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Dr. David Ebrey on Plato’s Phaedo: Immortality, Forms, and the Philosophical Life
37 Plays6 months ago
In this episode of The Dionysius Circle Podcast, we’re joined by renowned scholar of Plato, David Ebrey. We dive into his latest book on Plato’s Phaedo, exploring Socrates’ radical views on the immortality of the soul, the nature of the forms, and the role of philosophy as preparation for death. David sheds light on the literary structure of the dialogue, its connections to Greek tragedy, and Plato’s unique philosophical approach to ethics, metaphysics, and the natural world.
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Transcript
Introduction to Dionysus Circle Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Dionysus Circle Podcast. I'm Dr. Sam Bennett, your host. On this podcast, we explore the Eastern Christian Fathers and the philosophical traditions that influence them, including figures like Plato and Aristotle. In today's episode, my co-host, Jack Bozar, and I talk with Dr. David Ebre about his new book, Plato's Phato, Forms, Death, and the Philosophical Life. An affordable paperback edition of Ebre's clear and rigorous book is now available on Amazon.
00:00:29
Speaker
The Fado presents Socrates in a philosophical conversation on his deathbed, culminating in his drinking poison as part of his capital punishment by the state. This remarkable dialogue centers on four arguments about the immortality of the soul. Today's episode is part of a series we are dedicating to the Fado. Special
Dr. David Ebrey's Philosophical Journey
00:00:47
Speaker
thanks to Peter Anthony Taney for allowing us to feature his rendition of the hymn, Of the Father's Love Begotten, from his album, Sea Dreams. God bless you and I hope you enjoy the podcast.
00:01:07
Speaker
Welcome to the Dionysus Circle podcast. Today we have David Ebery, a Sarah Hunter Fellow at the University of Barcelona, who specializes in ancient Greek philosophy. We'll be discussing his new book or his recently published book ah on Plato's Phaedo, which has just come out in a and an affordable paperback edition. Thanks a lot for coming on, David.
00:01:28
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here and thanks for thanks for discussing my book. Could you maybe share a bit about your background personally and kind of what led you into philosophy? When you look back, do you feel like it's something kind of innate is that or explanation to, you know, your surroundings, maybe some of the people who introduced you to philosophy, that sort of thing? I'm i'm very skeptical of the idea that it's innate, and I also think it's a pretty it can be pretty hazardous when we we think that some students just have an innate talent for it. I don't buy that myself. i mean i did I grew up in a family. My parents are both professors. There were discussions happening when I was young. There was all sorts of, um yeah, and I want
00:02:18
Speaker
to public schools in a university town. um I was interested in physics. I was interested in mathematics. I was interested in computer science. When I went to the University university chief of Chicago as an undergrad, I thought I was going to be a physics major.
00:02:35
Speaker
at first but already I took a community college course intro to ethics while I was in high school so you know I ah definitely had interests in in philosophy um starting off younger.
00:02:51
Speaker
How did you specifically get into ancient philosophy? I was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, and Ian Mueller was retiring when I was there. And so I took and my second year introduction to ancient philosophy. I loved it. I said, what other courses can I take? And there weren't many options. And I ended up really getting into analytic philosophy, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics.
00:03:18
Speaker
And so then I went to UCLA to be a doctoral student there. And I was becoming more interested in metaphysical questions, connected philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics. Then I took a course on Aristotle, and I just thought this was taught by Sean Kelsey, who ended up becoming my dissertation advisor.
00:03:41
Speaker
I just thought, this is so much more interesting than the stuff that I'm thinking about in the contemporary philosophy of language. I mean, of course, you know, subtle and complicated issues. I think that there's really interesting stuff there as well. But, you know, without making too generalizing of claims, I myself just fell in love with it there. And then
Relevance of Ancient Philosophy
00:04:06
Speaker
UCLA had a structure at the time, I think they still do to some degree,
00:04:11
Speaker
that worked very well for me, which is that in your third year, you wrote a longer paper. And that longer paper could become your dissertation, but it didn't have to. And so it gave me a chance to sort of try out really working seriously in ancient philosophy, knowing that if I decide I could say, hey, that was a nice use of a year, but I want to go back to doing philosophy of language. Right. And so I sort of had this nice opportunity to really try it out. And by the end, I just wanted to keep going. And so here I am. That's cool. Yeah. and And you ended up writing your dissertation on Aristotle, right?
00:04:50
Speaker
Right, on matter and Aristotle really starting from the first book of the physics. um the I mean, the the title of my dissertation is Aristotle's motivation for matter. And so why does he think that we need matter in order to understand the natural world?
00:05:09
Speaker
Interesting. So at that time, did you, were you reading at all the Theta? I'm just, just cause I'm just thinking about how in the Theta, there's a whole like discussion of natural science and the, um, the famous but autobiography. So right did you read it at all or? I did. And the last chapter of my dissertation, I argue that in the FEDO,
00:05:33
Speaker
Socrates is committed to each explanatum only having one cause. And that then Aristotle's four causes should be seen as is an anti-Platonic move on his part, that he sees Plato is thinking that there's only one cause for each thing to be explained. And that his four causes are supposed to be saying, hey, look, you need to bring in more than just one cause.
00:06:03
Speaker
And this has a little bit to do with how you read physics two, three, but in any event, that sort of was when I first seriously started engaging with the FEDO. After I finished my dissertation, I had a postdoc at Berkeley and I was sick and tired of my dissertation. I didn't want to think about it at all anymore. I wanted to work on something else. And so I started working on Play-Doh and I taught grad seminars on the Me-No and then on the FEDO.
00:06:30
Speaker
In part because they were connected to things I had done, but at the same time was moving on to something else. And so that's, again, when I was trying to really work seriously. So 2009,
00:06:42
Speaker
nine I teach the grad seminar and then 2023, the book comes out. So yeah, I've been working on it for a while. Was part of your attraction to Play-Doh at a certain point, like the literary quality of it at all? Or like, I mean, obviously that kind of pulls everyone to some degree.
00:06:59
Speaker
I would say that that pulls everyone to some degree. I wouldn't say that for me, that was the sort of initial attraction as opposed to something that I became more and more interested in the more I worked on Play-Doh. And so, and at the same time,
00:07:19
Speaker
Part of what I liked, I mean, I've always been somebody who's a bit of a generalist. And one of the things I like about ancient Greek philosophy is that you get to be a generalist in a way that contemporary philosophers nowadays have to become experts on some particular narrow part of epistemology or something. But if you really want to work on Plato,
00:07:41
Speaker
You have to think about ethics, about metaphysics, about the nature of the soul. about And then part of what I wanted to do with this book was to really try to bring in each of the different parts. And so I didn't want to ignore the literary structure of the dialogue. I didn't want to ignore the cosmology, the interaction of the characters, to really try to take a comprehensive approach.
00:08:05
Speaker
And that's, to me, something I've always liked is that the opportunity to to think about these things. um David, how would you respond to someone who might be surprised by the level of energy and focus you've devoted to studying ancient texts? You know, if the goal is to understand the world, wouldn't it make more sense to prioritize contemporary science? So what in your view do these ancient works truly offer us today?
