Alex Priou's Musings on Plato's Symposium

Welcome to the new thing. My name is David Bart with me as always. My good friend Alex, pretty, how are you doing? I am rock hard and ready to rumble with my arrows on fire.

Another episode, 50th episode I'm supposed to have. That was good. It's not every day you catch me flat footed out. So I, that was good.

But let's talk to somebody who's flaccid. How are you doing, Greg? Where? Heechie, my friend, Peechie.

And you're a world. You're a world. Into fatherhood. Yeah, that's right.

And how are you doing? Because you're full of energy, which is uncharacteristic, but you have so many people serving you at your house. It's like you haven't missed a beat. I feel great.

Have you been doing this in your morning workouts? I have. So nothing in your life has been interrupted by the birth of a child. It's been slow at work.

Thankfully, I love our teaching ended for the summer and the new semester hasn't started yet. So I've had a few meetings. So I've been taking a lot easier work. Other than that, I've not been sleeping as well, obviously, but still sleeping way better than I expected.

And a little teddy bear is doing great. We should have now recorded some actually. No, we have. No, that is one.

Sorry. This is a brother of the episode. Let's announce the birth of Gregory McRayers, first known child, Theodore Samuel, the prayer. Right?

What was he born? He was born August the 8th, 2023 at 9.48 PM Eastern time in Orville, Ohio. Fun enough. Yeah.

Home of the Smuckers factory. Oh, really? Yeah. And your wife had a natural birth?

She. Natural. No. Zip.

Yeah. Not even a Tylenol. The conception was not natural. That's true.

The birth was natural. But like a good, she's from Kentucky, right? That's right. You could corn fed Kentucky woman.

Would you say that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

She's she can nurse with her in the morning, give birth in the morning, and then you'll talk about the county afternoon. That's the kind of gal she is. She's like, was it a hoe for plowing? What do you mean?

No, horse for plowing? Not what's the he's he applying? Yeah. And then get a woman, not your wife, but a slave.

Yeah. Right. I don't even know what you guys are talking about. The thing is, I just thought I'll quote it from He's He's Works in Days where the things you need for a happy life.

To get your life started. You're not to reply to a woman for a record and what, but it's kind of like driving. Driving. Driving.

Driving. Right. But the fact is, to hear that you don't marry the woman and deploy certain things. Right.

Right. Right. Alex, you gave birth again, too. Yeah.

I gave birth for my soul, not for my dad. Yeah. That's your third. This is my second.

No. You have burns that you're. Oh, yeah. I edited that volume.

But he doesn't recognize it. Great. Well, you write to the bathroom. Somebody else's work.

You feel more like you're stewarding. Great. That's right. You've had a good volume.

It's mostly you've edited a few months now, too. Yeah. Yeah. So tell us about the third one, the first two.

And then what's this one? This is the one you told us you were laughing about, because you got away with so much plagiarism, because there are no notes in it. It's not just a word. Well, I acknowledge the two sources I draw in continuously throughout Strauss and better, Daddy.

But it's called Music Zonklet, as opposed to a small volume. I kind of, yeah, Grace holding it up for our audio podcast. So small, 100 in, what is it? 107 page volume of distilled reflections on this symposium.

But it's a, this comes from a political animal press. I should say the press wants us to do a kind of giveaway of a book. And I was hard pressed to come up with something. I don't know.

How should we give away a book? I think David, you had an idea of doing a captioned podcast on Twitter? Yeah. Yeah.

So on Twitter, we would, our audience, our loyal audience, that follows us on Twitter, are aware of some of the ongoing jokes we have. And so we could just tweet a picture and say caption this. But I realized that we, so we have a lot of anonymous friends, but our friends that are quote unquote on the level, who are just front facing and have these careers, they can, they can DM us there. There.

I think this is a good idea. I was thinking because it gets our listeners who aren't on Twitter on Twitter to see that there's like a whole nother side show. Mostly, by the way, mostly, I asked you jokes since my childhood born. I noticed that our Twitter profile has taken some pretty nasty turns.

So what are you talking about? You guys need a whip it in order here, fellows. You guys been, you guys been on the 30. You guys been dragging us down.

You tweet something about going to San Dusky, Ohio. We all know what that means, Greg. Yeah. Yeah.

That's all. That's a secret. That's called the dog whistle in the biz. That means you're letting it know that, you know, anyways, because that because that Penn State coach named San Dusky, is that what you're is that what you're implying?

Are you implying that's what you're referring on believe and what you infer reveals your own mental associations. So I just like some pizza from San Dusky. That's all. Speaking of petarasty.

