and it's got a harmony of the spheres each, each sphere has a siren sitting on it, and she's singing a note. And because there's seven spheres, in all, you get a nice harmony of the spheres, which is like an entire seven tone scale. And the three fates are sitting around kind of lending a hand in turning the outermost sphere to keep it moving. And then this kind of Harold comes and says, Okay, it's time for this fates to give you your next lives. Here's the lots blah, blah, blah, and then they choose their their next slides, and it's a little complicated, but I guess the point I wanted to bring up here is, you have this very mysterious and weird excursus into what seems to be cosmic model building. First of all, in the underworld, which is a funny begins to have a look at the heavens, isn't it but then there's, there's reasons for this from the mystery cult traditions, and the ODIs. That whole thing, I found it so difficult to

Clif Mark: 1:02:37

picture, the like typography what was going on in the myth of her when I first heard it, it felt like, again, you know, you're going to the underworld, but you're in heaven, it's a very spacey feel. You're looking at the cosmos, it just felt very, like MC Escher impossible geometry. And confusing and, and what I did in the podcast is I gave, you know, the ethical message those interpretations. And I, in this case, because the myth of resection is so long, I just did not include all the tiny details that obviously point to some other interpretation that I knew I wasn't gonna have time to get into. Yeah. But yeah, this stuff is, is fascinating. So, so what do you think they meant, but he meant by it? Well,

Earl Fontainelle: 1:03:23

good question. Um, I think here, I can maybe give you a better answer. I still not gonna say what I think Plato means because I don't get Plato. You know, someone I don't know who said it. But someone said that the classical period is the dream time of the modern West. And I think there's something in that. So the dream time is, this is a, you know, an idea appropriated from Australian Aboriginal peoples who have this idea of the dream time, which is this sort of Kwazii it's this ancient period, where ancestor spirits and sort of quasi godlike beings were kind of roaming the land and doing all kinds of stuff. And and I think it's significant that the dream time because, you know, we all know what dream logic is, like. In fact, in a dream, you can have an experience quite like the myth of her where you're sort of like, well, it was like, I was in New York, but it wasn't New York, and then I went in this train, but then there was a basement in the train, and I went down to the basement and I was at a party. And then I saw my brother, you know, like that kind of crazy. Uh huh. That makes sense in the dream, but then when you try to explain it to like philosophers, or, you know, scholars of philosophy, try to say, well, it's clear that URL must not be looking at actually, the cosmic spindle, but at a model of the cosmic spin. Because otherwise, how could he be looking down at it? It's like, it's stupid. It's a very stupid thing. You know what I mean? Like Plato actually had a diagram in front of him. So, so think dream logic, and you won't go wrong when you're looking at any depiction of the other world, that's my other world interpretation, rule of Lake. And so my point here is that the underworld of the other world has landmarks, but it doesn't have mappable topography. So that's the kind of space that arises and in that in constructing the space of this rather psychedelic and shifting way, where suddenly they're on a plane, you know, he goes to the underworld, that's clear, he descends because he's his bed and his soul, his body. But then he's in this plane with these gates in this in the sky. AND gates in the ground is a woman I thought you wonder, then how can there be a sky? Oh, well, I guess there's the sky. Okay, no problem. That's the kind of thing we're dealing with. And in Plato, in doing that is being really true to this Greek, traditional other world construction weather, where the landscape dream logic of the other world. Oh, yeah,

Clif Mark: 1:05:49

I know. Okay, we've been on the we've been on the phone for a while. So I want to I don't want to take up too much of your time. But I do want to know if you have a short answer, because if it's not a short answer, like this is I know going to be a very, very long answer. But I realized that like, we're sitting here, and we're talking about all the math stuff in Republic, and we haven't even really talked about the mathematical education of the Guardians. Yeah. Right. And so this is this thing, and you go through, and it's like, what will they learn? Well, the most important subject is arithmetic, and then geometry, and then solid geometry, and then astronomy, astronomy, which turns out to be geometry, because it's astronomy without stars, and then harmony, which turns out to be math, because it's ratios, its ratios without without music. And so, in general, what do you make about that, but also even just very specifically, the short answer, he says, Why should they study arithmetic? And, and he says, Oh, well, because it'll get them thinking about the one in the many. Yeah. What is that?

