Welcome back to New Thinkery with me is always my good friend Greg McBrayer. How are you doing? I'm doing PG. Thanks.
Warm and fuzzy. Excellent. And our good friend Alex Preyarrios. I'm doing well.
I'm very excited about our guest tonight. Yeah. So who's with us? Ariel Helfer.
I want to open up a story about Ariel. I can't remember. I told you this. First time in my area, I never actually met him before.
We were on a panel together at some political science conference. And you know, political science conferences, usually the quality papers are much lower than philosophy conferences. But he, I was reading this great paper. It can't be true.
Can I? I was reading this paper on the outside bodies. We were both still grad students at the time. And I was like, this is a great paper.
This is really interesting. And it's, and it's, it's a careful reading, but you had real questions you wanted to ask. And it just felt like, Oh, okay, this guy's really thinking this thing through. So I didn't say this guy.
I thought Ariel, oh my God, I think this is a lady. And it's a smart lady. I hope honestly, as far as smart leads are concerned, the statistics are against me. But maybe the smart lady is also pretty.
And then in walks, this like this, and he goes, Hi, I'm Ariel. And I was just so disappointed. But it was a great paper. The book that came out of that paper, your dissertation, and your book eventually was was great as well.
So I'm pleased. You haven't gotten any hotter, as far as my my inclinations are concerned. But my work is broken, actually. So there's that.
But otherwise, yeah, I'm glad not to have disappointed you too many times beyond that first one. You know, I like to just keep it to the initial disappointment, and then you can kind of plateau. Yeah, there we go. I don't know who's going to introduce Ariel properly after my little mermaid when I met him.
So that's another good doctor. Helfer is a friend of mine, friend of ours. I've actually hung out with him a few times. He's a professor recently promoted associate professor, which means you can associate with other professors.
Now you don't have to assist them anymore. At Wayne State University, just up the road in Detroit, Michigan, for me. He wrote an excellent book that Alex has already alluded to called Socrates and Alcibiades, Plato's drama of little philosophy and ambition published with the University of Pennsylvania for us. And tonight we're discussing his second book, which is called Plato's Letters, The Political Challenge is of the Philosophical Life, which includes a translation of the Plato's Letters, all 13 of them.
And it also includes an introduction, some very lengthy and form of notes and a very long term, to reverse a longer than the letters themselves. Oh, much longer. So that tells you there's a lot of hate to be made out of the letters seems to be so welcome. Thank you very much for having me.
So for that lovely introduction, you're very welcome. It's not often that I have the third best beard on the podcast. So here we are. You might be in a type or second.
Yeah. So why'd you do this? Oh, the beard? I don't know.
It's just the book. Oh, the book. The book. Why'd I do it?
Well, um, tenure, you know, tenure needs to get tenure. Yep. And I don't know. I remember in college being in the library and, uh, and, uh, you know, look at in front of the section of Plato books, and I saw letters and I opened it.
No, that's fascinating. And, uh, you know, I think it was a little addition and opened it and tried to read it and, you know, couldn't make heads or tails of it. And, you know, didn't know nearly enough. Didn't even know what I was looking at.
That's my first memory of it. But I did remember thinking, well, that's off. The other thing is, I'm just trying to remember my earliest memories of it. Did we try to start earlier?
I was born in 1985. No, no, I don't know. All the way back. I think, you know, my first bag of cigarettes in 1985.
That's my real best. I remember that on your birthday. Um, I, I'm not sure how I first started to, why, how I first started to think that, have this idea that maybe the letters needed more attention. Um, it's obvious that there's something tantalizing about for a Plato scholar or anyone who's interested in Plato about the idea that instead of the dialogues where Plato is the hidden author behind the scenes, we would get something written directly in his voice and in his own name.
