In this episode, Brett sits down with Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tulsa, Jacob Howland, to discuss his new book, Glaucon's Fate, History, Myth, and Character in Plato's Republic. They discuss how the book explains why Socrates failed in his attempt to save the soul of his politically ambitious brother, and why he thinks Socrates failed. Along the way, we discuss what the Republic teaches us about manliness and what it means to seek the good in life. We end our conversation discussing the way the Republic taught us the need to possess not only physical courage but the courage to think for oneself and stand up for one s beliefs.
00:00:30.000He's a professor of philosophy at the University of Tulsa and the author of the recent book, Glaucon's Fate, History, Myth, and Character in Plato's Republic.
00:00:37.260We begin our conversation with an outline of Plato's Republic and how it combines literature and philosophy.
00:00:41.700Jacob then makes the case that in the Republic, Socrates was attempting to save the soul of Plato's politically ambitious brother Glaucon and why he thinks Socrates failed.
00:00:49.780Along the way, we discuss what Socrates' attempt to save Glaucon can teach us about Andrea, or manliness, and what it means to seek the good in life.
00:00:56.220We end our conversation discussing the way the Republic teaches us the need to possess not only physical courage, but the courage to think for oneself and stand up for one's beliefs.
00:01:03.940Courage that is tested in a time like our own, where it can feel difficult to ask hard questions and wrestle with thorny issues.
00:01:09.600After the show's over, check out the show notes at aom.is slash republic.
00:01:13.420All right, Jacob Howland, welcome to the show.
00:01:26.620Oh, it's great to be here, Brett. It's an honor and a pleasure to be talking with you today.
00:01:30.400Well, thanks for having me. We're actually at your office at the University of Tulsa.
00:01:33.820This is not very often I get to do interviews live with a guest. Usually it's remote.
00:01:38.800So you are a professor and you've made an expertise, you've become an expert on Plato.
00:01:44.940And you spent a lot of your career writing and thinking about Plato.
00:01:48.400How did that happen? Did you read the Republic in college and like you were just hooked since then?
00:01:53.500Yeah, well, you know, when I was a freshman, actually first I thought I was going to be a physics major and that kind of didn't pan out.
00:01:59.720And then I thought I was going to be an English major.
00:02:02.380And in my sophomore, in my spring of my freshman year, I wandered into a philosophy course taught by a guy named David Lochterman.
00:02:09.820And Lochterman was the most brilliant man, still is, that I've ever known.
00:02:14.080And he had an incredible passion for philosophy.
00:02:16.680And it was an intro to philosophy course.
00:02:19.320And, you know, you kind of get seduced by these really good teachers.
00:02:22.840And I thought, well, if this guy is this bright and he thinks this subject is this important, I need to take more of it.
00:02:29.120And then in my junior year, I took a seminar in ancient philosophy with him.
00:02:33.040And studying the Greeks is really exciting because the world was new and fresh to them.
00:02:39.040You know, they're the ones who came up with words like philosophy, love of wisdom, politics, athletics, agony, which is the word agon means competition, right?
00:02:49.060And that's what an athlete feels when he's contesting for victory.
00:02:53.860And so it's exciting to study the Greeks to begin with.
00:02:58.640And I remember reading Plato's Symposium, which is a dialogue about beauty.
00:03:03.020And in the symposium, the character of Socrates talks about being taught the mysteries of beauty and ascending a ladder, sort of a divine ladder of ascent toward the beautiful with a capital B.
00:03:14.360And I was entranced by the mystery of philosophy.
00:03:20.560I thought there was something deep there that I wanted to find out more about and some deep meaning that I was convinced Plato alone could reveal.
00:03:31.100So that's how I got started with Plato.
00:04:24.780But it all started with Socrates, who was a very charismatic personality.
00:04:28.880And I'll be talking more about him later in this podcast.
00:04:31.320Plato is unique for a number of reasons.
00:04:34.860First of all, he wrote dialogues, what are usually called platonic dialogues, 35 of them.
00:04:40.800And we have all 35 dialogues that were attributed to Plato in the ancient world, plus a number that were attributed to him but are probably not by Plato.
00:04:50.320And these dialogues are an entire sort of fictional world of the sort that only really the greatest writers like Homer or Shakespeare might produce.
00:05:00.600And I mention Shakespeare because in terms of literary genre, the dialogues are closest to Greek drama.
00:05:07.920You know, you had these Athenian dramatists, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, who wrote tragedies and comedies and weird little dramas called Seder plays.
00:05:15.340So the platonic dialogues are dramas in which we don't see the sorts of things we get in Greek drama where people are killed and, you know, there's fighting and war and so forth.
00:05:27.140But what we see is people arguing, having philosophical discussions and doing all the sorts of things that people do in discussion, telling jokes, making little speeches, maybe getting angry, telling stories.
00:05:40.340And in these dramas, Socrates, Plato's teacher, is the protagonist.