Earl Fontainelle: 1:06:55

Okay, well, the one, let me go back to the first the first thing. Okay, one thing that's interesting in what Plato is doing here, is that you start with number arithmetic, then you move to number in space. geometry, flat space, yeah, flat space, then you move to number in three dimensional space, solid geometry, then you move to number in three dimensional space, and movement, moving astronomy, then you move to number in three dimensional space movement in time. Music, harmony. Right. So he's like, adding layers each time

Clif Mark: 1:07:31

a dimension on each. Yeah,

Earl Fontainelle: 1:07:32

yeah. So that's, I think, the progression. Now, what was the next question? Well, what's the one in the many? The one in the many Whoa. So the one in the many is, it can be so many things, but you know, that but also in Plato's unwritten doctrines, the or garrafa dogma that, that Aristotle talks about? Plato gives a big basic ontology, you know, so so he, like all the pre socratics, who came before him, he says, he asked the question, what is the world made from? Right? faily said water and zegura said, news, etc. Plato says to him, the one and he said, do us the dyad, the indefinite diet, the owl restores do us. So that might be what he's talking about these these kind of, in an almost kind of naive way. This this belief that the universe arises from actual metaphysical principles, which are the one and the two, or the dyad, which, which is once you have to you have many, right, you have multiplicity. And this, you have to understand Greek numerical theory in this like so one is not seen as a number in Greek in Plato's time, it's seen as like the sort of mother of all numbers, but it's not itself a number that's important to understand, as background. But that's one reading of the one in the many, right? It's a knowledge of the ultimate principles of reality. So it's, it's just like saying, It's analogous to a modern physicists saying, if you want to understand the ultimate question of reality, you have to understand the Big Bang, or something like that, right? You know what I mean?

Clif Mark: 1:09:20

You have to know where it's like more abstract, the abstract metaphysical Big Bang,

Earl Fontainelle: 1:09:25

yeah, except we, as we know, played for Plato, the term abstracts a bit misleading to describe metaphysical realities and Plato, right, because it's more like this world that we can see. And touch is a bit abstract. It's abstracted forms. It's it's single Unity's that have been abstracted out into numerous instantiations. But the forms are unified there. They're the minimal possible number. They're like the point of the pyramid and we're living at the bottom of the pyramid. So if that makes sense,

Clif Mark: 1:09:56

I you know, there's also something he says about When he's trying to explain, you know, the whole point of this education on the explicit part of it is, well, you know, you want to turn people towards the forum's right. You want to get people wondering and doubting, and they'll start questioning maybe. And so his justification for arithmetic, he's like, don't worry about counting your armies and everything that's just like pedestrian. What you need to be doing is like thinking about this one many paradox. And I think he he explained something about how if you look at the same thing from different, doesn't the same thing always look sometimes like one sometimes like many

Earl Fontainelle: 1:10:36

Yeah. And in philosophy to this day. The problem of one in many remains a huge, huge problem. Same the problem of universals, it's often it's often talked about as well. There, for example, Socrates paradoxes, which is a very, very big and potent class of paradoxes, which seem to be kind of very difficult to escape from in any logical system. Which is how

Clif Mark: 1:11:05

many grains make a heap?

Earl Fontainelle: 1:11:06

Yeah, exactly. At what point do you go from having not a heap to a heap, there has to be a point, logically, there has to be some point at which you add one more grain, it's suddenly a heap. It wasn't a heap before, except you can never really specify that. And that's, that's a kind of illustration of a problem that really does apply to when we talk, you know, like, if you're talking about a person as being one person, yeah, but you can chop them up into two pieces.

Clif Mark: 1:11:30

Get them? And also the heap is still is still many grains. Yeah.

Earl Fontainelle: 1:11:34

So problems. Many, I think, you know, our fundamental problems of logic, and the kind of logic, incidentally, that was very much being done in the eleatic School of philosophy that we know, Plato was so engaged with entities and permanent Jesus followers. So it may be that that's part of the picture here. He's He's grappling with these logical problems of one and many that those guys have posed. Yeah. What I suggest is you read the poem entities, Plato's permanent things. Which, like, if you think you don't understand it now, read the amenities, and then you'll realize the absolute depths of your ignorance, right? He rinses the problem of one and many to the point where you're like, the one exists and doesn't exist and nothing exists and everything exists and minus and minus on your head explodes. Like that. That's the

