In this episode, we talk about the role of the philosopher Socrates in the Greek Republic, why he was so important, and why he's so important in the modern world. We also talk about his role in the myth of the mythos, and the role he plays in the story of Zeus.
00:00:14.580I have a kind of Straussian reading of it.
00:00:17.760I mean, it's not necessarily Strauss's reading, but there's an esoteric message that is suggested to you.
00:00:25.880And then there is the exoteric message, which is exactly what you said, where it's at one point you were chained in a cave looking at shadows on the wall and with everyone else.
00:00:36.620And then you left the cave and you saw the light of the sun.
00:00:41.620And so you saw the good in itself or the idea of the good, the real, real.
00:00:47.300And then you went in to try to tell these people what was happening and they didn't want to believe you.
00:01:30.640He also, throughout the Republic, tells you pretty vividly that the philosopher in politics, I mean, politics is kind of the royal science.
00:01:42.300I mean, it should be at least the queen of the sciences.
00:03:06.480So, you know, your lying eyes might tell you that this dude who is super rich and has lots of chicks and a great chariot, your lying eyes would tell him that that's the good.
00:03:46.240And so you're going to slowly acquire the good in itself via language.
00:03:54.300It's an odd metaphor that he stresses looking the sun itself when his entire motive in throughout all of his works, the Republic especially, is to valorize language and logical reasoning towards something as opposed to the visual.
00:04:21.160The visual is brought down and the linguistic is brought high in Plato.
00:04:28.840I mean, this is a really major move that he makes.
00:04:33.900So it's rather odd to kind of have all these metaphors of like dark caves and so on.
00:04:41.780And then, you know, you get out of them and you see the sun.
00:04:58.680It's kind of like the metaphor is, in fact, the reverse of what he's saying.
00:05:04.160And as I have also stressed, I mean, and this is rather explicit, but throughout the Republic, he is absolutely undermining Greek religion.
00:05:17.200So he is telling you that, you know, oh, my gosh, Zeus, you know, he had sex with all these women.
00:05:27.340And we need to imagine a kind of different type of God that is beyond these superhuman or all too human gods that were promoted at the time.
00:05:43.740So he's kind of subtly undermining things.
00:05:46.860And he worries about all of these kind of myths and, you know, oh, the myth of Kalos.
00:05:53.420And yet, on the other hand, all of his philosophy is just this effort at myth-making.
00:06:02.480At the end of the Republic, he goes into a myth of reincarnation and, in effect, heaven and hell.
00:06:11.340I mean, there is a line in Theotatus, which is just incredible, from Socrates, where it's like, surely you can't believe that you won't be punished in an afterlife
00:06:37.500This was something he was bringing into the world.
00:06:40.740And he puts it in the mouth of Socrates as a curious figure.
00:06:44.860And then he has all these people around, you know, agreeing with him.
00:06:48.560And even in, like, Statesman, I mean, the myth is really like the Earth turning in the other direction in the age of Kronos, the age of Saturn.
00:06:57.720And humans kind of coming out of the Earth.
00:07:02.040So he kind of, like, reiterates the Republic myth in this.
00:07:06.460His whole body is a bunch of myth-making.
00:07:10.300And yet he tells us that he wants to censor myth and that we want justified, didactic, you know, we don't want any of that Medea stuff.
00:07:19.320We want didactic kind of instruction for the youth.
00:07:23.600And yet his whole project is myth-making.
00:07:28.340So there are just some curious things that are going on with Plato.
00:07:33.400And what I would suggest is that he is undermining and, in some cases, actively trying to censor the Greek religion and the Greek world.
00:07:44.940And he's kind of taking early steps to moving to a new type of religion and philosophy.
00:07:52.580And this would be a kind of age of Kronos, as he imagines it.
00:07:57.600Greek religion is, it seems to be a kind of story of overcoming previous religions.
00:08:05.340You know, that basic myth of Kronos eating his children and then Zeus kind of tricking him and then escaping cannibalism and then growing strong and intelligent and then coming back.
00:08:18.800And, you know, it's like I'm now 25 and I'm intelligent as hell and been training for my whole life.
00:08:27.100There's this myth about overcoming an earlier religion, which I think Plato is kind of getting to.
00:08:33.460And he wants to go back to chronology, to Kronos, Saturn alien culture.
00:08:39.260So there's just a lot of curious aspects about this.
00:08:45.020But he clearly wants to get away from Zeus worship towards something.
00:08:48.740We don't quite know what it is, a kind of unknown God who would be all good.
00:08:54.020It was kind of like a placeholder, in a way, waiting for something.
00:08:57.400And I do think that Christianity kind of was able to fulfill that.
00:09:00.540But in terms of the cave itself, look, you could basically say that we shouldn't read too much into this.
00:09:10.900You know, he's making a really memorable image.
00:09:15.400And, you know, don't be like one of those guys who has some weird theory about Star Wars or something.
00:09:22.460Like Jar Jar is the real villain or some theories about how James Bond is always the same character and is a code name.
00:09:29.640Anyway, these are people just reading too much into something.
00:09:33.640They're, you know, they're much simpler explanations for things.
00:09:41.200You don't have to come up with some secret theory that doesn't really even improve the whole thing.
00:09:47.140But I don't think I would say that about Plato's cave because this is so of such monumental importance.
00:09:54.860He might very well be suggesting a reading to certain people and suggesting another reading to others and that you don't have to say everything and that you can hint at things or kind of allow them to complete the thought in their own mind.
00:10:14.740So he doesn't, like, he could have come up with a myth of the cave of, like, a guy, like, if you imagine, like, you're lost in darkness and you only have, like, your smell and your touch as a sense and your hearing, I guess.
00:10:30.380And so you're, like, you're putting your hands on the wall of the cave and you're figuring a way out or something.
00:10:36.600And then you get out of the cave and you've never seen the light of day before.
00:12:44.480And so all of these people, like, I think we've, I've mentioned this before, but like, you know, the Heritage Foundation or like some great books college or whatever, they'll be like, oh, Plato's Cave.
00:12:57.200You know, finally, you know, finally, you open up the book and it opens up the world to you and you see the truth and whatever.
00:13:04.940I do think the, his message is much darker, literally and figuratively than that.
00:13:12.980Um, he's certainly attacking like solar religion, sun worship, Zeus, Apollo, etc.
00:13:20.760He's, he's trying to move you away from that.
00:13:23.720And B, he, he offers this kind of tantalizing, unfinished image of basically enlightened people keeping others literally and figuratively in the dark and showing them cinema.
00:13:39.900So it's actually rather disturbing and keeping them in chains as well.
00:13:50.200I was going to ask, you know, what is the alternative or alternative to that?
00:13:54.580The Marx system of like Roman interpretation and then also creating these worlds, these new worlds that can, you know, produce new forms of art.
00:14:16.480I mean, maybe we should learn something from Plato.
00:14:20.040To paraphrase Jack Nicholson, like, can we actually handle the truth?
00:14:26.400And what, you know, and if the answer is no, like, what kind of work do you want to be involved in and in projecting something for someone to look at?
00:14:37.400But I think this is also kind of like the problem of like red pilling people or something.
00:14:45.100Do you really want to red pill the normies?
00:14:48.480At the very best, they might resist you.
00:14:53.560And at the very best, they also might ignore you.
00:14:56.780And at the very worst, they might be destroyed by you.
00:15:00.460So, you know, this whole thing of effects is a couple minutes of theoy 000 Copas, so people will go somewhere else.
00:15:08.160So, let's say that a couple minutes of above.
00:15:08.820But have you guys felt like a couple of days?