The Art of Manliness - #496： What Plato's Republic Has to Say About Being a Man

00:00:00.000 I'll see you next time.

00:00:30.000 He'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.

00:00:37.260 We begin our conversation with an outline of Plato's Republic and how it combines literature and philosophy.

00:00:41.700 Jacob 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.

00:00:49.780 Along 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.

00:00:56.220 We 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.

00:01:03.940 Courage that is tested in a time like our own, where it can feel difficult to ask hard questions and wrestle with thorny issues.

00:01:09.600 After the show's over, check out the show notes at aom.is slash republic.

00:01:13.420 All right, Jacob Howland, welcome to the show.

00:01:26.620 Oh, it's great to be here, Brett. It's an honor and a pleasure to be talking with you today.

00:01:30.400 Well, thanks for having me. We're actually at your office at the University of Tulsa.

00:01:33.820 This is not very often I get to do interviews live with a guest. Usually it's remote.

00:01:37.660 So this is going to be a lot of fun.

00:01:38.800 So you are a professor and you've made an expertise, you've become an expert on Plato.

00:01:44.940 And you spent a lot of your career writing and thinking about Plato.

00:01:48.400 How did that happen? Did you read the Republic in college and like you were just hooked since then?

00:01:53.500 Yeah, 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.

00:01:59.720 And then I thought I was going to be an English major.

00:02:02.380 And in my sophomore, in my spring of my freshman year, I wandered into a philosophy course taught by a guy named David Lochterman.

00:02:09.820 And Lochterman was the most brilliant man, still is, that I've ever known.

00:02:14.080 And he had an incredible passion for philosophy.

00:02:16.680 And it was an intro to philosophy course.

00:02:19.320 And, you know, you kind of get seduced by these really good teachers.

00:02:22.840 And I thought, well, if this guy is this bright and he thinks this subject is this important, I need to take more of it.

00:02:29.120 And then in my junior year, I took a seminar in ancient philosophy with him.

00:02:33.040 And studying the Greeks is really exciting because the world was new and fresh to them.

00:02:39.040 You 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?

00:02:49.060 And that's what an athlete feels when he's contesting for victory.

00:02:53.860 And so it's exciting to study the Greeks to begin with.

00:02:56.700 But then we studied Plato.

00:02:58.640 And I remember reading Plato's Symposium, which is a dialogue about beauty.

00:03:03.020 And 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.

00:03:14.360 And I was entranced by the mystery of philosophy.

00:03:20.560 I 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.

00:03:31.100 So that's how I got started with Plato.

00:03:33.780 And so it's been like that.

00:03:34.860 So how long has that been?

00:03:36.260 Well, that was a long time ago.

00:03:37.860 You know, it's impolite to ask somebody my age about how long it's been, but that seminar was in 1978.

00:03:45.080 So that's already 40 years now.

00:03:47.240 So, okay, let's talk about Plato.

00:03:49.160 I know a lot of our listeners have read Plato's Republic.

00:03:52.360 Either they did it in college in some sort of gen ed philosophy course they had to take, or they just did it for pleasure.

00:03:57.380 But there's some people who don't know a lot about Plato.

00:04:00.460 There's a lot of Greek philosophers this time, the Axial Age.

00:04:03.180 What made Plato unique as a philosopher compared to like Xenophon or Aristotle and all these other guys?

00:04:11.540 Yeah.

00:04:11.860 So Xenophon, who you just mentioned, was one of two very important students of the philosopher Socrates, Plato being the other.

00:04:22.600 And Plato's student was Aristotle.

00:04:24.780 But it all started with Socrates, who was a very charismatic personality.

00:04:28.880 And I'll be talking more about him later in this podcast.

00:04:31.320 Plato is unique for a number of reasons.

00:04:34.860 First of all, he wrote dialogues, what are usually called platonic dialogues, 35 of them.

00:04:40.800 And 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.

00:04:50.320 And these dialogues are an entire sort of fictional world of the sort that only really the greatest writers like Homer or Shakespeare might produce.

00:05:00.600 And I mention Shakespeare because in terms of literary genre, the dialogues are closest to Greek drama.

00:05:07.920 You know, you had these Athenian dramatists, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, who wrote tragedies and comedies and weird little dramas called Seder plays.

00:05:15.340 So 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.

00:05:27.140 But 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.

00:05:40.340 And in these dramas, Socrates, Plato's teacher, is the protagonist.

00:05:46.700 He appears in almost every single platonic dialogues.

00:05:50.100 And 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.

00:05:59.300 So 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.

00:06:09.800 And 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.

00:06:18.220 He's a sort of new protagonist.

00:06:19.960 You know, the Greek dramas and Homer, they might have somebody like Achilles or Heracles.

00:06:26.940 And these men were great because they were courageous and they were victorious in battle and so forth.

00:06:33.560 Socrates is a philosophical warrior of sorts.

00:06:36.020 And what makes him heroic is his integrity.

00:06:41.480 I think that he shows us Socrates because Socrates was a rare human being who lived up to his best understanding of things.

00:06:48.900 He didn't just talk the talk, which would be philosophy.

00:06:52.180 He walked the walk.

00:06:53.400 So he spoke about justice and courage and virtue and making your soul as good as possible.

00:06:58.580 And he lived that life.

00:07:00.140 And that's what Plato wants to present to us.

00:07:02.940 So, 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.

00:07:13.260 Yeah, that's what I've – I love reading Plato.

00:07:16.440 I'm drawn to Aristotelian virtue ethics, but reading Aristotle is a slog because, you know, those are basically his, like, lecture notes.

00:07:23.240 And it's just, like, if then, then this and blah, blah, blah.

00:07:26.180 And 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.

00:07:33.500 It's like you're reading a novel, drama.

00:07:35.480 It's fantastic.

00:07:36.300 That's right.

00:07:36.720 And, you know, let's not – let me put in a word for Aristotle.

00:07:41.540 I 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.

00:07:54.160 And that's what the Greek word virtue, arate, means, is coincident with happiness.

00:07:57.820 That is the root to a deeply meaningful and flourishing life.

00:08:01.880 But that comes out of Plato because Plato shows us that in the character of Socrates.

00:08:07.020 Socrates 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.

00:08:21.140 So Aristotle grows out of Plato.

00:08:22.740 Plato makes Aristotle possible.

00:08:24.160 So I think you mentioned this a bit, but what was Plato's big goal as a philosopher?

00:08:30.120 Like what was he trying to accomplish?

00:08:31.840 Well, that's a great –

00:08:32.900 That's like an entire course right there.

00:08:34.980 No, that's a great question.

00:08:36.600 So I'm going to speak to what I see as sort of the center of the target with respect to what Plato's trying to do.

00:08:43.620 And to do that, I want to give a little bit of historical background.

00:08:46.820 Plato was born maybe around 428 BC.

00:08:49.240 The Peloponnesian War, which had essentially been started by Pericles, who was practicing a kind of politics of imperialist expansion, had begun in 431.

00:08:59.660 The war lasted 27 years.

00:09:02.220 It's called the Peloponnesian War because the opponents of the Athenians were – lived in the southern region of Greek called the Peloponnesus.

00:09:09.880 And their leader was the city of Sparta.

00:09:13.460 And this was a long, protracted, bloody war that the Athenians finally, against all odds, managed to lose.

00:09:22.580 They had the best military equipment.

00:09:24.980 They had the best navy in the world.

00:09:27.120 They had a tremendous amount of wealth, but they bungled it and they lost.

00:09:31.500 So fast forward to 404 BC.

00:09:34.740 The Spartans have the city of Athens surrounded.

00:09:37.000 They are starved into submission and they capitulate.

00:09:40.380 Immediately 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.

00:09:53.560 And this regime proceeds to execute 1,500 of their fellow Athenians.

