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Anyway, back to the podcast.
Hello and welcome back to Pods with Nick and James after this very long hiatus.
My fault. I'm very sorry.
Today's topic is Plato and how Plato remains relevant two and a half thousand years on.
James, did you have any insight into Plato before I suggested this topic?
So I know. Well, I know you're going to give a lowdown of Plato.
I know that he. So three major philosophers in ancient Athens and ancient Greece hold more fame in Western thought and Western philosophy than any others.
Like I'd heard of these three philosophers who will go into in just a moment way before I'd heard of Phaleis of Mylita or is it Taosong?
Yeah.
Or any of you know, with the exception.
Oh, OK. With the exception of maybe Buddha.
But then you could argue that's more of a holy figure than a philosopher.
OK, so all right. Already.
Yeah, already put my foot in it.
With the exception of holy figures.
These three philosophers have had more of an influence on Western thought and weirdly enough, medieval and Renaissance thought more than.
Any other individuals and the most incredible thing about these three philosophers, if I'm thinking about the right three, is that one taught the other who taught the other.
That's it.
Yeah.
So do you want to do you want to give a background?
Yeah, sure. So Plato was the middleman.
He was a he was born as aristocles in 427 BC and lived until 348 BC.
He was taught by Socrates and idolized people like Pythagoras, Heraclitus and Permanides.
And he taught Aristotle.
So right there, you've got some of the most famous philosophers of all time.
Within a tight little knit bundle, he was taught by Socrates and he taught Aristotle.
So that's why I said he was a middleman.
The middle of the sandwich.
The middle of the sandwich of some of the greatest minds of greatest philosophical minds of all time.
He was a rich philosopher, one of the more privileged, shall we say, of his time, born into quite a rich family.
But he set out to help people reach a state that he called eudaimonia.
I think I'm reading that wrong.
Essentially, it's just fulfillment and wholeness. And he founded the first ever academy in the Western world,
which I just thought would be a good starting point before Socrates.
There was no center for education.
It was just you self endeavor.
It was literally just self led in individual pupils.
The weird thing is, some people might talk about the Pythagorean school.
But although the Pythagorean school does predate the academy, the academy was something where...
So it was on Plato's family's land in a gymnasium.
And you're right, although it doesn't have all of the institutions of a modern day school,
it's the first one where people could just show up.
Plato didn't charge people to listen to him or to use whatever facilities there were there.
But it's different from the Pythagorean school in that the Pythagorean school, for lack of a better way,
was a bit of a cult. You were either all in or all out.
Whereas Plato seems to have been far more lenient and far more...
You show up, you listen, you leave whenever you want to leave.
Whereas with the Pythagorean school, that didn't happen.
Either you were in or you were out. Whereas Plato seems to be...
Plato's philosophy was very much...
If he was going to be seen to maintain the philosophies that he did,
having a price tag on his teaching almost contradicted that entire philosophy, didn't it?
Oh, absolutely.
One of the...
So a quick shout out to some of my sources.
I've gone for, again, a very short introduction to Plato.
I've also downloaded an audio version of Plato's Republic.
It's 12 hours long, if that gets you an idea of just how much information is in there.
But within the first 40 minutes, Plato is making sarcastic...
Well, Pliton, that's a whole other kettle of fish.
Okay, so just really, really quickly, and I'm sorry to our listeners that there isn't more of a...
When me and Nick do these things, there's not a script.
So just once again, I know I'm going to go...
This is in topic, but I realize it's a weird way of doing it.
One of the reasons why so many people know more about Plato than his teacher Socrates
is that Socrates saw the written form as dead.
He loved debating with people using the spoken word.
Socrates wrote nothing, or at least we don't have anything.
Plato wrote absolutely loads, and we've got 51...
What's called the 51 Byzantine manuscripts for some of his work.
And Aristotle was a very nice mix of the two.
Like he did a lot of speaking and he did have published works,
but a lot of his published works weren't as organized as Plato's.
Plato's were very, very organized.
I had a point. I've lost it. I'm very, very sorry.
Yeah, get us back on track.
No worries. You mentioned a couple of his more famous books.
The most incredible thing I think about Plato's writings is that most of the time
they were written in the style of a conversation with Socrates.
He would normally have Socrates as like a cameo appearance, do it all,
one of the main storytellers actually, debating the point that he was trying to put across.
Some of the more famous books have gotten written down here.
You obviously said it then, The Republic.
You've got The Symposium, The Laws, The Meno, The Apology.
There's like, you said 51 or 57 manuscripts.
Yeah, called the 51 Byzantine manuscripts.
Yeah, and these are all incredible ideas that he's written down.
And nine times out of ten, Socrates is like one of the main characters of his writing.
That's absolutely right.
One of his only books where Socrates doesn't feature at all is The Laws.
He's pretty much in every other book.
So highly esteemed.
And this is the thing, wasn't Socrates jailed towards the end of his life?
Okay, so everyone thinks that Galileo was killed.