So I was going to go to our Twitter, the day of release, we'll have to, what we've got time between now and when this is released by the day, this is released, go to our Twitter, CD episode announcement. We'll have a picture. We'll decide what that is. Come up with a caption.

If you come up with the best caption, my editor at the political animal press, the good folks at political animal press will send you a book. I wish you plug the press a little bit because they let me talk about that. So the press, you can't say if you really start in. So Alex will tell you the background.

I was so excited. I had a classmate in graduate school, Lewis Sloskey, who's also a, who went to, who's an undergraduate at St. John's College and really, really knows Nietzsche well, among other thinkers in our discipline. And we hear through the grapevine that he started his own press.

And so this is something that I think academics talk about, like over a years, how wouldn't it be nice if our books were $300 and more than 12 people read them, right? Right. But that's not just ego. I mean, you want to do a nice translation like Greg Xenophon.

You want to share it with people, benefit the community. And Lewis and he has a partner that does this, the two of them teamed up. And he was an Andy Wall. Alex Wall.

Sorry. It was all. Sorry. Sorry.

And I'm also my think as St. John's graduate and a man's field student at Harvard for his PhD. I think they just got together and they said, look, we're going to start our own imprint. And so here we have Alex's book.

The title is Musings on Plato's Symposium from political animal press, which is such a wonderful name for an imprint and it's selling for $20. Yeah. And so I hope that Lewis breaks the mold and just crushes, you know, the other academic presses into. So to give you a sense of the kind of thing they do, I'll describe what I was working on.

OK, so I was working on this and was asked to write something on Strauss on this and put it in the brilliant ed volume. So I taught a seminar on the symposium last fall. And as I was reading Strauss and Savannah Dettie, because they've also included some of the materials included, Strauss's correspondence with Ben and Dettie, I found like, you know, the dialogs fitting together better than ever before. And I also found myself making sense of a lot of other things I'd observed in the dialogue, but never quite put together, installing some of the bigger problems I'd had to having a coherent reading, not to say a final reading, but something that actually holds together.

And once I had done that, I started jotting my notes and I just found myself enjoying being playful with this dialogue because it is, I think, more comic and more playful than some of his dialogues. I mean, it's yeah, there's just a lot is really rich in the humor as you watch these characters kind of exposselate their theories about what love is. You you get, I think, a more extreme sense of their limits than you do in just a normal, socratic conversation where it's very nippy, and you're really trying to wrestle with the argument, summarize it accurately, notice the deducts. So there's some kind of lends itself to this sort of thing.

And so I just started writing up my thoughts and kind of short chunks and ended up writing 49 of these short chunks, some are like just a few sentences, some are four or five pages. And I threw them together with a preface and I showed it to Lewis when I had about half of it done. And he, Lewis Floss, he the editor there, and he liked it. And he was happily greenlighted, finally, he just ripped him in February and it's out the following August, which is, anybody knows something about publishing books that's very fast.

It was the total time I know. I mean, I started writing in October, it was out when in a year. Getting to write it, you know, part of it is this is about the length of like three articles, usually clear, so 24,000 words, it's not a long book, about 107 pages. And, you know, some of them are quite short.

So there's an empty space in there. But so it's something to quickly write. And it is, from my perspective, there's somebody writing it's something that took a lot of time to think about. And so the thoughts have been kind of distilled by the time I wrote.

So it went quickly. But it's nice to know that there's a press that's willing to accept an unconventional manuscript, give great editorial voice and hold me to the fire when he thought I was not being clear and stuff like that and asking me to write a longer preface, for example, the original one's quite short. But giving good editorial advice, but being hands off, trusting in the author and being willing to do unconventional stuff and then to promote it quite well. So I'll just say that any academics who listen or, you know, academics who are interested in doing something, maybe in addition to scholarship, something a little un-scholarly like this, I would suggest you go to political and well, because I think they are going to be way more open to unconventional manuscripts and they're going to be into promoting it and doing a lot for you.

So that's what you mean? What do you mean when you say unconventional and not scholarly? What does that mean? Yeah.

So I mean, I don't what is a scholarly what is a scholarly conventional book? Well, it has a strong obvious thesis. Yeah. In Belaipur's its way of proving that thesis.

What's that stress line about Weber? We just recorded Weber not that long ago, the episode of Weber. I'm sure he's without harder, whatever special. You know, the way he says after he comes out or his idea, he says, let us look at this and we find 600 pages of the fewest number sentences and the most number of footnotes.

