WEBVTT 00:00:00.010 --> 00:00:04.702 >> Two in San Jose and 59 degrees in downtown San Francisco. 00:00:04.702 --> 00:00:11.250 [ Music ] 00:00:11.269 --> 00:00:17.120 >> Right, ladies and gentlemen, Michael Savage, Hot Talk 560 KSFO. We're talking 00:00:17.140 --> 00:00:20.910 about what kind of world do you want to live in? What highway are we on? Do we 00:00:20.910 --> 00:00:23.910 want to be on this highway? Do we want to create a new highway? What did Plato 00:00:23.910 --> 00:00:27.269 say? This guy knew what was going on, but that was Greece. This is San 00:00:27.269 --> 00:00:28.369 Francisco. 00:00:28.389 --> 00:00:33.329 >> Is that the idea area? To keep talking until, finally, we get it right? We're 00:00:33.350 --> 00:00:37.899 having the same conversations Plato and his friends had back in 400 BC. 00:00:37.920 --> 00:00:39.217 [ Multiple Speakers ] 00:00:39.237 --> 00:00:41.030 >> Did you see the paper the other day about that high school student who was 00:00:41.030 --> 00:00:42.030 caught cheating on her college boards. 00:00:42.030 --> 00:00:43.239 >> Yeah, I read that, yeah. 00:00:42.869 --> 00:00:43.869 >> Oh, yeah. 00:00:43.869 --> 00:00:47.769 >> She said her teacher gave her the answers and told her that everyone cheats. 00:00:47.789 --> 00:00:48.789 That's the way the world works. 00:00:48.789 --> 00:00:51.829 >> But I think it's sad. People are under a lot of pressure. 00:00:51.849 --> 00:00:55.859 >> Let's face it here. If you were guaranteed that no one would find out, 00:00:55.879 --> 00:00:59.019 wouldn't you cheat? 00:00:59.039 --> 00:01:09.930 >> Would you cheat? Would you? What if there was a world where nobody cheated, 00:01:09.950 --> 00:01:15.024 and philosophers were the kings? 00:01:15.043 --> 00:01:45.043 [ Music ] 00:01:46.609 --> 00:01:51.549 This is a book that pulls you in, plays with your mind, and dares you to put it 00:01:51.569 --> 00:01:53.849 down without saying what you think. 00:01:53.869 --> 00:01:59.450 >> Plato's Republic has the kind of power to intrigue and infuriate that few 00:01:59.469 --> 00:02:06.239 works can equal. You can argue about anything from whether we should allow 00:02:06.259 --> 00:02:10.999 certain kinds of music to be sold, whether we should censor the arts. 00:02:11.019 --> 00:02:12.379 >> What is justice? 00:02:12.400 --> 00:02:14.439 >> What is a great society? What ought to be? 00:02:14.439 --> 00:02:16.439 >> What is authentic, and what is fake? 00:02:16.460 --> 00:02:17.460 >> How one has knowledge. 00:02:17.460 --> 00:02:19.509 >> What do we teach the young? 00:02:19.530 --> 00:02:23.269 >> Whatever it is, it's somewhere in Plato. 00:02:23.289 --> 00:02:28.609 >> Plato's Republic follows the intellectual adventures of Socrates, who one 00:02:28.629 --> 00:02:35.459 night, 24 centuries ago, created an ideal city, the Republic, were all of 00:02:35.479 --> 00:02:38.109 mankind's problems are solved. 00:02:38.129 --> 00:02:41.369 >> This book, the Plato's Republic, changed my life. 00:02:41.389 --> 00:02:45.049 >> William Bennett, former Secretary of Education of the United States says it 00:02:45.069 --> 00:02:47.409 encouraged him to go into politics. 00:02:47.429 --> 00:02:51.419 >> Plato says, yeah, we better have censorship in the ideal republic, because 00:02:51.439 --> 00:02:55.310 you're going to have otherwise you're going to have license. Everyone's going to 00:02:55.310 --> 00:02:59.669 do what they see on the video tape, and the videotape didn't even exist. He said 00:02:59.689 --> 00:03:02.979 he would kick out the poets, too. Go up to North Beach, I tend to agree with 00:03:02.979 --> 00:03:03.979 him. 00:03:03.979 --> 00:03:09.139 >> Mike Savage, a radio talk show host, who bills himself as the compassionate 00:03:09.159 --> 00:03:13.189 conservative, reads it regularly to his listeners. 00:03:13.209 --> 00:03:17.289 >> It's sort of an internal chess game that I play with myself, and I will read 00:03:17.289 --> 00:03:22.489 a few pages and find my mind, for, let's say, the pieces of thoughts that dance 00:03:22.509 --> 00:03:27.229 around in my head sometimes that get out of control fall in place. It's a way of 00:03:27.250 --> 00:03:33.229 ordering my mind, my imagination, and all of my mental faculties. 00:03:33.250 --> 00:03:36.669 >> Nobel prize-winning poet, Joseph Brodsky dismisses it. 00:03:36.689 --> 00:03:39.310 >> There are people, and people, you see, and this is what Plato couldn't 00:03:39.310 --> 00:03:46.699 understand. He thought that all people should be like, well, let's say himself. 00:03:46.719 --> 00:03:49.619 >> Novelist Joyce Carol-Oates questions his sanity. 00:03:49.639 --> 00:03:58.209 >> The Platonic vision is basically somewhat unreal. It's basically mad. 00:03:58.229 --> 00:04:04.199 >> Madman? Visionary? Plato has been hailed as the father of philosophy, the 00:04:04.219 --> 00:04:10.579 first feminist, a dangerously na�ve idealist, and a fascist. The fact is, we 00:04:10.599 --> 00:04:15.389 know very little about him or what he meant by his greatest book. 00:04:15.409 --> 00:04:20.569 >> It was, indeed, a kind of thought experiment to show the impossibility 00:04:20.589 --> 00:04:27.329 precisely of a perfectly just, perfectly communal, perfectly rational society. 00:04:27.349 --> 00:04:30.699 What the limits are, the limits that are rooted in our human nature. 00:04:30.719 --> 00:04:35.850 >> I think it's the deepest challenge against our way of life that there has 00:04:35.870 --> 00:04:42.170 ever been, and a deep challenge, because it has a kind of great nobility and 00:04:42.189 --> 00:04:43.780 beauty to it. 00:04:43.800 --> 00:04:50.280 >> Plato was born in a place that worshiped beauty and knowledge, Athens, 428 00:04:50.300 --> 00:04:55.920 years before the birth of Christ. The newly completed Parthenon towered over the 00:04:55.939 --> 00:05:00.110 city, another crowning achievement to the world's first democracy. This was the 00:05:00.129 --> 00:05:04.280 golden age, where the first plays were performed and the first histories of the 00:05:04.300 --> 00:05:09.780 world were written, a time when the Athenians produced art and ideas that we 00:05:09.800 --> 00:05:10.941 still marvel at. 00:05:10.961 --> 00:05:18.370 [ Music ] 00:05:18.389 --> 00:05:24.319 But it was also a time of devastating human loss. For the first 23 years of 00:05:24.339 --> 00:05:31.629 Plato's life, the Peloponnesian war raged between Athens and its neighbor, 00:05:31.649 --> 00:05:36.420 Sparta. Plato watched as the Athenian democracy was overthrown by a aristocrats, 00:05:36.439 --> 00:05:42.899 then replaced by dictators before democracy sees control once again. The one 00:05:42.919 --> 00:05:48.139 constant through it all, in Plato's view, seemed to be corruption, brutality, 00:05:48.159 --> 00:05:53.810 and blind ambition. Still, he probably would've ended up in politics like the 00:05:53.829 --> 00:05:59.720 rest of his wealthy family if he hadn't met a sidewalk philosopher named 00:05:59.740 --> 00:06:01.889 Socrates. 