Clif Mark: 1:12:30

Well, I mean, I get a lot of head exploding from playdough. And okay, yeah, yeah, one of one of the things I want to mention is that, you know, we were talking about the divided line and how our every word in syllable may be intentional in Plato, because it's the republicans cutting to such precise proportions. But reading it, and particularly rewriting it in a way that would be I thought, listenable for a regular set of ears, even like from my set of ears, unprimed by many years of study, and just like the pigheaded determination, when you just read the text, it's like, it feels I can't feel the rhythms of it. It feels like some parts go on forever. Some parts are really short, some parts he's just looping around. And these arguments that don't make much sense. And I find him incredibly frustrating. So I want to think that like, you know what, he's a good philosopher. He's just sloppy with some kind of form. He's just like, his pacing is poor. But I guess it's not I guess he was just playing an entirely different game, that that my ears can't hear.

Earl Fontainelle: 1:13:39

I hear you. I, I have a theory about that. It's a it's something that's coming to me recently. I'm rereading the republican for the last sort of year. I think he has, I think his writing process went something along the lines of and he might have, I do think it's possible that he wrote the Republic, or he wrote and rewrote and, and he sort of added new ideas when he rewrote so that eventually, because like, you know, you have the tripartite soul, and then he kind of just drops it. And suddenly you have the four part cognition and it's like, how does that fit into the tripartite so and even says, like, four parts of the soul? These you know, so it's like, what I thought we had three parts. So it was like, Yeah, yeah, let's

Clif Mark: 1:14:21

start with the two parts the soul

Earl Fontainelle: 1:14:23

Yeah, like Wait, what? So, that being the case, I kind of feel like the way he might have written it without getting into any details, because we just do not know. And this is completely speculative. His he had structure he had landmarks, he had in fact, a structure based on musical theory, which I think Maya elephant and others are right. That that is the basic over overarching structure of the Republic that is based on these these important consonant harmonies. Whether intentionally or not, we don't know And sometimes he's putting in filler material. Yeah, he has he knows he has this many. He's probably dividing up by lines, which was the normal way to divide up.

Clif Mark: 1:15:14

I'm just I'm just so glad to hear someone else say that.

Earl Fontainelle: 1:15:19

He's dividing it up by lines. He knows. So, okay, what have I done here better to draw? Okay, I've done my bit about a divided line, and I need to get to this bit. Know, I've done I've done all my amazing images. And now the next big thing is going to be referenced in music. So how do I get there? Okay, well, I'll throw in a bit about, you know, blah, blah. So like, the bit about the whole attack on Homer. And the problem with Homer, you know, which is so vexing to so many people, because he's, throughout the whole Republic, he's quoting Homer all the time and stuff like that. Yeah.

Clif Mark: 1:15:51

Yeah. I mean, I love the problem with Homer. That's one of my favorite bits, the themes of the Republic, actually,

Earl Fontainelle: 1:15:57

it may be that some of that is just in there, because he needs to he knows he has, like 500 lines to use up to get ready next bit, which has to be placed in a certain spot. So he is, I think there's filler material.

Clif Mark: 1:16:11

I really do. I mean, I guess it's like, almost like the only way to do it. If If you want to hit these landmarks. Yeah, Don? Yeah.

Earl Fontainelle: 1:16:19

Um, I could be wrong. But I do and and that would explain the, the kind of weird impression, you get reading it, right, tell me if you have this impression as well, where you feel like, on the one hand, this is a master at work. And I'm reading like a piece of architecture. On the other hand, he kind of some of the bits, like the baseboards, and some of the cabinets are kind of, he kind of didn't do the same quality work on those as he did other bits. And he's sort of like fudged a few bits to get the whole thing together. That's the kind of impression I get.

Clif Mark: 1:16:52

Yeah, that is, that is such a good way to put it because, like, some of it is just so precise, and so carefully written, it can't be an accident. But so much of it just feels so sloppy and looping that it couldn't be on purpose. Yeah. Which may go some way to explaining why I found it so challenging to turn this book into like a radio play. That was listenable, and comprehensive, comprehensible.

Earl Fontainelle: 1:17:24

Yeah, welcome to comprehensible and also kind of pleasant listening. Right?