Galileo wasn't killed, he was imprisoned.
Socrates literally was killed.
Yeah, he died in prison, didn't he?
Killed in prison.
But this is the weird thing as well.
He had so many chances to get out of it.
So the way that the old courtrooms in Athens used to work were that there were no professional lawyers.
You made your own defense.
Whereas Socrates got so annoyed by his opponents claiming that he was corrupting the youth, claiming that he was this, that, and the other.
When it came to what would happen normally is the, so rather than a judge saying this is the maximum sentence, this is the minimum sentence, jury, what's your verdict?
Or the jury coming out with a verdict of guilty or not guilty and then an individual judge choosing what the thing was.
The way that it happened in ancient Athens for Socrates' trial was that they, there doesn't seem to be much mediation.
There was, sorry, the prosecution would say what they would like to happen and what they feel the person deserves.
Then the defendant would say what they would like to happen and what they feel they deserve.
And then a group of, and then the jury would decide which of those two things happened.
So the people who brought Socrates on trial were saying that he deserves to die through poison, which I guess was a slightly more humane way of dying back then, considering all of the horrible,
I mean human beings are very good at figuring out horrible ways of killing each other so that was like the more humane, okay this person needs to die, but they were sensible with their mind.
Was there the ancient lethal injection?
Yeah, exactly, essentially.
Then Socrates had had enough, yeah, Socrates had had enough and he just, rather than saying, well I think I should, I deserve to leave or I deserve to live,
which he probably would have been allowed to, even though Socrates is renowned for being an unpopular figure in Athens at the time, because he just spent all of his time disproving everyone and not putting things forward.
But he was also honest in that when he says people say that I disprove things and don't put anything forwards, they're right, I won't, I literally, that's the one thing I can't disprove, is their criticism of me and of my rhetoric.
But sorry, when it came to his trial, Socrates literally said, well, I'm doing Athens a service by disproving people who claim to have knowledge who don't have knowledge, those who are trying to wield power unjustly,
though I am unveiling people's eyes of falsehoods, so you say I deserve death, I deserve to live in the palace, to have a free meal every day, and he came up with this huge list of demands.
And it was just like, okay, so what you've just done is you've given your terms as so outlandish that we can't stand by you.
Exactly, exactly. So unsurprisingly, because he had pissed off so many people over the years, more people voted for him to die than they did for him to be lauded with wealth.
And unfortunately, as well, it's also somewhat recorded that he was given a month to prepare for his death because people weren't executed during this religious ceremony whilst this boat went on this voyage, but I don't know enough about it.
And he had a month. And the general consensus seems to be from other historians is that he could have escaped at any point.
Nobody really, really cared. It wasn't like he was stuck horribly in a dungeon or that the guards were following him around all the time.
He just stayed put. And then when he was presented with the poison, he drank it. So he was put to death, but it was also very much his own frustration with his opponents that killed him ultimately.
Yeah, I can understand some of his frustration like Socrates. Socrates had actually fought as a warrior.
For the city of Athens as a heavily armed soldier, so nobody could claim that he wasn't loyal to Athens. Yet he had been literally condemned to death by the society that he had fought for earlier in his life.
Simply because he was doing what he thought to be right, but what he thought to be right was going around and annoying loads of people by proving them wrong. Which unfortunately back then, if you were proved to be wrong, it wasn't like nowadays where you can just say, I was wrong.
Shrug your shoulders. The moment you said, I was wrong, shrug your shoulders. People said, ah, well, how can we trust you about anything?
Yeah. See, I think that leads heavily into. So Plato had an intense unhappiness about the way that democracy worked and still works to this day.
He saw it as unfair that average Joes were allowed to vote.
Because it led to the polls being diluted with people that didn't have a bleeding clue what they were doing.
It's unfortunate that a lot of some, well, some of the more right wing of politicians kind of hide behind Plato when putting these forward, some of these views forwards like.
And it's a valid criticism of democracy that somebody who's better informed has the same amount of power as somebody who's less informed. Sorry, go ahead.
No, absolutely. And he actually has an he describes it like a boat. A boat has three members, should we say, of or three compartments of crew.
You've got the owner of the boat, which is this burly, strong, captain like figure that has no idea about sailing, but just is the strongest guy on the ship and therefore does like tells people what to do.
You've got the sailors who quarrel all the time and argue and can never make a decision. And then you've got the navigator who is the most clued in about where to go and what to do and how to sail and all the rest of it, but has no interest in leading at all.
And this is analogy can be put into the.
The compartment of I suppose general society being the owner of the boat, general society, the what he called the plebs or the plebeians, the uneducated public as the strong, we decide because we are the people with power.
And you've got the politicians as the sailors who can bicker all day long and can't make a valid decision. Just go backwards and forwards all the time. And then you've got the philosophers who were the navigators of the time that had no interest in leading or doing the right thing or or taking control of the situation.
But nine times out of ten knew the right thing to do at the right time. And the entire ship is.