00:05:46.700He appears in almost every single platonic dialogues.
00:05:50.100And this is really unique in philosophy that what we have is a kind of story making not philosophy but the philosopher the center of attention.
00:05:59.300So we get to see Socrates as a whole human being and we get to see him interacting in the historical circumstances of his age with other Athenians.
00:06:09.800And one feature of Socrates that I want to mention, I'll talk about this more later too, but he is a kind of new hero.
00:07:00.140And that's what Plato wants to present to us.
00:07:02.940So, very different from, say, a philosophical treatise like Aristotle or Kant, who basically engages in the analysis of phenomena, but doesn't give us a drama.
00:07:13.260Yeah, that's what I've – I love reading Plato.
00:07:16.440I'm drawn to Aristotelian virtue ethics, but reading Aristotle is a slog because, you know, those are basically his, like, lecture notes.
00:07:23.240And it's just, like, if then, then this and blah, blah, blah.
00:07:26.180And it's just, like – but, like, Plato, it's, like, wow, I could just – you can just read this for pleasure because, like you said, it's like literature.
00:07:33.500It's like you're reading a novel, drama.
00:07:36.720And, you know, let's not – let me put in a word for Aristotle.
00:07:41.540I mean, Aristotle's account of virtue and happiness and his demonstration that these things are essentially coincident, that to be the best human being and live the best life and realize your human potential in the most excellent way possible.
00:07:54.160And that's what the Greek word virtue, arate, means, is coincident with happiness.
00:07:57.820That is the root to a deeply meaningful and flourishing life.
00:08:01.880But that comes out of Plato because Plato shows us that in the character of Socrates.
00:08:07.020Socrates is the man who values justice and goodness and virtue above all else and could even be said to have been happy even though he's executed by the Athenians on the charge of impiety and corrupting the young.
00:08:49.240The Peloponnesian War, which had essentially been started by Pericles, who was practicing a kind of politics of imperialist expansion, had begun in 431.
00:09:02.220It's called the Peloponnesian War because the opponents of the Athenians were – lived in the southern region of Greek called the Peloponnesus.
00:09:09.880And their leader was the city of Sparta.
00:09:13.460And this was a long, protracted, bloody war that the Athenians finally, against all odds, managed to lose.
00:09:34.740The Spartans have the city of Athens surrounded.
00:09:37.000They are starved into submission and they capitulate.
00:09:40.380Immediately thereafter, the Spartans install a puppet government of Athenian aristocrats, really oligarchs, who then establish a regime that lasts only eight or nine months that was known as the regime of the 30 tyrants.
00:09:53.560And this regime proceeds to execute 1,500 of their fellow Athenians.
00:10:38.200I've often put myself in the position of Plato.
00:10:40.380What would I do if I saw my city collapse through foolish policies and engage in a long war and it finally ends up with a bloody civil war and the death of my mentor?
00:10:52.760I probably would just go off and weep or something, but Plato wrote 35 dialogues.
00:10:58.640He responds by memorializing Socrates and, in effect, producing this curriculum, this educational materials, these dialogues that are designed to try to save Athens and maybe to save the world from the sorts of mistakes the Athenians made.
00:11:15.700Now, what does that salvation involve?
00:11:20.560One is Plato looks at the causes of the war and the causes were really the sort of uncontrolled passions for power and greed and wealth that caused the Athenians to get into the trouble that they immersed themselves in.
00:11:36.420And Thucydides, the historian, wrote a history of the Pelophanesian War and in this history, he uses the word eros.
00:11:45.560Eros is a word that's the source of our word erotic.
00:11:48.260It specifically refers to sexual passion, but it more generally refers to a very strong desire.
00:11:53.260And in Thucydides, there are about six places the word eros shows up and it's always a dirty word because the Athenians, for example, had an eros for going to Sicily, the Sicilian expedition, and trying to conquer Sicily and then conquer Carthage and perhaps attack the Persians and so forth.
00:12:20.080And he teaches that the object of human desire should be what he calls the good.
00:12:27.220The good, if you will, is Plato's version of God.
00:12:29.840It's the transcendent source of meaning and goodness in the world.
00:12:34.260And coordinate with that, he believes that the soul that approaches the good through philosophy will be the most integrated, wholesome, whole human soul, human being.
00:12:47.780So he wants to present us with an idea of what it means to be a person of integrity and to be that kind of person, as exemplified by Socrates, we have to come into the presence of the highest transcendent reality.
00:13:02.840He wants to remind human beings that the world is a big place and that there's something above man.
00:13:10.640And to relate to that transcendent reality is to be fulfilled and be virtuous and live a good human life.
00:13:22.000All right, so he's written a lot of dialogue, but his seminal work is the Republic, where he really grapples with this issue.
00:13:29.840For those who aren't familiar with the Republic, or maybe just for a refresher, like what's the general outline?