00:09:58.940 They purge the city.

00:10:00.700 They are attacking their political opponents.

00:10:03.380 A number of their political opponents, the Democratic Party, goes into exile.

00:10:09.020 They return.

00:10:10.240 A huge civil war ensues.

00:10:12.100 The Democrats regain power.

00:10:14.260 And then they put Socrates on trial.

00:10:16.420 They're trying to settle old scores and they want to connect Socrates with certain members of the 30 tyrants.

00:10:22.940 And I'll talk about those connections a little bit down the line as well.

00:10:26.860 So he's executed.

00:10:28.400 He's tried for impiety and corrupting the young.

00:10:30.600 He's executed.

00:10:31.500 So here's Plato.

00:10:33.280 Plato is Socrates' friend.

00:10:35.580 He is his student.

00:10:36.500 Socrates is his mentor.

00:10:38.200 I've often put myself in the position of Plato.

00:10:40.380 What 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?

00:10:52.760 I probably would just go off and weep or something, but Plato wrote 35 dialogues.

00:10:58.640 He 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.

00:11:15.700 Now, what does that salvation involve?

00:11:19.140 I'll just say two things.

00:11:20.560 One 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.

00:11:36.420 And Thucydides, the historian, wrote a history of the Pelophanesian War and in this history, he uses the word eros.

00:11:45.560 Eros is a word that's the source of our word erotic.

00:11:48.260 It specifically refers to sexual passion, but it more generally refers to a very strong desire.

00:11:53.260 And 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.

00:12:12.600 Plato realizes it's not passion.

00:12:15.840 It's not strong desire that's the problem.

00:12:18.500 It's the object of our desires.

00:12:20.080 And he teaches that the object of human desire should be what he calls the good.

00:12:27.220 The good, if you will, is Plato's version of God.

00:12:29.840 It's the transcendent source of meaning and goodness in the world.

00:12:34.260 And 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.

00:12:47.780 So 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.

00:13:02.840 He wants to remind human beings that the world is a big place and that there's something above man.

00:13:10.640 And to relate to that transcendent reality is to be fulfilled and be virtuous and live a good human life.

00:13:17.680 Long answer.

00:13:18.480 Well, yeah, that's a big goal.

00:13:20.000 Yeah.

00:13:20.480 It's a hefty goal.

00:13:21.240 It's a huge goal.

00:13:22.000 All right, so he's written a lot of dialogue, but his seminal work is the Republic, where he really grapples with this issue.

00:13:29.840 For those who aren't familiar with the Republic, or maybe just for a refresher, like what's the general outline?

00:13:35.440 Well, the Republic is set during the Peloponnesian War, and basically it tells a story.

00:13:40.960 Socrates goes down to the seaport of Athens called the Piraeus with Plato's brother Glaucon.

00:13:46.460 Really unusual thing about the Republic is that Plato had two brothers, an older brother named Glaucon and his oldest brother named Adamantus.

00:13:53.420 And they play a very big role in this dialogue.

00:13:55.960 They go down.

00:13:56.660 It's a religious festival.

00:13:58.320 Socrates and Glaucon go down following this religious procession.

00:14:01.720 And 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.

00:14:10.900 As part of this festival, we're going to have a sort of an all-night party.

00:14:15.400 There'll be a torch race on horseback.

00:14:17.040 There'll be drinking and so forth.

00:14:19.160 Well, Socrates being Socrates gets them involved in a discussion instead.

00:14:22.620 And instead, they spend all night talking about the best life and whether the best life is a life of tyranny.

00:14:32.380 Tyrannical power, so you can get anything you want, kill anyone you want, become wealthy, right?

00:14:38.180 No limits on your desires.

00:14:40.120 Or is it the life of philosophy and justice?

00:14:44.140 And Plato has a couple of, well, we can talk about some of the thought experiments.

00:14:48.520 Do you want me to say a bit about that?

00:14:49.520 Yeah, let's go into this.

00:14:50.160 Because there's a lot of popular thought experience that people might even know about but didn't know it comes from the Republic.

00:14:55.640 Sure.

00:14:55.780 So I'll say a couple of things about that.

00:14:57.480 At one point, Glaucon, who is Socrates' main conversation partner or interlocutor in the Republic, says, look, I want to tell a little story.

00:15:07.200 It's a thought experiment.

00:15:08.120 And 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.

00:15:17.560 And here's the experiment.

00:15:19.340 What if he had a ring that made you invisible?

00:15:22.620 How would you behave?

00:15:23.560 This is the story of Gaiji's ring, named for the guy who finds the ring.

00:15:28.700 And he tells a little story about a shepherd of nobody, barbarian shepherd in Lydia, who finds a ring that makes him invisible.

00:15:35.680 And what does he do?

00:15:36.880 Well, he sneaks into the palace.

00:15:39.420 He murders the king.

00:15:41.320 He seduces the queen.

00:15:43.580 And he becomes the ruler of this barbarian kingdom.

00:15:46.420 And he uses the ring opportunely to appear to be just while actually being unjust.

00:15:53.640 So he kills his political opponents and so on.

00:15:56.300 So 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.

00:16:06.100 And that proves that at bottom, we're all unjust.

00:16:09.740 Another famous, not exactly a thought experiment, but it's an image in the Republic, is called the cave image.

00:16:14.340 I think it's a very powerful image.

00:16:17.500 And so Socrates says, here's an image of what it would mean to be educated.

00:16:22.240 And he says, our initial condition is we're born into a cave.

00:16:25.500 We don't know it, but we're prisoners chained up in a dark cave.

00:16:29.540 And 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.

00:16:38.140 We don't even know it's there.

00:16:39.380 So it's something like watching a movie, right?

00:16:41.600 And the prisoners in the cave think that these shadows of artificial objects are what is real.

00:16:48.800 And if you think about what they're watching, it's a story.

00:16:52.760 Socrates says they're men and animals and tools.

00:16:56.200 And the cave is an image of culture.

00:16:59.080 Every culture, if you like, is a cave. 0.97

00:17:01.040 And people are born into it.

00:17:02.440 And they're taught these are the realities.

00:17:05.060 And this is, for example, what it is to be manly.

00:17:09.720 This is what it is to be successful.

00:17:11.720 This is what this is who our gods are.

00:17:14.080 And 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.

00:17:30.340 So 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.

00:17:47.680 And 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.

00:18:00.900 And the people who are involved in that are often unaware that there's anything outside of the cave.

00:18:06.220 So those are two very interesting images.

00:18:09.020 Well, they are.

00:18:09.400 And those, I mean, they creep up in pop culture today.

00:18:11.780 So like Guides Ring, The Lord of the Rings.

00:18:14.420 Absolutely.

00:18:15.460 Tolkien picks up on this.

00:18:16.600 In fact, we can go back to Richard Wagner, who wrote operas as part of what he called The Ring Cycle.

00:18:23.140 It's the same idea.

00:18:24.300 And then Tolkien picks up on this.

00:18:26.380 The cave image, incidentally, we see that, for example, in The Matrix.

00:18:31.460 That's what I was thinking.

00:18:31.940 Yeah.

00:18:32.200 So The Matrix, you know, I mean, I tell my students, watch The Matrix.

00:18:35.980 You only need to watch the first one.

00:18:37.660 By the third one, I was rooting for the machines.

00:18:39.620 But if you haven't seen The Matrix, it's we live in a world of illusion.

00:18:43.740 That's essentially The Cave.

00:18:44.800 And some people get out of that world of illusion and encounter reality.

00:18:49.660 But there is one major difference I have to say about The Matrix.

00:18:52.940 For Plato, and this, by the way, is why the Christians and in general, and also the Jews and the Muslims, they loved Plato.