This guy did and and ran ashore because of this lack of leadership. And that was his his mentality when it came to democracy, which I really I understand and I.
I'm almost ashamed to say it, but I agree in the fact that, you know, like there's so many instances where people I mean I've had pretty sure you're the same. I've had numerous occasions where I've tried to offer a debate towards a situation or a maybe a political stance or a happenstance in the world.
And I've tried to offer my perspective on it. And I like to think that I've that that's taken a little bit of thought, a little bit of consideration.
And then somebody's gone over the top of it with the most role single minded aggressive perspective and the general consensus of the room has gone with the funny or quick witted perspective over siding with mine because it was you had to you had to you had to think about it more.
If you know, I mean, yeah, or like the, you know, something can sound clever and not be or like if I'm honest with you, if somebody's forceful enough with the way that they express something.
Yeah, no, I hear you. It's.
Sorry, and I'm literally doing it now. I'm being I'm over.
No, no, you're absolutely. But it's frustrating when you try and put something forward. Maybe you trip up on a word, maybe you put emphasis in the wrong bit or something.
And then rather than people look at the content and try and figure it out, they just come out with something or they get offended by a part of it and then shut you down with like basically just shoe horning in something from a comedian that they've heard.
Yeah, or like a put down.
In the worst cases, incredibly personal insults simply because you're coming out with a view that they disagree with.
Having said that, like, I get why sometimes people do that as well because there are a lot of extreme views out there and there are extreme views that I hold, which will be offensive to people, but at the same time, it's 2024.
If we're so advanced, then we should be able to discuss anything to a point.
You know, and even if someone shuts you down and just says, Look, we've talked about this before, and you know that I think you're wrong.
That's a better way than saying it than just either coming out with sarcasm. But it's weird that what you're saying as well was also Plato's problem with the use of rhetoric as a way of defining truth rather than observation, which
is really ironic and really tragic in that later Platonists and later Aristotelians would focus too much on the dogma of
Plato and Aristotle's writings, rather than using their eyes, which is what Plato and Aristotle told people to do all along.
It's almost like, and I'm going to go very close to the wire here, it's almost how I perceive most organized religions in that when I think about the stereotypical Christian or Catholic person,
they go to church and they pray and they do all the right things to be a Christian, but they'd still step over a homeless person to get to the church on a Sunday morning.
And it's the hypocrisy, it's the complete, they've got to maintain the image and yet not the teachings. I don't necessarily follow a religion, and yet I would
like to think that I lead a kind-hearted, meaningful life where if somebody requires help in my vicinity, I will give it quite freely.
If somebody is in need of something that I have, I will give it quite freely, but I don't need to be told that's the thing to do. I know that's the right thing to do.
You know, there was actually, that analogy was actually part of a story about a new priest to a church in America somewhere.
And this bloke was the new local priest and he, on his first day at this church, he wanted to see what kind of people were in his, I don't know what they call it, his gathering.
His congregation, and he wanted to know what kind of people they were.
And he said, I don't like where this is going. And he, obviously they opened doors for these people to come in and on the way in, most of these guys were walking towards the
church and they noticed there was this homeless guy, sat, leant up against the wall in his sleeping bag with a cup of tea, and they just stepped around him and went into the
church, like looked down at him in disgust and went in. And as they got to the point where they're new priests, they were already really excited to see this new priest and whoever he was, you know.
And in comes this homeless guy at the back of the church and he drops his sleeping bag and takes off his jacket and he's there in his dog collar and all the rest of it.
He went, not a single person in here offered me in, offered me in to get warm or to be part of what you're doing here. That's not the word of God.
You can have the picture of, you can have the picture and allow the windows to be tinted. He said, but without actually fulfilling the word of God, it's all meaningless.
Shall we start again? And kind of went from the ground up with it. I thought it was absolutely, it was so powerful.
But that's the reality of so much. And I think what you were saying about those, about the other philosophers, like the more modern day philosophers, you get so wrapped up in the teachings, they forget what the actual teaching is and how to use that information in the modern day.
So how do you take the teachings of Aristotle and of Socrates and of Plato and apply it to modern day?
Well, you, I mean, let me just give you a couple of these quotes from Plato.
I was really tempted to grab one. Do you mind if we, do you mind if we take it in turns on this one?
Absolutely.
I've got a couple of ones here. So if you come out with one, I'll come out with one. I really want to grab one.
Bear in mind these quotes were written two and a half thousand years ago. Admittedly they were written in Greek and have been translated since, but the meaning is still there.
There are two things you should never get angrier.
Those you can help and those you can't.
That's really good.
I love that one because it's like anger is a very base emotion.
You've got, it does nothing but waste energy and rationale is never available in the height of anger.
So if you want to make the right decision and if you want to make the right choice, your best bet is to be calm.
You can be wronged by someone and you, you, you can either be, you can either learn from your mistake in being safe.
For example, you, you, you own a company and somebody steals from your company.
Right.
Soon as you find out that you have been stolen from, you can either be very angry about that situation and scream and shout.