00:13:35.440Well, the Republic is set during the Peloponnesian War, and basically it tells a story.
00:13:40.960Socrates goes down to the seaport of Athens called the Piraeus with Plato's brother Glaucon.
00:13:46.460Really unusual thing about the Republic is that Plato had two brothers, an older brother named Glaucon and his oldest brother named Adamantus.
00:13:53.420And they play a very big role in this dialogue.
00:13:58.320Socrates and Glaucon go down following this religious procession.
00:14:01.720And they're getting ready to go back to Athens, and they run into Adamantus, a guy named Polemarchus, a bunch of other younger men, who say, stick around the Piraeus.
00:14:10.900As part of this festival, we're going to have a sort of an all-night party.
00:14:15.400There'll be a torch race on horseback.
00:14:55.780So I'll say a couple of things about that.
00:14:57.480At one point, Glaucon, who is Socrates' main conversation partner or interlocutor in the Republic, says, look, I want to tell a little story.
00:15:08.120And the thought experiment is designed to show that even people who are thought to be just or think they're just are really, at bottom, unjust.
00:15:43.580And he becomes the ruler of this barbarian kingdom.
00:15:46.420And he uses the ring opportunely to appear to be just while actually being unjust.
00:15:53.640So he kills his political opponents and so on.
00:15:56.300So this is a very interesting challenge because Glaucon says, anybody, even those who we think are just or who think themselves just, if they had the ring, they would behave unjustly.
00:16:06.100And that proves that at bottom, we're all unjust.
00:16:09.740Another famous, not exactly a thought experiment, but it's an image in the Republic, is called the cave image.
00:16:17.500And so Socrates says, here's an image of what it would mean to be educated.
00:16:22.240And he says, our initial condition is we're born into a cave.
00:16:25.500We don't know it, but we're prisoners chained up in a dark cave.
00:16:29.540And we're shown images cast on the back wall of the cave, which are really shadows produced by puppets held in front of a fire way above and behind us.
00:17:11.720This is what this is who our gods are.
00:17:14.080And philosophy is getting out of the cave into the sunlit uplands of truth and being where, incidentally, one encounters the highest principle of reality, according to Socrates, the good, which Socrates presents in an image as the sun, the source of light and life.
00:17:30.340So education is getting out of the particular cave of our culture and seeing things from the perspective of reality itself, the real world, and liberating ourselves from the prejudices and the short-sighted understanding of things in our culture.
00:17:47.680And in particular, the game that goes on in the cave, because every cultural cave, in every cultural cave, there's a quest for power and a quest to try to be the person who manipulates the images.
00:18:00.900And the people who are involved in that are often unaware that there's anything outside of the cave.
00:18:06.220So those are two very interesting images.
00:20:16.460And I think that the filmmakers and Plato and philosophers in general agree that the human mind and the human soul needs to be coordinated with reality.
00:20:28.800Nietzsche, by the way, who, you know, was sort of famously nihilistic and, you know, taught that God is dead and so forth.
00:20:36.100In the preface to Beyond Good and Evil, he describes philosophers as we whose task is wakefulness itself.
00:20:42.960So, the idea of, like, waking up from a dream, a world of illusion, coming out of the cave, that's essential to philosophy, even if you're Nietzsche.
00:20:51.220So, but another big part of the Republic is this thought experiment, a big one, is creating these cities in speech.
00:21:00.520So, Socrates, with his interlocutors, decides to create these, like, imaginary cities.
00:21:09.420What was he trying to do by creating these imaginary cities?
00:21:12.020Yeah, so, again, I mentioned that the issue in the Republic is whether the life of justice and virtue is preferable to the life of tyranny.
00:21:22.820And Socrates is asked at one point to prove that it's better to be just than unjust.
00:21:29.400And so, he says, you know, the soul is a very hard thing to see.
00:21:34.000He sort of says it's a very small thing.
00:21:37.740So, how do we get to know someone's soul or character?
00:21:40.800Well, you can't look directly, I can't look directly into you, Brad, and see what sort of person you are, but I can see what you do, I can see what you say, I can see how you behave.
00:21:49.400But Socrates says, the city is the soul writ large.
00:21:53.240And if we look at a city, which is, you know, an entire political community, we could get a better idea of what justice is.
00:22:00.860And so, the city is an image of the soul.
00:22:02.580So, but in fact, Socrates then starts laying out these cities.
00:22:08.280And each city teaches us something about a whole way of life.
00:22:12.780By the way, the word republic in Greek is politeia.
00:22:22.500The very first city is sort of designed to appeal to Glaucon and Socrates' other interlocutors and kind of test them and see whether they respond to this vision of what it would be to have a healthy community.
00:22:37.300The first city Socrates describes as true and healthy.
00:22:40.340And it's a group of very moderate human beings who have little technological development.
00:24:04.840It means the noble and beautiful city.