Clif Mark: 1:17:28

Right. Because I mean, that kind of thing that you might listen to, if you weren't, you know, being threatened with flunking out of a degree or something like that.

Earl Fontainelle: 1:17:36

Yeah. And I think, you know, that isn't really what the Republic is. So you're, you're doing something that Plato is not intending, he's intending this thing. Putting aside the issue of the esoteric altogether for a minute, he's intending this to be difficult and recursive. And it's, it's either a total mess, or what I think is more likely, it's like all these layers of self referentiality and self contradiction, which are meant to bust our minds open and get us not thinking in the terms we think that we are thinking in and thinking, you know, outside of all conceivable boxes, especially when it's I

Clif Mark: 1:18:18

rise. And so I think that's, I think that's absolutely right. He's building, he's building brain teasers and purposes to, you know, precisely to vaxis as you say, but, but I read enough times in the secondary person that, you know, Plato's this literary genius, you got to attend to the dramatic movement of the dialogues. And I said, Well, maybe it's true. Why don't I've never seen anyone attend to the dramatic dial movement of the dialogues, because they just, you know, they'll say it, but let me actually try to do it. And that's, that's why I decided to like rewrite the thing. And sometimes I was successful. But other times, I was like, you know, what, this isn't a dramatic movement really isn't the thing. There's all these brain teasers in here as well. And it's hard to do justice to them both. I like it.

Earl Fontainelle: 1:19:06

I like what you're saying, um, you know, to, to re approach that question, though, you've picked, maybe aside from the laws or something like that,

Unknown: 1:19:17

you know, the worst style,

Earl Fontainelle: 1:19:19

the worst dialogue to do that with, like, do that with the use of fro or the apology, and it's like, a beautiful, it's the phaedrus

Clif Mark: 1:19:26

is cute, you know, flirting by the river,

Earl Fontainelle: 1:19:28

and it's a story it has. It has, you can read it at numerous levels, it's got, it's got thrills and spills, it's got comedy, it's got the sublime. It kind of has a nice bow tied on the end. And it's quite, it's not super open ended, even though it's a poetic in some ways. That's Plato as a dramatist writing a satisfying draw. Well,

Clif Mark: 1:19:49

yeah, but good in theory is a political theory podcast. And so I was asking less which of the dialogues makes the most compelling radio, play and more What's the most compelling and interesting way to present? Plato's Republic? Yeah. Anyway, I do want to ask you one more thing that I think is germane to the whole idea of an esoteric hidden truth in the dialogues that's only seeable by a few or invisible. And that's the analogy make. That's the analogy that Plato makes, or Socrates makes with knowledge and the sun. Yep. So the idea is that be holding with your mind, the knowledge of the forms is like looking at the sun with your eyes. And what that tells me is that you can't understand them. Because we all know that if you stare into the sun, you're not going to be able to see, it's blinding. So that's not the only interpretation. What do you make of this, of this metaphor? Anything?

Unknown: 1:20:52

Yeah.

Earl Fontainelle: 1:20:55

Yeah, there's all kinds of interesting ways you could run with that. What Plato seems to be saying, though, is or at least, or I should say, what Plato Socrates seems to be saying, in certain parts of the Republic, is that for a very small number of people, you can look at the sun, you can look at the sun of the good. And, and it's interesting, he chooses the sun as a metaphor, because, of course, you can't stare at the sun, you know, when, when the guys come out of the cave, and in this very naturalistic, sort of metaphor of the cave, yeah. And he's saying, you know, glaucon, then they're gonna go at this rough and steep ascent, and they're gonna come out into the outer world. And at first, they're gonna be blind, right? And goblins like necessarily Socrates. And then what isn't it logical to think glaucon, that they're then going to start to look at indirect things, shadows and reflections, shadows and reflections. And then they'll be able to look at actual things. And then finally, they'll be able to stare directly at the sun itself. And it's like, hang on a minute, no one can stare directly at the sun, it'll burn your eyes out, like that's a bizarre metaphor. Is that? Is that bizarre? Because he's just not being naturalistic? He's just, we're supposed to be thinking in terms of a kind of, again, like a dream logic? Or is he intentionally putting in this weird, like, kind of reference to a transcendence of the human condition? It's like, what if there were someone who could stare at the sun? Obviously, that would be someone very special, indeed, someone who can actually