00:08:32
Speaker
Good. And I do find this a very tricky and subtle issue, I have to say. I think, I mean, of course, I think that it's worthwhile are trying to get a historical understanding of things that don't have any immediate application. So work in the history of science, I think is worthwhile, even if the scientific theories have no validity of any sort. And I think that for for me, some of the work in in history of philosophy is like that as well. um I just think it's worthwhile out trying to understand these things for better or worse. Absolutely. I think that we do sometimes come across
00:09:24
Speaker
real philosophical insights that are that are exciting in working through ancient philosophical texts. um To some degree that's because the philosophical ideas are independent of the broader theories of physical reality um that they're connected to. But part of what makes this a subtle and difficult issue, I think,
00:09:53
Speaker
is I absolutely, the reason I want to work on Plato and Aristotle is because I find them absolutely fascinating philosophical minds that I wanted to engage with. At the same time, I think that if you come to them really just wanting to find the truth, there's a very strong temptation to project onto them whatever you think is the truth already.
00:10:24
Speaker
And that then when you do that, it actually ends up making them less interesting than they would be otherwise, because you're in a sense just finding the ideas that you already believe, then finding them again in these authors. Hey, look, it turns out that it's actually just John Rawls. i mean that um you know this ancient thinker already had a Rawlsian theory of justice. um you know So I think that there's a real temptation when we come to them really just trying to find philosophical truths to then find what we want to find there. And so
Socrates' Radical Views in Phaedo
00:11:05
Speaker
coming to the texts interested in philosophical truths, but being willing to find that maybe they don't
00:11:13
Speaker
accept what we think is true. I just want to go one step further here in this answer. And that's, to me, this is some of the things that is most interesting about ancient philosophy is that sometimes I think they just view the world in a way that's radically different than us. And it's it's not that Oh, and then we're going to take on their way of viewing the world and adopt it quite possibly. I think it's very likely that we don't, but here's a philosophically extraordinary thinkers.
00:11:52
Speaker
looking at the world in a very different way from us, and that there's something valuable about philosophically working through a very different point of view than your own. I think i think that point about the radical nature of ah the agent's views is is pretty important. I mean, you wrote your dissertation on on matter in Aristotle, and I'm sure that you have so have a lot to say about how prime matter differs from contemporary atomistic notions.
00:12:22
Speaker
So yeah, I mean, I know when I read The Fado, I'm just struck especially by, I think, Socrates' account. Maybe you could say of the good life, doing philosophy, and essentially doing philosophy as a sort of preparation for death.
00:12:41
Speaker
that that That notion right there you won't find in the contemporary academic, philosophical world. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, maybe this is something we'll talk about some more later. I think that there's a way in which the FIDO is very clearly a document.
00:12:57
Speaker
a work putting forward some radical ideas. You know, you write that in your book. Socrates' views in the Phaedo are every bit as radical as they initially seem, perhaps even more so. yeah What are some of these radical views that like jump out at you? And then can you also talk about how like you mentioned that scholars often out of you know being motivated by like the principle of charity will try to attribute more reasonable sounding views. And so I'm just kind of curious, like, how do you, you know what's your, I mean, we kind of already touched on it, I think, actually, you know but what's your perspective on that sort of interpretive tendency? And then, yeah, just what are some radical views that we find in the fate of just to... Good, yeah I mean, so...
00:13:46
Speaker
ah what I mean, one of them has been mentioned about um philosophy as a preparation for death and for being dead. um Another one is is the thought that the that the body is the cause of many, if not most of our problems. um And then, of course, there's the idea that um
00:14:17
Speaker
The things that are most real are these things like justice, piety, largeness, which Socrates calls to the forms, and that the way in which he does natural science is to try to bring things back to them.
00:14:39
Speaker
as what are the causes that we search for. um I mean, each of those ideas I think are pretty radical. and and then And so then the kind of interpretive approach of a lot of people. Oh, right, yes. They're trying to be charitable. They're trying to be charitable. And of course, one thing that I think is happening is is what I mentioned before, which is that people come to these texts and they want to try to find something that they think is true.
00:15:06
Speaker
And what it seems like it's saying seems crazy. And so they tried to find it as saying something other than what it seems to say so that it turns out to be true.
00:15:17
Speaker
um And of course, ah over different centuries, different people have very different ideas of what's likely to be true, and that they they progressively find different things in the text. um But I do think that the principle of of charity, there's also a question of of how we we understand that, right? And so one thing about my approach is really to try to
00:15:51
Speaker
look at the whole dialogue and see how each of the different parts interact with one another. And I think that when we take that overall approach, um that makes it a little bit harder to look away from the more radical things that he's saying because they seem to fit into the argumentative structure of the whole dialogue. They repeatedly come up.
00:16:16
Speaker
Um, sometimes if passage taken on its own, maybe there might be a ah less radical way to read it, but given what's said five pages earlier and six pages later, um, the other sort of central part of my approach is in addition to trying to understand all of the parts, the dialogue within the overall structure is to try to situate it within its intellectual and cultural context. Um, and so,
00:16:46
Speaker
There, too, I think some of the the supposedly more charitable readings um turn out to be more far-fetched. Yeah, gotcha. You know, you argue that the fado is kind of false, I guess is a tragedy in some sense, right? But in a way, um it's a new kind of tragedy. It overturns a lot of elements of a typical Greek tragedy. um So yeah, can you kind of describe that? How does it depart from typical tragedies? And then also, it's kind of crucial to that is how the main character, of course, Socrates,
00:17:30
Speaker
um is is a new hero is how you describe them. Absolutely. Yeah. And so in a way, what I try to be ecumenical about is, should we say that it's a new type of tragedy or is it a rejection of tragedy? right What I want to say is it's a rejection of traditional tragedy and it's writing a new sort of thing, but a new sort of thing that that fits within the broad structure of tragedy. And now, what do I mean by the broad structure of tragedy? Well, first of all, it's the sort of stories that are described in the Republic about being about heroes, gods, demons, and the underworld.
00:18:13
Speaker
So books two to three of the republic sort of describe these type of stories. And I want to say the Fido is written to be the right sort of story that's described in books two to three of the republic. How you should tell a story about heroes, gods, daemons, and the underworld. We get all of those within the story. So there's a broad type of story.
00:18:36
Speaker
ah of this, but tragedy, of course, isn't just stories about heroes, gods, and the underworld. um There are certain topics that are typical and one of the most typical topics in Greek tragedy is heroes having to face their death. And so it's not just that it's about heroes, gods, and the underworld, it's about somebody having to face their death.
00:19:05
Speaker
Then I point out how throughout the dialogue Socrates is compared to different heroes. So to Theseus and to Heracles and to ah a hero in a tragedy. So we get this sort of constant comparison throughout. And so So that's just a little bit to say about what do I mean by this? It's a story about heroes and gods. We get a lot about Socrates' interaction with his dreams, him being a slave to Apollo, offering a sacrifice to Asclepius. He's interacting with gods throughout the the dialogue. He has
00:19:50
Speaker
um a right way to think about it, but then I think he's presented the way that the Republic says a hero should be presented. And what we're told in the Republic is that the reason why it's important to present heroes this way is because we naturally admire them. And I do think that the Fido is purposefully written in such a way that we will come to admire Socrates.