00:19:00.920 Because, again, he emphasized the good and this notion of a transcendent source of being and life.

00:19:09.520 And the fundamental idea there is that the created world is good.

00:19:15.720 The world is good.

00:19:17.160 And that happiness and fulfillment comes through contact with reality in all of its concreteness and in all of its vibrant life.

00:19:27.460 The Matrix, it's sort of a more modern view of reality or even postmodern.

00:19:31.760 The only thing reality has to recommend it in that film is that it's real.

00:19:36.600 It's not particularly good because once you get out of that illusion, you realize you're actually slaves.

00:19:42.200 And, you know, the people who have gotten out of The Matrix are on some spaceship.

00:19:46.720 It probably smells horrible.

00:19:48.420 The food isn't – it's a colorless environment.

00:19:51.080 The food is some nasty gruel.

00:19:52.840 But it's real.

00:19:54.140 It's real.

00:19:54.860 And that alone, human beings want to have contact with reality.

00:19:59.140 That's a Platonic principle.

00:20:00.700 That's what fulfills us.

00:20:01.920 Maybe The Matrix is a Nietzschean version of Platonism.

00:20:05.140 I think that's right.

00:20:06.040 Yeah.

00:20:06.420 The Matrix is a kind of stripped-down view.

00:20:09.460 You know, in that film, there's no God.

00:20:11.640 There's no fundamental principle of nature and the goodness of nature.

00:20:15.420 But it's still real.

00:20:16.460 And 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.

00:20:28.800 Nietzsche, by the way, who, you know, was sort of famously nihilistic and, you know, taught that God is dead and so forth.

00:20:36.100 In the preface to Beyond Good and Evil, he describes philosophers as we whose task is wakefulness itself.

00:20:42.960 So, 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.

00:20:51.220 So, but another big part of the Republic is this thought experiment, a big one, is creating these cities in speech.

00:21:00.520 So, Socrates, with his interlocutors, decides to create these, like, imaginary cities.

00:21:08.000 Why did he do that?

00:21:09.420 What was he trying to do by creating these imaginary cities?

00:21:12.020 Yeah, 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.

00:21:22.820 And Socrates is asked at one point to prove that it's better to be just than unjust.

00:21:29.400 And so, he says, you know, the soul is a very hard thing to see.

00:21:34.000 He sort of says it's a very small thing.

00:21:36.060 In fact, it's invisible, right?

00:21:37.740 So, how do we get to know someone's soul or character?

00:21:40.800 Well, 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.

00:21:49.400 But Socrates says, the city is the soul writ large.

00:21:53.240 And if we look at a city, which is, you know, an entire political community, we could get a better idea of what justice is.

00:22:00.860 And so, the city is an image of the soul.

00:22:02.580 So, but in fact, Socrates then starts laying out these cities.

00:22:08.280 And each city teaches us something about a whole way of life.

00:22:12.780 By the way, the word republic in Greek is politeia.

00:22:15.760 And that word means regime.

00:22:17.640 And for the Greeks, a regime was an entire way of life.

00:22:21.260 So, we get a sequence of cities.

00:22:22.500 The 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.

00:22:37.300 The first city Socrates describes as true and healthy.

00:22:40.340 And it's a group of very moderate human beings who have little technological development.

00:22:46.740 They have a lot of leisure.

00:22:47.680 They have a lot of leisure because they don't need to work too hard.

00:22:50.620 They don't have very expansive needs.

00:22:52.860 And their life is spent basically in community with one another and enjoying simple pleasures and simple food.

00:23:00.780 Well, Glaucon looks at the city and he says, they don't have any luxuries.

00:23:03.860 They don't have painting.

00:23:04.940 They don't have philosophy. 0.99

00:23:06.360 This is fit for pigs. 0.99

00:23:08.360 So, Socrates says, oh, I see. 0.96

00:23:09.660 You want a city where we've got all, we let our desires grow and we can fill ourselves with luxuries.

00:23:15.440 That city turns into what he calls the fever city.

00:23:18.320 Then Socrates very wisely says, this city is sick.

00:23:21.340 Okay.

00:23:21.940 That first city was true and healthy, but let's purge this city.

00:23:26.080 Then he introduces another one that looks a lot like Sparta, a much more sort of Spartan city, right?

00:23:31.460 Moderation, kind of enforced moderation, manliness, a regimen of physical exercise and spiritual toughening.

00:23:38.320 And that looks pretty good.

00:23:39.560 And Glaucon's interested in that.

00:23:41.780 But then his friend Polemarchus says, wait a second.

00:23:45.080 Socrates mentioned something about women and children.

00:23:48.260 They're young men, so they want to know more about that.

00:23:50.880 And so then Socrates says, well, okay, I'll tell you about that.

00:23:54.940 And the city then turns into what will become at the end of its development, the city of philosopher kings in the republic.

00:24:01.780 That's called the Calipolis.

00:24:02.820 I think it's a somewhat ironic name.

00:24:04.840 It means the noble and beautiful city.

00:24:06.460 And 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.

00:24:18.160 And finally, that last city, the city of philosopher kings is one that Glaucon finds extremely attractive.

00:24:22.580 And I think it's got a kind of pedagogical function because Socrates wants to see whether he can get Glaucon interested in philosophy.

00:24:30.980 And 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.

00:24:39.780 So I need to talk a little bit about Glaucon as well.

00:24:42.240 Yeah, so why did Plato pick his brother to be this main interlocutor with Socrates?

00:24:49.120 And what did he represent?

00:24:51.020 And why wasn't in the republic, why wasn't Glaucon initially interested in philosophy?

00:24:57.700 And he found these other things interesting.

00:24:59.780 Yeah.

00:25:00.880 So we know about Glaucon, who was a historical character, of course, one of Plato's brothers.

00:25:07.000 Initially, the earliest report of who Glaucon was comes from Xenophon.

00:25:12.500 Xenophon was, again, another student of Socrates.

00:25:15.500 And in Xenophon's memorabilia, his recollections of Socrates, he tells a little story.

00:25:20.360 And the story is this.

00:25:22.380 Glaucon, before he was even 20 years old, before he was even a citizen of the Athenians,

00:25:28.100 would go to the assembly and get up on the platform and harangue the Athenians.

00:25:32.040 He was so ambitious for power. 0.97

00:25:34.780 And his relatives would pull him off of the platform because he was making a fool of himself. 0.96

00:25:42.640 And they couldn't get him under control.

00:25:45.480 And so Xenophon says, for the sake of Plato, who, by the way, at that time was probably like

00:25:50.620 12 or 13.

00:25:51.940 I mean, he was just a boy.

00:25:53.460 For the sake of Plato, whom Socrates already knew, he went to talk to Glaucon.

00:25:57.880 And what he said to Glaucon is, well, you want to be a powerful man among the Athenians.

00:26:02.880 Yes, I do.

00:26:03.640 Well, you know, that's wonderful.

00:26:05.540 What do you know about economics?

00:26:07.240 What do you know about military matters?

00:26:09.040 And he shows him that he doesn't really know anything.

00:26:12.240 So that's our first introduction to Glaucon.

00:26:14.360 And Glaucon is particularly interested in impressing his relatives.

00:26:19.360 He has two relatives in particular.

00:26:21.080 One is named Critias and one is named Carmides.

00:26:23.080 Socrates, these are names of notorious Athenians because they were two men who were the leaders

00:26:31.940 of the 30 tyrants, the oligarchy that took over Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian

00:26:36.580 War and executed all these fellow Athenian citizens. 0.93

00:26:39.660 So Socrates is interested in Glaucon because he wants to save Glaucon from the fate of pursuing

00:26:49.120 power and glory and pursuing tyranny.

00:26:52.460 Again, in the Republic, Glaucon is the spokesman for tyranny.