Nothing's going to change or you can learn from it.
Ask them to be a better person and return whatever there is they've stolen.
If they choose not to, once again, you can either get angry or you can report them to the police fire and get on with your life.
But what's what's really going to make the change that's meaningful there?
Learning from the mistake, which if you've been wronged in some way, you're still at fault in some way.
That's normally what people get angry about.
I allowed this situation to happen and I've been wronged.
I'm angry about that.
Just get over it.
Get over it. Get over yourself.
Learn your lesson and move on.
That's what Plato was, I think that's one of the things that Plato meant in that quote.
What have you got?
OK, so this one's I don't know if this one's been translated wrongly or something because it seems too much like a bumper sticker.
But here we go from 2000 from two and a half thousand years ago.
Be kind. Every person you meet is fighting a difficult battle.
Yeah.
Yeah, you don't know their story.
Yeah, absolutely.
Not nearly.
Sorry, it's got it doesn't have as many legs as yours, but it's pretty it's pretty powerful.
There's some several other ones that I want to go for.
So if you want to come out with a few more people are like dirt, they can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you will and die.
I like that one. I really like that one because I struggle so much with the general public because of judgments they pass too quickly or
the way they're quick to anger.
The lack of thought when they're running about in their normal in their normal routine day.
And I try to surround myself with people that enable me to be the best version of myself that I can.
And I think that's kind of where he's going with that you wouldn't you wouldn't bring people into your circle that that make you feel choked and stifled.
You would want people in your circle that you feel free and comfortable to be yourself and have qualities about them that you don't have and can teach you how to be that that way or have that quality, you know.
Make sense.
Absolutely true.
I don't know though because I find that
I don't know sometimes you can
I found. Okay, so what I found what you've just said is the reality of what I found.
I love the idealists that
a good like a genuinely good person will have a variety of people around him, some of which whom you wouldn't expect them to be able to get along with.
But what I have found is that
I don't know like when
Yeah, no, unfortunately, the quality of the company that you keep changes not just how other people see you but also your own mental health and your own growth. So that's yeah.
I mean I went to Australia about 15 years ago now I suppose a bit maybe a bit more and before I went to Australia.
I had a leaving party and I invited a large group of friends and I invited all of my friends to have a plus one.
They could bring anybody that they wanted. One of my friends bought a friend of theirs and they came into my home and they were sat there for a little while on the outskirts not really knowing who to talk to other than one of my close friends.
And they passed a comment which really offended one of my housemates at the time and they came over to me really heart really really angered and they wanted me to do something about it and this person had said
This is such a large group of weirdos.
And I went over and spoke to this person and I was I wasn't offended by at all.
I wasn't offended by at all because the group of friends that I have each one of them is unique in their own way.
They bring their own little bit of color to my world and they are I mean I've met some of the most dangerous people.
I've met some of the most crazy people some of the people that you can talk to and have no idea what they're talking about half an hour and you're entranced in what they're saying because they've just got that energy about them you know.
And then you've got the other the other side of it where you I've got friends that are just a height of the party they are so hilarious and you just want to you just want to be around them because they just make you laugh.
And all of these people in one room it was just it was yeah it was it was diverse to say the least.
And so I wasn't offended I thought I took that as a compliment I took that as the biggest compliment they could have given me even if they didn't mean it even if they didn't mean it that way because I was like you know what I do attract.
A different kind of person that the one thing that they all have.
Is the willingness to be part of something and not judge how they're seen or how other people behave or they don't there's no no sense of how you should behave everybody was willing to accept everybody else in their own way and there was no animosity about any of it.
And I explained that to this person as soon as I explained my mind and said why I wasn't offended by what they said I actually really relaxed inside really enjoying themselves.
And but before that they were really standoffish they didn't know how to take it didn't know how to be in that circle of.
Of diversity I suppose is like is what the term should be used.
But I was it was one of the most poignant moments in my life where I can remember it really identified the kind of circle that I've always I always wanted to have growing up I wanted to be a friend to many and each of them to have their own quality and it wasn't until that point that I realized.
That's exactly what I've managed to achieve.
Without meaning to I've achieved exactly what I say I had to do which is be.
Able to mix with anybody as long as they're willing to accept me for who I am.
Yeah, and I think that's it. Unfortunately you do need to, you do need to have that caveat there. Like, because if somebody can't accept you, then you can't have a proper conversation with them.
Yeah, and I think in a social setting that is that is absolutely.
That is absolutely right like they're.
Oh yeah, no, you know I've got. I'll go into some stuff with that at another point but um.
Yeah, like it.
When it comes to.
No, I will say with this.
I.
So I.
One of my jobs at the moment is working at a sports bar which also has some pitches.
And one of my least favorite parts of the job.
Is.
Sometimes kids get onto the pitches because the security is terrible.
And it's somehow the bar job bar staffs job.
To get these kids off the pitches.
And some of the some of the kids just go.
And when they go say thank you very much.