00:20:19
Speaker
But when we come to admire Socrates, we're coming to admire a very different sort of ideal of what sort of person we should be like. We're not trying to be like Agamemnon. We're not trying to be like Heracles. We're trying to be, um well, like Socrates. And in parts of the dialogue He uses Homeric language to talk about coming into close combat with Simeus and Kebbe's, but the close combat is philosophical argumentation. And so we get a sort of new set of what are the real heroic activities to engage in. But at the end of the day, okay, so there's philosophy, there's Socrates, but the it's also the story of Socrates facing his death.
00:21:17
Speaker
And he's the one who's consoling his companions. It's not his companions consoling him. He's the one who's about to die. And he's helping all of his friends on the last day of his death. he Nobody is as calm and collected and courageous as Socrates. So we we get a sort of picture of what it is to embody these virtues, I think, in ah in a very important way.
00:21:47
Speaker
straight up to the death scene. So at the very end, they say, hey, you know, other people have giant feasts before they're going to die. They have sex with whoever they want. And Socrates says, well, they do that because that's what they think. They think it's going to bring them some benefit. I don't because I don't. And so we're seeing his philosophical considerations make him an exemplar for how to live and how to act, um truly courageous, truly moderate, truly wise. could you Could you say that this is a sort of overturning of the ancient Greek paradigm of death? I mean, I don't know much about the Homeric literature, but it seems to me that your position would be that Socrates
00:22:41
Speaker
is is kind of taking the view of a heroic death or the hero facing his death and and putting a new twist on it. In general, absolutely. Absolutely. It's trying to overturn an idea that's very common, for example, in Greek tragedy, that death is a horrible thing, that it would require something extraordinary for us to be able to face.
00:23:12
Speaker
And, you know, of course we see these great heroes in tragedy wailing and bemoaning their impending death. And
Plato's Divine Goodness vs. Greek Tragedy
00:23:21
Speaker
Socrates couldn't be more different in how he's approaching his death. Now, there are, yeah, I mean, there is a another strand in Greek thought that's often connected to views about what will happen to us after death.
00:23:42
Speaker
that can be more positive, so orific gold tablets, some, there is some thoughts that maybe we can look forward to something better after death. And some of those ideas are definitely being reworked and rethought by by Socrates in the Fido. And so I wouldn't want to say,
00:24:07
Speaker
100% of Greek culture thought that death simply must be avoided and Socrates is taking something that's entirely against that. But, but you know, in broad brush strokes, I think that's right. He's definitely going beyond that the sort of Homeric picture. Absolutely. For sure. And not just the Homeric picture, the the picture that we get in fifth century Greek tragedy, say, that's pretty clear. and And other literary sources as well. I mean, it's not just. do Would you want to talk a little bit about, I think you call it the tragic worldview. So basically part of the tragic worldview is that, as I understand it, is that chance
00:24:57
Speaker
plays a decisive role in whether or not your life goes well, whether or not, I guess maybe you're happy or whether or not you flourish, that chance is crucial. This in general, it's um it's really interesting to think about that, the degree to which yeah our fate is outside of our control and whether or not you know philosophy potentially kind of is a way of overcoming chance but I don't know anyway but but yeah do you want to just talk about that idea that like so Plato's term for this is touche for chance and he's the one who seems to go
00:25:43
Speaker
to describe tragedy this way, especially in book 10 of the Republic. So this seems to be part of how he thinks of tragedy. And he might be right about it, but it's not that if you read tragedies, you just find them all talking about chance. Of course, it comes up, but this is how Plato understands the tragic worldview. Whether he's right about that or not, we can sort of set aside for the moment. He thinks that it's central to the tragic worldview.
00:26:11
Speaker
that chance plays a huge role in our lives. and Now, I think that a large part of the reason for this is connected to a question about the nature of the gods. If we think that the gods are fickle and at war with one another, and we are the playthings in their larger schemes,
00:26:36
Speaker
then of course it's very hard for us to actually have much control over our lives. And I think that Socrates would think if the gods really were like that, maybe we wouldn't have much ah control over our own happiness and our own doing well. And so I don't know, I wouldn't want to say that it's that we just have complete self-sufficiency, but given that in fact the gods are good,
00:27:05
Speaker
which is not part of the tret so and then we got lucky that the gods are good important part of the tragic is a view about the gods and how the gods play with us in a certain way and once we view the gods as good this gives us more control over our own lives. In fact, the gods are trying to help us out in our lives, not to harm us. And that's central. I still don't think that Plato's view goes as far as the Stoic view, you know famously saying that the that the sage is still happy while being tortured on the rack. I don't think
00:27:53
Speaker
then that Plato thinks that but you would need to think that if you thought external circumstances cannot in any way affect our happiness, right? So that's what where
Impact of Bodily Pleasures on Philosophy
00:28:05
Speaker
what leads the Stoics there. I guess I would put Plato's view in the Fido between the Stoic view and and as I understand Aristotle's view that um There's a fair amount that's under our control, but you do need a certain amount of external circumstances as well. It seems to be Aristotle's view. um It's hard to be generous if you don't have any money to give away. It's hard to, you know, there's various things in which um external circumstances help. um So one specific way that this comes up in the Fido has to do with
00:28:47
Speaker
how we understand Plato's claims about how pleasure and pain affect us. um And in particular, i think I think that Plato's view is that pleasures and pains tend to change our beliefs and intense pleasures and pains force us to think things even if they're not true. And those of course would be cases in which external circumstances could influence um whether we're happy or not. A simple version of this is if somebody stabbed you with a knife, it's really hard not to believe that that knife is most real and that the worst thing that can happen to you is for someone to do something like stab you with a knife. It's really hard to think ignorance is the worst thing there is when there's a knife in you, right? Even if that's true,
00:29:45
Speaker
The intense pain just is going to, I think he thinks, force beliefs on you regardless of their truth. So anyway, that this has to do with the extent to which we have some self-sufficiency and the extent to which the external world um impinges on our good life. Doesn't he say, well, it's kind of confusing because I feel like in the, in Theto, there's two times where Socrates talks about ah the greatest evil. And I think he says something different each time, but I think the first time I was, you know, he says like the greatest evil. Yeah. Something about how like pleasure, intense pleasures and pains.
00:30:28
Speaker
for making you believe that what you're engaging with is is react is the true, I don't know, ultimate reality or is somehow real, something to that. Most real, and we get this superlative, which is a pretty unusual superlative in Plato or in Greek in general, not just true, but most true or most real.
00:30:51
Speaker
ah thank that And then the other time is when he says that mythology is the greatest evil. Um, and so let me, now there is, um, technically what he says at 89 D is that there's no greater evil than mythology.
00:31:20
Speaker
no greater evil than coming to hate arguments. And so that might allow for a tie, but there's no greater one. There's maybe two that, but of course what it, what it looks for is, well, what, if these two things are tied, intense pleasure and pain and coming to hate arguments are tied for being the greatest evil. Why?
00:31:49
Speaker
Why would it be that these are the two things? And I think that the common element is that they take us away from truth. Both hatred of argument and intense pleasures and pains are things that in a very strong way will lead us away from genuine searching for the truth, which is where our happiness is to be found, is where the good life is to be found. And so anything,
00:32:20
Speaker
Whatever does the greatest job in turning us away is going to be the greatest people. Right. So just to be clear, are you saying that, you know, generally speaking, yeah, we have a lot more control and Plato's thought, but where that control as a limit is, you know, if someone is under an extreme intense pleasure or plane, you lose, is it that you lose control of your, your kind of like your rational faculty or your,
00:32:49
Speaker
self-control or something? I think I think he thinks that it's possible for us to be forced to think that things are true which aren't true to that we have to think this now maybe later we could go back and revise what we're thinking but I'm a little hesitant to say that that's the only thing because let Let me give an example that I use in class that might be useful.