00:26:55.480 He's the guy who says people underneath are unjust.

00:26:58.180 He's attracted to power and rule.

00:27:00.800 And it's clear that Socrates has a close relationship with Glaucon.

00:27:03.920 He's with him at the beginning of the dialogue and he speaks directly to him repeatedly in

00:27:09.620 the myth of Ur at the end of the dialogue.

00:27:12.080 So there's a special issue there.

00:27:14.600 Socrates wants to save Glaucon's soul from a life of politics and injustice and turn him

00:27:21.020 toward philosophy.

00:27:22.840 And but also Glaucon, as you allude in the book, it sort of represents an ideal of manliness

00:27:29.580 that was prominent in ancient Greek at the time.

00:27:33.220 So where you were to be a man to have and is it Andrea is the Greek Andrea you needed to 0.70

00:27:39.580 have ambition for power, seek glory, seek honor.

00:27:43.520 So tell us more about ancient Greek manliness and how Glaucon embodied that.

00:27:48.400 Right.

00:27:49.140 So ever since the time of Homer, I guess you could say that all young Greek males wanted 1.00

00:27:54.780 to be Achilles.

00:27:55.960 Achilles is the most famous Greek warrior and cannot be defeated in battle.

00:28:00.620 I mean, of course, he does ultimately die because he's shot by an arrow in his heel.

00:28:05.020 That's a whole nother story.

00:28:06.440 Not one, by the way, that's told in Homer.

00:28:08.880 And the so the paradigm for manliness was heroic manliness, deeds of valor and glory on the

00:28:15.900 battlefield.

00:28:16.720 The word Andrea means courage.

00:28:18.760 And what's interesting is that, well, let me say a little bit more about about that ideal.

00:28:26.560 I think it's it's reasonable to think of the Greeks as part of a sort of Mediterranean culture

00:28:32.000 of manliness.

00:28:32.620 I would actually refer to the Sicilians here, if anyone knows the story of the Godfather.

00:28:37.700 In the beginning of the Republic, Polemarchus, who is one of Socrates' interlocutors, says

00:28:44.160 justice is harming enemies and helping friends.

00:28:47.520 And the harming enemies part, Socrates argues against.

00:28:51.000 Think about what it would mean to be a godfather, this sort of Mediterranean and Sicilian idea

00:28:56.880 of manliness, which is very much like the Greek idea.

00:28:59.600 You don't let people hurt you.

00:29:02.220 You hurt them.

00:29:03.760 Revenge is a big, big thing.

00:29:05.500 Okay, and so this is the sort of standard heroic ideal of manliness.

00:29:12.780 What's interesting about Socrates is that he represents a very different ideal.

00:29:19.060 Socrates is himself, and we know this is historically true, he was a distinguished warrior.

00:29:25.020 Socrates was a poor man, but somehow he acquired the money to buy the shield and greaves and spear

00:29:33.100 and sword that would allow him to be a hoplite warrior.

00:29:37.020 Hoplite warriors were sort of the main warriors in ancient Greece.

00:29:41.620 And he distinguished himself on the field of battle.

00:29:44.100 There's a dialogue called the Carmedes, in which Socrates returns from a very bloody battle,

00:29:48.880 in which he saved Alcibiades, another famous Greek warrior, and then turned down.

00:29:54.420 We know this from the symposium.

00:29:55.660 He turned down the awards.

00:29:56.680 He said Alcibiades should get the awards.

00:29:58.040 So, young men like Glaucon and Alcibiades and others were attracted to Socrates in the first instance

00:30:04.820 because he was a famous warrior.

00:30:07.260 He actually spent years on campaign.

00:30:09.040 There's a wonderful article called Socrates as Hoplite, published in the journal Ancient Philosophy

00:30:13.660 that details this.

00:30:16.120 But I think that, so he had those ingredients, but Socrates' idea of manliness was very different

00:30:22.940 from the classical Greek ideal because the fact is that Greek manliness, which is the word

00:30:30.200 for courage, was actually rooted in cowardice.

00:30:34.160 This is sort of the dirty little secret.

00:30:36.960 If we look at Homer, Hector, the great Trojan warrior, is facing Achilles outside the walls of Troy.

00:30:44.500 His mother and father, the king and queen of Troy, have said, come inside the wall, Achilles will kill you.

00:30:50.360 And Hector doesn't do it because he doesn't want to be called a coward.

00:30:55.080 Aristotle says in the Nicomachean Ethics that the citizen soldiers in Greece were motivated by the fear of shame.

00:31:03.240 This is, for example, a major principle in Sparta.

00:31:05.860 Sparta was extremely hard on those who in any way were thought to be cowards.

00:31:11.380 So the fear of disrepute is what drove ancient Greek courage.

00:31:16.480 Here comes Socrates.

00:31:18.020 Socrates has a different idea of manliness.

00:31:20.420 His idea is the courage to do what is right and just, no matter what people think of you.

00:31:28.280 And this comes to a head in the case of the trial of Socrates.

00:31:31.840 He's tried for impiety and corrupt in the young.

00:31:34.660 It is said by his accusers that his philosophizing harms his fellow Athenians.

00:31:39.480 And 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.

00:31:48.720 I will not stop philosophizing.

00:31:51.020 And he's tried and executed on a capital crime.

00:31:54.480 What kind of courage does it take to stick to your convictions in that way?

00:31:58.220 And not to be afraid of disrepute.

00:32:01.180 Not to be afraid of being executed because you're doing something that, to the best of your knowledge, is just and right.

00:32:08.360 That's a new idea of heroism.

00:32:10.360 We don't see that in the ancient Greek heroes like Achilles.

00:32:13.560 We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:32:16.640 And now back to the show.

00:32:18.140 And 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.

00:32:33.900 It would eventually destroy the city, the city state.

00:32:36.960 That's sort of the point of the Iliad, right?

00:32:40.200 That's right.

00:32:40.600 Achilles' quest for glory, and he felt he was being disrespected.

00:32:44.720 He withheld his fighting ability, and the Greeks got slaughtered. 0.81

00:32:49.700 And so Homer was like, don't do that.

00:32:52.080 That's an example of what happens when you let glory and honor become your main purpose in life.

00:32:57.860 That's exactly right.

00:32:58.840 I think the Iliad really is a fantastic story and has this really critical edge.

00:33:04.640 I mean, some might read the Iliad and say, look, it's celebrating these heroic warriors.

00:33:08.000 But the deeper, darker side is, what does the longing for glory and the fear of disrepute do to you?

00:33:14.340 So Achilles, you know, the Iliad begins with a quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon, who's the chief general of the Greek forces.

00:33:21.660 Achilles feels disrespected.

00:33:23.480 And because his pride is wounded, he withdraws from battle.

00:33:27.640 And the real tragedy of that is not only are the Greeks basically being slaughtered because they've lost their greatest warrior.

00:33:33.840 Achilles' best friend, Patroclus, goes into battle and is killed.

00:33:40.800 And Achilles loses his friend because of his own withdrawal from battle and because he's not there to protect him.

00:33:46.760 And once that happens, he realizes, you know what?

00:33:50.040 All this glory stuff, it's nothing compared to my love of the man who died, my best friend.

00:33:57.180 And then Achilles goes and he, you know, he slaughters Hector.

00:34:01.260 And it's not even a quest for glory anymore.

00:34:03.280 It's pure revenge. 1.00

00:34:04.400 I'm going to kill the man who took the life of my friend. 1.00

00:34:07.020 He learns too late what's valuable in life. 0.99

00:34:09.920 And Plato wants to teach us what's valuable.

00:34:12.340 Virtue, friendship, which is extremely important.

00:34:15.460 Aristotle teaches that friendship is a virtue and involves virtue.

00:34:18.640 It's an arena for showing that you're a good human being, helping your friends.