00:06:01.909 --> 00:06:06.209 >> Socrates seemed to have stood out in absolutely every possible way. He said 00:06:06.229 --> 00:06:13.750 that he was to Athens what a gadfly is to a large, lazy horse, in that the gods 00:06:13.769 --> 00:06:19.110 had sent him there to prick Athens and to irritate it and to make it think 00:06:19.129 --> 00:06:22.370 seriously about the kind of life that its citizens were leading. He was there to 00:06:22.370 --> 00:06:23.370 make people uncomfortable. 00:06:23.370 --> 00:06:28.000 >> Ever says this scum set up shop here, he's made me work twice as hard. 00:06:28.019 --> 00:06:30.919 >> So you say Simmias here is your enemy, because he makes you work harder than 00:06:30.919 --> 00:06:31.919 you did before? 00:06:31.919 --> 00:06:34.500 >> Well, isn't that enough to make any man your enemy? 00:06:34.500 --> 00:06:36.620 >> But an enemy is a man who does you evil, isn't he? 00:06:36.620 --> 00:06:38.459 >> Any fool knows that. 00:06:38.479 --> 00:06:40.589 >> And a friend is one who does you good. 00:06:40.589 --> 00:06:41.589 >> Any fool knows that, too. 00:06:41.589 --> 00:06:45.479 >> But what a fool does not know is what is good and what is evil. Now you make 00:06:45.479 --> 00:06:49.459 better vases and you work harder because of Simmias's competition, do you not? 00:06:49.479 --> 00:06:57.290 >> To talk to Socrates was to be taken down the garden path at the end of which 00:06:57.310 --> 00:07:02.449 one finds that, alas, you don't know what you're talking about. So it's fun to 00:07:02.469 --> 00:07:08.469 read the works. You sympathize with the person Socrates is questioning, and you 00:07:08.489 --> 00:07:14.420 have a sense that this poor person is being had, but you don't know exactly how 00:07:14.439 --> 00:07:18.980 it's being done. Socrates is the master of this. He can give you enough rope to 00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:22.579 hang yourself, and he always does. 00:07:22.599 --> 00:07:26.389 >> The master wrote nothing himself. We know him through writers like the 00:07:26.409 --> 00:07:31.969 general, Xenophon, and the comic poet, Aristophanes, who lampooned Socrates as 00:07:31.989 --> 00:07:33.209 the proprietor of a thinking shop. 00:07:33.209 --> 00:07:34.209 >> Anger. 00:07:34.209 --> 00:07:36.229 >> I told you once, Simmias, and I won't tell you again. 00:07:36.229 --> 00:07:37.670 >> Anger always interests me. 00:07:37.689 --> 00:07:38.750 >> Protagoras. 00:07:38.769 --> 00:07:43.439 >> But the infamous Socratic method was captured most vividly by Plato in a 00:07:43.459 --> 00:07:49.509 series of imaginary conversations known as The Dialogs. He made his mentor the 00:07:49.529 --> 00:07:56.410 main character of more than 20 books, including The Republic. The action begins 00:07:56.430 --> 00:08:03.839 at the port of Piraeus, just outside Athens. Socrates bumps into an old friend 00:08:03.859 --> 00:08:10.939 who invites him home to a party. It's there that he seizes the occasion to start 00:08:10.959 --> 00:08:13.699 a conversation that will last all night. 00:08:13.719 --> 00:08:21.639 >>Cephalus, it's clear that you're a good and decent man, so if anybody knows 00:08:21.659 --> 00:08:24.639 what it means to be a good and just person, it's you. 00:08:24.639 --> 00:08:30.750 >> I have been able to proceed through life with a clear conscience. I haven't 00:08:30.769 --> 00:08:35.688 been tempted to cheat or deceive someone to survive. I pay my bills. 00:08:35.708 --> 00:08:37.700 Occasionally, I give to a good cause. 00:08:37.720 --> 00:08:44.049 >> So if I understand you, Cephalus, to be a good person means to tell the truth 00:08:44.068 --> 00:08:46.689 and to pay your debts. 00:08:46.709 --> 00:08:47.709 >> Well, Socrates -- 00:08:47.709 --> 00:08:56.740 >> The main argument of the Republic is an argument about being a good person, 00:08:56.759 --> 00:09:01.340 but the term that's usually used in translations is justice and what's at stake 00:09:01.360 --> 00:09:03.850 is the definition of justice. 00:09:03.870 --> 00:09:06.689 >> The style of the book's like the Johnny Carson show. Here we are, we're 00:09:06.689 --> 00:09:10.569 gathered together. We're talking. Let's meet so-and-so. Let's see what he has to 00:09:10.569 --> 00:09:14.209 say. Let's meet Cephalus. Well, Cephalus, come on out and tell us what you think 00:09:14.209 --> 00:09:17.480 about things. Well, Polemarchus, come on out. What do you think? Well, here's 00:09:17.480 --> 00:09:21.299 that crazy guy, Thrasymachus. Come on out, Thrasymachus. What do you think it 00:09:21.319 --> 00:09:25.860 is? Well, it's like an ongoing, you know, late-night TV show with these 00:09:25.879 --> 00:09:29.580 "experts" coming on. Here's your interviewer, your moderator, who says, well, 00:09:29.600 --> 00:09:34.980 that won't do. No, that idea of justice won't do and this idea, and the audience 00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:36.079 gets caught up in it. 00:09:36.079 --> 00:09:43.960 >> A man has lent you a weapon and now wants to have it back, but in the 00:09:43.980 --> 00:09:49.450 meanwhile, he believes his wife's having an affair with someone else, and he's 00:09:49.470 --> 00:09:55.100 desperate and actually wants to kill himself. Would it be right to give him what 00:09:55.120 --> 00:09:57.539 is rightfully his? 00:09:57.559 --> 00:09:59.539 >> No, I suppose not. 00:09:59.559 --> 00:10:04.580 >> So in this case, doing the right thing would, in fact, be doing the wrong 00:10:04.600 --> 00:10:11.379 thing. It's perfectly obvious that everyone is just doing what is in their best 00:10:11.399 --> 00:10:15.980 interests. The reality is that justice in this day and age is in what's in the 00:10:16.000 --> 00:10:20.649 interest of the stronger party. As a matter fact, I'll take it even further. The 00:10:20.669 --> 00:10:23.429 advantage goes to the unjust person every single time. 00:10:23.449 --> 00:10:25.529 >> Let's see if I understand you. 00:10:25.549 --> 00:10:30.549 >> At this point in the story, Socrates smashes the theory that might makes 00:10:30.569 --> 00:10:35.169 right, but back in Athens, might smashed right. The leaders of the shaky 00:10:35.189 --> 00:10:41.169 democracy had only had only recently lost the Peloponnesian war. They were tired 00:10:41.189 --> 00:10:46.090 of being stunned by Socrates's sharp tongue. In 399 BC, the 69-year-old 00:10:46.110 --> 00:10:50.319 philosopher was brought to trial for undermining the system. 