WEBVTT - Why Are We Still Talking About Plato After 2100 Years? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:07.120 Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, 0:00:07.160 --> 0:00:11.440 Lauren Vogelbaum. Here all of Western philosophy, said the British 0:00:11.440 --> 0:00:15.960 mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead is quote a series 0:00:16.000 --> 0:00:20.520 of footnotes to Plato. This Greek philosopher, who started as 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:23.800 a young devotee of Socrates, laid the groundwork for more 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:29.160 than two millennia philosophical thought. Plato's dialogues, including Republic, are 0:00:29.200 --> 0:00:33.000 required reading for every serious student of philosophy, and his 0:00:33.040 --> 0:00:36.640 academy in Athens set the model for the modern university. 0:00:37.200 --> 0:00:41.320 So who was this guy? Plato of Colitis was born 0:00:41.440 --> 0:00:44.199 around four hundred and twenty eight b c. In the 0:00:44.240 --> 0:00:47.280 waning days of the Golden Age of Athens. He met 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:49.839 Socrates as a young man and was a close follower 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:53.920 of this provocative street philosopher who confounded politicians and prostitutes 0:00:53.920 --> 0:00:58.040 alike with his unrelenting questions, now known as the Socratic method. 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:02.080 Plato was a owned twenty years old when Athens lost 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:06.360 the disastrous Peloponnesian War to its rival Sparta. He served 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:10.280 briefly in the war. After considering a career in politics, 0:01:10.560 --> 0:01:14.520 Plato grew Disenchanted by corrupt leaders and the tragic execution 0:01:14.520 --> 0:01:17.960 of Socrates, his hero and mentor, Plato came to believe 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:22.160 that only right philosophy could end human suffering and ensure justice. 0:01:23.280 --> 0:01:27.480 Plato turned his energies to education, studying Pythagorean mathematics and 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:31.679 traveling through Sicily, Italy, and Egypt. In his early thirties, 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:34.319 he returned to Athens and founded his academy in an 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:37.880 open air grove open to men and women. It drew 0:01:37.920 --> 0:01:40.080 the best and brightest from the Greek speaking world to 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:44.200 learn mathematics and natural philosophy. Aristotle came there when he 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:47.600 was seventeen and stayed on to teach. The academy continued 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:51.120 for almost two centuries after Plato's death, closing in seventy 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:55.200 b c. E. Plato never married or had any children. 0:01:55.680 --> 0:01:58.120 He died in his early eighties, but lives on in 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:02.080 his captivating prose and thought promo questions recorded in thirty 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:07.120 lively and challenging dialogues. Reading one of Plato's dialogues is 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:11.480 like eavesdropping on a fascinating, rambling conversation. The dialogues are 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:15.400 constructed like intellectual dramas, with Socrates often playing the main 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:20.400 character in them. Socrates teasingly interrogates applies answers out of 0:02:20.400 --> 0:02:25.560 his fellow Athenians, revealing the allusiveness of simple truths. Plato's 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:28.480 early dialogues are heavily indebted to Socrates, who left no 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:31.680 writing of his own, but Plato's own ideas emerge in 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:36.320 middle and later works. Like Socrates, though, Plato doesn't beat 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:39.000 the reader over the head with his philosophy, but prefers 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:42.240 an indirect approach that tasks the reader with drawing their 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:46.720 own conclusions. We spoke with Eric Brown, a philosophy professor 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:51.519 at Washington University in St. Louis. He explained, in his dialogues, 0:02:51.600 --> 0:02:54.200 Plato doesn't say, here are the answers and here are 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:58.000 the reasons, except them on my authority. Plato wants to 0:02:58.040 --> 0:03:01.160 inspire people to do philosophy fee and think it through 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:04.639 for themselves. The dialogues do that. They leave a lot 0:03:04.680 --> 0:03:07.840 of open questions. They don't settle everything. I think that's 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:10.079 one of the reasons why Plato has found so many 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:12.520 readers over the centuries. He leaves a lot of the 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:15.760 work for the reader to do, which maybe we find inspiring. 0:03:17.320 --> 0:03:19.960 If Plato could be said to have a central doctrine. 