00:34:22.280 And harming your enemies and getting revenge is not part of the philosophical life.

00:34:27.060 But this is a, but the way Socrates does it, it's very subtle.

00:34:30.160 Because he could have done just be like, you know, bludgeoned them, ham-fisted, like, you just need to be a good guy.

00:34:35.720 But he doesn't do that.

00:34:37.060 Yes, right.

00:34:38.020 So how does Socrates make philosophy appear manly to Glaucon?

00:34:44.280 Because that's what he's trying to do, right?

00:34:46.020 Yeah, I mean, this is right.

00:34:48.120 So the way I read the Republic is that he is trying to bring Glaucon permanently into his orbit.

00:34:58.220 He wants Glaucon to become a student of philosophy and to spend his life philosophizing.

00:35:05.080 And in the Republic, by the way, Socrates says that philosophy is a lifelong quest.

00:35:09.860 Philosophy, as he says famously in the Apology, is the examined life.

00:35:14.120 And Socrates says the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.

00:35:17.200 But so we know that Glaucon has spent time with Socrates, but Socrates feels he's not really permanently attached to him.

00:35:25.820 And 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.

00:35:35.940 And Glaucon is schooled in mathematics.

00:35:38.540 He's poetically gifted.

00:35:39.580 He'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.

00:35:52.980 He's very drawn toward the political life that's represented by Plato's relatives, Critias and Carmides.

00:35:58.040 So, Socrates wants to pull him away from those seductions, which are really a sort of life in the cave, and bring him into philosophy.

00:36:06.880 How does he do that?

00:36:08.220 Well, he presents this city called Callipolis, in which the greatest warriors are going to achieve the greatest honor.

00:36:16.980 He describes an army training of warriors, both male and female, who will protect the city, who will maintain civic order.

00:36:26.700 And 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.

00:36:38.900 And 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.

00:36:59.360 So, I think he tries to lay out this city of philosopher kings as a way of hooking Glaucon.

00:37:04.280 And 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.

00:37:12.600 And if you're even, if you're the best of the best, you could become a philosopher king.

00:37:17.340 And 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.

00:37:27.400 I think that's the gamble that Socrates is taking.

00:37:29.720 So, yeah, he tries to hook him with this idea of what could be in store for a guy like Glaucon.

00:37:39.360 So, he's using that passion for glory and honor, sort of nudging him in a different direction towards something more positive.

00:37:48.120 Right, right.

00:37:48.960 And 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.

00:38:06.720 Yes.

00:38:07.280 Like Odysseus, or like Iliad, or like Achilles.

00:38:09.860 Have the courage of Achilles, but, you know, towards philosophy.

00:38:13.880 Right, exactly.

00:38:15.480 So, this latest book is called Glaucon's Fate, History, Myth, and Character in Plato's Republic.

00:38:21.500 But my first book, which Brett has already read, you already read.

00:38:24.620 Yeah, it's good.

00:38:25.840 It's called The Republic, the Odyssey of Philosophy.

00:38:28.340 And that book read Plato's Republic as a kind of philosophical odyssey.

00:38:33.120 And, in fact, in other dialogues as well, philosophy is presented as a kind of odyssey and quest.

00:38:39.280 So, what's the odyssey?

00:38:40.580 Well, you know, Odysseus leaves home, has all these adventures, finally returns home.

00:38:44.860 And in the Republic, it's presented as a kind of journey.

00:38:48.620 I mean, Socrates and Glaucon at one point, you know, they're said to be sort of at sea, and they have to jump into the sea and swim.

00:38:55.560 And so, and one can find specific parallels that I won't go into to Homer's odyssey.

00:39:00.660 But the idea is that it's an intellectual odyssey and a spiritual odyssey, right?

00:39:05.880 You could also think of coming out of the cave as a kind of odyssey of the soul.

00:39:10.820 So, there's clearly something about manliness or courage that is reflected in the use of a character like Odysseus.

00:39:21.200 By the way, in the Apology, Socrates compares himself to Achilles.

00:39:24.240 He compares himself to Heracles, whom we know as Hercules, who went around the world killing monsters and sort of saving civilization.

00:39:33.760 And then the question becomes, well, you know, what exactly is the role of courage in philosophy?

00:39:39.500 And again, I think manliness, Andrea, courage plays a central role.

00:39:44.740 Because at the end of the day, I think what Plato wanted to show us in Socrates is what it means to be a person of integrity.

00:39:52.840 We might say a self, an active, reflective, responsible individual.

00:39:59.640 Not to be swept up in the passions of your community, like Athens and the Peloponnesian War.

00:40:06.280 Not to be swept up in whatever values your particular cave of culture might be promoting.

00:40:12.320 But to be your own person.

00:40:14.180 To be reflective, to be deliberate, to understand what is right and good, and to do it.

00:40:19.480 And by the way, Socrates was famously a man of integrity.

00:40:23.860 Kierkegaard, 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.

00:40:38.700 And what he means by that is he says he walks the walk and he talks the talk.

00:40:43.580 There's no gap between his knowledge of what is right and good and his action.

00:40:48.500 And that is, that requires manliness.

00:40:52.560 That requires courage.

00:40:53.940 Because to be a good person at all times is difficult because we are surrounded, you know, by many mediocre individuals and some bad ones.

00:41:03.200 And the just man in unjust times will not be lauded and not be approved.

00:41:08.360 And so you've got to have the courage of your convictions, but your convictions also have to be right and good.

00:41:14.520 And that's what philosophy is about, is understanding how to live.

00:41:19.280 And then the deep secret is that's the source of happiness.

00:41:22.320 Happiness, 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.

00:41:38.660 Okay, so let's kind of recap here what we've talked about so far and then get into whether Socrates was successful with Glaucon.

00:41:45.980 So 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.

00:41:55.260 That's where that's, and you showed courage that way on the battlefield, et cetera.

00:41:59.760 Socrates was coming along and saying, well, no, that can lead to disaster, both for the individual and for the city-state.

00:42:06.660 So he came up with this new, like, Socratic manhood, where you had Andrea or courage, but for the philosophical life.

00:42:13.560 That's right.

00:42:13.860 So 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.

00:42:26.220 Did it work?

00:42:27.560 Did that city-state that Socrates created, did it help Glaucon go over to the world of philosophy?

00:42:35.140 Well, that's a good question.

00:42:36.480 I 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.

00:42:46.520 So let me say this.

00:42:48.200 The logician and philosopher-scientist, the British thinker Karl Popper, wrote a book during the Second World War called The Open Society and Its Enemies.

00:42:57.180 And it was an attack on totalitarianism.

00:42:59.120 And in this book, Popper argues that the regime of philosopher kings in Plato's Republic is a totalitarian regime.

00:43:08.840 That's the one called Callipolis.

00:43:10.840 And I have to say, I agree with Karl Popper.

00:43:14.240 So let me tell you, first of all, this is a very strange thing because Socrates presents it.

00:43:19.000 He expresses admiration for this regime, which...

00:43:21.500 Yeah, you read it and it sounds terrible.

00:43:22.920 You have no privacy.

00:43:24.220 That's right.

00:43:24.520 You don't have your own family.

00:43:26.540 You don't even know if your kids are your kids.

00:43:29.000 That's right.

00:43:29.560 It's terrible.

00:43:30.340 Right.

00:43:31.080 So there are a lot of interesting levels here, but let me say a little bit about the origin of this.

00:43:36.200 As I said, Glaucon tells this myth of Gyge's Ring, the Ring of Invisibility. 0.99

00:43:41.000 And there is a deep problem here.

00:43:43.840 I 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.

00:43:54.560 It's called the Sisyphus Fragment.

00:43:56.800 And 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.

00:44:05.940 And that is this.