Clif Mark: 1:22:23

fly. I always just assumed he was just that was one of those times he's stating the impossibility of it, right? Maybe he's like, what would it mean to understand the form of the good is what it would mean to be able to stare in the sun, which is like humans can't do it? Possibly, or? Or you could say, like, humans, it's not possible in the physical world because of our bodies, but maybe you can do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Earl Fontainelle: 1:22:46

Maybe the soldiers can. Right. Yeah. That's that's one possible reading for sure. It's certainly emphasizing that it's not going to be I mean, it's when when I say it's not going to be easy, I mean, it's really not going to be talking about super human beings who have transcended what it is to be what's normally thought about being a human being right. And when he talks about the highest segment of the divided line, whether that be the big one, or the little one, Socrates says, And as for the highest one, you know what? Let's move on. Yeah.

Clif Mark: 1:23:25

So you wouldn't get it anyway.

Earl Fontainelle: 1:23:27

Yeah, you wouldn't get it anyway, let's move on to something else. So if that isn't a kind of little tease, like a very significant tease at an empty space in the dialogue that you're being invited to fill? I don't know what is.

Clif Mark: 1:23:42

Well, I mean, funny, you should pick exactly that language. Because like, as I said, my, my episode on that section of the book was called horny for the good. And the kind of way I think about it sometimes is that there are philosophers who want to tell you something. And there are philosophers who want to get you questioning, there are philosophers who are about satisfaction or desire, the ones who are like about the nuts or the Boehner. And as far as I can tell, Socrates is all about the Boehner. That's why he brings glaucon right to the edge Anglicans, literally yelling like, tell me by Apollo Tell me what the form of the good he's like. No, I can't.

Earl Fontainelle: 1:24:19

Socrates is literally about the Boehner if you read this. Exactly. It's uh, yeah. Like, yeah, it's not even met, you don't even that's actually a really good metaphor, because it's not even a metaphor. He's when? What's his What's his name? You know, by the sounds of it. He says, you know, this one time, Socrates and I were in bed all night and I was like, all like rubbing up against him and trying to get him to, you know, and Socrates was cool as a cucumber and never knotted. Yeah.

Clif Mark: 1:24:51

That's really part of the appeal of Plato. And that is why I'm always suspicious of all this esoteric stuff. That's why I'm always like, you know, Is he signaling this vast underground world of happiness? Or is he being a tease? Which is certainly he's also that at least Yeah.

Earl Fontainelle: 1:25:15

It's a really it's a really interesting question. I don't answer it. I don't I don't have a, an answer myself. And the reason I don't have an answer is because Plato is in the dream time, his his way of thinking, the fundamental way he thinks the fundamental way he uses language is so different from modern ways of thinking that I can't really enter into it and and plotinus, who writes in the third century, see, who has a extremely abstruse highly apophatic take on the highest reality, which is the one which of course he finds in Plato esoterically expressed in the dialogues, it's incredibly difficult. He says on numerous occasions, I can't put it into words no one can it's beyond the human can. I still totally get him more on the one than I get Plato on just normal. Talk about fries and stuff like that, because platanias is recognizably thinking in terms that are much more similar to modern ways of thinking than Plato. So yeah, so

Clif Mark: 1:26:25

yeah, shall we shall we conclude on that note of bafflement in the impossibility of ever glimpsing the depths of of our hero Plato?

Earl Fontainelle: 1:26:37

I like it so good. It's always good to end on a note of bafflement.

Clif Mark: 1:26:41

What is it is your tagline till next time stay esoteric?

Earl Fontainelle: 1:26:45

Yeah, in this case, I would say even be like the, the eternal reputation of Plato as a literary Craftsman and philosopher par excellence, and stay esoteric.

Clif Mark: 1:27:00

Thank you very much.

Earl Fontainelle: 1:27:01

Hey, thanks for having me on. Man. It's been a delight chatting with you about this stuff.

Clif Mark: 1:27:24

Thank you, of course to Earl fontanelle. for being our guest on the show. You can find his podcast on your podcast app or@schweppe.net. Also, special thanks to Simon Dixon and Murray for deciding to support good in theory on Patreon. If you want to do the same, go to patreon.com slash good in theory, you can find us there. And if you've been listening for a while, and you think you're getting anything out of the show learning something, then remember, you can help other people find it by leaving us a rating or review. Thanks again. See you next time.