And I can be fairly courteous.
With them.
But I can't have a proper conversation.
In the same way and I can't make myself vulnerable and I can't come to them as James the person I have to come as James the staff member who needs them to bugger off.
Basically, which.
I'm okay with but I did find it frustrating that I could tell that one of them the other day when I was doing it was getting frustrated with me.
Simply because I wasn't engaging them.
Yeah, I won't go into it more than that but like.
You can't you also you can't.
I don't know you can't just be challenging.
You know what I feel that maybe maybe maybe I'm getting the wrong end of the stick but it's just I feel it's really important to accept and respect people and always important to be human.
But there are times when your role and interaction with people don't allow.
Don't allow that you know.
Yeah, I think I think.
Important to remember that if you have respect for someone.
It's okay to challenge them.
It's okay to have.
A different opinion to theirs and to express your opinion and and try to get them to see your side.
As long as it's done with the respect.
Yeah, I guess they thought I was being disrespectful but they brought up something to do with my.
You know what I'm not even going to.
That's narrow mindedness that's something that I actually it's one of my biggest bug bears is when you have to know if you have to resort to insult.
Then you've lost immediately and I'm not going to give you any attention and I'm not going to give you any respect.
Yeah, that's it.
It was like they were they were coming out with this thing as an insult and then when I came out with a flippant thing they then got more flippant with me because I wasn't giving them an explanation for.
Yeah.
Yeah, for this law that they found with me and it was just like the floor.
I'll be honest with you is you know what?
No, I won't go there but it was a flaw with my appearance.
I was aware of exactly what it was but I wasn't going to tell them exactly what it was because it would have made me appear even weaker than I was already having to be.
It's about respect. It's about respect if you see if you can I can I can absolutely say I point out this same flaw in you in a way that you would not be offended and it would be challenging your perspective of yourself because it was done out of.
I want or desire for you to be better or whatever not that I would do it because I don't know what the floor is that they were pointing out but the point is I would approach it in a way that was respectful and therefore you would see it with the respect and it would be received differently.
If it was used as an insult, I mean there's no need ever to stoop to the level of insult in a debate. If you stoop to the level of insult and you were never even part of the debate, there's no need ever to if you can't be educated enough to put your point across and stand up for your point, then your point is invalid.
Because you don't believe in your justification.
There's no resilience. There's no no.
How can I put it?
If you if you have to use a load of.
Absolutely.
Yeah, you know what? Sorry, I've gone off on that one too much.
Have you got another quote for us? I do have another quote but one thing I wanted to get back to is we were going to be discussing the effect that Plato has had on modern day thought. So I just thought I was going to throw something out here.
A lot of plate Plato's work was from 51 Byzantine manuscripts, a lot of Aristotle stuff was lost, but saved by the Islamic nation. So thank you very much guys.
Translated and then given back to the Byzantines, which is how we got Aristotle's. I was going to ask you a rhetorical question and then if you do know this, I was going to let you take it but if you don't, I was going to take it.
Do you know which of Plato's work was the most famous and the one that most scholars had access to in the, I think it was the 15th and 16th century.
So before, before, so at the low point so you know like when you know stuff stuff sometimes gets lost and the Dark Ages was one of those times.
So during the Dark Ages, and the first one that kind of got re redistributed throughout Europe was this book of Plato's called the Timaeus.
Yep.
Now the weird thing is nowadays, the Timaeus is not seen as one of Plato's most influential works.
It's not even seen as one of his most important works.
But it was hugely influential in all the way up until renaissance, well it was still being there, it was still influential in Renaissance Europe, but one of the reasons why it was so influential was because
the scientific observations that Plato was able to make at his time massively agreed with both the Islam and Islam, basically the Abrahamic faiths, it agreed with it, but came from a pagan source.
So it really kind of makes me wonder though, how much stuff have we lost because it wasn't, wasn't kind of safeguarded.
Didn't feed into the narrative and wasn't seen.
Yeah, exactly. But also like, I really, I wanted to read the Timaeus, I didn't get round to it.
But I still want to because I still want to know a little bit about it, like one of the things that I love about the Presocrates and then about Plato is the idea of the forms.
So like the idea that the things that we see are something that also comes up in the cave, it's the things that we see are copies of the perfect idea of something or they are twisted versions of the perfected thing, which you can argue whether that exists or whether the idea of something, something we've just created in our minds.
But like, I like that idea. I like that when the Plato was incredibly practical and he kept on trying, at least to make sense of the universe.
So the way that they used to, they didn't understand a heliocentric universe and they didn't understand gravity.
But the way that Plato and Aristotle tried to figure it out was to be like, okay, well, you've got stuff which is heavier, which has more mass, which always sinks to the bottom.
So what is at the bottom of this world? Oh, okay, it's earth. So what must earth be made out of? Well, earth must be made out of loads of tiny cubes.
So they thought that earth was made, the atoms, well, they didn't use the term atoms and they weren't divisible, but they thought that the form of earth was a cube.