00:44:07.260 People were lawless and unjust until laws were made.

00:44:10.920 But then people figured out that you could commit injustice in secret.

00:44:14.580 And Critias says, and by the way, Critias was a radical thinker.

00:44:18.960 That's when human beings invented the gods and said that the gods know everything we do, even secret injustice.

00:44:27.040 And 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.

00:44:37.360 And by the way, Zeus in Homer, for example, is said to wander the cities and observe the unjust deeds of human beings.

00:44:45.640 Well, 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.

00:44:56.640 He doesn't believe in them.

00:44:57.520 And he goes under the ground and he steals a ring from a corpse, which is a very impious thing to do.

00:45:04.620 Grave robbery was a very serious sin, if you will.

00:45:08.440 So 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.

00:45:18.920 The only way to stop that kind of injustice is, therefore, to design a city in which everyone is spied on at all times.

00:45:28.460 And that is what happens in the city of philosopher kings called Kallipolis.

00:45:33.540 Anyone can go into anyone's room at any time.

00:45:37.200 All the poetry is censored.

00:45:39.120 Poets produce state-mandated content.

00:45:41.120 There's no privacy.

00:45:41.980 And so on one level, what this city is, is a regime that is designed to root out injustice everywhere.

00:45:52.580 And it does so by essentially engaging in a kind of totalitarian monitoring of all the citizens.

00:45:58.520 It's a very ugly regime.

00:46:00.300 That's not my only criticism of the regime.

00:46:02.340 So then we have this question, what's going on with this story?

00:46:06.420 Now, on the one hand, I've suggested that it's designed to attract Glaucon because it's a city in which Glaucon feels he could be at home.

00:46:15.820 He could be a big shot.

00:46:17.020 He would be a big warrior, and he could even be a philosopher king.

00:46:20.820 It'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.

00:46:32.440 And so, you know, there's a lot to untangle here.

00:46:34.940 Why would Socrates present this city?

00:46:37.520 Well, 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.

00:46:45.600 But 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.

00:46:58.020 And what would be needed is an unjust regime.

00:47:01.400 That's the problem.

00:47:02.540 And Karl Popper is right, actually, that one can see in that city of the republic a kind of prototype of later totalitarian regimes.

00:47:12.620 And, 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.

00:47:24.080 Believe it or not, Khomeini had studied Plato's republic.

00:47:26.140 If 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.

00:47:34.320 So, 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.

00:47:45.220 But it raises big questions, which is, what responsibility did Socrates have for Glaucon's fate?

00:47:52.480 Did 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?

00:48:00.960 On the other hand, did Critias get his ideas for the sort of tyrannical regime he sets up from this Kallipolis in the republic? 0.69

00:48:09.960 These are big questions.

00:48:11.260 Yeah.

00:48:11.480 And 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?

00:48:22.740 And then depending on where you were, you'll get put into, like, the school for guardians, right?

00:48:26.600 And you're going to be trained in philosophy, but a state sort of mandated philosophy.

00:48:31.180 And then if you're good enough, then you'll be, you know, moved over to the philosopher king and be trained for that.

00:48:36.700 And it looks like Socrates is like, hey, this is a way where you can sort of do philosophy, but, like, it isn't philosophy.

00:48:43.300 Right.

00:48:43.460 Because, like, you're just, you're told the answers and you just sort of spit out the answers over and over.

00:48:47.940 And so, it's not really philosophy.

00:48:49.560 Yeah, that's right.

00:48:50.380 You 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.

00:49:05.760 And the ills of communities, war and discord and so forth, will not be overcome unless philosophers rule.

00:49:13.080 And Glaucon says, hey, what are you talking about?

00:49:16.520 Many people will be angry with you when you say that.

00:49:18.840 And Socrates says, well, maybe you don't know what a philosopher is.

00:49:22.100 And then he lays out what a philosopher is.

00:49:24.220 And in this part of the dialogue, I think we hear Socrates' genuine voice.

00:49:28.520 And he doesn't talk about the mind or the intellect.

00:49:31.620 He 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.

00:49:43.920 The philosopher loves wisdom, and his desire is to come into the presence of the truth.

00:49:51.760 By 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?

00:50:01.660 You know, the exile from Eden is a curse because you're no longer in the presence of God.

00:50:07.440 So, 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.

00:50:17.240 And 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.

00:50:28.540 And there's no debate.

00:50:30.220 We don't have Socratic dialogue.

00:50:32.800 If you sort of ask, would Socrates be happy in this regime?

00:50:35.860 If Socrates lived in this regime, he would be asking questions, as he always does.

00:50:39.620 He would be questioning the philosopher kings.

00:50:41.920 They would not take kindly to it because they are part of a school of philosophy.

00:50:45.900 So, there's a kind of calcified version of philosophy in the Kallipolis.

00:50:51.940 And what's interesting is, in book seven of the Republic, Socrates lays out the whole curriculum for the philosopher kings.

00:50:57.080 The word eros never shows up.

00:50:59.280 It's not erotic.

00:51:00.900 It's compared to gymnastic, which means exercise in Greek.

00:51:04.620 It's a grind.

00:51:05.860 It's very strange.

00:51:06.360 It 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?

00:51:15.420 You don't go because of the love of learning.

00:51:17.720 You 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.

00:51:23.420 Like, that idea that Socrates is putting out there for the education of a philosopher king reminded me of that for some reason.

00:51:31.780 Yeah, I think that's right.

00:51:32.860 And 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.

00:51:44.760 That 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.

00:51:54.860 And it's a very kind of abstract thinking.

00:51:58.260 Socrates, to sort of go back to why Plato wrote dialogues, they're very concrete.

00:52:03.380 Every discussion in a Platonic dialogue starts out in an ordinary human context and returns to that context.

00:52:10.440 There's a dialogue called the Lockies, for example, where the issue is courage.

00:52:13.660 And 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.

00:52:22.620 And that quickly leads into the discussion of what is courage.

00:52:24.740 The philosophical regime in the Republic is characterized by a very abstract thought.

00:52:31.740 It's not connected with the concrete character of everyday life.

00:52:36.420 And I think our education today is often sort of imposed from above in very abstract categories.

00:52:45.140 It 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.

00:52:58.600 So 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.

00:53:15.900 I don't know if that's very clear, but that's my sense.

00:53:18.660 No, that's what I think.

00:53:19.300 And this goes to show how the Republic is still relevant today.

00:53:24.540 I mean, we are still grappling with this idea of what does it mean to be a man?

00:53:28.600 Yes.

00:53:29.100 And does it mean to sort of that Homeric manliness where it's like bravery on the battlefield and having a love of honor and glory?

00:53:36.120 Or is it something different?

00:53:38.020 If it is something different, how do you nudge men in that way without being condescending and making it so unattractive?

00:53:47.120 Like, I don't want to – so like the whole new man thing of the 1960s and 70s ponytail guy.

00:53:52.640 Right.

00:53:53.660 That didn't work.

00:53:54.900 And we're still grappling with that issue today.

00:53:56.600 No, I think that's right.

00:53:57.720 And I think a lot of categories are confused here.

00:54:01.200 As you know, Brett, there's a lot of discussion of toxic masculinity.

00:54:04.460 And obviously, there are forms of masculinity. 0.73

00:54:07.000 I would say that Greek heroic traditional masculinity is toxic in the sense that it involves a competition for glory and power.

00:54:15.740 And that's very destructive of human communities and of individuals.

00:54:21.480 But I don't want to get lost in all this discussion of toxic masculinity, the models of good masculinity.

00:54:28.580 And I think Socrates is trying to model that.

00:54:31.600 And, you know, masculinity is – I mean, I'm probably preaching to the choir here.

00:54:38.360 But this is not a bad thing because courage is not a bad thing.

00:54:42.740 And 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?