00:33:24
Speaker
I think that Plato is worried about us thinking, oh, well, in these cases, I have control, and so there's no harm.
00:33:35
Speaker
in my going ahead. So
Purification and Philosophy's Necessity
00:33:38
Speaker
I say, well, look, it's perfectly harmless to eat cake. And I'm a real lover of cake. But when I have the piece of cake, I know at the time this isn't the greatest good. Coming to know the forms is the greatest good. I think what happens is I'm a great lover of cake.
00:34:00
Speaker
I think I'm in complete control. And then I find myself, well, taking a slight detour on my bike ride home, stopping at the bakery, picking up another piece of cake. I have some free time. Oh, why don't I take a vacation to Vienna and try the famous Sachertorte there?
00:34:20
Speaker
But your life ends up shifting. Your values end up shifting. You're not spending your free time engaging in philosophy, and that this can happen without you recognizing it. And in some ways, this is the most insidious concern. this is the most Okay, so you get stabbed in the leg. You think there's nothing more real than the knife.
00:34:46
Speaker
Okay, but the next day you're like, no, no, no, I realize ignorance is the greatest evil, but there's something a little bit worse about not that, but a whole life in which various small pleasures and pains are changing your values in such a way that it just influences the way that you live your whole life. Now, could any one of them be resisted?
00:35:16
Speaker
Yes. So maybe unlike the being stabbed in the leg, it's not forced on you. um But I do think that there's there's something that's even perhaps more insidious about the sort of small ways in which if you let your guard down a little bit and what What Socrates says is that it would be foolish to put yourself in harm's way and then have to struggle against this. So foolish for me to have another piece of cake and then try to resist coming to believe that it's perfectly good and fine and harmless to have the occasional piece of cake. You know, this won't really change what I really value.
00:36:11
Speaker
Putting yourself repeatedly in harm's way may have real effects on your values, even if you would like to believe not. Yeah. Be careful with the Socrates. I've had that. This is an example, I think, of the sort of thing where I'm not sure that I agree with Socrates here, but I think that it's a really interesting position. And if we came to the Fido only wanting to find ideas that we ourselves agreed with,
00:36:39
Speaker
I think it'd be very easy to miss this, whereas the thought that bodily pleasures and pains really do influence our values. And so it's not that we should beat ourselves up, but that we should gently try to remove them from our lives to the extent that we can, because that'll allow us to focus on the things that really matter. It might be wrong, but I think it's a very,
00:37:09
Speaker
sensible view that has radical ah it has a radical conclusion, but we have to take the the reasoning and the ideas seriously. I wanted to jump in there, Sam, and I think that's that's a really good um place to kind of look at the idea and the fado of this notion of purification being required to to do philosophy.
00:37:38
Speaker
and So maybe you could say a bit more about that. and I think you've you've you've explained part of it so far in that we have to avoid sense pleasures and pains to do metaphysical speculation. But for the common person today, this is going to sound totally wild. i mean how yeah and And I've struggled to understand this a bit, um but it's a really common theme, not only in Plato and in this text, but you find it in early Platonic patristic figures as well, especially Gregory Nazianzis, Gregory Nissa. And so it it definitely had a very large impact on the philosophical world. Absolutely. And I mean, I think it's worth
00:38:22
Speaker
saying there's a question of what how later plaintiffs are viewing this talk of purification, which is, I think, a very fascinating and complex question.
00:38:36
Speaker
Plato is certainly picking up on religious ideas about the need to purify yourself. Now, I think that what we see repeatedly in the dialogue is him pulling out often different religious ideas. Some of them might be involved in one sort of religious movement, others in different religious movements, and combining them to get at what he thinks is the truth. And so he thinks that they're on to something that's true and that's right, but it's not that he's just sort of taking over their views, but trying to pull out what he thinks is right about them.
00:39:21
Speaker
And so I think that part of his use of the language of purification is to try to to to point to things that other previous people have said and say what he thinks is right about what they've said. So maybe he could have expressed it differently, but he wants to show that there the other people were on to something important here.
00:39:43
Speaker
And of course the idea of purification is like a sort of cleanliness to remove things that shouldn't be there, right? And so we have a development of, I mean, I think we're very much developing the notion of the soul right here in the Fido. I mean, it's very interesting if you look at sixth, fifth century theories of the soul and now what Plato is doing in trying to think through the nature of the soul. And so,
Understanding Forms and the Soul
00:40:13
Speaker
we're We're developing the nature of the soul. We're applying some of this um religious language of purification, but now what are the impurities? In a lot of traditional Greek religious practice, you have to purify yourself and that might mean sort of physically washing off your hands and body. It might be very specific sort of ritual acts that you have to undergo.
00:40:43
Speaker
and Socrates is saying those aren't the impurities that need to be removed. The impurities are these things that are in your soul that are leading you to not live a good life and that are making it difficult for you to.
00:41:04
Speaker
Now, I think that there are a variety of different things, but one of the things when it comes to inquiry that I think he's concerned about in the FEDO when he's describing people who go astray is now, I mean, there's one problem, which is that when they try to investigate, there are barriers to investigating. But in a way, there's a deeper problem, which is that they don't even try to investigate. They're spending their time trying to do something else.
00:41:34
Speaker
And that's part of what my, you know, Zacher Tort example was supposed to be that these things get into our soul and we're not spending our time at philosophy conferences. We're spending our time taking trips to Vienna to pursue cake. Like we have a limited amount of attention in time and energy And these affections in our soul can distort what our our aims are. So, you know, one point you make in your book is that the forms, the soul, and the good life are not independent topics that, you know, Socrates gives an account of the soul, but that's grounded.
00:42:20
Speaker
uh, in an account of the forms and then he gives an account of the good life, but that's grounded in an account of the soul and the forms. Um, so yeah, I was just kind of curious, like, do you want to maybe provide a nistle sketch of those relationships? You know, how does the correct understanding of the forms lead it to an understanding of the soul and then the forms to soul and then, and then how does, you know, soul and forms kind of lead to understanding of the good life.
00:42:49
Speaker
the The two places where I think forms and soul are connected to one another are in the the so-called affinity argument, which I call the kinship argument, and in the final argument. And part of the reason why I think it's important to call it the kinship argument, though I mean there's a couple of different reasons, but one of them is that I do think that it's making a claim that our souls are akin to the forms.
00:43:18
Speaker
And that this, I think we can roughly think of as something like, it's like they share a genus with the forms. They're not the very same sort of thing, but they are broadly of the same sort, the way that your kin aren't exactly the same as you, but they're related to you in an important way. And so if we want to understand our natures, we can do so in part by thinking about our relationship.
