Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum. Here all of Western philosophy, said the British
Speaker 1: mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead is quote a series
Speaker 1: of footnotes to Plato. This Greek philosopher, who started as
Speaker 1: a young devotee of Socrates, laid the groundwork for more
Speaker 1: than two millennia philosophical thought. Plato's dialogues, including Republic, are
Speaker 1: required reading for every serious student of philosophy, and his
Speaker 1: academy in Athens set the model for the modern university.
Speaker 1: So who was this guy? Plato of Colitis was born
Speaker 1: around four hundred and twenty eight b c. In the
Speaker 1: waning days of the Golden Age of Athens. He met
Speaker 1: Socrates as a young man and was a close follower
Speaker 1: of this provocative street philosopher who confounded politicians and prostitutes
Speaker 1: alike with his unrelenting questions, now known as the Socratic method.
Speaker 1: Plato was a owned twenty years old when Athens lost
Speaker 1: the disastrous Peloponnesian War to its rival Sparta. He served
Speaker 1: briefly in the war. After considering a career in politics,
Speaker 1: Plato grew Disenchanted by corrupt leaders and the tragic execution
Speaker 1: of Socrates, his hero and mentor, Plato came to believe
Speaker 1: that only right philosophy could end human suffering and ensure justice.
Speaker 1: Plato turned his energies to education, studying Pythagorean mathematics and
Speaker 1: traveling through Sicily, Italy, and Egypt. In his early thirties,
Speaker 1: he returned to Athens and founded his academy in an
Speaker 1: open air grove open to men and women. It drew
Speaker 1: the best and brightest from the Greek speaking world to
Speaker 1: learn mathematics and natural philosophy. Aristotle came there when he
Speaker 1: was seventeen and stayed on to teach. The academy continued
Speaker 1: for almost two centuries after Plato's death, closing in seventy
Speaker 1: b c. E. Plato never married or had any children.
Speaker 1: He died in his early eighties, but lives on in
Speaker 1: his captivating prose and thought promo questions recorded in thirty
Speaker 1: lively and challenging dialogues. Reading one of Plato's dialogues is
Speaker 1: like eavesdropping on a fascinating, rambling conversation. The dialogues are
Speaker 1: constructed like intellectual dramas, with Socrates often playing the main
Speaker 1: character in them. Socrates teasingly interrogates applies answers out of
Speaker 1: his fellow Athenians, revealing the allusiveness of simple truths. Plato's
Speaker 1: early dialogues are heavily indebted to Socrates, who left no
Speaker 1: writing of his own, but Plato's own ideas emerge in
Speaker 1: middle and later works. Like Socrates, though, Plato doesn't beat
Speaker 1: the reader over the head with his philosophy, but prefers
Speaker 1: an indirect approach that tasks the reader with drawing their
Speaker 1: own conclusions. We spoke with Eric Brown, a philosophy professor
Speaker 1: at Washington University in St. Louis. He explained, in his dialogues,
Speaker 1: Plato doesn't say, here are the answers and here are
Speaker 1: the reasons, except them on my authority. Plato wants to
Speaker 1: inspire people to do philosophy fee and think it through
Speaker 1: for themselves. The dialogues do that. They leave a lot
Speaker 1: of open questions. They don't settle everything. I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why Plato has found so many
Speaker 1: readers over the centuries. He leaves a lot of the
Speaker 1: work for the reader to do, which maybe we find inspiring.
Speaker 1: If Plato could be said to have a central doctrine.
Speaker 1: It's the concept of forms, the idea that the world
Speaker 1: we perceive with our physical senses is flawed, but there
Speaker 1: also exists a separate world of perfect, eternal forms beyond
Speaker 1: our perception. Those perfect forms are abstract ideals like beauty, equality, goodness, being,
Speaker 1: and knowledge. This core philosophy is called Platonism, and philosophers
Speaker 1: who have ascribed to it over the millennia are known
Speaker 1: as Platonists. Brown said Platonism is the idea that there
Speaker 1: are truths, causes, or principles that are abstract and not
Speaker 1: available to sense perception, but only to thought, and that
Speaker 1: when we access these were in a better position to
Speaker 1: understand the way the world is and in a better
Speaker 1: position to live a good life. Two of the most
Speaker 1: popular dialogues are Symposium and Feto. Symposium discusses love, including
Speaker 1: what's come to be known as platonic love, a term
Speaker 1: Plato never used and which is far more nuanced than
Speaker 1: simply a non sexual relationship. A Plato distinguishes between divine
Speaker 1: eros and vulgar eros. A divine eros is a love
Speaker 1: that goes beyond physical attraction, which is vulgar eros to
Speaker 1: supreme beauty or makes one think of spiritual things. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Feto explores the nature of the soul. However, the most
Speaker 1: read of Plato's works is Republic. Brown said, it covers
Speaker 1: so much ground. You get a little of Plato's thinking
Speaker 1: about politics, a little bit about the soul, about what
Speaker 1: it is to live a good life, what it is
Speaker 1: to understand the world, how it is to teach, and
Speaker 1: what teaching really is. In Republic, Plato puts forward a
Speaker 1: number of bold posals, including the claims the ideal city
Speaker 1: would be ruled by a class of virtuous male and
Speaker 1: female philosopher kings. Brown thinks that Plato is clearly trying
Speaker 1: to push his reader's philosophical buttons. He said Republic was
Speaker 1: plainly written to be provocative. The idea that no city
Speaker 1: is well governed unless it's ruled by a philosopher, it's nutty.
Speaker 1: One of the most vivid and enduring passages in Republic
Speaker 1: is socrates extended Allegory of the Cave. In the allegory,
Speaker 1: a group of captives are chained up inside a dark
Speaker 1: cave lit only by faint firelight. Their only knowledge of
Speaker 1: the outside world are the shadows that play on the
Speaker 1: cave walls and garbled bits of echoed conversation. One of
Speaker 1: the captives manages to escape and discovers there's an entire
Speaker 1: reality outside of the cave. The brightness of the sun
Speaker 1: burns his eyes, but the pain is worth knowing the truth.
Speaker 1: When he returns to the cave and offers to free
Speaker 1: his fellow captives, they mock his interpretations of their beloved
Speaker 1: shadows and decide to kill him. Here again, Plato is
Speaker 1: returning to his notion of truth existing outside of our
Speaker 1: limited perception. Brown believes that the cave allegory is specifically
Speaker 1: talking about the true nature and function of education. Brown said,
Speaker 1: real education is not being filled with information, it's a
Speaker 1: transformation of your soul, a reorientation of your values. For Plato,
Speaker 1: when you stop taking the world as it seems to you,
Speaker 1: and when you stop believing other people's opinions on what's
Speaker 1: valuable and you start searching for what's beyond those mere appearances,
Speaker 1: that's when you're being educated. Brown teaches Plato every semester
Speaker 1: at Washington University and says that students continue to have
Speaker 1: their minds opened by Plato's dialogues, which challenge readers to
Speaker 1: wrestle with some of the biggest questions, how to know
Speaker 1: and how to live. Brown said, he asks questions that
Speaker 1: are still worth asking, and he asks them in an
Speaker 1: engaging and provocative way. That's still one of the best
Speaker 1: literary representations of how to do philosophy or how to
Speaker 1: get into doing philosophy. For those two reasons, he will
Speaker 1: always matter. Today's episode was written by Dave Ruse and
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Clay. For more on this and lots
Speaker 1: of other curious topics, is it how stuff works dot com.
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