And the reason why you could get everything, get so much of it or get such density with it was that pure earth would just be loads of cubes, which all tessellate.
And so you'd have very little gap in between them.
They also thought that the D4, I don't even know the name of the shape, but it's like, basically, if you've got a metal D4, you can use it as a caltrop.
It's sorry, caltrop. It's the sharpest of all the shapes.
And the reason why, and so considering it's the sharpest of all the shapes, what do you think, what element from the four elements as we were thought of by the natural philosophers and the pre-Socrates person who I can't bloody remember, it really annoys me that I can't remember it.
Which, yeah, the default, what do you think they, which element do you think they thought that was?
I don't know.
Okay. All right. Well, fire.
And this is the stupid thing, because it's prickly.
Yeah, it's just like, that's how they thought. Okay, well, it's prickly, it hurts and it seems to change other things.
You know what, if you add a lot of these shapes and you jammed them in something.
That's how it worked. And then like water, because it flows, they thought was the isohedron or the 20 sided dice. So it's weird that the pre, it's interesting that Plato and Aristotle almost thought that the world was made up of loads of D&D dice, basically.
Like, it's also interesting though that Plato talks about, he saw God as the demiurge, the creator of the forms.
And what he, where his thing differs from the Judeo-Christian Islamic God is that, well, at least in Christianity, I can't speak on behalf of the other religions and I shouldn't have, I perhaps shouldn't even be lumping them in with myself.
But Abrahamic faiths are, it is a thing.
They were created the world out of nothing, whereas in Plato's idea is that the stuff always existed.
So in a way, the universe was eternal in that the stuff existed, but the forms were created by this being called the demiurge.
And he created the forms of all the elements and the form of the soul or of the human mind. Now, he also then created lesser gods other than himself or like angels.
And then what I find interesting is that it's those lesser gods who made the human body.
So even though the human body is good, the way that Plato saw it is, yeah, it's good. It's not great though.
It wears out quite quickly. It has loads of illnesses. It does lots of things okay, but no thing exceptionally.
Yeah. And it was also that idea of mind was created originally by the original creator and then the body was created by lesser beings.
So the etheric came first and then the physical came second.
Absolutely.
It's almost like, to put it in its simplest form, it's monkey see monkey do, isn't it?
So if the parent makes a cake, the child tries to make a cake, it's a perversion of the parent's cake and it's never quite as good as the first.
So in essence what he's saying is that the soul was created and is the perfect being and then the physical form was created out of love for the perfect being that was created by their father,
which we say for lack of a better term, and was a perversion, was never going to be as perfect as the original object.
Absolutely. And that's also, that's another theme that came in that I forgot about because I'm not an auditor, not good at this sort of thing.
But another thing is that in like the Abrahamic faiths, the world was originally perfect and has become bad over time.
In Plato's version of, in Plato's cosmology if you will, no, no, no, matter's always been flawed.
And it was all, and weirdly enough, just as you said the human body is a perversion of like the soul or whatever, his view was the world is imperfect because everything that you see is trying or is made as good as it can be made.
But the matter in and of itself is inherently flawed and therefore will never hold a form perfectly.
But this also, this was something that came from a number of Greek philosophers, but it is something that you see throughout Renaissance art, it's something that you see in, yeah, you'll see in like any number of kind of like classical depictions of Christianity
or just thought generally in the Western world, the idea that the mind is higher than the body, that the ability to grasp a higher truth is better than grasping the material components to just get through the next day.
Just that separation of mind versus body or material and ethereal, like those, yeah, that two thing is explored massively in Plato, expressed massively in Plato and I feel that's one of the major influences that he's had.
And yet it's still hugely explored nowadays.
Yeah.
This is, this is, this is kind of where I was going with it.
It's still like Plato was around two and a half thousand years ago and still had one of the most poignant perspectives.
So poignant in fact that it's still relevant two and a half thousand years later.
You can read his teachings and still be just as blown away.
This guy really knew what he was talking about.
Two and a half thousand years on.
Like where's the evolution?
Where's the, where's the development of human psyche?
If anything, if you look at Plato's teachings, the very thing that he was teaching that is the wrong way to go about life is the very way that life has gone.
He, he says, for example, that art is therapy.
Art is the, it can bring it, so you're attracted to art because it contains a quality that you need in your life.
If you see serenity in a painting because your body or your mind rather is screaming out for serenity and therefore is attracted to this painting.
And yet you look at, you look at the kind of things that we watch regularly on TV that the art that we are subjected to nowadays is quite often in the form of film or TV shows.
So much of film and TV shows nowadays is drama and conflict and action and war.
It's almost like we're craving that, that need for conflict, a need for argument and for separation and for there being a reason why you can't just be at peace.
Because the shows that are released, that are, or the shows that were released a long time ago, and I don't think there's been anything in the last 50 years because the things that get produced nowadays are the things that will get views.
Like the stuff that was artistic, was peaceful, was serene, was gentle, was kind, falls off the screen because nobody wants it anymore.