00:43:48
Speaker
but thinking about the forms and then how we are related to the forms. And so I think we are broadly supposed to be of the same sort as the forms and that one thing that this means is that
00:44:13
Speaker
when we have a chance to interact with the forms through coming to know them, we will become more like them and will become stable and unchanging and that this is the sort of natural state for us in which we then find ourselves to be happy and um and to live well. And this is,
00:44:43
Speaker
Yeah, so that's sort of how the ethics, the nature of the soul, and the nature of the forms all end up lining up with one another. I mean, there are other things too. um I think that we're, soul is supposed to have a special connection to the form of life that comes up in the final ah argument, the one for the the final argument for immortality. And that special connection to the form of life is part of what is supposed to ensure that our soul is never destroyed. um So we have a special connection to one form or broadly of the same sort as the forms
00:45:29
Speaker
This also is one of our soul's claims on having some degree of divinity because the forms are divine and we are broadly related to these divine things.
00:45:42
Speaker
I actually think that this is in a way Plato's version of the idea that heroes have some, are sort of partially gods, have a sort of parched divinity to them. In fact, all of our souls have some degree of divinity to them, not to the same extent as the gods, not to the same extent of the forms, but broadly, it's the most divine part of us.
00:46:10
Speaker
um So, sorry, I could say more, but there's a kind of a brief sketch of how- Yeah, that's helpful. Yeah. It sounds like maybe a funny Socratic irony. You know, you're used to being told, you know, if you want to be, you lead a good life, you know, maybe try to be around other people who are good people and then maybe they'll rub off on you kind of thing. And I imagine that's part of like Greek culture too, is that kind of, this kind of relationships. But this is about The forms will kind of, robot it's like you focus on the forms and like these seemingly, um yeah, unreal, you know, they're invisible, of course, that kind of thing. But anyway, that that's how. I mean, actually, I think that that's exactly right, that there is a ah thought that what you interact with,
00:46:58
Speaker
has a very deep effect on what you are and how you are. And this is an idea that we get in the feeder and we get in the Republic also, that and and yeah in the kinship argument and in the Republic too, he says, it's and impossible to come to admire something without imitating it. And then he says that the philosophers come to admire the forms And so they imitate and try to become like the forums. And this ends up being good for the philosophers, but it's part of a more broad idea that would apply to Michael Jackson or a football player, just as well as it does to the forums. You can't help admiring something without coming to imitate it to some degree.
00:47:44
Speaker
um When we interact with things and when we view things as good, we end up trying to become like them. So there's a sort
Forms: Foundation of Plato's Philosophy
00:47:53
Speaker
of physical interaction and then coming to value and both of those two things lead and lead to changes in us. Can we take a step um back a little bit and talk about your own reading of what the forms are?
00:48:11
Speaker
um Yeah, and because I mean i'm I'm familiar with Gerson's work on this um and I don't think you you Correct me if I'm wrong, I didn't see you interact with his reading of the Fata or the forms in the book. But I mean, he basically holds that the forms are sort of um conditions for ah predication and language. And I've been kind of confused by his reading, but I mean, first of all, what's your take on what the forms are? And then if you have any comments, maybe about the scholarly literature that's going on right now.
00:48:48
Speaker
Sure. I mean, of course, the scholarly literature is gigantic. and be I mean, ive i I've certainly interacted with a lot of Lloyd Gerst and stuff, and i i he has a lot of interesting things. But it's true that in this case, I didn't interact with him on on this topic.
00:49:07
Speaker
um So I think it's important to sort of step back and I don't think it's quite useful for us to just try to give a general account of the forms that would cover all of their characteristics. What I think is useful is to ask, what's the sort of minimal description of what a form is? And then what are the various claims that are made about forms in whatever dialogue we're reading?
00:49:41
Speaker
um
00:49:45
Speaker
In the Euthyphro, in the Mino, across many, many of Plato's dialogues, Plato calls the thing he's looking for when he asks a what is it question, a form. He uses both the term eidos and edea in the Euthyphro. He uses eidos in the Mino.
00:50:10
Speaker
for the thing that I'm looking for when I ask what is a question. Now, I don't think it's the word for the language, like it's not the word for the answer, it's the word for the entity that would be picked out by that answer. Whatever it is in the world that I'm looking for,
00:50:32
Speaker
Now, I don't think in so that's, as it were, the job description. When I'm looking for a form, what am I looking for? That.
00:50:45
Speaker
In the FEDO, we start to do a sort of second-order thing of, okay, so there's the job description. the What I'm looking for when I ask my what is it question,
00:51:01
Speaker
But what could I say about those things independently of the specific answers that I come up with to specific questions? So I ask you, what is justice? What is largeness? What is beauty? One thing we could do is we could just sit and spend the whole day talking about what is beauty.
00:51:25
Speaker
What he does in the Fido is he starts to ask questions about, well, what's true of all of these things that I'm looking for when I ask these questions? What are general features that they all have?
00:51:38
Speaker
So I think one thing that we, if you want to say, well, what is a form? It's the thing that Socrates is looking for when he asks his, what is a question? In several of the dialogues, we get some basic features of this. So it's that by which every holy thing is holy in the Euthyphro. So it's somehow that by which the holy things are holy and all the holy things will have this thing in common. I don't think that it's, as it were, metaphysically innocent. There's some substantive commitments already in the Euthyphro about these things, substantive commitments in the Mino. I think in the Mino, he actually, Mino, the character, denies. He says, well, what is the one thing that's found in every case of virtue?
00:52:32
Speaker
Amino says he doesn't think that there is any one thing that's found in every case of virtue and so then Socrates has to to argue that actually you are committed to there being a single thing in all cases of virtue and then we restart the what is it question. So that's just to say I think that that's what we're looking for in general and then in the veto I think as the dialogue unfolds we get different claims made about the forms.
00:53:07
Speaker
Some of those claims aren't found in other dialogues and we can ask ourselves why and there's a lot of different things to be said but you know, one obvious answer is maybe they weren't relevant in those dialogues. Like we didn't need to make those claims for the arguments and ideas that are developed there. So the fact that it isn't mentioned in another dialogue shouldn't immediately lead us to think that it's a different, that Plato has changed his mind. Maybe he has, but maybe it just isn't needed for those arguments. So
00:53:41
Speaker
I could, I don't know what you, should I say a little bit about what I think are the distinctive features in the FIDO or what would you like?
00:53:52
Speaker
Okay, so so I think we at first get the thought that the the forms can't be seen, that they're not the sort of things that we sense, but we don't really know why they're not the sort of things that our sense
00:54:11
Speaker
Then in the recollection argument, I think we get that the forms aren't the sort of things that change over time. In contrast to ordinary sensible things, ordinary objects as I call them, which do change over time. In the kinship argument, I think we get the idea that forms don't have distinct parts that have distinct features, but all of the features that they have, they have as a whole. Whereas, ordinary objects have distinct parts that have distinct features. My hand has features that my leg doesn't, et cetera, et cetera. And then finally, in the lead up to the final argument,
00:55:06
Speaker
I think we have the idea that ordinary objects will have some features in relation to one thing and other features in relation to different things, whereas the forms don't have that.
00:55:24
Speaker
having some features in relation to one to some things and others in relationship to others. And so the example that we get there is that a person could be small in relation to one person and large in relationship to another, whereas largeness itself isn't the sort of thing to be small in relation to anything. So those three features, okay, so it's not visible. First thing,
00:55:50
Speaker
Second, doesn't change over time. Third, doesn't have distinct parts. Fourth, isn't different in terms of how it relates to other things. Now those last three, I think he connects all of them to a general idea that the forms aren't receptive to opposites, whereas ordinary objects are receptive to opposites.