00:10:50.339 --> 00:10:54.240 >> The official charge was that he did not believe in the gods of the city, and 00:10:54.240 --> 00:10:58.580 that he corrupted the young. He showed you how to find holes in what other 00:10:58.600 --> 00:11:03.039 people believed but didn't necessarily, in fact never, substituted something 00:11:03.059 --> 00:11:07.350 positive in its place, and that was seen as a very dangerous thing, which in 00:11:07.370 --> 00:11:12.919 fact, it was. After all, Plato, his greatest disciple, was also the greatest 00:11:12.939 --> 00:11:15.610 critic Athens has ever had. 00:11:15.629 --> 00:11:20.740 >> Socrates's trial was attended by health of Athens, including Plato. He says 00:11:20.759 --> 00:11:25.569 Socrates was offered his freedom if he would just stop questioning people, but 00:11:25.589 --> 00:11:31.370 he refused, proclaiming that the unexamined life was not worth living. Found 00:11:31.389 --> 00:11:36.149 guilty by a jury of 500, he suggested he be sentenced to free meals at city hall 00:11:36.169 --> 00:11:41.230 for the rest of his life. They didn't laugh. He was condemned to die by drinking 00:11:41.250 --> 00:11:45.600 a poison made from the hemlock plant. 00:11:45.620 --> 00:11:48.980 [ Music ] 00:11:49.000 --> 00:11:52.049 Plato's account of the death of Socrates made him a symbol of free speech and 00:11:52.049 --> 00:11:54.529 the favorite subject for artists like Jacques-Louis David. 00:11:54.549 --> 00:12:00.769 >> His friends come to say goodbye to him, and he spends the whole day trying to 00:12:00.789 --> 00:12:06.220 convince them that the soul is immortal, and then after he dies, the soul, which 00:12:06.240 --> 00:12:10.389 is the most valuable part of the human being, is going to remain perfectly 00:12:10.409 --> 00:12:14.019 unharmed. Socrates takes the poison and starts drinking it and continues 00:12:14.039 --> 00:12:19.539 discussing the issues. The executioner says "Please don't do that, because if 00:12:19.559 --> 00:12:23.299 you get agitated and talk too much, the poison doesn't work so quickly." 00:12:23.319 --> 00:12:25.039 Socrates says, "No leave me alone," he says. "Leave us alone, my good man. Your 00:12:25.039 --> 00:12:31.360 job is to give the poison as many times as it takes to kill me. My job is to 00:12:31.379 --> 00:12:37.110 have a discussion for as long as I can." He insisted on talking until the very, 00:12:37.129 --> 00:12:45.299 very end. Plato closes the dialogue by describing him as the best, the wisest, 00:12:45.319 --> 00:12:50.210 and the most just man of all we knew at that time. 00:12:50.230 --> 00:12:55.919 >> The martyrdom of Socrates made a political career unthinkable Plato. He spent 00:12:55.939 --> 00:13:01.509 the rest of his life carrying on his teacher's work. Nobody knows for sure where 00:13:01.529 --> 00:13:07.909 Socrates's ideas leave off and Plato's begin. Over time, the two names have 00:13:07.929 --> 00:13:14.350 become interchangeable. It is as Socrates that Plato plans a new world, where 00:13:14.370 --> 00:13:20.500 wisdom, not power rules, and it is Socrates who explains why philosophers must 00:13:20.519 --> 00:13:25.759 be its catalyst. Until philosophers are kings or the kings and princes of this 00:13:25.779 --> 00:13:30.370 world have the spirit and the power of philosophy and political greatness and 00:13:30.389 --> 00:13:34.949 wisdom meet in one, our cities will never have rest from their evils. No, nor 00:13:34.969 --> 00:13:46.929 the human race. Back at the party, Socrates has turned into the dinner guest 00:13:46.949 --> 00:13:49.709 from hell. The rest of the company has been drawn into the debate. 00:13:49.709 --> 00:13:53.399 >> You want me to prove that virtue is its own worth. 00:13:53.419 --> 00:13:58.350 >> But you have to prove that the good and honest person who goes unrewarded and 00:13:58.370 --> 00:14:01.553 unrecognized comes out ahead in the end. 00:14:01.573 --> 00:14:02.573 >> You're on. 00:14:02.573 --> 00:14:05.360 [ Chuckling ] 00:14:05.379 --> 00:14:12.269 We'll begin with a very simple society with men and women leading very basic 00:14:12.289 --> 00:14:13.769 lives, living close -- 00:14:13.789 --> 00:14:19.389 >> And so Socrates begins to fantasize the first utopia in Western literature. 00:14:19.409 --> 00:14:26.899 Perhaps they can find that good person with the best life here, he reasons. For 00:14:26.919 --> 00:14:33.009 after all, society is just the soul writ large. 00:14:33.029 --> 00:14:36.169 >> He originally creates the city as a device, in order to understand something 00:14:36.169 --> 00:14:41.279 about human beings. He wants to say that each of us is made up of three parts. 00:14:41.299 --> 00:14:46.110 There's a rational part. There's an emotional part that loves honor and gets 00:14:46.129 --> 00:14:50.529 angry and so on, and then there's what he calls the appetitive part, which is 00:14:50.549 --> 00:14:56.169 the part that wants food and drink and sex and so on, the bodily appetites. 00:14:56.189 --> 00:15:00.730 >> Those animal appetites must be kept in their cages. Reason and honor will 00:15:00.750 --> 00:15:08.399 rule the republic, just like the well-ordered soul. Everybody gets one job for 00:15:08.419 --> 00:15:17.199 life, and a color-coded class, bronze for workers, merchants, and artisans. 00:15:17.219 --> 00:15:25.689 Silver for police and soldiers. And pure gold, naturally, for the philosopher 00:15:25.709 --> 00:15:26.709 King. 00:15:26.709 --> 00:15:32.699 >> See, he said that there's three types of people, the gold person, the silver 00:15:32.719 --> 00:15:36.929 person, etc. Now you may say, oh, my God. That means some people are not as good 00:15:36.929 --> 00:15:38.839 as others. Well, let me ask you something -- 00:15:38.839 --> 00:15:41.039 >> Who's to determine what class they get into? 00:15:41.039 --> 00:15:45.199 >> It's real simple. I could never be a linebacker. I said that yesterday on the 00:15:45.219 --> 00:15:50.600 49ers, but don't let me sit and listen to somebody tell me every 49er is capable 00:15:50.620 --> 00:15:52.000 of being a poet or philosopher. 00:15:52.000 --> 00:15:53.000 >> Right. 00:15:53.000 --> 00:15:55.299 >> We're not equal. 00:15:55.319 --> 00:15:58.740 >> In Plato's Republic, the philosopher kings would much prefer to be off 00:15:58.759 --> 00:16:05.829 thinking, but duty requires them to rule the state. Eternal bonding is 00:16:05.849 --> 00:16:10.709 forbidden. It might detract from loyalty to the state. Mothers care for babies, 00:16:10.729 --> 00:16:16.419 but they aren't told which ones are their own. A child's place is determined not 00:16:16.439 --> 00:16:25.909 by sex or race, but purely by intelligence. A farmer's daughter might become a 00:16:25.929 --> 00:16:26.929 philosopher queen. 