The human psyche as it has been built up to crave is drama, is all this negative energy.
Well absolutely, weirdly enough there is a quote here which I feel is very relevant from Plato to your point.
We become what we contemplate.
Yeah exactly, exactly. It's so hard to be anything different than what you have around you.
I mean I actually deleted Facebook, I've deleted Instagram, and the reason I've done that is because social media was so full of people wanting attention for the wrong reasons that it made me angry scrolling through Facebook and looking through Instagram.
The very purpose of Facebook and of Instagram and of these other social media sites is to keep your attention fixed on that.
And it was so good at doing that and yet the energy it was giving me was so negative that in the end I went, hold on, no no no no.
You've got to look at it for what it really is. My partner watches EastEnders, my wife watches EastEnders and she'll get frustrated because I'll sit down while she's watching EastEnders and within about two minutes it's fulfilled its purpose.
It's grabbed my attention and I'm like, who's that? What's she doing? Why is she doing that? And I have to stop myself. I have to stop myself and I'm like I don't actually care.
I don't actually care, it's got no relevance to my life, I'm not watching it again tomorrow, I don't want to know.
But the show is so cleverly done that it grabs your attention and it makes you need more. And it's the same with social media. It grabs your attention and it makes you need more.
And if you're surrounded by things that are trying to do this, then you can't look beyond that, you can't be more than that.
And that's the reality that we live in. And that's the very thing that two and a half thousand years ago, Plato warned against in all of his teachings.
It's interesting that you say that because yeah, just to back you up on that one.
Plato accorded, well, sorry, I've just got a list of quotes here, but something that he had said is, poverty doesn't come because of the decrease of wealth, but because of the increase of desires.
So, yeah.
So that backs up your point there perfectly.
One thing, a couple of ones that I really love of Pizz is the right question is usually more important than the right answer.
And you'll definitely see that mimicked in things, in modern things like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where the Earth is created simply to define the perfect question.
As when asked, what is the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything?
Deep thought points out that the question is flawed.
Some other ones I really like is a wise man speaks because he has something to say, a fool because he has to say something.
Yeah, again, it can sound like desk calendar wordplay. Yeah, I think anybody who hears that and thinks about it will struggle to disagree.
Some other ones, I will be done very quickly. I won't go off on one for this.
Reality is created by the mind. We can change our reality by changing our mind.
You're going to find so many. Yeah, it's incredibly powerful. That one incredibly powerful.
This one, I feel. Okay, so this one to me just shows that the parent-child dynamic has not changed in two and a half thousand years.
Don't force your children into your ways for they were created for a time different from your own.
Where is that quote? You don't see it repeated, but it is sadly, absolutely true. True nowadays more than any other time as things are changing more and more quickly.
I can't believe how much I feel that right now. I've got five kids. My wife's got four. I've got one. So together we've got five kids.
I've never felt more old. I'm only 36 years old. I like to think I'm still quite young.
The older they get, the more I start to feel like Uncle Albert from Only Fools and Horses.
Back in my day, when I was younger, during the war, that kind of thing, you find yourself looking at yourself,
in the third person, looking back and going, looking at yourself and going, how did it get here? How did I get to this point?
But exactly that. The kids are growing up in a completely different world to the one that I grew up in.
The world is a different place to where it was 30 years ago when I was at school.
And it will be a completely different place by the time my kids have kids. So give them a break.
That's it. That's it. I can't say all the ways that Plato has affected thought.
What I do find interesting is that in the Bible, Jesus often answers a question with a question.
What I find even more interesting is that that's exactly what Socrates used to do.
The difference between the two being that Jesus had assertions that he would then make, whereas Socrates made no assertions ever.
I also find it interesting that Plato and Aristotle reject Pheles of Miletus because at one point, during one instance,
Pheles uses his mind to make a load of money. Plato and Aristotle were full on, philosophy needs to be its own thing.
And also another thing that you said, which I know we don't have time to fully get into this, but you said about how where is the development of humanity?
That's something which has affected so many people.
Loads of people have said, well, all of philosophy is a footnote to Plato, as in what can be discovered through rhetoric and observation alone, through the human senses, was figured out two and a half thousand years ago.
Additionally, like Stephen Hawking, when during one of his interviews, like asked why he went into becoming a physicist, said that he chose science over philosophy because from his own readings of philosophy, philosophy is dead.
I think I disagree. I don't think that philosophy is dead.
But I will admit that there
isn't as much progress with it. I feel that perhaps philosophy isn't necessarily a way to discover new truths, but to realize existing ones. It's to compound truths, isn't it? Yeah. It's not to develop truths because anybody that takes time to think about things will think clearly.
You can't change that. There's a truth or the gray area surrounding it. You take time to think enough, you will find the truth.
But not many people take enough time nowadays. And I think that's the problem with with the lack of philosophy nowadays is that not enough time is being taken to consider and to rationalize in order to make just and real decisions.
It's all rushed. Everything's on a time scale because time is money.