00:24:06.460And each one of these cities is a sort of way of seeing whether Glaucon can be attuned to the way of life that Socrates describes.
00:24:18.160And finally, that last city, the city of philosopher kings is one that Glaucon finds extremely attractive.
00:24:22.580And I think it's got a kind of pedagogical function because Socrates wants to see whether he can get Glaucon interested in philosophy.
00:24:30.980And so the description of the cities is a way of getting issues of justice on the table and a way of attracting Glaucon to what Socrates has to say to him.
00:24:39.780So I need to talk a little bit about Glaucon as well.
00:24:42.240Yeah, so why did Plato pick his brother to be this main interlocutor with Socrates?
00:31:18.020Socrates has a different idea of manliness.
00:31:20.420His idea is the courage to do what is right and just, no matter what people think of you.
00:31:28.280And this comes to a head in the case of the trial of Socrates.
00:31:31.840He's tried for impiety and corrupt in the young.
00:31:34.660It is said by his accusers that his philosophizing harms his fellow Athenians.
00:31:39.480And he says, no, I am all about going around the city of Athens and telling you to care for your souls, to be the best human beings possible.
00:32:18.140And I think it was interesting, too, you talk about in the book is that this ancient idea of Greek manliness, while it could spur individuals to strive for greatness, erite, but in the end, all that striving came to lock.
00:32:33.900It would eventually destroy the city, the city state.
00:32:36.960That's sort of the point of the Iliad, right?
00:34:48.120So the way I read the Republic is that he is trying to bring Glaucon permanently into his orbit.
00:34:58.220He wants Glaucon to become a student of philosophy and to spend his life philosophizing.
00:35:05.080And in the Republic, by the way, Socrates says that philosophy is a lifelong quest.
00:35:09.860Philosophy, as he says famously in the Apology, is the examined life.
00:35:14.120And Socrates says the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.
00:35:17.200But so we know that Glaucon has spent time with Socrates, but Socrates feels he's not really permanently attached to him.
00:35:25.820And really the tragedy of the Republic, in a way, is that Glaucon is caught between Socrates, whom he admires and respects as a warrior, as a man of intellect.
00:35:35.940And Glaucon is schooled in mathematics.
00:35:39.580He's an educated guy, on the one hand, and the pull of his relatives, Critias and Carmides, whom I said earlier, we see as early as the story Xenophon tells about him before he's 20, he wants to impress.
00:35:52.980He's very drawn toward the political life that's represented by Plato's relatives, Critias and Carmides.
00:35:58.040So, Socrates wants to pull him away from those seductions, which are really a sort of life in the cave, and bring him into philosophy.
00:36:08.220Well, he presents this city called Callipolis, in which the greatest warriors are going to achieve the greatest honor.
00:36:16.980He describes an army training of warriors, both male and female, who will protect the city, who will maintain civic order.
00:36:26.700And then the best of those warriors, who are also the best in study and in learning, and Glaucon is, again, very bright and intelligent, will be promoted to the level of philosopher kings.
00:36:38.900And I should say, we know that Glaucon is manly because early in the Republic, Socrates quotes a poem made by Glaucon's unnamed lover, who, weirdly enough, some have attributed the poem to Critias, saying that Glaucon was a very bold and courageous warrior.
00:36:59.360So, I think he tries to lay out this city of philosopher kings as a way of hooking Glaucon.
00:37:04.280And here's a regime you could imagine yourself in, and if you're great in battle, you'll get all these honors and power and so forth.
00:37:12.600And if you're even, if you're the best of the best, you could become a philosopher king.
00:37:17.340And then, so the idea would then be that if Glaucon gets interested in this regime, which he is very interested, he might hang around with Socrates and pursue philosophy.
00:37:27.400I think that's the gamble that Socrates is taking.
00:37:29.720So, yeah, he tries to hook him with this idea of what could be in store for a guy like Glaucon.
00:37:39.360So, he's using that passion for glory and honor, sort of nudging him in a different direction towards something more positive.
00:37:48.960And in addition to that, you also talk about how Socrates makes all these references to the Greek epics, like the Iliad and the Odyssey, where sort of subtly saying, like, you know, showing, like, looking to these guys and saying, you can do that, but also be like a philosopher.
00:40:14.180To be reflective, to be deliberate, to understand what is right and good, and to do it.
00:40:19.480And by the way, Socrates was famously a man of integrity.
00:40:23.860Kierkegaard, the 19th century Christian philosopher who loved Socrates and modeled himself, he thought of himself as a Christian Socrates, actually suggests in his journals and notebooks that Socrates is the only person outside of Christianity who is without sin.
00:40:38.700And what he means by that is he says he walks the walk and he talks the talk.
00:40:43.580There's no gap between his knowledge of what is right and good and his action.
00:40:53.940Because to be a good person at all times is difficult because we are surrounded, you know, by many mediocre individuals and some bad ones.