00:16:26.929 --> 00:16:32.069 >> He does imagine that there will be some women all the way up to the top 00:16:32.089 --> 00:16:37.110 class. "If then, we use the women for the same ends as the men, we must teach 00:16:37.129 --> 00:16:42.319 them the same things. Yes, the males received an education consisted of 00:16:42.339 --> 00:16:47.750 literature and athletics, yes. Then we should give these two sorts of training 00:16:47.769 --> 00:16:51.490 to the women, too, and military training also, and we should treat them in the 00:16:51.490 --> 00:16:53.279 same way." 00:16:53.299 --> 00:16:58.839 >> Repos in Plato's time probably greeted this with astonishment. Athenian women 00:16:58.859 --> 00:17:06.460 had no vote and virtually no education. Often, the weren't even the sexual 00:17:06.480 --> 00:17:14.279 partners of choice. Wives didn't eat at the same table as their husbands, let 00:17:14.299 --> 00:17:16.858 alone fight beside them at war. 00:17:16.878 --> 00:17:22.269 >> It's a world in which men and women are completely equalized on the premise 00:17:22.289 --> 00:17:27.049 that women must never again be mothers. So I think what Plato means to say is 00:17:27.069 --> 00:17:31.839 this is what it would take to really overcome sexual differentiation and 00:17:31.859 --> 00:17:32.859 hierarchy. 00:17:32.859 --> 00:17:38.160 >> Was the Republic meant as a straightforward blueprint or a political satire, 00:17:38.180 --> 00:17:41.599 as many scholars insist. Maybe some of both. 00:17:41.619 --> 00:17:45.680 >> There is the sense that in his city, I would not be able to do what I liked. 00:17:45.680 --> 00:17:50.940 There is a sense in which I would not be able to have my own family in my city. 00:17:50.960 --> 00:17:57.029 Those are very, very frightening ideas. On the other hand, on the other hand, 00:17:57.049 --> 00:18:08.680 there's this incredible love of learning, of understanding, of trying to fit all 00:18:08.700 --> 00:18:12.759 the various pieces of our lives and of the world together in such a way that 00:18:12.779 --> 00:18:19.569 they can't even for one moment, make sense to us. It's such a powerful idea that 00:18:19.589 --> 00:18:24.039 there are moments when you say, even if the price is the other, it might be 00:18:24.059 --> 00:18:25.920 worth paying. 00:18:25.940 --> 00:18:31.250 >> Plato doesn't want the rulers fighting over money or personal relationships. 00:18:31.269 --> 00:18:35.269 So he doesn't give them any. The rest are allowed the comforts of their own 00:18:35.279 --> 00:18:43.069 homes and families but have no say in how things are run. Those who have can't 00:18:43.089 --> 00:18:51.069 rule. Those who rule can't have. It's an interesting idea. To keep up the 00:18:51.089 --> 00:18:56.079 quality of the flock, the philosopher kings secretly rig periodic meeting 00:18:56.099 --> 00:19:00.809 lotteries to produce the best possible offspring. Once the children are born, 00:19:00.829 --> 00:19:06.461 the society begins shaping their characters early and carefully. 00:19:06.480 --> 00:19:10.079 [ Music ] 00:19:10.099 --> 00:19:14.240 "Shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales, which may be 00:19:14.259 --> 00:19:19.599 devised by casual persons? And to receive into their minds ideas, for the most 00:19:19.619 --> 00:19:23.119 part, the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they're 00:19:23.119 --> 00:19:25.759 grown up? We cannot." 00:19:25.779 --> 00:19:29.139 >> William Bennett's collection of stories, The Book of Virtues, starts with 00:19:29.159 --> 00:19:31.480 that quote from The Republic. 00:19:31.500 --> 00:19:36.139 >> There's really only one fundamental political question, and that is the 00:19:36.159 --> 00:19:38.869 education of the young. It's a very platonic thought. I mean, I think anyone 00:19:38.869 --> 00:19:43.529 would agree. What do we tell them about ethics? What do we tell them about jobs, 00:19:43.549 --> 00:19:48.670 life, career, destiny, fate? Isn't that what determines the future of this 00:19:48.690 --> 00:19:52.690 country, education? And that is, essentially, what he saying in this book. That 00:19:52.710 --> 00:19:54.990 the whole course of a city state and the whole course of a life depends upon 00:19:54.990 --> 00:19:56.912 education. 00:19:56.932 --> 00:20:02.149 [ Multiple Speakers ] 00:20:02.169 --> 00:20:07.170 >> To ensure that the Republic remains on course, the children are only allowed 00:20:07.190 --> 00:20:13.869 to hear heroic and uplifting tales. Homer's stories about the gods temper 00:20:13.889 --> 00:20:18.539 tantrums and carousing with humans are out. So is rowdy music. 00:20:18.559 --> 00:20:23.029 >> This is Zeus. 00:20:23.049 --> 00:20:27.940 >> Socrates decrees that any poet who refuses to produce politically correct 00:20:27.960 --> 00:20:33.559 fairytales will be banished from the kingdom. 00:20:33.579 --> 00:20:37.839 >> "The first thing will be to establish a censorship of the writers of fiction 00:20:37.859 --> 00:20:41.680 and let the sensors receive any tale of fiction which is good and reject the 00:20:41.700 --> 00:20:46.480 bad. And we will desire mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorized 00:20:46.500 --> 00:20:53.649 ones only." Well, this is just a very spirit of the dictator. 00:20:53.669 --> 00:20:57.670 >> Censoring storytelling in ancient Athens would be like censoring TV in our 00:20:57.690 --> 00:21:03.980 own culture. The tragic plays of Sophocles and Aeschylus were the free press of 00:21:04.000 --> 00:21:11.470 their day. And Homer, author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, was a read as a guide 00:21:11.490 --> 00:21:18.009 to life and revered as a god. Plato thought that was unhealthy. As he puts it in 00:21:18.029 --> 00:21:24.629 The Republic, "Good role models don't make good theater." He doubted whether 00:21:24.649 --> 00:21:28.649 average citizens could separate reality from fantasy and worried that they might 00:21:28.669 --> 00:21:30.730 imitate the world they saw on the stage. 00:21:30.750 --> 00:21:36.940 >> And he said if amusements become lawless and the youths themselves become 00:21:36.960 --> 00:21:41.399 lawless, they could never grow up into well conducted and virtuous citizens. 00:21:41.419 --> 00:21:48.690 >> Who is to give the guidance that's most authoritative in life? Is it to be 00:21:48.710 --> 00:21:54.099 the philosopher, which includes the scientists, the man of reason? Or is it to 00:21:54.119 --> 00:22:00.200 be the poet, the person or man of inspiration of the gods, of revelation, of 00:22:00.220 --> 00:22:09.220 mystery? And Socrates insistence is the poets need, finally, to bow to reason. 00:22:09.240 --> 00:22:13.629 That would be one of the great costs of a perfectly just society. If you're 00:22:13.649 --> 00:22:19.220 going to say everyone must be brothers and sisters, don't expect Shakespeare or 00:22:19.240 --> 00:22:22.369 Goethe or Aristophanes to be part of it. 00:22:22.389 --> 00:22:28.309 >> "From my window at dusk, I would watch the horde of bleating automobiles, as 00:22:28.329 --> 00:22:34.869 they flash back and forth past shapely, nude columns and Dordic hairdos, 00:22:34.889 --> 00:22:38.019 standing pale and un-rebellious on the steps of the city court." 