It's also annoying that, like, you know about the new Google Pixel 9 or whatever? Yeah. And it talks about like, oh, you can do all these amazing things with your phone.
Like what terrifies me and I know this is such a stupid thing to be terrified of.
What happens when we become completely reliant on that?
Like when the gadget isn't just a new gadget, when it is the be all and end all, you know, rather than talking to a person, you talk to a machine.
Like that's another thing. I hate to say it, but I think that is the world that our kids are growing up in.
Yeah. I don't see my kids without a device.
But that's the thing as well, that you've got to you've occasionally got to look up, though.
You know, like, is it going to get to the point where
a perfectly good and decent business model fails because the algorithm in the advertising
doesn't accept it? You know, like it just finding out also like, for example, in this advert, they've got this traveler going, oh, Google, take me all to the shops that do this, this, this and this.
And then it produces a load of locations.
And although that's fantastic. And as you said, it saves time.
But where's where's the natural inquiry? Like, and what's going to happen to our ability to to think and to inquire and to to search and to find and to explore
if our phone tells us exactly where everything we need is.
Yeah. Yeah. Like, I, I realize that there.
I realize that, you know, like, I'm not into making things difficult for difficult things that being difficult sake.
But I do feel that everybody
needs to try and not only needs to try, but needs to be able and to be encouraged to try.
Annoyingly, I occasionally get a little bit arty with one of my mates, because what I see in him is whenever he faces a problem, his immediate response is to pass responsibility or at the very least to share responsibility with others.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't be able to ask for help from the people that love you.
But I reckon there has to be part of you which doesn't immediately ask for help or or there needs to be part of you, which tries to overcome than to immediately submit and seek assistance.
I think there are two different kinds of people, though, aren't there? In that respect, there are the people that are victim to the world and there are people that survive it.
There are people that encounter problems and go, oh my God, there's a problem. What am I going to do?
And then there are people that encounter a problem and go, OK, how can we deal with this? Let's do X, Y, Z.
Yeah.
You know, anyway, one thing I am very aware of is that we're currently at an hour and 10 minutes of recording.
And needless to say, Plato is a bottomless pit and we could have gone on for absolute hours discussing how relevant Plato is even two and a half thousand years on from his teachings.
Even though I really badly need the toilet. How about you come out with your favorite thing about Plato, your least favorite thing about Plato, then I come out with my favorite thing about Plato, my least favorite thing about Plato.
And then we and then we wrap up. I know you're moving towards a wrap up anyway, but I do want to hear your view and then I do want to say two things which I can condense into a couple of minutes.
My favorite thing is completely not to do with philosophy at all. My favorite thing about Plato is his account of Atlantis.
And the insight that that gave to a mythical world, not necessarily mythical, but I personally believe it is real and was a real place. And so many people believe it to be an allegory, a metaphor for human endeavor and ambition.
My least favorite thing about Plato, I suppose, is that I didn't exist at the same time as him. I would have loved to have sat down with him and just talked.
No, that's fair enough.
That's fair enough.
My favorite thing about Plato is that he clearly wanted to teach people for their own good, that he didn't charge for the academy that he set up the academy that he asked questions and put forward assertions that he used the dialogue.
And because he was trying to make his ideas accessible to as many people as possible, and it wasn't for his own fame, and it wasn't for his own money. It's that he wanted people to think he wanted people to understand and he wanted us all to grasp at truth.
That is my favorite thing about Plato.
The things that I dislike about Plato are his, although I will admit, democracy is put on somewhat of a pedestal in today's society.
His object dislike for democracy is something that I struggled with.
His belief that a womb is almost like a creature inside of a woman that makes their thoughts less rational than a man.
Those are the two things that I struggled with Plato.
His explanation of platonic love also seems different because the idea of platonic love being pure and good and that's how it's normally used, but then when you read a bit more about his writings into what it actually consists of, it's not nearly as cut and dry.
And perhaps that's just me being me misunderstanding it or maybe it's me being homophobic. I need to think on that a bit more. But those are some of my favorite things about Plato.
Those are some of the things that I struggled with.
And thank you so much for taking the time to go over this with me. I really enjoyed talking about Plato.
And I've really enjoyed researching him. I knew very little about Plato before this podcast.
Now I feel like I know very little about Plato.
Yep. Right now with you buddy.
I feel like that's the theme every time we discuss a topic on these podcasts, but I enjoy them nonetheless.
I hope the listeners have enjoyed them as much as we have. I'm going to say goodbye though and I shall leave this space for you to do the same.
Goodbye guys. I just want to hit you guys with one more quote, which actually weirdly enough actually backs that up.
I really should have had this ready.
Wisest is he who knows what he does not know.
There's one. And then there was another one, which I thought was really good.
I've got one which I'll leave with, which is the punishment suffered by the wise who refuse to take part in government is to live under the government of fools.
You know what? Let's go with that.
I said no Matt. That's a good one.
Take care guys. Bye everybody.