00:41:03.200And the just man in unjust times will not be lauded and not be approved.
00:41:08.360And so you've got to have the courage of your convictions, but your convictions also have to be right and good.
00:41:14.520And that's what philosophy is about, is understanding how to live.
00:41:19.280And then the deep secret is that's the source of happiness.
00:41:22.320Happiness, that's what makes a human life deeply fulfilling and meaningful, is having the courage to be the best individual you can be, regardless of whether people look at you as eccentric or weird or strange or they're hostile to you as they were to Socrates.
00:41:38.660Okay, so let's kind of recap here what we've talked about so far and then get into whether Socrates was successful with Glaucon.
00:41:45.980So Glaucon had this idea of Greek manliness, where it meant to be, you sought glory, power, and you wanted to be in the public arena.
00:41:55.260That's where that's, and you showed courage that way on the battlefield, et cetera.
00:41:59.760Socrates was coming along and saying, well, no, that can lead to disaster, both for the individual and for the city-state.
00:42:06.660So he came up with this new, like, Socratic manhood, where you had Andrea or courage, but for the philosophical life.
00:42:13.860So then Socrates creates this perfect city that was sort of drawing on, appealing to Glaucon's love of glory and power, but then nudging him slightly towards the philosophical life.
00:42:36.480I need to say something more about this city because I have a somewhat individual take on this city called Callipolis, the noble and beautiful city.
00:42:48.200The logician and philosopher-scientist, the British thinker Karl Popper, wrote a book during the Second World War called The Open Society and Its Enemies.
00:42:57.180And it was an attack on totalitarianism.
00:42:59.120And in this book, Popper argues that the regime of philosopher kings in Plato's Republic is a totalitarian regime.
00:43:43.840I believe that this myth actually is a response to something that his relative, his older cousin, Critias, who was the leader of the 30 Tyrants, wrote in a play.
00:43:56.800And in this little story about Sisyphus, Critias tells the following story that looks a lot like the story Glaucon tells before he tells his ring myth.
00:44:07.260People were lawless and unjust until laws were made.
00:44:10.920But then people figured out that you could commit injustice in secret.
00:44:14.580And Critias says, and by the way, Critias was a radical thinker.
00:44:18.960That's when human beings invented the gods and said that the gods know everything we do, even secret injustice.
00:44:27.040And the Sisyphus myth ends with Critias saying, and that's how human beings put an end to injustice because they got people to believe in these all-seeing gods.
00:44:37.360And by the way, Zeus in Homer, for example, is said to wander the cities and observe the unjust deeds of human beings.
00:44:45.640Well, if Glaucon is right about the ring myth, what needs to be said here, by the way, is that the guy who discovers the ring, an ancestor of a fellow named Gyges, isn't afraid of the gods.
00:44:57.520And he goes under the ground and he steals a ring from a corpse, which is a very impious thing to do.
00:45:04.620Grave robbery was a very serious sin, if you will.
00:45:08.440So what that story is pointing to is that those people who don't actually believe in an all-knowing God will continue to be unjust and commit injustice in secret.
00:45:18.920The only way to stop that kind of injustice is, therefore, to design a city in which everyone is spied on at all times.
00:45:28.460And that is what happens in the city of philosopher kings called Kallipolis.
00:45:33.540Anyone can go into anyone's room at any time.
00:46:17.020He would be a big warrior, and he could even be a philosopher king.
00:46:20.820It's also a city, and here's where things get really complicated, that looks a lot like the regime of the 30 tyrants that was established by Glaucon's relative, Critias.
00:46:32.440And so, you know, there's a lot to untangle here.
00:46:37.520Well, on one level, he's trying to attract Glaucon to a life of philosophy because it's a regime in which Glaucon believes he could be a philosopher king.
00:46:45.600But on another level, and the republic has many levels, it is a demonstration of what would be needed if you absolutely wanted to root out injustice everywhere.
00:46:58.020And what would be needed is an unjust regime.
00:47:02.540And Karl Popper is right, actually, that one can see in that city of the republic a kind of prototype of later totalitarian regimes.
00:47:12.620And, in fact, later totalitarian regimes have modeled themselves on that regime in the republic, the Khmer Rouge and the regime of revolutionary Iran set up by the Ayatollah Khomeini.
00:47:24.080Believe it or not, Khomeini had studied Plato's republic.
00:47:26.140If you look at the structure of that regime, there's a council of guardians, you know, and he regards himself as a kind of philosopher king, a sort of religious philosopher king.
00:47:34.320So, the history of the republic, the effect of the republic on human history has not been great, but I actually regard all of this as a kind of misreading of what's happening.
00:47:45.220But it raises big questions, which is, what responsibility did Socrates have for Glaucon's fate?
00:47:52.480Did he tell this story because he was, he knew that Glaucon was already familiar with that kind of regime, having spent time with his relative Critias?