00:22:38.039 --> 00:22:42.680 >> For the late Russian poet, Joseph Brodsky, this is no theoretical discussion. 00:22:42.700 --> 00:22:49.009 He lived in Plato's Republic Soviet style. Jailed four times, he was finally 00:22:49.029 --> 00:22:50.210 exiled as a social parasite. 00:22:50.210 --> 00:22:55.549 >> There is a certain point that it was allowed in the city, well, and a certain 00:22:55.569 --> 00:23:00.349 point which it wasn't. As simple as that. The state was simply doing the 00:23:00.369 --> 00:23:07.970 discerning job, which is, essentially, a very Platonic idea in the sense, 00:23:07.990 --> 00:23:14.039 because what it does, it simply subordinates ascetics to the ethics. This is 00:23:14.059 --> 00:23:20.720 exactly what Plato is all about, and this is garbage. Well, aesthetic is, how 00:23:20.740 --> 00:23:24.829 should I put it to you? Aesthetics is the mother of ethics, not the other way 00:23:24.849 --> 00:23:28.770 around. No matter how ethical society can build, it won't secure the 00:23:28.790 --> 00:23:31.520 masterpiece. Good ethics don't. 00:23:31.540 --> 00:23:39.930 [ Music ] 00:23:39.950 --> 00:23:44.049 >> Plato thought reason should rule in his republic. We think he pushed it a 00:23:44.069 --> 00:23:47.029 little too far. We reject the eugenics. We reject the imposition of order. We 00:23:47.029 --> 00:23:51.129 would reject the censorship. No, there's too much totalitarianism here. There's 00:23:51.149 --> 00:23:54.930 too much utopian totalitarianism. There's too much tyranny. There's too much the 00:23:54.950 --> 00:23:56.149 smart guys know best. 00:23:56.169 --> 00:23:59.129 >> When he gets to the point of saying you shouldn't love your children. We 00:23:59.129 --> 00:24:02.849 should structure the city in such a way that we don't even know who our own 00:24:02.849 --> 00:24:13.799 children are, so that we won't have these intense personal attachments, you 00:24:13.819 --> 00:24:14.819 can't run a city that way, because if people don't love their own, that they're 00:24:14.819 --> 00:24:15.819 not going to care about anything else either. The vision of The Republic is a 00:24:15.819 --> 00:24:19.680 vision of justice and harmony. Well, people are not going to be harmonious, 00:24:19.700 --> 00:24:23.599 because people are going to insist upon, in the face of all these laws, 00:24:23.619 --> 00:24:27.460 committing adultery. They're going to have romantic liaisons. Children are not 00:24:27.480 --> 00:24:33.569 going to want to be taken from their mothers. Mothers are going to love their 00:24:33.589 --> 00:24:37.549 children. Somebody's going to want to create music. Everybody is born with the 00:24:37.569 --> 00:24:43.750 specific spiritual identity, and we're not worker ants. I'm not sure that ants 00:24:43.769 --> 00:24:48.859 are happy. I really wouldn't want to be an ant to find out. 00:24:48.879 --> 00:24:53.200 >> I don't think any serious person could agree that The Republic is really a 00:24:53.220 --> 00:24:56.990 good place to live in, and I doubt very much whether Socrates or Plato did. The 00:24:56.990 --> 00:25:02.619 Republic is meant by Plato to prove that philosophers can never be kings, and 00:25:02.639 --> 00:25:07.149 that we can never have a completely communistic society. It establishes the 00:25:07.169 --> 00:25:12.529 limits of politics, I think, more clearly and more profoundly than any thinker 00:25:12.549 --> 00:25:17.509 ever has, precisely by pressing those limits of this fantastic thought 00:25:17.529 --> 00:25:18.690 experiment. 00:25:18.710 --> 00:25:23.730 >> My own view is that he believed it. He believed every word of it, and he 00:25:23.750 --> 00:25:29.369 never had a doubt that if his city was installed, it would be the best city in 00:25:29.389 --> 00:25:30.389 the world. 00:25:30.389 --> 00:25:32.774 >> No, that's why we go to wise men and experts, isn't it? To clear things like 00:25:32.774 --> 00:25:33.948 this up. 00:25:33.968 --> 00:25:40.069 [ Music ] 00:25:40.089 --> 00:25:51.720 Is this a real mountain? Plato didn't think so. What about those clouds? This 00:25:51.740 --> 00:26:00.269 flower? That bee? He said they're just copies. That there's a parallel world 00:26:00.289 --> 00:26:08.799 where you'll find the ideal cloud, the original flower, the perfect bee. The 00:26:08.819 --> 00:26:14.309 soul is imprinted with these models at conception. That's how we recognize a 00:26:14.329 --> 00:26:20.929 tree, for instance, when we see one. For Plato, the idea of a tree that you hold 00:26:20.949 --> 00:26:28.089 in your mind is what's real. This particular tree, and all the others we see, 00:26:28.109 --> 00:26:30.089 are just imitations of that idea. 00:26:30.109 --> 00:26:43.490 >> Plato's theory of forms is an effort to explain what's true in an absolute 00:26:43.509 --> 00:26:55.589 sense. What is it possible to know really? Answer, what doesn't change. When you 00:26:55.609 --> 00:26:59.769 will learn geometry, you're not learning about chalk circles. You're not 00:26:59.789 --> 00:27:06.169 learning about circles that are even more perfect than the one I've drawn, if, 00:27:06.189 --> 00:27:12.779 in fact, the circle is made of something physical. You're learning about an 00:27:12.799 --> 00:27:22.159 ideal circle. One that you can't touch. One that you can't even see, because any 00:27:22.179 --> 00:27:31.220 circle you could see would be a physical circle. And so, Plato, wanting to point 00:27:31.240 --> 00:27:39.330 us to what can't change and is perfect, wants us to consider a circle that can't 00:27:39.350 --> 00:27:40.733 be seen. 00:27:40.753 --> 00:27:43.079 [ Music ] 00:27:43.099 --> 00:27:53.609 >> What do we see about the three yellow and the two green? What do we see? 00:27:53.629 --> 00:27:59.169 >> Mathematicians proving the existence of invisible circles and abstract 00:27:59.189 --> 00:28:04.539 equations all deal with ideal forms, but the kind of mental leap Plato was 00:28:04.559 --> 00:28:08.490 talking about went way beyond math, and that's frustrated philosophers for 00:28:08.509 --> 00:28:15.129 centuries. On file in that metaphysical heaven, were perfect examples of 00:28:15.149 --> 00:28:21.339 everything in the universe, even qualities like beauty, justice, and goodness. 