00:54:54.520 And Socrates says, not at all.

00:54:57.420 The only thing you should care about is being the best human being you can.

00:55:00.820 You should care about justice.

00:55:02.060 You should care about your soul being in the best condition possible.

00:55:05.340 There 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.

00:55:16.820 And turn us away from the question of being the best people we can be.

00:55:21.660 And frankly, it takes courage to pursue that goal often in society and to turn away from these seductions.

00:55:30.320 I think C.S. Lewis said that every virtue at the breaking point turns into courage, right?

00:55:36.080 Right.

00:55:36.380 Because you have to take a stand.

00:55:37.620 And, you know, one of the things that I think that Socrates stood for is cultivating the individual as an individual.

00:55:48.820 You know, Socratic education, Socrates believed that we don't really know anything that we haven't worked out for ourselves.

00:55:55.680 Education is not pouring water from an empty cup, from a full cup into an empty cup.

00:56:00.800 We need to be active participants in our own learning.

00:56:03.580 And one of the great things that comes out of that is discovering who we are.

00:56:10.480 Self-knowledge was a big element of, major element of Socratic philosophizing.

00:56:15.660 So discovering who you are as an individual and what it is that makes your life fulfilling and rich.

00:56:24.800 And not wavering from that, right?

00:56:27.000 Not being swept away in social currents or fashion.

00:56:31.740 And there is a kind of manliness that is required to pursue that kind of path.

00:56:39.380 So 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. 0.99

00:56:51.540 You 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.

00:57:09.560 And letting them become confident about their beliefs and their opinions.

00:57:14.720 Well, so I mean, how do we do that?

00:57:16.780 So obviously, Calipolis didn't work where you sort of come up with this curriculum where you say, here's what you need to learn.

00:57:24.320 How do you inculcate that love, that desire to just learn and be playful?

00:57:28.840 I mean, that's another thing about soccer.

00:57:29.800 Soccer is very playful.

00:57:31.200 Right.

00:57:31.300 We 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?

00:57:42.820 No, I don't think you can.

00:57:45.520 You know, anyone who has observed little children sees their playfulness and their curiosity.

00:57:52.300 I happen to have a three-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter, and she's just incredibly curious and playful.

00:57:59.200 So what happens?

00:58:00.420 Kids go to school, and it somehow gets knocked out of them.

00:58:04.420 And I think part of this is a reflection of the kinds of tendencies we see in, for example, Calipolis.

00:58:10.880 There's centralization, right?

00:58:12.740 We 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.

00:58:25.000 And somehow, this playfulness and this curiosity is lost.

00:58:32.380 The only way to really – I think Socrates is right about this.

00:58:35.860 His education was one-on-one.

00:58:37.960 When Socrates was talking to somebody, they were the center of the world for him.

00:58:42.000 He paid attention.

00:58:42.860 He looked them in the eye, and he asked them questions, and he put them on the spot.

00:58:46.220 And another thing here, by the way, and I think this is also relevant to the question of courage and manliness, he asked tough questions.

00:58:53.560 He didn't cut people breaks.

00:58:55.200 It 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. 0.99

00:59:02.600 And that's the first thing you need to do if you're going to learn something is realize that you're ignorant. 0.97

00:59:08.180 Socrates was sort of the school of tough love in education. 0.89

00:59:11.120 A lot of educational philosophy today is trying to find the strengths of students and not challenge them, right?

00:59:21.660 So 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.

00:59:31.960 I think Socrates would say, well, if you have difficulty learning through reading, then we should make you read more, you see?

00:59:37.100 So somehow to combine those challenges with a sense of fun.

00:59:42.520 Socrates is very funny, actually.

00:59:45.240 So we have to recover that.

00:59:48.020 But the key here is it's one person at a time.

00:59:50.900 You 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.

00:59:58.120 And it occurs one student at a time, right?

01:00:01.140 I mean, I'll have a class with a bunch of students, but it's individual students I'm teaching.

01:00:04.400 And they're the ones that come up to me and say, that's interesting what you said.

01:00:07.880 I want to learn more about that.

01:00:09.900 One little victory at a time.

01:00:11.620 I was, as you were talking, do you think it's harder to ask questions and be playful with ideas in today's world?

01:00:18.700 Or is it actually easier compared to Socrates' time?

01:00:22.940 I think it's actually harder to ask questions because we've been talking about shame and fear of public opinion.

01:00:29.200 And I said that Greek heroism was rooted in that, in that fear especially, even more than in the love of glory.

01:00:37.820 And today, you know, there are certain subjects that professors have to be fairly intrepid to even raise in class.

01:00:47.700 Certain issues having to do with sexuality or religion or minority groups and so forth.

01:00:54.020 And a lot of professors really shy away from those sorts of issues.

01:00:58.020 One 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.

01:01:05.320 I 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.

01:01:15.960 And you can approach these issues if you're talking about another text, not necessarily directly addressing questions in contemporary culture.

01:01:25.100 Because, frankly, there's a lot of pressure.

01:01:27.900 I think students have complained about this as well as professors.

01:01:31.040 What if I voice an opinion that people might take the wrong way?

01:01:34.740 What if I say something that might offend somebody?

01:01:37.600 And, in fact, at our university, there is an anonymous online bias reporting system to report bias.

01:01:47.000 So you can imagine that students and professors alike are pretty cautious about asking questions and raising topics.

01:01:54.620 And the fact is that we need to be able to talk about everything.

01:01:57.860 I mean, philosophy shouldn't shy away from anything.

01:02:00.700 That's the way that we're educated.

01:02:02.820 And this is not a question of taking political sides.

01:02:05.580 If 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.

01:02:16.780 So 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.

01:02:31.340 So it actually takes a certain amount of courage to be a Socratic thinker in today's world.

01:02:39.080 You know, Socrates was never afraid of saying what he thought.

01:02:41.500 In fact, he thought he was obliged to say what he thought.

01:02:44.340 Very few people are completely open about their views in a public context today.

01:02:49.040 Yeah.

01:02:49.660 So, I mean, that bias outline sounds like Kallipolis, right?

01:02:51.940 No privacy.

01:02:52.980 Just kidding.

01:02:54.680 It's a problem.

01:02:55.440 It's a problem.

01:02:56.740 And I think that people need to learn to be tough, you know.

01:03:03.880 Plato loves to compare the body and the soul.

01:03:06.040 How do you get a healthy body?

01:03:08.480 Well, one thing is exercise.

01:03:09.960 What is exercise?

01:03:11.180 It is putting your body in a position where you are overcoming resistance.

01:03:15.760 What does a healthy soul look like?

01:03:17.500 A healthy mind.

01:03:19.200 Putting yourself in a position where you're overcoming resistance.

01:03:21.800 That means there has to be resistance.

01:03:23.260 That means there have to be ideas that are anathema to you when you first look at them, right?

01:03:28.420 Only 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.

01:03:40.200 And, you know, I think, I mean, the promotion of honesty and public discourse is absolutely crucial.

01:03:46.700 But it requires people who are prepared to engage in that kind of often rough and tumble debate.

01:03:52.920 And 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.

01:04:02.980 And they're not going to develop the confidence in their individual selves as active, reflective centers of thought and action.

01:04:13.380 And that's what it means to be a fully flourishing human being from the Socratic perspective.

01:04:18.060 You need Andrea.

01:04:19.040 It all goes back to manliness.

01:04:20.860 It goes back to courage.

01:04:21.960 So what do you think happens to Glaucon?

01:04:23.300 Do 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?

01:04:28.480 He realized, ah, man, this little gamble I took in making this thing that appealed to Glaucon, it actually backfired.

01:04:36.940 And he was like.

01:04:38.000 Right.

01:04:38.400 So first of all, in Socrates' defense, let me say this.