00:48:00.960On the other hand, did Critias get his ideas for the sort of tyrannical regime he sets up from this Kallipolis in the republic?
00:48:11.480And I thought it was interesting, too, you make this really great point that in Kallipolis, there's the guardian, like, so you're sort of sorted out, you know, like you were either bronze, silver, gold, right?
00:48:22.740And then depending on where you were, you'll get put into, like, the school for guardians, right?
00:48:26.600And you're going to be trained in philosophy, but a state sort of mandated philosophy.
00:48:31.180And then if you're good enough, then you'll be, you know, moved over to the philosopher king and be trained for that.
00:48:36.700And it looks like Socrates is like, hey, this is a way where you can sort of do philosophy, but, like, it isn't philosophy.
00:48:50.380You know, it's absolutely fascinating because in the Republic, when Socrates introduces the philosopher, it's quite remarkable because Socrates says at one point, you know, the ills of human life will not be solved.
00:49:05.760And the ills of communities, war and discord and so forth, will not be overcome unless philosophers rule.
00:49:13.080And Glaucon says, hey, what are you talking about?
00:49:16.520Many people will be angry with you when you say that.
00:49:18.840And Socrates says, well, maybe you don't know what a philosopher is.
00:49:22.100And then he lays out what a philosopher is.
00:49:24.220And in this part of the dialogue, I think we hear Socrates' genuine voice.
00:49:28.520And he doesn't talk about the mind or the intellect.
00:49:31.620He says the philosopher is somebody who is supremely erotic, super passionate, but not about glory, not about honor, not about sex, not about material rewards, about wisdom.
00:49:43.920The philosopher loves wisdom, and his desire is to come into the presence of the truth.
00:49:51.760By the way, this is, you know, this platonic idea, very attractive to religious thinkers because what has happened is from a religious perspective, being in the presence of God, right?
00:50:01.660You know, the exile from Eden is a curse because you're no longer in the presence of God.
00:50:07.440So, in any case, what happens as he then lays out the regime is that erotic philosopher kind of disappears and is replaced by a dogmatic philosopher.
00:50:17.240And essentially, the state has sort of one version of philosophy, and there's a long training in metaphysics and in analytical thinking and so forth.
00:51:06.360It made me think when I was reading that part in the Republic and then also in your book, it made me think of like, just sort of like how school is for a lot of young people today, right?
00:51:15.420You don't go because of the love of learning.
00:51:17.720You just go because there's these hoops I got to jump through in order to get the degree so I can get the nice job that will pay for whatever.
00:51:23.420Like, that idea that Socrates is putting out there for the education of a philosopher king reminded me of that for some reason.
00:51:32.860And I think you're pointing to a very serious problem because I guess I would say that what we see in the Republic, what substitutes for philosophy is something more like ideology.
00:51:44.760That is to say, if we go back and look at the totalitarian character of the regime, one of the reasons that they're spying on everyone is they don't want challenges to their authority.
00:51:54.860And it's a very kind of abstract thinking.
00:51:58.260Socrates, to sort of go back to why Plato wrote dialogues, they're very concrete.
00:52:03.380Every discussion in a Platonic dialogue starts out in an ordinary human context and returns to that context.
00:52:10.440There's a dialogue called the Lockies, for example, where the issue is courage.
00:52:13.660And the question of what courage is comes up because a couple of men are asking Socrates whether their sons should study a certain technique of fighting in armor.
00:52:22.620And that quickly leads into the discussion of what is courage.
00:52:24.740The philosophical regime in the Republic is characterized by a very abstract thought.
00:52:31.740It's not connected with the concrete character of everyday life.
00:52:36.420And I think our education today is often sort of imposed from above in very abstract categories.
00:52:45.140It doesn't appeal to the concrete desires of existing human beings and doesn't really nurture their longing to explore and discover, doesn't stimulate their passion.
00:52:58.600So there is a sense in which the kinds of mistakes that we see being played out in the Republic of sort of abstract thinking and a kind of one-size-fits-all implementation from above, state-mandated content, and so forth, are being repeated today.
00:53:15.900I don't know if that's very clear, but that's my sense.
00:53:57.720And I think a lot of categories are confused here.
00:54:01.200As you know, Brett, there's a lot of discussion of toxic masculinity.
00:54:04.460And obviously, there are forms of masculinity.
00:54:07.000I would say that Greek heroic traditional masculinity is toxic in the sense that it involves a competition for glory and power.
00:54:15.740And that's very destructive of human communities and of individuals.
00:54:21.480But I don't want to get lost in all this discussion of toxic masculinity, the models of good masculinity.
00:54:28.580And I think Socrates is trying to model that.
00:54:31.600And, you know, masculinity is – I mean, I'm probably preaching to the choir here.
00:54:38.360But this is not a bad thing because courage is not a bad thing.