00:56:14
Speaker
Those opposites might be over time or in different parts or in relationship to different things. But in general, the forms aren't receptive to opposites in any of those three different ways. And ordinary objects are receptive to opposites in all three of those different ways. And so then that ends up making them metaphysically very different from ordinary objects.
00:56:39
Speaker
an idea which I think just isn't even raised or or relevant in other dialogues like the Youth of Frouher. It seems like at certain points, someone could agree with some of those characteristics and be not a realist about universals in the sense of like, so maybe it's like, yeah, I think there's a, you know, I think there's um there's one thing for all, whenever something's virtuous,
00:57:10
Speaker
There's one quality that all the virtuous things have in virtue of which they are virtuous. yeah However, virtue itself, that's just kind of like this abstraction that our minds come up with to describe the sameness that we find and all. So there all of the things are in some respects same, as thus they are virtuous yeah and our abstract definition kind of describes that. But that abstract definition is not like independent of our reflection or something. i don't I don't really know how to tend to do this, but you kind of get what I'm going for here, David. like Yes. Yeah, okay. Good.
00:57:54
Speaker
so So I don't think that Plato thinks that, right? I don't think that he think i think that he has a very realist position. In fact, the most real things that there are are the forms. um And I suppose there's a couple of different things that I want to say here. One is that broadly,
00:58:14
Speaker
I think it's extraordinarily difficult for us to put ourselves back into Plato's time in part because so many of the questions, debates, and even basic ideas that we're working with are ones that Plato developed. And so, you know,
00:58:36
Speaker
You said abstract objects, abstraction, to some degree that's maybe an idea that Aristotle develops of taking a number of different things and then abstracting from them something which is in common. So I think that Plato is maybe the first person to come up for some words for what it is for some category which we might call abstract entity or something like that, although, of course, calling it an abstract entity is already to build a kind of philosophical theory to say that it's the result of an abstraction, which, of course, you'll deny. But I don't think there's anybody before Plato who looks at largeness
00:59:27
Speaker
piety and beauty and said, you know what, those three things, they all belong to a same category. And now what are the characteristics of that category? So I think that just doing that is already a major philosophical step. And so this is just one way of saying, I don't think that Plato has highly developed opponents who've developed an alternative abstraction theory, which he's then going to be arguing against, because he's actually developing the whole category to begin with. Now, I wouldn't want that to mean that I think, oh, so he doesn't have good reasons for going the direction that he does, but it it also means he's not
01:00:16
Speaker
engaging with Occam, right? Because we don't have 2000 years almost of philosophical reflection to develop that sort of account.
01:00:28
Speaker
um So why does he think that these things, if anything, have the greatest account ah the greatest claim on being as opposed to not being. I think that this is a tricky question that has to do with a little bit of what does it mean to say that something is? like what is What is it to to attribute being to something? I don't think I have a particularly novel view on this, but I do think that
01:01:06
Speaker
that Plato is working within a broadly Parmenidean framework in which there's a thought that just to be able to sort of simply say that something is, is, ah as it were, unqualifiedly is, whereas if it is at one time, but it isn't at another, or it is in one part, but not in another,
01:01:33
Speaker
that qualifies claim on being in some way. And so exactly the three characteristics, which I mentioned, the forms is having are part of why they have a greater claim on being than I do. I change over time than ordinary sensible objects, which are here now and gone a week later. Um,
01:02:00
Speaker
And so, yeah, I mean, one of the questions is going to be, what what are our criteria for being? And of course, this is a question that Plato continues to think through throughout his dialogues. One famous place is the Battle of the Gods and the Giants in Plato's Sophist, where he engages with the so-called giants who believe that nothing exists unless they can put their hands on it, that they can touch and see it in some way. And so Plato is highly aware that there are people who have different ideas for what the criteria are for something to be. um And I don't think he treats the Fido as the sort of final word on that. but that may you know that That notion of being, first off,
01:02:52
Speaker
to me is plausible. Like I think there's something intuitive about the idea that like, is this person really happy when we all know that John tomorrow is going to be in the dumps? You know, it's like it's like you there's a sense in which you're like hesitant about say that he is happy because it's like We're going to have to retract that tomorrow. and there's So anyway, i think that's I find that plausible. It's tricky because someone who is a non-realist about the forms could say, yeah, I think the abstract definition of virtue is unchanging. It's just that the thing that's unchanging ist ah is the result of an abstraction.
01:03:35
Speaker
But maybe that's problematic because it's like, well, if it's the result of an abstraction, then I guess did it not exist at one point? And then maybe it is changing. I don't know. I mean, I don't. Right. um Sorry to go sort of so far back, but I do think that.
01:03:54
Speaker
One thing that it seems to me that Plato is committed to at least seems strongly implied by the dialogues is there's a lot of different discussions and a lot of different debates that we could have.
01:04:09
Speaker
And you need to sit down and put your ideas to the test. And the FIDO is not the discussion between Socrates and somebody who thinks that justice and piety are mental abstractions. If it were, it would be a different discussion that would have gone in a different direction. And we would learn different things in that discussion than the one that we do here. So I i do have a worry that sometimes we sort of try to pull out more theory than is there in what's really a specific discussion between a few different people that develop some ideas. There's plenty of other ideas that would be that could be developed but but aren't. um so one So maybe one thing that I found super interesting is that your whole idea, the forums are distinct for Plato from
01:05:04
Speaker
ordinary objects. Some people call them, you will say, ordinary perceptible objects, but you like you know prefer the ordinary objects. And one has to one aspect of that has to do with explanatory work um that forms can do, but ordinary objects can't do. Can you kind of get into that? I think that's a really interesting. Sure. So the thought is that this feature of the forms that we get in the Euthyphro, and we get in the Me Now,
01:05:34
Speaker
that it's by the form of beauty, that beautiful things are beautiful, by the form of holiness, that holy things are holy, that that idea actually comes up somewhat late in the Fido, in the autobiography, and in what comes afterwards. You might have expected it to come up earlier, but it doesn't. And now I think that in the autobiography,
01:06:05
Speaker
It looks like the fact that things that are characterized by contraries don't meet the minimal requirements that we want a causal explanation to have. But now we know that he thinks in general, ordinary sensible objects, ordinary perceptible objects aon are characterized by these sort of contraries.
01:06:34
Speaker
And so it turns out that only forms, well, at least not ordinary sensible things. Ordinary sensible things can't do that sort of explanatory work. Now, so so anyway, that's the sort of broad idea. Now, why is that? Well, let me try to talk through it a little bit.
01:07:02
Speaker
you say the reason what makes this thing hot is this torch. And I say, okay, but the torch is both large and it's small. And so large things can make something hot and small things can both can also make something hot.
01:07:31
Speaker
It doesn't, why would so both largeness and smallness be able to make something hot? Now, quite plausibly, you're going to apply and say, oh, no, no, no, no, no. The largeness and smallness are totally irrelevant to this thing's being hot. They are, ah, okay, so it's not actually the torch. You said that the torch is what makes this thing hot.
01:07:59
Speaker
I point out a couple of features of it. You say, oh, it's not those features that are doing it. It's something the torch is doing or more specific. Well, I think that Plato thinks you'll then need to find some sort of imminent characteristic in the torch.