That's a great name of what a scholarly which look, I wrote a 125,000 word commentary on Plato's Charminities, which is the labored in detail. So, you know, I have respect for that. But, you know, I think there's a place, especially when writing on the supposing for doing something a little different. So I don't only have 21 footnotes.

There's I don't connect all the dots. I don't lay out my arguments. I kind of just present my interpretations and it's up to you to judge them by the time. And Greg, it really sounds like Alex Cuttle on corners here.

I sound like they're in a sounds round. It sounds like one of Erysophanes, the lobby, or beings. I have a monster. I'm a monster attack in the gods.

But you know, Alex, it reminds if any readers are familiar with some of Eva Brand's books, one in particular, the Homeric moments. Yeah. I like that. I can't remember the subtitles, something like clues to the light, the light and the ileod and oddity or something like that.

But there's very short chapters. And I don't know what I'm sorry about that book. Yeah. I was I visited a classics professor at NYU, who I won't name.

But I was I was thinking about doing a PhD in classics when I was in like academic world. So I went to talk to some professors and he saw I had even read and I heard a clay this book and he was looking at it. And he looked at it. It's like also like you can brand it.

It was like Homeric. This is to be clear for the folks. No, not the not not the infamous Nazi wife. Vadol Fettler, either.

Brawn, even right. Sorry, not her. So I had this book and he looks and he looks and he looks and he looks and he sees American moments, clues to delight and reading the ileod and honestly. But yeah, that is why we get into this.

We just delight in the books. And then the guy goes on to show me he has a book like thicker than like, you know, you know, like Robert Alter's like Old Testament Bible, right? And it's just a big leography on Parmesan's poem. And he's like showing off how many entries are this thing.

I was like, there's something perverse about that when you have to read 10,000 things or a thousand things before you feel comfortable writing on something. But I know he can. Right. I mean, and the people who do waste their time because, you know, if you can think nobody's right.

I mean, it's a read. Anyway, so I assume that I acknowledge that upfront in the preface that almost everything I've written is derivative in some way, either negatively or positively in Strauss's lectures on the symposium and better. I'll say, which is also, I think, in dialogue with Strauss. He obviously edited the Strauss lectures on the symposium.

So he was obviously deeply indebted, disagrees with him in parts. And I think sometimes better than he's right, sometimes Strauss is right. But it's just one of those things. This is the symposium was the first dialogue I ever read by Plato.

And I read Strauss at the same time. And I was just one over by both of them. Wow. Yeah.

But you know, so let's talk a little bit about the structure. How did you decide? I mean, so even thinking about first of all, we have a series of episodes on the symposium, our never ending series, you've been thinking about it, teaching and reading it for years now. How did you decide upon the structure?

I mean, you can joke that you chose the path of least resistance. But I mean, did you, you, this was, you plan to write a not exactly popular book, but something that was accessible. Yeah, it's meant to be accessible to somebody who's thoughtful of you, so it's the first time or something you've been studying in a long time. But then an older, well, I was in the scholar like Greg can still learn from it, right?

I would hope so. I can give us a judgment. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But I think it's, yeah, it's meant to be something approachable, but also giving a lot over time, mostly because I just leave a lot of what I think are the big questions. I end a lot of the sections with large questions, but what's the M-dashes, by the way? Well, M-dashes.

It depends on where they occur. But sometimes it's... You'll end up chapped or with an M-dash. Like, what the hell is that?

Yeah. Yeah. Is that supposed to be some weird sex thing I don't understand? Is it like, are you doing punctuation in the bedroom, Greg?

No, I don't know. It's an M-dash. That's longer than an M-dash. I don't know.

I mean, this is funny. So I like to read. So this is chopping two on the... Dricks got a real tilde, you know what I mean?

Well, worry. This is just an example. So let me read actually with your permission, Alex. Some of the chapter titles.

So I'm using some Plato's symposium. It's 49 chapters. Greg, you can talk to us about the central one I went into it. I already did.

But it's funny. So like, number one, the gathering. Chapter six, Agathon's house. Chapter 14, hiccups.

Chapter 17, the ancient quarrel. Chapter 18, Greg's favorite, is Socrates a lover of boys. 21 is num-tungs and deaf ears. So Alex, you're really using your creativity here, and it's wonderful.

So I'll just read the very last paragraph of chapter two, this Sicilian expedition. This is typical of how Alex will end some of those chapters. I'll ask you a number of questions, right? But what effect could his sobriety have had amid so much...

Sockerti? Which is that? Right. So what effect could Socrates sobriety have had amid so much psychic innibriation?