00:54:42.740And standing up for what is right and taking account, as Socrates says in the Apology, by the way, he imagines someone saying to him, aren't you ashamed of doing something that could result in your being executed?
00:55:02.060You should care about your soul being in the best condition possible.
00:55:05.340There are a lot of forces in contemporary society that pull us in other directions, that distract us, that seduce us with promises of pleasure and entertainment and wealth and power.
00:55:16.820And turn us away from the question of being the best people we can be.
00:55:21.660And frankly, it takes courage to pursue that goal often in society and to turn away from these seductions.
00:55:30.320I think C.S. Lewis said that every virtue at the breaking point turns into courage, right?
00:56:27.000Not being swept away in social currents or fashion.
00:56:31.740And there is a kind of manliness that is required to pursue that kind of path.
00:56:39.380So I don't think we're doing a particularly good job of educating young men to manliness or even defending manliness, good manliness today, because we don't educate people Socratically.
00:56:51.540You know, I think sort of the individual attention and the excitement of learning are things we need to recover, because that's the route to virtue, opening the mind to the world, opening the mind to reality and showing young people the joys of learning.
00:57:09.560And letting them become confident about their beliefs and their opinions.
00:57:31.300We know, I feel like we've lost that playfulness in education, and I don't, I mean, from reading The Republic, I don't know if it's possible to sort of mandate that from above, right?
00:58:12.740We have these big school districts, and the school districts mandate certain kinds of teaching and mandate certain kinds of evaluation and testing and so forth.
00:58:25.000And somehow, this playfulness and this curiosity is lost.
00:58:32.380The only way to really – I think Socrates is right about this.
00:58:55.200It wasn't particularly pleasant to talk to Socrates because what he did is he showed you that you probably didn't know what you were talking about.
00:59:02.600And that's the first thing you need to do if you're going to learn something is realize that you're ignorant.
00:59:08.180Socrates was sort of the school of tough love in education.
00:59:11.120A lot of educational philosophy today is trying to find the strengths of students and not challenge them, right?
00:59:21.660So if someone is, let's say, they learn better by listening than by reading, then we should provide them with opportunities where they get most of their content through listening.
00:59:31.960I think Socrates would say, well, if you have difficulty learning through reading, then we should make you read more, you see?
00:59:37.100So somehow to combine those challenges with a sense of fun.
00:59:48.020But the key here is it's one person at a time.
00:59:50.900You know, I've been teaching at the University of Tulsa for 31 years, and every day that teaching and learning occurs in my class is a good day.
00:59:58.120And it occurs one student at a time, right?
01:00:01.140I mean, I'll have a class with a bunch of students, but it's individual students I'm teaching.
01:00:04.400And they're the ones that come up to me and say, that's interesting what you said.
01:00:11.620I was, as you were talking, do you think it's harder to ask questions and be playful with ideas in today's world?
01:00:18.700Or is it actually easier compared to Socrates' time?
01:00:22.940I think it's actually harder to ask questions because we've been talking about shame and fear of public opinion.
01:00:29.200And I said that Greek heroism was rooted in that, in that fear especially, even more than in the love of glory.
01:00:37.820And today, you know, there are certain subjects that professors have to be fairly intrepid to even raise in class.
01:00:47.700Certain issues having to do with sexuality or religion or minority groups and so forth.
01:00:54.020And a lot of professors really shy away from those sorts of issues.
01:00:58.020One way to approach them, by the way, and this is why I think studying the ancients, for example, is a wonderful thing, is through reading books like The Republic.
01:01:05.320I mean, one thing about The Republic is it's very interesting on the question of males and females and, you know, roles of women and men in society and so forth.
01:01:15.960And you can approach these issues if you're talking about another text, not necessarily directly addressing questions in contemporary culture.
01:01:25.100Because, frankly, there's a lot of pressure.
01:01:27.900I think students have complained about this as well as professors.
01:01:31.040What if I voice an opinion that people might take the wrong way?
01:01:34.740What if I say something that might offend somebody?
01:01:37.600And, in fact, at our university, there is an anonymous online bias reporting system to report bias.
01:01:47.000So you can imagine that students and professors alike are pretty cautious about asking questions and raising topics.
01:01:54.620And the fact is that we need to be able to talk about everything.
01:01:57.860I mean, philosophy shouldn't shy away from anything.
01:02:02.820And this is not a question of taking political sides.
01:02:05.580If you have a certain kind of belief, the best way to strengthen your understanding is to expose it to contrary opinions and come up with arguments against other positions.
01:02:16.780So the sort of public pressure – and, by the way, that's multiplied by things like Facebook and Twitter and so forth because it's very easy for a large group of people who have the same kind of opinion to gang up and attack.
01:02:31.340So it actually takes a certain amount of courage to be a Socratic thinker in today's world.
01:02:39.080You know, Socrates was never afraid of saying what he thought.