01:08:19
Speaker
But that imminent characteristic is now going to be connected to the forms. And so it's really going to be the form that explains it through this imminent characteristic. If you really want to take the whole object, it's going to have these contrary qualities, and you're going to be able to say,
01:08:40
Speaker
Largeness explains this thing just as well as smallness does. Beauty does just as well as ugliness. And if you want to say, oh, but those things are totally irrelevant, it's really this characteristic that's doing the work, well, then it's not actually the object that's the cause. It's actually the characteristic. And it's key to this characteristic that it isn't um characterized by opposites.
01:09:09
Speaker
The characteristic doesn't have these opposed features.
01:09:17
Speaker
Why is that? Why think that it can't be characterized by opposites? Well, Socrates seems to think if we allow in opposed characteristics, then it seems like you could say
01:09:39
Speaker
I could have just given you the opposite thing and that would have been just as good of an explanation as the thing that you actually gave me. You say that the explanation is this tall thing, but then you would have been just as happy to say that a small thing would have explained it. How does this function is an explanation at all if you could have given me the exact opposite thing And I was supposed to be just as happy with the opposite thing as with the thing that you gave me. If the opposite thing would work just as well as what you gave me, we're not meeting minimal requirements that we would hope from an explanation. So it's like, ah how did this, what what was the first question? Was it, how did we, how did this thing catch fire? Was that our? Yeah, or I said, how is it hot? But yeah, why is this thing hot? And someone says, um, the torch. Well, the torch is both,
01:10:34
Speaker
big with respect to something small with respect to others so it's like it's weird that we could say so if it really was the torch it seems like we would be able to say it's the small torch that's making it hot as well as it's the tall torch that's making its hot making it hot and that's weird because put it in terms of you're hoping to learn something that you didn't know before, you're hoping to have some sort of informative answer. And if somebody could just tell you literally the opposite thing, and that's supposed to be just as good as what they told you, it doesn't seem that we've we've been informed of anything and that we've learned anything new because it looks like, why is it hot? Because of the tall thing.
01:11:30
Speaker
Why is it hot? Well, because of the small thing. Wait, if you could have told me either of them, it seems that neither of them could really be what, but this thing, the the nature, I mean, Plato's term in the Fido for this is that they're multi-form. The nature of ordinary sensible objects is that they're multi-form. They have all of these different characteristics. They're tall and short.
01:11:59
Speaker
They're beautiful and ugly. They're um heavy and light, right? They have all of these different characteristics. So any ordinary object that we pick out by its very nature is going to have all of these contrary qualities in it. And so I think he thinks it can't really be the ordinary object.
01:12:22
Speaker
The ordinary object just isn't the sort of thing that could give us what we want from a cause, which is something that allows us to understand the phenomenon in question better than we did before. We we gain no
Limitations of Natural Science
01:12:36
Speaker
understanding by being pointed to this thing. What if someone says, let me be clear, someone might say, oh, well, it is informative in the sense that we have at least identified the like causal agent. We know, no, it's the torch rather than the tree.
01:12:52
Speaker
Good. So then I think the thought would be, ah, OK, so trees can never make something hot. Oh, well, there is this case in which the light was reflecting off of the tree. And then the thing right next to it was hot. And so you say it's it's hot because it was a torch rather than a tree. But in other cases, it seems like trees do make things hot, maybe even hotter than the torch does.
01:13:21
Speaker
And so it still seems like you haven't really identified in virtue of what this thing is hot. Right. Cause if the person then says, Oh, well, I'm not, you know, I'm not saying, you know, yeah, a tree can sometimes make something hot, but in this particular case, it's not the tree that's making it hot. It's the torch. Right. But then we.
01:13:44
Speaker
I guess it's like then we need some more information to explain why is it that in this particular case, exactly the torch is doing, making it hot, rather than. Yeah, that's the thought. I think that Plato wants to identify the primary thing that's responsible.
01:14:04
Speaker
And he wants a broader account of how that thing is responsible for the, for the exponent for the the phenomenon in question. So this thing is hot. What's the fundamental thing that's responsible?
01:14:20
Speaker
He wants to argue it's the form which is fundamentally what's responsible. Now, of course, there's a question of like, well, how did the form do that? After all, some things are hot, other things aren't hot, but the form of fire is is always there, right?
01:14:37
Speaker
and so it's it still We're still going to need something more than simply identifying what the fundamental thing is that's responsible. We'll also need some broader causal explanation that ah explains in this particular case why this is hot. At one point in the intellectual biography, Socrates says, you know simply, naively, and perhaps foolishly, I cling to this.
01:15:04
Speaker
that nothing else makes something beautiful other than the presence of or the sharing in the beautiful. So in respect to like what we were just talking about, nothing, you know, nothing else makes something hot other than the presence of and the sharing in the hot maybe. well And, you know, so obviously like the first reaction is is like, this is not super illuminating, right? um It's like, of course, for something to be beautiful,
01:15:29
Speaker
it must share in the beautiful, in the sense that for something to be beautiful, it has to be beautiful. In other words, it almost seems like a tautology, maybe? I don't know. Anyway, so I'm just kind of curious, it like how how does one respond to that? um I mean, I do a lot of different things in my discussion of the autobiography, but let me put that particular idea in part of the broader context of one of the things I'm doing in the autobiography, I think that throughout the autobiography, we're supposed to be seeing the recognizable Socrates of the Socratic dialogues engaging in natural science. And so sort of very typical Socratic responses
01:16:16
Speaker
And um actions are now sort of, instead of seeing them in ordinary ethical discussions, we're seeing them um in this, ah as it were, a new arena. So one of those is all sorts of things that other people take to be obvious. Socrates has a lot of trouble understanding. And so we see this all the time with, well, everybody knows what courage is. Well, for some reason I'm an idiot and I can't figure out what courage is. So if you could just very kindly, you know, tell me this thing that everyone else takes to be obvious. And then of course, it turns out that it's not nearly so easy or obvious as people take it to be.
01:17:09
Speaker
So I take it that everyone thought it was obvious how growth works, except dumb old Socrates. He's not smart enough to figure out how growth works, but it turns out.
01:17:20
Speaker
that all of the explanations that people give fail to meet minimal requirements that Socrates thinks that any explanation should give. In particular, including this idea that you shouldn't be able to put forward the same thing and be able to use it to explain opposite things. So it's not a good explanation if you could use it to explain the opposite thing.
01:17:47
Speaker
And so those are actual explanations that Socrates thinks that people offer and they fail to meet these minimal requirements. And now when we turn to Socrates' own theory,
01:18:02
Speaker
One thing is I do think it's supposed to fit with the portrayal of Socrates as accepting his own ignorance. It's not supposed to be a substantive theory that requires having a lot of knowledge on his part. And so in that way, it is both fairly minimal, like he's somebody who professes his own ignorance.
01:18:25
Speaker
At the same time, the so-called wise people who who think that they have all this knowledge, they put forward proposals that don't even meet minimal requirements on an explanation. Whereas his proposal, while it might be thin, at least the form of beauty never claims to explain ugliness.
01:18:48
Speaker
right And so the minimal requirements that the other sophisticated theories all fail at, his much more modest theory can at least do that much. So I do think that one thing is it is supposed to be an epistemically modest Socrates putting forward a theory that at least doesn't flagrantly go against the minimal expert expectations that we should have.