00:28:21.359 --> 00:28:26.579 Today, wise men and women say he was looking in the wrong direction. For them, 00:28:26.599 --> 00:28:32.970 our world, this minute, is as real as it gets. 00:28:32.990 --> 00:28:37.869 >> These ideas were always be evolving, so long as we are human, and so long as 00:28:37.889 --> 00:28:42.399 consciousness is evolving. You simply can't stop history. You see, everything is 00:28:42.419 --> 00:28:46.700 changing. Reality is flux. 00:28:46.720 --> 00:28:52.139 >> Whatever you think of Plato's quest for permanent answers, nobody denies the 00:28:52.159 --> 00:28:54.584 power of The Republic's most famous story, the allegory of the cave. 00:28:54.584 --> 00:29:04.269 [ Music ] 00:29:04.289 --> 00:29:09.279 Imagine that this is the only world you've ever known. For as long as you can 00:29:09.299 --> 00:29:12.263 remember, you've been chained here in this cave watching the shadows dance on 00:29:12.263 --> 00:29:13.709 the wall in front of you. 00:29:13.709 --> 00:29:21.220 [ Music ] 00:29:21.240 --> 00:29:27.429 Unable to even turn around, you have no idea that they are merely reflections 00:29:27.449 --> 00:29:32.976 cast by the outside world. You believe they are all there is to life. This is 00:29:32.996 --> 00:29:34.419 your reality. 00:29:34.439 --> 00:29:38.549 [ Music ] 00:29:38.569 --> 00:29:42.838 Then one day our prisoner breaks loose. 00:29:42.858 --> 00:29:53.250 [ Music ] 00:29:53.269 --> 00:30:00.679 Drawn to the light, he is almost blinded by his first sight of the sun. But 00:30:00.699 --> 00:30:11.869 little by little, he is able to open his eyes and see the world beyond the cave. 00:30:11.889 --> 00:30:13.429 >> We are prisoners right now. We are now in the middle of a cave, [inaudible] 00:30:13.429 --> 00:30:19.059 of a dark room in which we are all tied up. This is the cave. The freest moments 00:30:19.079 --> 00:30:23.639 that we have for Plato are moments of imprisonment, are moments of slavery. We 00:30:23.659 --> 00:30:29.220 all begin, in some sense, is prisoners of our culture or our religion or our 00:30:29.240 --> 00:30:33.639 civilization. We're given answers to the most fundamental questions. What is 00:30:33.659 --> 00:30:40.119 love? What's a good family? Who is God? Nowadays, the currently fashionable 00:30:40.139 --> 00:30:43.740 conventional philosophy that's taught in our schools is something called 00:30:43.759 --> 00:30:47.960 pragmatism. The idea being that we just simply can't really transcend our own 00:30:47.980 --> 00:30:52.619 time and culture. That we just have to deal with the world that's given to us. 00:30:52.639 --> 00:30:56.279 Now Plato would say that means just rearranging the shadows on the walls of our 00:30:56.279 --> 00:30:57.279 cave. 00:30:57.279 --> 00:31:00.369 >> One of the tasks of The Republic is to bring people out of the cave, so 00:31:00.389 --> 00:31:05.750 they're not looking at shadows, but looking at the real thing out into the sun. 00:31:05.769 --> 00:31:10.990 If there's a cave today and shadows the people are looking at, it is the sort of 00:31:11.009 --> 00:31:14.936 darkened living room at four in the afternoon, with those images flickering 00:31:14.956 --> 00:31:16.096 across the screen, miseducating the young. 00:31:16.096 --> 00:31:21.960 [ Music ] 00:31:21.980 --> 00:31:28.189 >> Are his fellow prisoners thrilled to learn that the real world is out there? 00:31:28.209 --> 00:31:33.750 Not exactly. Plato ends the story by saying that they would tear the enlightened 00:31:33.769 --> 00:31:39.240 one limb from limb if they could break their chains. He has challenged 00:31:39.259 --> 00:31:42.439 everything they believe in. Of course, once you've seen the light, it's hard to 00:31:42.439 --> 00:31:47.888 go back. As Socrates discovered, it's a lonely being the bearer of new ideas. 00:31:47.908 --> 00:31:50.684 [ Music ] 00:31:50.704 --> 00:31:54.464 The most damning criticism of The Republic came in the 1940s. 00:31:54.484 --> 00:31:55.484 >> Seig! 00:31:55.484 --> 00:31:57.056 >> Heil! 00:31:57.076 --> 00:31:58.076 >> Seig! 00:31:57.551 --> 00:32:02.963 >> Heil! Heil. 00:32:02.983 --> 00:32:10.730 >> Philosopher Karl Popper the charge that Plato had opened the door for this 00:32:10.750 --> 00:32:17.689 madness with the eugenically superior model state he had envisioned in 386 BC. 00:32:17.709 --> 00:32:22.069 >> People do think of Plato as a fascist, as maybe the first fascist, maybe is 00:32:22.089 --> 00:32:26.389 the greatest fascist. I think it's extraordinarily unfair and inaccurate to 00:32:26.409 --> 00:32:30.359 think of him in those terms. He does not believe in any kind of racial 00:32:30.379 --> 00:32:32.619 superiority of the people in his city. He does not believe that this society can 00:32:32.619 --> 00:32:35.346 come about by, as it were, forcible means. 00:32:35.366 --> 00:32:42.759 [ Explosions ] 00:32:42.779 --> 00:32:49.079 >> The idea that Plato foreshadowed certain ideas that we've come to associate 00:32:49.099 --> 00:32:52.949 with fascism, I'd say, I think that's fairly tenable. If Plato had never lived, 00:32:52.949 --> 00:32:59.369 however, we would still have had Hitler. One certainly can't blame Plato for 00:32:59.389 --> 00:33:04.259 Hitler or Stalin or Marx or Lenin. It's not for their theories that they're 00:33:04.279 --> 00:33:09.299 remembered but for their actions. They were brutal murderers. 00:33:09.319 --> 00:33:17.210 >> Corruption is the human norm, and this is what Plato won't swallow. 00:33:17.230 --> 00:33:20.909 >> Plato's understanding of human nature might appear to be as abstract as his 00:33:20.929 --> 00:33:25.909 ideas, but some of those ideas are still very much alive. For instance, in 00:33:25.929 --> 00:33:30.534 Singapore, in just 30 years, this small, ethnically diverse island has been 00:33:30.554 --> 00:33:31.892 transformed into one nation, one people, one Singapore. 00:33:31.892 --> 00:33:40.389 [ Singing ] 00:33:40.409 --> 00:33:45.589 Led by a benevolent despot named Lee Kwan Yew, whose reputation for integrity is 00:33:45.609 --> 00:33:49.990 as legendary as his strict controls, the crime rate is down. The standard of 00:33:50.009 --> 00:33:54.109 living is up. It's seen as one of the most astonishing success stories in the 00:33:54.129 --> 00:33:58.049 developing world and is a nation in a straitjacket. 00:33:58.069 --> 00:34:03.750 >> He has curtailed individual freedoms and put into place a highly moralistic 00:34:03.769 --> 00:34:09.400 and constraining conception, which includes a lot of policies for breeding. I 00:34:09.420 --> 00:34:14.599 mean, eugenic policies, which say that we'll give special breaks to people in 00:34:14.619 --> 00:34:18.799 certain classes when they reproduce but will penalize reproduction and some of 00:34:18.819 --> 00:34:24.829 the other ethnic groups. All of this, with a kind of Platonic idea that in this 00:34:24.849 --> 00:34:29.009 way, we're going to promote the common good and raise people's well-being. 00:34:29.029 --> 00:34:30.029 >> It's Hot Talk 560 KSFO. 00:34:30.029 --> 00:34:34.529 >> I got a quote from another political scientist, Ben Franklin. He said, 00:34:34.549 --> 00:34:38.090 "People who are willing to sacrifice freedom in exchange for security will 00:34:38.110 --> 00:34:39.590 receive neither and deserve neither." 