And isn't Socrates also surrounded by lovers? The most infamous being Elsa Bites? Is Socrates really sober? Last sentence.

We played with envy a lover of Socrates' great critic, the comic book, Aristophanes. And so this is Alex not answering any questions, but he's asking you the right provocative question at the right time. And I think answering those questions successfully or at least thinking through them, if you can do that, then you're ready for the next chapter. And so it's like these mini challenges.

I don't think you intended it that way, Alex, but it's almost like if you can solve some of the riddles that you post at the end of the chapters, you move on to the next one. Yeah. Well, I would say I do answer these questions, but like for instance, the last one is answered ultimately. It's addressed throughout, but it's answered ultimately in the last section on Plato.

But I didn't want to do the thing, which is like, you'll remember back in section two, we raised the following question. We are in position to answer that question. I just want somebody who's attentive and thinking and move by them to read and to connect the dots. So I just you're right.

I took the path of least resistance because you could spell things out all the way, but it's a little bit boring and a little bit indecent and clumsy. But you never write an essay. You guys will understand it. You write an essay and you're just like, in this essay, I will argue and editors will force you to do it.

And it's just just not feel something so like just like flat-footed about it. I just didn't know what you should do what my monitor does in the guy. He'll just trust my meaning has been understood. I just said in your mind, I'm a collet.

Isn't he exactly? Greg, did you do anything with the numerology in this book about it? I did note there's a central chapter in a central footnote, probably worth looking at for the folks at home. And there are pictures in the book too.

There is a picture in the book. Don't reveal this. Which I had a hand in, so to speak. Two hands in, I would say.

Yeah. I helped arrange that R.B. to be made, actually, by posing. Yeah.

Yeah. So Alex, I mean, the jokes aside, I mean, there's a lot of this interesting here. What, I mean, you did spur a lot of thoughts in me with this. I thought it was funny.

I agree with you that this sort of is one of the best ways to go about this. One of the things that occurred to me in one of your chapters, I wrote, this is chapter eight, this is page 20. The thought occurred to me, are these kinds of eulogies? Because they do seem like exhibitions be each other sort.

And if they are eulogies, I don't know, is there some kind of playing with the notion that Eros has somehow died in Athens? Is that an all? And is that just maybe that's taking it wrong direction on basically what you said? But they're in co-me of sorts, right?

And I mean, you don't only provide those for the dead, but typically one would. And I was just wondering if Athens is ending. Greek civilizations on its way out here, right? This is so many other conditions, all this.

Is there some kind of, like, these are the sophisticated people. They don't, they no longer believe in the sort of pantheonic Greek gods in the way. They all seem to be in a piece of the way. Is there some kind of way in which this is them eulogizing Greek civilizations in some way?

I think that's, I mean, that really cuts to the heart of this imposing way, right? Which is that there's a kind of sickness in Athens. Yeah. And Socrates seems to be trying to devise a cure.

And what you get from this imposing, it's all fun, it's delightful, whatever. But then you get a sense that nobody has any idea what's going on. They're all infected in Socrates. This is almost like to borrow a page out of Nietzsche, though.

He doesn't really put it in the sense that it was a sickness of Eros. But there was a kind of, and this is the section you're talking about. It's called praising Eros. And there's something weird about praising Eros because Eros is brought.

Everybody knows that love is in some ways the most positive thing we wanted. And yet even when you get it, it's a full of House of Problems. It's nothing of pursuing it, right? It's not this pretty thing yet.

It speaks to the depth of us. And to simply praise it is… And Eros on the political level is tied to empire in Thucydides, but also in Plato. You get a sense that there is something really, really wrong with it. No, for sure.

And so perhaps the praise of Eros in Echomium for Eros, but therefore an Echomium for Eros is an Echomium for Eros is an Echomium for Eros. But therefore an Echomium for Eros. Yeah. You say on page 53 that when everyone sees this combination of endrogyny, that that's no doubt a symptom of this psychic illness that plagues Athens or any society, where you see a proliferation of endrogymen types.

It took that to be very sharp. It's very insightful. Can I read my favorite life in this section? Yeah, sure.

So, Aristophanes has these androgynous types in his speech, which is, people are really emphasized this, but this is a reference back to his own play that Desmond Ford has used to. This is Plato having Aristophanes references his own play, where he mocks Agathon for his androgyny, for wearing feminine clothing, shaving his body of all hair and, quote, being ridden like a horse. And then this is literally what Agathon has done. But then Agathon is the beloved of Pausanius who talks about educating his beloveds in virtue.