01:19:19
Speaker
Now I do think it's supposed to be a theory that could be filled out more. So if we discover what the form of beauty is, obviously we can provide a much more substantive account. When I say the sunset is beautiful, why is the sunset beautiful? Well, it participates in the form of beauty. Thanks a lot, David. Really helpful. Okay, but now if I know that beauty is order and proportion. And I can explain to you why the sunset manifests order and proportion. Well, now I have a pretty substantive account of why it's beautiful. It just depends on now needing to go and find out the answers to these what is it questions and coming to know what beauty is, what largeness is,
01:20:11
Speaker
etc. which is of course then what Socrates devotes himself to doing. So in a sense his activity makes sense given so I'm inclined to see it as a sort of framework that does better than any of the alternatives, but is still thin, but can be filled out in a way that the other ones are just non-starters. Yeah. Cause when you look at it, you might think initially, okay, seems sort of trivial, but then you have to, you keep in mind the alternatives, which all of us engage in all the time. I mean, I'm just thinking about the one that popped in my head is like, why is Susie sad? Because her dog died.
01:20:52
Speaker
So everyone would normally think that's a great explanation, but the thing is that, well, but Johnny is happy that the same dog died. So how is that an explanation? Yes. Right. And so it might seem trivial, this idea that, you know, it's nothing other than the the form of the beautiful that makes something beautiful. It, it really puts off the table, a bunch of explanations that are super common that we use every day. I appreciate that. Yeah, I think right. And I also.
01:21:21
Speaker
I think that Socrates thinks that people doing natural science think they're being sophisticated, but they're really providing the same sort of explanations as the ordinary, everyday explanations. They they sort of dress it up in a way that it ends up being the same sort of thing. Yeah, sorry.
01:21:40
Speaker
No, this this is really good. this is ah I think we're going to have to take a lot more time to think about this. Because like you said, Sam, this is so common. And I'm just thinking like, trying to say I'm trying to think of an example in the natural sciences. I don't know, maybe like, honestly, the theory of evolution, there's got to be some stuff going on there where like like parts of Darwinian theory can be used to explain the same and opposite um adaptations or something. Right. There's going to be an important question of how we take a passage that comes at the end, near, not at the end, but near the end of the autobiography, where Socrates discusses people who are constantly trying to find an atlas, which is um ah more immortal to hold up for the the heavens, where
01:22:35
Speaker
there's going to be a question if we if we find an ordinary sensible explanation and then somebody says oh but look that works just as well to explain the opposite thing you might think oh okay so now i just need to try to choose something a little bit different and if i choose something a little bit different i'll avoid that objection and maybe that works, but then a new objection comes. And then we, and so there's this sort of, he describes this, you can see that there's a kind of um coming up with counter examples modifying the theory, coming up with counter examples modifying the theory, and Socrates thinks that's going to be endless because you're trying to engage in a type of explanation which
01:23:23
Speaker
And he doesn't quite explain to us why, but which is destined to fail. Now, putting this together with his general theory of the nature of ordinary sensible objects, it's easy to think, well, that's why. Given the nature of ordinary sensible objects, any particular one that you pick out is is never going to to be able to work. He doesn't say that, he just says, this is going to be an endless task and we're left to speculate as to why that would be.
01:23:59
Speaker
So,
Concluding Reflections
01:24:00
Speaker
you know, famously in the biography, ah Socrates gets really jazzed about this idea that noose or intelligence is responsible ah for all things or is the cause of all things. Right. And he then gets disappointed by by the rest of Anaxagoras' philosophy besides this claim.
01:24:21
Speaker
And then, and so basically one thing I just kind of want to get to like the heart of the issue where it's like, you kind of say that look like Plato's ultimate way of explaining things that we've already been talking about, you know, in terms of forms that is distinct, right? From using noose to explain all things. So I'm just kind of curious, yeah, what's what's going on there? is So is it is it that and initially Socrates bought the noose idea that it was the cause of all things and then rejected it and said, no, actually the forms are causing everything or or yeah, just what's going on there in terms of the forms versus. Yeah. So obviously this is a hugely influential passage that, you know, for the whole history of philosophy. And there's a lot of, and one of the things I want to do is to try to, to, to at least initially read it, not in light of the Republic, not in light of Aristotle, not in light of later, Platonist, medal, neo, et cetera.
01:25:20
Speaker
So he says that Noos is going to be response, that according to Anaxagoras, Noos is responsible for everything. And then he says that he thought that if this were true, Anaxagoras would tell him the cause of ah all the different celestial activities, why it's better, whether the Earth is in the center or not, and why it's better for it to be so.
01:25:50
Speaker
These are the sort of things that he expected, Anaxagoras. Kind of like natural phenomena. Exactly. Now, he says that he heard somebody reading from a book and this is what he expected.
01:26:02
Speaker
But then as Anaxagoras went on, he did something very different. And so these are all his ex expectations before he's even read the book once, right? So this is this is very much the initial expectations when he's starting to hear somebody describe what's happening in the book. um Now, I think that he's expecting an explanation in terms of news to mean that you would have to explain things in terms of why it's better for them to be the way they are rather than some other way. And he thinks to give an explanation in terms of that, you would have to say why it's better for the world to be in the center rather than on the periphery.
01:26:54
Speaker
Anaxagoras doesn't do that. He doesn't know how to do it himself. And so he says that he does something different. and so I don't think that the different thing that he does is supposed to be able to help him in any way determine whether it would be better for the Earth to be in the center rather than in the periphery or better for the Earth to be a sphere rather than flat. So that those are the expectations. So if you have this sort of theory, this is what you would have to be able to do. The theory that he ends up adopting isn't able to do that.
01:27:36
Speaker
that's some initial evidence that it's not supposed to do what that theory um said it was going to do. So to go back to our earlier discussion, I think that theory in terms of noose is one that Socrates is very excited about because in order to do that, you would need to actually have substantive knowledge of the nature of the good.
01:28:04
Speaker
And there is nothing that Socrates wants more than substantive knowledge of the nature of the good. This is the thing that in every dialogue, Socrates is after. And so he finds somebody who says, hey, I know what the nature of the good is, and Socrates gets super excited.
01:28:24
Speaker
He would love to have an account like that, but epistemically modest Socrates, when it turns out that neither Anaxagoras nor any of the other natural philosophers are able to give an account like that,
01:28:39
Speaker
He comes up with what I think is just a very different way of proceeding, which doesn't require substantive knowledge. So that sort of theory would be great, but it would require you to really know the nature of the good and know other things. So you might know that goodness is unity and still not know whether it's better for the earth to be in the center rather than on the periphery. Now we need to know which contributes more to unity, right? So it's really quite high standards that are built into the sort of theory that Anaxagoras has. And so so anyway, I mean, that's a kind of
01:29:22
Speaker
bigger account of why I think these are just two very different theories, the one that he was hoping to get from Anaxagoras and the theory that he ends up going on you to give. Fantastic. Well, David, um yeah, this has been an awesome discussion. ah Really enjoyed it. So thanks a lot.
01:29:43
Speaker
Thank you so much for, I mean, this was a lot of fun. I really i enjoyed it a lot too. And thanks again for for reading the book and I really enjoyed talking through it with you.