00:34:39.610 --> 00:34:42.569 >> Yes, I love that. That's very beautiful. So you're saying -- 00:34:42.569 --> 00:34:47.980 >> How do we make America an orderly state without making it overly orderly and 00:34:48.000 --> 00:34:52.900 turn it into a Singapore where a piece of chewing gum on the street is an 00:34:52.920 --> 00:34:56.750 offense for $500, for example? I don't want to live in in this Huxleyan Brave 00:34:56.750 --> 00:35:03.369 New World, okay? So I think maybe, Plato's Republic can also warn us away from 00:35:03.389 --> 00:35:10.949 an overly ordered state, an overly clean place, an overly good place. 00:35:10.969 --> 00:35:16.599 >> Time to take out the trash and clean out the barn. 00:35:16.619 --> 00:35:20.960 >>Ah, that brings us to a democracy. Could a philosopher king survive in 00:35:20.980 --> 00:35:21.980 Washington DC? 00:35:21.980 --> 00:35:28.299 >> On the one hand, it's wonderful that anyone can grow up to be president. On 00:35:28.319 --> 00:35:33.159 the other hand, it's frightening that anyone can grow up to be president. 00:35:33.179 --> 00:35:38.219 >> America doesn't choose its leaders by lot, as ancient Athens did. It holds 00:35:38.239 --> 00:35:43.710 popularity contests instead. Plato might well have admired the idea of a small 00:35:43.730 --> 00:35:48.210 group of wise men and women seeking justice in the courts, but he'd most likely 00:35:48.230 --> 00:35:54.360 see America's obsession with individual power, money, and success as signs of a 00:35:54.380 --> 00:35:56.619 society with a seriously disordered soul. 00:35:56.639 --> 00:36:02.049 >> One of the serious criticisms Plato addresses to democracy is that its love 00:36:02.069 --> 00:36:08.509 of freedom easily becomes a life of license without realizing it. That a taste 00:36:08.529 --> 00:36:11.884 for having no restrictions can easily replace the more thoughtful and mature 00:36:11.903 --> 00:36:14.746 conception of freedom, which is freedom has to be freedom under the rule of law. 00:36:14.746 --> 00:36:19.090 [ Crowd Shouting ] 00:36:19.110 --> 00:36:26.250 >> I mean, can we admit that our public life is disordered in something like the 00:36:26.269 --> 00:36:29.449 way Plato says, and yet still defend our own way of life? What can the role of 00:36:29.449 --> 00:36:32.313 reason be in a democracy like ours without taking away the freedoms that we all 00:36:32.313 --> 00:36:34.538 cherish? 00:36:34.557 --> 00:36:38.329 [ Music ] 00:36:38.349 --> 00:36:44.150 >> The citizens of the Republic are satisfied with their place in life, because 00:36:44.170 --> 00:36:48.420 they've been told that the gods created them for different purposes. That's why 00:36:48.440 --> 00:36:52.690 they made some people with gold in their veins, some with silver, and some with 00:36:52.710 --> 00:36:54.655 bronze. In the book, Socrates calls the story The Noble Lie. 00:36:54.655 --> 00:37:00.269 [ Snare Drum Playing ] 00:37:00.289 --> 00:37:05.909 >> We, too, have our myths, our noble lies. The Declaration of Independence, 00:37:05.929 --> 00:37:11.739 prior to a probing philosophical analysis, which very people undertake, it 00:37:11.759 --> 00:37:15.639 really comes to us and is taught to us when we're Young is a kind of myth, a 00:37:15.639 --> 00:37:20.699 kind of poetry, a kind of beautiful belief, and what the philosopher in our 00:37:20.719 --> 00:37:21.719 society, if he was a Socratic, would have to do is question it, doubt it. Ask 00:37:21.719 --> 00:37:23.487 what do we mean by human rights? Do they exist? 00:37:23.487 --> 00:37:25.952 [ Music ] 00:37:25.972 --> 00:37:35.889 >> The Republic was Plato's ultimate attempt to vindicate Socrates way of life. 00:37:35.909 --> 00:37:41.980 In the allegory of the cave he says that the escaped prisoner cannot sit alone 00:37:42.000 --> 00:37:48.579 forever under the sky of ideas. It is the philosopher's job to return to the 00:37:48.599 --> 00:37:55.309 cave and try gradually to turn others away from the shadows. 00:37:55.329 --> 00:38:00.779 >> The deep insight into human beings here is that we are political creatures. 00:38:00.799 --> 00:38:05.440 That the life of the city and our lives are inextricably intertwined. That 00:38:05.460 --> 00:38:09.860 probably explains why I'm engaged personally, so much engaged in public life and 00:38:09.880 --> 00:38:16.000 politics. I am persuaded by Plato that the man who lives away from the affairs 00:38:16.019 --> 00:38:20.019 of the city state is the idiot. That to separate oneself from the life of the 00:38:20.019 --> 00:38:21.719 community is to separate out oneself from life itself. 00:38:21.719 --> 00:38:30.179 [ Music ] 00:38:30.199 --> 00:38:35.819 >> Plato wasn't just someone who lectured and wrote. He was someone who started 00:38:35.839 --> 00:38:41.710 a school. His school was called The Academy. The word we have now, academy, and 00:38:41.730 --> 00:38:47.639 likewise, the word academics, comes from the Greek word, and at his school, he 00:38:47.659 --> 00:38:52.710 had a student who went on to become rather famous it is all right. His name was 00:38:52.730 --> 00:38:53.730 Aristotle. 00:38:53.730 --> 00:39:00.710 >> Aristotle arrived at The Academy when he was 17. He spent the next 20 years 00:39:00.730 --> 00:39:05.099 arguing with Plato about the meaning of it all before he went on to tutor 00:39:05.119 --> 00:39:11.650 Alexander the Great. The world's first university lasted for almost 1000 years. 00:39:11.670 --> 00:39:14.025 Then in 529 AD, the Christians targeted this early think tank as a pagan 00:39:14.025 --> 00:39:16.159 stronghold and shut it down forever. 00:39:16.179 --> 00:39:24.679 [ Non-English Spoken ] 00:39:24.699 --> 00:39:29.529 Today, there's not much left of Plato's Academy, but it is still hallowed ground 00:39:29.549 --> 00:39:37.110 for those lovers of wisdom who gather each week to listen to the ideas of modern 00:39:37.130 --> 00:39:41.529 philosophers. When the school was closed, the Academy's students fled, probably 00:39:41.549 --> 00:39:45.500 taking Plato's and Aristotle's manuscripts with them for safekeeping. 00:39:45.519 --> 00:39:48.960 >> It meant that they were scattered all around the Mediterranean world, 00:39:48.980 --> 00:39:54.659 extremely good copies of all of Plato's works, and this meant that the odds that 00:39:54.679 --> 00:40:00.360 they would last of The Dark Ages and be rediscovered in cellars and in wine 00:40:00.380 --> 00:40:05.819 casks, in all kinds of crazy places was much greater than, for example, poor 00:40:05.839 --> 00:40:16.029 Sophocles or poor Euripides, most of whose plays were lost, and so on. 00:40:16.049 --> 00:40:19.809 >> Socrates survived the dark ages, thanks to Islamic scholars. They translated 00:40:19.829 --> 00:40:21.009 Plato into Arabic and passed his books through Egypt, India, Persia, in Spain. 