But if Agathon learned how to be ridden like a horse, it gives you sense of what Pausanius is less than actually work. I think that this is what I mean. The more I started reading this, I started thinking about its images and tracing on it. The more I was like, oh, this is like body level.

It's filthy. It's filthy. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's not Socrates isn't beneath or isn't above. He's making these dirty jokes. He enters the scene and he makes a dirty joke right away. Yeah.

One thing I will say, I think you're right to focus on the playful. But I mean, they're in the background is something very, very serious. I'm just touched on this. Athens is in decline.

Athens is about to die. And Socrates is about to die. A lot of this is going to be pinned on Socrates. You touch on this in the text.

But how much of this conversation related here is what gets him in so much hot water. So the levity might be masking some really serious things here. Yeah. Maybe on this, I could talk about what was the big thing I think I figured out that made it together.

And this gets at Section 25, the central section, so we'll just go ahead and talk. How about that? The six speeches? Yeah, the six speeches.

My big question was I can never understand why you had the first three speeches. And the key for me in this was Strauss's distinction between uninspired and inspired speeches. The first three he says are uninspired, uninspired by arrows, which is to say that they subordinate arrows to something external. Right.

So these were therefore seem to be in this conference. I mean based on these two, they were therefore seem to be kind of typical restraints on So, like, Vadris subordinates arrows to gain, specifically material gain. Right. So, varying sensibly is the most immediate version of this.

Pauseous works arrows to morality or moral self restraints. And then, eric-sympics supports arrows to technique or to technical skill, to that is like manipulating and trying to maintain a balance of 100 other bases of some kind of technical ability. So, not morality, but science tells you to, you know, don't do this, don't do that, right? Well, art, but yeah, right.

Yeah, art. So, yeah. So, I mean, we would say you're right. You're right.

You got this section, pick me up. I'm sorry. This Socrates is the one that it's about knowledge or science right? I'm assuming.

Yeah. So, yeah. Fine. Because it's a couple of active.

Right. Movement. But then, so, okay. So, then you'd say, this then connects it to the Sustainate Commission, right?

Sustainate Expedition, D going to lose your well, right? Or you restrain it by morality. Don't you realize what you're doing is unjust? Or you restrain it on behalf of civic health or something like that.

But none of these three things are actually working anymore, which means that you need to find a way in which arrows devolve or limits itself through its own sort of self-understanding or self-expression. And so, what you get from Aristophanes, Agathon, and Socrates are a more imminent analysis of error. So, one way to say about it is that the three speech first, we just kind of don't work because they don't speak to the depth of our longing, which is part of the reason I think people kind of gloss over them pretty quickly. And they immediately are hit by Aristophanes, which speaks to, speaks to arrows as a love of your own or your love of your other half.

Agathon speaks to arrows as solving all the problems. So, I think he's most emblematic of the sickness, the peak of the sickness, where he thinks he's the cause of peace. He's wrong about that. And then you get Socrates, who gives an analysis of arrows, which pushes arrows to its limits and shows how what it wants is impossible.

Which then the reason this tied things together for me is he connected the political theme of the Sicilian exhibition to the question of wisdom or the contest between the poets and the philosopher, where it seems like Socrates is the one who understands arrows because he understands its limits, which means understanding the limits of what poetry can do. So, the reason I put this in the center or a first reason why I might want to put something on this in the center is because I think this is just the way to think about the whole of the suppose, right, how it all fits together. Do you have a favorite chapter, Alex? Yeah, it depends on my mood.

I have to say that your writing stylistically is very beautiful in this book. I like, I also think the most scholarly contribution is section 45, Elsebius after Socrates. I was really, I felt like I figured something out about Elsebius' life, largely through Plutarch's health. I mean, our episode on Plutarch was really instructive for this.

I should give a shout out to you guys. You guys get a fat thank you and the acknowledgments on the back cover. Yeah, we do. Thanks for that.

Thanks, Alex. Yeah, but we'll get to that. We'll get to that. Yeah, I just felt like I felt like he had to advise the key to understanding the relationship with Elsebius.

Explain how. I just think Elsebius puts Elsebius in conflict with himself in a really powerful way. And yeah, I mean, I don't want to go into all the details because it would get kind of too historical. But I think Elsebius comes to see himself as possibly the political instantiation or representation of Socratic moderation, philosophical moderation.

I think he's confused in that regard, but that is the path that he cars for himself. And his later political successes and failures, I think, are tied to that attempt to that. This is your longest chapter. Yeah, because I felt like I had to lay out a lot.