01:04:42.080 I think this was a gamble dangling a city like Kallipolis before him.

01:04:45.760 And, 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.

01:05:02.660 Why is there no question?

01:05:04.000 Well, Plato leaves a letter called the Seventh Letter.

01:05:06.740 And in the Seventh Letter, he explains his own experience.

01:05:10.280 Now, Plato was the youngest brother.

01:05:11.760 Adamantus was the oldest.

01:05:12.820 Glaucon was the middle brother.

01:05:13.840 Glaucon, we know, had already established himself as a brave warrior and a very bright young man by the time of 404.

01:05:21.880 Plato would have been about 24 years old.

01:05:23.640 Glaucon may be closer to 30.

01:05:26.380 Plato writes in the Seventh Letter, I was invited by my relatives.

01:05:29.220 They took over in Athens at the end of the war.

01:05:31.940 And they promised to restore the city to virtue and justice.

01:05:39.040 And he indicates that, basically, he was on board and he began to participate.

01:05:43.840 And he said, but I quickly realized that the previous regime was a thing of gold compared to these guys.

01:05:50.500 And he talks about how they persecuted Socrates.

01:05:53.040 They actually made a law, right?

01:05:54.260 They didn't like Socrates because he asked questions.

01:05:56.760 And naturally, Socrates was anti-tyrannical.

01:06:00.680 And so they made a law.

01:06:01.880 Socrates can't talk to anyone under the age of 30.

01:06:03.940 And you can't teach the art of speech and so forth.

01:06:07.200 Glaucon would certainly have been invited to join this regime.

01:06:10.680 Adamantus would have been invited to join the regime.

01:06:13.960 We know that Adamantus didn't.

01:06:16.120 There are various clues in the Republic.

01:06:17.520 But one major clue is he is present at the trial of Socrates as somebody who can vouch for Socrates.

01:06:24.580 Had 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.

01:06:42.180 These are people that Socrates talks to in the dialogues.

01:06:45.840 Glaucon does not show up in the Apology.

01:06:47.940 He disappears from the historical record.

01:06:51.140 And 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.

01:06:58.280 He says to Socrates, I'm convinced the life of philosophy is better than the life of tyranny.

01:07:03.200 And I believe he was convinced at that time.

01:07:06.480 But things change.

01:07:08.220 And I was reading a book years ago.

01:07:10.800 I never thought about it.

01:07:11.580 I thought he's convinced.

01:07:12.560 A 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.

01:07:19.980 And Munn pointed out a couple of things just in passing that really got me thinking.

01:07:24.200 He said, I think Glaucon joined the 30.

01:07:26.800 And I think he died in the decisive battle in which Critias and Carmides were killed by the returning Democrats. 0.64

01:07:33.480 And this battle took place in the Piraeus.

01:07:35.920 He says Glaucon doesn't show up in the Apology.

01:07:38.400 He disappears.

01:07:39.020 More 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.

01:07:51.680 That's the location of the battle.

01:07:54.200 And there were a couple of other things that he mentioned.

01:07:56.220 I started thinking about it.

01:07:57.560 And I realized that there are lots of clues in the Republic.

01:08:00.980 There's all this kind of deep, tragic, dramatic undertones associated with Glaucons.

01:08:07.180 And so, and I won't go through all the clues.

01:08:11.320 I won't say anything else about that right now.

01:08:12.720 But I make the case in this book that Munn is probably right.

01:08:16.620 That the suggestion is that Glaucon did join the regime of the 30 and did die fighting for them, most likely.

01:08:23.640 And that means Socrates failed.

01:08:24.960 And 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.

01:08:37.320 It's a tragedy.

01:08:38.400 Why is that?

01:08:40.220 Why couldn't he save him?

01:08:41.760 And 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.

01:08:57.540 How do you overcome those forces and set somebody on the path to virtue and wisdom?

01:09:04.180 Socrates couldn't do it with Glaucon.

01:09:05.700 He did it with Plato.

01:09:07.060 He did it with Xenophon.

01:09:08.680 And those are two major, major accomplishments.

01:09:11.680 But as the case in many other platonic dialogues, he fails.

01:09:15.860 He fails with the people he talks to.

01:09:17.640 Yeah.

01:09:17.740 So it's risky.

01:09:19.400 Dialogue is risky.

01:09:21.060 Socratic philosophy is risky.

01:09:23.100 Philosophy is very risky.

01:09:24.380 It's, it's, uh, but according to Socrates, you know, the examined life is, is the life to, to goodness and virtue and happiness.

01:09:34.160 And it's a risk we have to take.

01:09:35.860 By 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.

01:09:49.460 Projected on the wall by the, the guardians of this culture, these, these puppeteers.

01:09:55.280 So the first step in philosophy is calling into question the things that you have unreflectively been taught, the things that you assumed were true.

01:10:03.900 The first step in philosophy is negative.

01:10:06.340 And that's dangerous because if you stop there, you can end up being a nihilist, right?

01:10:11.480 You can say, what have I learned?

01:10:13.100 And by the way, I think that's a big problem today.

01:10:15.300 We're in an age of deconstruction and postmodernism.

01:10:18.360 As the word deconstruction suggests, we're taking apart the views and the traditions that we've been taught.

01:10:24.300 We're very good at that.

01:10:25.980 But what do we replace it with?

01:10:27.980 And someone can easily develop the cynical view that each culture, each society, maybe even in each individual has their own views.

01:10:36.400 There's no truth.

01:10:37.920 There's no outside of the cave, if you will.

01:10:39.620 So that negative moment is very dangerous.

01:10:43.520 Glaucon stopped too early.

01:10:45.640 He should have continued with Socrates.

01:10:47.940 And 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.

01:11:03.340 Socrates describes that happiness at the end of the philosophical quest.

01:11:06.860 I'm convinced that Socrates had it, and it would have been Glaucon's salvation.

01:11:12.240 But my guess is, he didn't save him.

01:11:15.840 Didn't work.

01:11:16.540 Well, Jacob, this has been a great conversation.

01:11:18.360 Is there some place people can go to learn more about the book and your work?

01:11:20.780 Sure.

01:11:21.180 Well, I mean, you can, I actually have a website.

01:11:25.780 I think it's called jacobhowland.com.

01:11:27.500 I say I think it's called because I don't really look at it a lot.

01:11:31.220 But you can look at my book, Glaucon's Fate, History, Myth, and Character in Plato's Republic, on Amazon.

01:11:37.380 There is a review coming out in the Claremont Review of Books, and there should be a review in City Journal online in a month or two.

01:11:46.260 So, but check it out on Amazon.

01:11:47.960 There are a couple reviews.

01:11:49.080 You can look at it there.

01:11:51.280 And I hope that interested listeners will buy the book and find out more about this sort of historical mystery.

01:11:59.220 Right.

01:11:59.420 Well, Jacob Howland, thanks so much for your time.

01:12:00.660 It's been a pleasure.

01:12:01.280 Thank you so much, Brett.

01:12:02.280 I really appreciate your talking with me.

01:12:03.740 My guest today was Jacob Howland.

01:12:05.640 He is the author of the book, Glaucon's Fate.

01:12:07.880 It's available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.

01:12:10.200 Make 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.

01:12:23.040 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast.

01:12:26.160 Check out our website at artofmanliness.com, where you find all the podcast archives.

01:12:29.720 We've got almost 500 episodes there coming up on 500.

01:12:31.920 Also, we have thousands of articles that we've written over the years about personal finance, social skills, physical fitness.

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01:12:51.120 And until next time, this is Brett McKay reminding you to not only listen to the AOM Podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

01:13:01.920 We'll see you next time.

The Art of Manliness - April 03, 2019

#496： What Plato's Republic Has to Say About Being a Man

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