00:40:21.009 --> 00:40:27.940 It wasn't until centuries later that the ancient texts were finally unearthed in 00:40:27.960 --> 00:40:34.900 Europe and translated into Latin and other languages. This ninth century 00:40:34.920 --> 00:40:38.099 manuscript found in Constantinople was purchased by King Henry IV of France 00:40:38.119 --> 00:40:44.559 towards the end of the 16th century. It is believed to be the oldest surviving 00:40:44.579 --> 00:40:51.670 copy of The Republic in the world. In the 24 centuries since it was written, 00:40:51.690 --> 00:40:57.440 Plato's Republic has sired hundreds of imaginary worlds. In 1516, Sir Thomas 00:40:57.460 --> 00:41:04.029 More named the mythical kingdom he modeled on Plato Utopia. In Greek, it means 00:41:04.049 --> 00:41:11.130 both no place and good place. Sigmund Freud studied Plato. The inventor of 00:41:11.150 --> 00:41:15.480 psychiatry divided the human psyche into the into the id, the ego, and the super 00:41:15.500 --> 00:41:20.159 ego, an intriguing resemblance to Plato's balance of reason, honor, and passion 00:41:20.179 --> 00:41:22.339 in the well-ordered human soul. 00:41:22.359 --> 00:41:27.880 >> That idea that the person is the soul or the mind, and that the body is 00:41:27.900 --> 00:41:35.019 somehow external and temporary, a bit like a house in which you might live, has 00:41:35.039 --> 00:41:40.219 been a very prominent idea in the history of Western civilization. Of course, it 00:41:40.239 --> 00:41:46.960 has obvious connections with the immortality of the soul in Christianity. 00:41:46.980 --> 00:41:52.179 >> The German philosopher Nietzsche called Christianity "Plato for the people." 00:41:52.199 --> 00:42:04.259 Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley called Plato one of his gods. Even Arthur Conan Doyle, 00:42:04.279 --> 00:42:10.400 creator of Sherlock Holmes, pays tribute when Dr. Watson quotes Plato to 00:42:10.420 --> 00:42:13.891 describe his detective friend as, "The best and wisest man I have ever known.". 00:42:13.891 --> 00:42:16.641 >> Allow me to congratulate you on a brilliant bit of deduction. 00:42:14.632 --> 00:42:21.429 [ Music ] 00:42:21.449 --> 00:42:25.349 >> Plato never gave up searching for the truth, and one must never let it be 00:42:25.369 --> 00:42:31.630 said that his views were impervious to experience. His one venture into politics 00:42:31.650 --> 00:42:36.130 was on the island of Sicily, where he had hoped to turn the young ruler into a 00:42:36.150 --> 00:42:40.289 flesh-and-blood philosopher king. His pupil, however, soon grew bored with the 00:42:40.309 --> 00:42:46.969 experiment and tried to sell Plato into slavery. After barely escaping with his 00:42:46.989 --> 00:42:52.969 life, Plato felt compelled to create a somewhat more user-friendly utopia. The 00:42:52.989 --> 00:42:55.809 poets still are banished, but the philosopher kings have been replaced by the 00:42:55.809 --> 00:43:03.750 vote and a set of laws. Plato died shortly after finishing The Laws at the age 00:43:03.769 --> 00:43:09.710 of 80. His biographer reported he had passed to that city state which he planned 00:43:09.730 --> 00:43:12.998 for himself and planted in the sky. Many centuries later, philosopher Alfred 00:43:13.018 --> 00:43:16.116 Whitehead concluded that everything is just a footnote to Plato. 00:43:16.136 --> 00:43:26.299 [ Music ] 00:43:26.319 --> 00:43:31.059 >> "He imagines that he is a master in dishonesty, able to take every crooked 00:43:31.079 --> 00:43:36.099 turn wriggle into and out of every hole, bending like a withy and getting out of 00:43:36.119 --> 00:43:40.739 the way of justice, and all for what? In order to gain small points not worth 00:43:40.759 --> 00:43:45.569 mentioning." He's talking about the life-long litigant, ladies and gentlemen. 00:43:45.589 --> 00:43:49.369 Twenty-seven-hundred years ago the lawyers of the judges were already driving 00:43:49.389 --> 00:43:51.609 Greek society and saying, okay. 00:43:51.629 --> 00:43:55.929 >> I think one of the most compelling moments in the history of Western thought 00:43:55.949 --> 00:43:59.699 is in this book, and I will never forget it. I still get goosebumps thinking 00:43:59.710 --> 00:44:05.299 about it, which is the challenge of the Ring of Gyges. If you had this ring, and 00:44:05.319 --> 00:44:08.900 that's the story and here, and you turned the bezel of the ring, and you became 00:44:08.900 --> 00:44:13.819 invisible, and you could get away with anything by being invisible, would you do 00:44:13.839 --> 00:44:14.839 it? 00:44:14.839 --> 00:44:19.630 >> What Plato wants to prove in The Republic is that that's wrong. That in fact, 00:44:19.650 --> 00:44:25.109 even with a ring that made you invisible, even apart from what other people 00:44:25.129 --> 00:44:31.049 think, it's good to be good. The question is whether he succeeds in proving what 00:44:31.069 --> 00:44:35.699 others might want him to prove or expect him to prove. The course of The 00:44:35.719 --> 00:44:43.009 Republic, he redefines goodness. Plato tells us that virtue is internal to a 00:44:43.029 --> 00:44:48.039 person. That is the harmony of the soul. 00:44:48.059 --> 00:44:52.880 >> People leave the dialogue differently from when they start. You are a changed 00:44:52.900 --> 00:44:58.000 person, in some ways, by encountering this man who truly means what he says. 00:44:58.019 --> 00:45:02.420 This is not just highfalutin bull session. This is about life and how you leave 00:45:02.440 --> 00:45:07.079 it, how you live it, how you leave it, and the conditions under which it should 00:45:07.099 --> 00:45:09.099 be lived. This is about the real stuff. 00:45:09.109 --> 00:45:15.079 >> You see, most of us, when we think, usually we're in trouble, and we think to 00:45:15.099 --> 00:45:20.400 get out of trouble. What Plato tries to convey there is thinking can be a feast 00:45:20.420 --> 00:45:26.359 and a frenzy, and that philosophy is that thinking as a feast. 00:45:26.379 --> 00:45:34.469 >> "The wonder," Plato says, "is the beginning of philosophy." We still wonder 00:45:34.489 --> 00:45:48.119 about the same questions he set down all those centuries ago, searching for 00:45:48.139 --> 00:45:52.359 wisdom and justice and finding an imperfect approximation, struggling between 00:45:52.379 --> 00:45:53.379 reality and illusion, reason and passion, politics and philosophy, public and 00:45:53.379 --> 00:45:55.610 private, body and soul. And probably, we always will be. 00:45:55.630 --> 00:46:16.989 [ Music ] 00:46:17.009 --> 00:46:21.079 >> Behind every great book, there's a great story in it. Now sit back and spend 00:46:21.099 --> 00:46:25.099 an hour with the best reading experience you'll ever have on television. The 00:46:25.119 --> 00:46:27.619 Great Books Festival continues on TLC, adventures for your mind.