Yeah, good. I think I see you know, Barge has fallen over your beautiful writing. What was this? Yeah, come on.

No, no, I'm not going to do this. I'm going to point out I detect another author not played over lurking behind all of your style of writing here. Ransing has begun? No, no, no.

It's the end of your story. You're here? It was me. Mecha.

There's a lot of... I'm fine. I mean, there's some nearly explicit references and then just your manner seems almost aphoristic. Even the 49 chapters seem more like 49, I mean, they're longer than aphorisms, but they almost seem like it'd be 49 barbs and arrows or aphorisms or something.

Oh, yeah, and Greg, you're a comment about the M-dashes. Yeah, the M-dashes. I mean, AK-Homo, we all know what you're trying to say there. Alex, everybody can see through that.

But you know, all that kind of stuff. Tell me about the Nietzschean. Actually, actually, actually, actually, actually, actually homo for the folks at home is Latin for the whole, the homo, which you look like to do. But now, he...

No, I like to hold. Hold him. Hold him. There's another joke about holding and holding you make here that David...

Don't you get the sense that Alex is writing this and then he had just read Nietzsche's you know, why I am a destiny, why I write such good words. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to be a prick and I put these little hilarious musings that only I understand. Exactly.

I'll tell people, I'll tell people because this is the oldest con in the game, right? Yeah. Oh, oh, just think hard enough and I'll leave these questions on the answer you've done. I tell you, you're reading into our M-dash.

I don't know. I'm smart at the end. Yeah, and you keep promises you have to... Hey, give them one more.

This episode is never going to release. Hey, listen, hey listen, folks at home, if you want to feel stupid, buy this book. You're going to be insulted by the author. I owe you guys.

I owe you guys a gratitude because I almost felt bad about what I wrote about you and the acknowledgments and now I feel perfectly justified. I feel perfectly justified. Why don't you... Why don't we tell them about what you...

What happened? Post Butterworth seminar at the University of Maryland. Yeah, why don't you apply it? Why don't you lay out with your allegations here, like get my attorney on the line.

I'll read it. Because I first year reading it and you're like, oh, what a nice... In fact, I tweeted a screenshot out of this and people said, oh, you know, what a nice commendation Alex gave. And then no, no, no, no, no, no.

Just read it carefully. He says, those companions from whom I've learned something about the topics covered in this symposium are too many to name. First of all, I'll just jigalose. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I must express... I'm reading into this. I'm reading into this. But I must express gratitude above all to my two close friends, Gregory McBrayer and David Barr, the two men at the University of Maryland, that's true, where the former was a graduate student in political philosophy, already advanced in years, so Greg was in his 20s, and the latter an undergraduate young handsome eater to learn.

Now, where have we heard that phrasing before, Greg? I think the plot of Poor Little White Boy. Telling me once, and I was like, Greg, really, really good. And then also, you know, Alex, you do think, but more seriously, our producer, Jake Cannon.

Yeah, thanks, Adam. And then he had another asversion, Greg, towards the end regarding art. That's not an asversion, it's gratitude. That's the best...

I would befriend David only a few years later at St. John's College in Zune Greg as well. But their lasting friendship, especially in the reciprocity of their playful banter and mutual assistance, was a confused to be a model of lifelong companionship. That's sweet.

I think that one was nice. Yeah. Oh, and Alex also thinks that they think great. That's big big.

That's right. Thank you. But thanks to our listeners. Yeah.

You know, but I can see... Guys help each other out, and you are like, mean to live together forever. So, but I can't you see Alex's writing in this book? And it's like he had just...

He looks at his eyes, range over his books, shelf. He's like, oh, yeah, I should write this. Oh, Montesquitees is us about a secret thread running through the text. I'm just like that guy.

So I'm gonna do something similar. But here's Alex in his early 40s, still a young scholar, already adopting the stance of deep esoteric... Right. ...is in the pantheon.

Because why not? Yeah. Yeah. You guys are reading into this.

Yeah, I mean, the idea that was to write something that doesn't give everything up on the first reading, which is strangely easier. It's easier not having to justify everything you think. I'm kind of... A lot of this, I'll say I actually thought the most revealing thing did set up this.

Sorry, I'm just crying at the poor little bit. Sorry. But I thought the most revealing thing David said was Alex being lazy and taking the patent case resistance. Yeah.

Whatever said, if I tried to justify everything I say in this book, it would have taken me another year to write this thing. I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. I want to leave like a lot of those questions are just assertions.