0:03:20.160 --> 0:03:23.520 It's the concept of forms, the idea that the world 0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:27.000 we perceive with our physical senses is flawed, but there 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:30.720 also exists a separate world of perfect, eternal forms beyond 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:37.480 our perception. Those perfect forms are abstract ideals like beauty, equality, goodness, being, 0:03:37.720 --> 0:03:43.400 and knowledge. This core philosophy is called Platonism, and philosophers 0:03:43.440 --> 0:03:45.880 who have ascribed to it over the millennia are known 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:50.280 as Platonists. Brown said Platonism is the idea that there 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:54.000 are truths, causes, or principles that are abstract and not 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:57.640 available to sense perception, but only to thought, and that 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:00.400 when we access these were in a better position to 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:03.360 understand the way the world is and in a better 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:07.360 position to live a good life. Two of the most 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:12.880 popular dialogues are Symposium and Feto. Symposium discusses love, including 0:04:12.920 --> 0:04:15.520 what's come to be known as platonic love, a term 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:18.600 Plato never used and which is far more nuanced than 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:23.400 simply a non sexual relationship. A Plato distinguishes between divine 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:26.720 eros and vulgar eros. A divine eros is a love 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:30.080 that goes beyond physical attraction, which is vulgar eros to 0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:35.520 supreme beauty or makes one think of spiritual things. Meanwhile, 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:39.559 Feto explores the nature of the soul. However, the most 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:44.440 read of Plato's works is Republic. Brown said, it covers 0:04:44.480 --> 0:04:46.880 so much ground. You get a little of Plato's thinking 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:49.320 about politics, a little bit about the soul, about what 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:51.200 it is to live a good life, what it is 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:54.120 to understand the world, how it is to teach, and 0:04:54.200 --> 0:04:58.960 what teaching really is. In Republic, Plato puts forward a 0:04:59.040 --> 0:05:02.600 number of bold posals, including the claims the ideal city 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:05.160 would be ruled by a class of virtuous male and 0:05:05.320 --> 0:05:09.760 female philosopher kings. Brown thinks that Plato is clearly trying 0:05:09.800 --> 0:05:13.880 to push his reader's philosophical buttons. He said Republic was 0:05:13.960 --> 0:05:17.320 plainly written to be provocative. The idea that no city 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:21.320 is well governed unless it's ruled by a philosopher, it's nutty. 0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:25.040 One of the most vivid and enduring passages in Republic 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:29.720 is socrates extended Allegory of the Cave. In the allegory, 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:32.279 a group of captives are chained up inside a dark 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:35.840 cave lit only by faint firelight. Their only knowledge of 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:38.159 the outside world are the shadows that play on the 0:05:38.200 --> 0:05:42.800 cave walls and garbled bits of echoed conversation. One of 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:45.960 the captives manages to escape and discovers there's an entire 0:05:46.040 --> 0:05:48.760 reality outside of the cave. The brightness of the sun 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:51.400 burns his eyes, but the pain is worth knowing the truth. 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:54.400 When he returns to the cave and offers to free 0:05:54.400 --> 0:05:57.760 his fellow captives, they mock his interpretations of their beloved 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:02.920 shadows and decide to kill him. Here again, Plato is 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:06.120 returning to his notion of truth existing outside of our 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:10.640 limited perception. Brown believes that the cave allegory is specifically 0:06:10.640 --> 0:06:15.320 talking about the true nature and function of education. Brown said, 0:06:15.600 --> 0:06:18.839 real education is not being filled with information, it's a 0:06:18.839 --> 0:06:23.760 transformation of your soul, a reorientation of your values. For Plato, 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:26.400 when you stop taking the world as it seems to you, 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:29.400 and when you stop believing other people's opinions on what's 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:33.560 valuable and you start searching for what's beyond those mere appearances, 0:06:34.040 --> 0:06:39.239 that's when you're being educated. Brown teaches Plato every semester 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:42.440 at Washington University and says that students continue to have 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:46.120 their minds opened by Plato's dialogues, which challenge readers to 0:06:46.120 --> 0:06:49.000 wrestle with some of the biggest questions, how to know 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:53.920 and how to live. Brown said, he asks questions that 0:06:53.960 --> 0:06:56.400 are still worth asking, and he asks them in an 0:06:56.400 --> 0:06:59.359 engaging and provocative way. That's still one of the best 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:02.839 literary representations of how to do philosophy or how to 0:07:02.880 --> 0:07:06.400 get into doing philosophy. For those two reasons, he will 0:07:06.440 --> 0:07:14.440 always matter. Today's episode was written by Dave Ruse and 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:16.840 produced by Tyler Clay. For more on this and lots 0:07:16.840 --> 0:07:19.600 of other curious topics, is it how stuff works dot com. 0:07:19.720 --> 0:07:22.520 Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio. More podcasts on 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:25.400 my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:27.160 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.