01:02:41.500In fact, he thought he was obliged to say what he thought.
01:02:44.340Very few people are completely open about their views in a public context today.
01:03:19.200Putting yourself in a position where you're overcoming resistance.
01:03:21.800That means there has to be resistance.
01:03:23.260That means there have to be ideas that are anathema to you when you first look at them, right?
01:03:28.420Only then do you develop the kinds of intellectual virtues and strengths that can allow you to have a better understanding of your views, a better understanding of other views.
01:03:40.200And, you know, I think, I mean, the promotion of honesty and public discourse is absolutely crucial.
01:03:46.700But it requires people who are prepared to engage in that kind of often rough and tumble debate.
01:03:52.920And I don't think we do our students a service by shielding them and coddling them and making sure that we don't step on their toes because they're not going to learn those kinds of skills.
01:04:02.980And they're not going to develop the confidence in their individual selves as active, reflective centers of thought and action.
01:04:13.380And that's what it means to be a fully flourishing human being from the Socratic perspective.
01:04:21.960So what do you think happens to Glaucon?
01:04:23.300Do you think, I mean, I know that maybe this is sort of killing the, you know, but like, what do you, do you think Socrates was successful?
01:04:28.480He realized, ah, man, this little gamble I took in making this thing that appealed to Glaucon, it actually backfired.
01:04:38.400So first of all, in Socrates' defense, let me say this.
01:04:42.080I think this was a gamble dangling a city like Kallipolis before him.
01:04:45.760And, however, had Socrates not intervened with Glaucon, there's no question that he would have joined the regime of the 30 tyrants and participated in that tyrannical oligarchy and engaged in many unjust deeds as a result.
01:06:16.120There are various clues in the Republic.
01:06:17.520But one major clue is he is present at the trial of Socrates as somebody who can vouch for Socrates.
01:06:24.580Had he been a member of the oligarchy, the regime of the 30 tyrants, he would not have been present at a trial under the newly restored democracy when Socrates is being tried in part because of his connections with Critias and Carmides, by the way, because these are Plato's relatives.
01:06:42.180These are people that Socrates talks to in the dialogues.
01:06:45.840Glaucon does not show up in the Apology.
01:06:47.940He disappears from the historical record.
01:06:51.140And I always assumed when I wrote my first book on the Republic that at the end of the dialogue, I took Glaucon at face value.
01:06:58.280He says to Socrates, I'm convinced the life of philosophy is better than the life of tyranny.
01:07:03.200And I believe he was convinced at that time.
01:07:12.560A number of years ago, I picked up a wonderful book by a historian named Mark Munn called The School of History, Athens and the Age of Socrates.
01:07:19.980And Munn pointed out a couple of things just in passing that really got me thinking.
01:07:24.200He said, I think Glaucon joined the 30.
01:07:26.800And I think he died in the decisive battle in which Critias and Carmides were killed by the returning Democrats.
01:07:33.480And this battle took place in the Piraeus.
01:07:35.920He says Glaucon doesn't show up in the Apology.
01:07:39.020More interestingly, the battle took place on the very road at pretty much the exact place where Glaucon and Socrates are stopped, going back up to Athens at the beginning of the Republic.
01:08:24.960And that means, and this is where it really gets interesting, that Socrates, the age's most competent and capable spokesman for virtue and philosophy, couldn't save Plato's beloved brother.
01:08:41.760And one of the things that points out is how very difficult it is to overcome the socially inculcated values, this idea of Greek manliness and glory and power and ambition that Glaucon absorbed as it were with his mother's milk.
01:08:57.540How do you overcome those forces and set somebody on the path to virtue and wisdom?
01:09:35.860By the way, in the cave image, the prisoners, when they're, Socrates says, if somebody unchained one of these prisoners and turned them around and brought them up, the first thing they realize as they go up out of the cave is all these things I thought were real are just shadows.
01:09:49.460Projected on the wall by the, the guardians of this culture, these, these puppeteers.
01:09:55.280So the first step in philosophy is calling into question the things that you have unreflectively been taught, the things that you assumed were true.
01:10:03.900The first step in philosophy is negative.
01:10:06.340And that's dangerous because if you stop there, you can end up being a nihilist, right?
01:10:45.640He should have continued with Socrates.
01:10:47.940And I'm convinced that if he had finally come into the presence of the good more closely, come into the presence of the goodness at the heart of creation, at the heart of the world, that he would have, he would have had the fulfillment that Socrates described in the Republic.
01:11:03.340Socrates describes that happiness at the end of the philosophical quest.
01:11:06.860I'm convinced that Socrates had it, and it would have been Glaucon's salvation.
01:12:05.640He is the author of the book, Glaucon's Fate.
01:12:07.880It's available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.
01:12:10.200Make sure to check out our show notes at aom.is slash republic, where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.
01:12:23.040Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast.
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