I just stick a question mark on it. You go figure out whether you agree or not. That's not a good thing. Figure out whether you agree or not.

It's not a good thing. It's not a good thing. It's not a good thing. It's going to have to avoid responsibility.

But it's the kind of book that people love to read. I mean, like how much more fun a thing looks got now that he seems to be completely free to do whatever he wants, right? You don't want to read scholarly stuff. I mean, you want something that actually...

This is not to say this is non-serious. It's not scholarly. It's not serious. That's correct.

You raised very serious questions about Plato's dialogues that get you thinking. I think someone who's only read the dialogue for the first time will benefit from this. And I've read that symposium on and off for quarter of a century. And I still got a lot of it.

I hate this little here. Is it right? Oh, because we just don't know. No, no, I just don't like the dialogue at all.

I leave it cold. I just say, but yeah, outside of it, I have a question that will sound like a joke, but it's serious. With all these loose ends dangling in the air, is there an esoteric core work to this book? I mean, there's certain things you have a deeper argument that's running that...

I answer questions in some places. I say that I answer them elsewhere. Part of that is I just didn't want to be flat-footed. I mean, that honestly, I just didn't want.

And I think anybody who reads this and is thinking about whatever you will notice the connections, obviously, it's not a difficult, I think. Oh, actually, I mean, I think that's... There are certain things that I just wanted to sort of glance on that I think are quite important, that I think they're more talking. I didn't want to have to go into it.

Part of it is that I wanted to trace the thread of the Sicilian expedition and what Plato's up to in writing a book of this style. And also just have fun. I wanted to make something that if you read it, you're not going to just read it once and then put it aside, but maybe you'll return to it because the book could be much longer if I laid it out, but it isn't. And therefore, you need to read it more than once.

I think, you know, so it's... Yeah, I mean, by the way, so there's another little book like this that I loved. I remember our old tutor from St. John's Eric Salem.

I think he has a book, do you remember Greg on the Essex called The Pursuit of the Good? Just something like that. He's a very... Eric Salem's very, very short book on the ethics.

That's a wonderful, seemingly light read, but it just opens up the text. And also to your point, Alex, has anybody tried to nay say the seriousness of the book? If you read your book closely, you'll see that... Try to figure out how to phrase this, that...

I can write one of these chapters and then just ask a bunch of idiot questions and people would be able to tell them that I'm just raising questions. I don't even understand that I don't have the answer to, but I don't even know what the question is in a serious way. You can tell the questions you're raising. I have a tremendous amount of thought behind them.

It's not just like some bullsh... Actually, I can't answer every question I raised. Some of them are just like, this is what I think is the question one needs to ask. And I just leave them.

Yeah, do you hear that, Greg? That's a weird admission of humility from Alex. Can't answer every one of his questions. That's unbelievable.

Well, you would think somebody puts a question in print is because they think you should think about it and maybe they think that leads somewhere. Sometimes I'm just like, I think, for me, the question of Aristendemus, I feel like I have a decent grasp of why he's... I still feel like there's something I'm missing and some of the questions are dancing around that. I liked your chapter on the seeding...

Or sorry, the missing speeches. That was interesting. That's another... You can just pure conjecture.

And so, for me, it was actually a lot of fun to read. And I think that I hate praising you this much because already the ego, Greg, is outside. It's... Is he does bigger than...

He's like a Persian satrap of old. Jesus Christ, what is this episode? Straightening my ego. I've been cut down to size a thousand times.

It's just smaller than I was. I forgot my praise. That was like, this sounds praising you. You kind of offered for the good part was company.

Alex has something racist now. Alex, have I changed your number anymore? No, you can't... You make it a joy, actually, to...

You can introduce, I think, the joy of philosophizing in a lot of these chapters. The question about that is, this was something I've been asked by a few people, why did you write this thing this way? And I'll be honest, one of my inspirations was Twitter. Like, I'm on Twitter too much.

And I've found that if you... Some of these people who have bought my Twitter will see that some of the things I've talked about and threads are on there. You set up a good Twitter thread of like eight to ten tweets on a subject. You kind of lay out steps of an argument, leave it with questions.

It's provocative. I just noticed people like that and thoughtfully. And they want something thought-provoking with good questions, insights, and they don't want you to waste their time. And I thought, look, Twitter threads in the worst case are just like a path of grants.

But in the best cases, in the best case, you can write something that's almost like an aphroism in a single tweet or in a series of tweets. And people expect you to be tying things together and get to the point, because you can see people drop off as they're reading. And then some people will be really into it and follow it and be like, oh, that's interesting. I'll think about that.

And I thought, look, media changes, the way people consume thoughts change, and on Twitter, I think there are a group of people that interact with who are thoughtful, who are interested in that, who are sometimes overly passionate about things. But there's a kind of appetite for not like a blog post, but something small, that's like a distill of the reflection. And I just thought, this is almost like writing an effort. So when you talk about Nietzsche, of course, I was thinking, how does Nietzsche write?

How does Nietzsche cut thoughts short? You know, question marks, dashes. That's the way that you stop a thought midway. You say, there's more going on, but I'm going to stop here, because I think I've laid enough on the table.

Of course, I had to think about Nietzsche, right? It's just one of my first philosopher that I ever read, that I first really enjoyed reading. And I thought, I can't write a Nietzschean aphroism, but I understand some of the tools he uses. And I think it's useful in trying to do this.

So it just felt like the style was appropriate to the kind of consumption we're used to of thoughts. Now, that was like a rhetorical thought that went into this was largely coming out of, just noticing that if I wrote something didactic or kind of textual with no provocation on Twitter, nobody cares. But when you really do something that's like, well done distilled and not as well formed as anything in here, people react to it. They like it.

Well, there are also different, I would love for somebody, I'm sure somebody's written this. I had an idea to write a short essay this years and years ago, but it's just the cycle of scholarly aesthetics for lack of a better word. So there are historians, you see cycles of historians where they will get really, really foot no heavy, and then it turns to kind of just more elegant writing. Like you can think of giving still has like footnotes and stuff, but you have different, they're different things fall on a popularity and then rise again.

So do you think Alex that we are trending that direction or is the hold of academia and what's expected just to iron? I think academia's got so ideological and positions are becoming less research oriented that I hope there's a lot of freedom. Okay. So you see it's actually open?

Yeah. I think there's you can draw distinction between somebody like Rousseau, who writes a 20 page work like the first discourse that's just powerful and incredibly distilled and I could read that three times in a day and never get bored. Right. And then you look at equally as brilliant a thinker, Montaigne who writes a massive work called the essays.

That's got it's full of short things, but nobody knows how to make heads or tail with it. And I think there's something to be said for both of or Montesquieu, for example, who wrote a work that's incredibly influential at the time. Yet nowadays people don't have the time or it doesn't fit our attention spans and our work, you know, the founders, you know, as they had, you know, certain people working for them to cultivate their fields, good sit in their study all day and read 300 pages of Montesquieu carefully. We don't have that.

And so different writing is needed when people are asked to be consumed, dry literature to write something short, punchy and provocative. I don't know. I'm hoping people will take this as a breath of pressure. That's what I wrote it all day.

But you have a few kids on the way, right? So your next book that's set to come into the world is on the trilogy, the Lord of the Rings, right? Oh, it's like that. But the story's true.

I played a trilogy. Now that that is a book I would say that's more. That's the way they're scholarly. It has a thesis and it kind of works all towards that thesis.

But my follow up to this is, do you, I think you had something to say to you about the over a few things on the fire. Do you see yourself returning to this style of presentation and perhaps even at a greater length sometime in the future? I don't know. I mean, I don't know.

I think the symposium lens itself that I just found myself like enjoying writing these things. I don't know if I will again. I mean, I'm just, I work on, you know, the scholar. This was just a kind of.

Oh, big city scholar. Big city scholar. You know what I mean? Like I'm used to writing, oh, this is what I think about the book.

Here are my eight reasons. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I like, and here's the footnotes and thank you for this. And I disagree with Mr.

whatever professor, whatever. And like, you know, that's just how I think and like how I'm trying to work. But you know, this is different. It's just a point of.

You jokingly, I mean, we made light of your your praise for the podcast. But I think you mentioned Twitter helping too. But like, we really do. I think it helps us for me to, it's like, it's just so much more fun and to think in these ways and communicate in these ways and it gives us a liberty that we wouldn't have in Scott.

Like we say stuff here that we couldn't get away with in a scholarly writing, you know. And I think, I don't think he's right. A little light society. Or a little light society.

Yeah, I swear, we're also you bring it up for a little white boy. And what this is, don't Google it. That's my own white guy. I think that's the title of the series, Greg is.

I don't know. But yeah, he started it all stuff. But I mean, like, look, there's an audience for this kind of stuff too. Right.

Like your books probably sell them way better than most scholarly books and the podcast is okay. And I don't know. I mean, that's something I was I didn't think about the since I, you know, said the final version. Yeah, which I don't know.