And so that's always been sort of tantalizing. But beyond that, at some point, I don't know, I, whether it was looking at the Ojis Layersh, just seeing how the letters was included in the old tetrologies, these groupings of four that all the Platonic dialogues are in and wondering why is it have a place among all the other works like that or maybe coming across some reference and something I was reading to some old idea that maybe the letters was a, was a work at some point it came into my head that something that really needed to be thought about further was, is it possible that they're not really letters that it's actually something like an epistolary novel and can it be read that way? And the more I began to explore it, the more I just was persuaded and in graduate school, we did a reading group one year on the seventh letter and I sort of was looking around the letters even more, more broadly than that. And so it was then I think that I can see the idea first.
I even thought for a moment about changing my dissertation, but a dissertation was already sort of off and running and so I didn't do it. But even at the time, I thought, well, if I did that, I'd want to do a translation too, and my Greek's not good enough. And so I put it off, but I kind of knew for, even when I was doing the dissertation, I kind of thought I already knew my next project with the letters. And I always, I just sort of thought, I think this idea has merit and I never was sufficiently dissuaded from that notion.
That's a big deal, Ariel. I remember as an undergraduate and graduate student, whenever the letters were brought up, people would always say something like, oh, they're spurious, but you're talking about the second and seventh or something like this. But like, don't really worry about it. And that was told to me at, by all levels, I mean, students professors, don't worry about it.
So do you kind of manly that you approach this? Did you have people whose names you know you can keep we can bleep or just don't say that we're like listen, Ariel, like if it was that important, you know, as Shaus would have written on the letters by now or something like this, we would do it. You know, one, as far as as as far as Strauss goes, he has one letter to Jacob Klein, where he says, it's been a long time since I even looked at it, but it's something to the effect of they're all by Plato and I think even says in their book, and he compares the book to he compares, he says it is for Plato what the anatomist is presentive in it. He tries to make himself look completely normal as though he was free of socratic corruption.
I think something to that effect, don't quote. But it's an interesting line. But the thing is that it's a passing line in the letter to Jacob Klein. And so he never published on it, he never wrote about it.
Who knows if he even held on to the opinion or how much thought about it. There are a couple of places where he refers to a few letters in passing in the Nietzsche part of the political philosophy he mentions the letters, and then there's somewhere else I don't just have to talk my idea of the other one. But so you're right now. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, lots of people refer to one or another letters we've got references and as many people do, especially to the seventh and the second and as you're saying David, but so, you know, but there definitely were moments where I was feeling, I don't know, am I crazy?
But I just, I stuck it. I mean, I could be crazy. I don't think it's something that can be proven, you know, but I think that it's something that is much more worth entertaining than one would guess from, as you were saying, you know, what people generally say about the letters, which is most of them, maybe all of them are spurious and there's some interesting tidbits, but ultimately, you know, there's not, there's not much we can do with them. And that, I think, is far too little credit to the positive possibility, which has been raised much more, I think, fully and elaborately here and there over the years and stressed it in one letter decline, which you can't hang all that much on in the end anyway.
Ariel, just for yeah, folks are what happens are tantalizing. Mm hmm. So folks are what happened to tannerless? Well, then then well, Brendan, yeah, I was right.
Yeah. Let's hope you have a better fate. Alex has a serious question, though. I know we're trying to ask questions in the unit for that.
I thought, well, maybe it's a really relevant point. It was not which I say that now I was about to make a dumb joke, which is first you do to also buy his dialogues next. Next, I know, I know, actually, okay, sir. Yeah, that's a real list.
I think it'd be helpful to give a kind of overview of the contents of the letters. And maybe just a few questions, because they do a lot of them are related around this, these trips that played a took to Syracuse, these two figures, Dion and Dionysius, and he's Greg, no, so lean Dion jokes, I know that's where you're going. Yeah, I know where we go on. Yeah, you see Heather locked in ready to go.
Well, you open door once more. That's right. Yeah, and then some of them are completely separated from that, but maybe thematically related. And then there's the question of the order of the letters and whether they're chronological to what degree they are and the structure of the work, because there are 13, and then there's a huge one right in the middle.
So give us a sense of what's going on. What's in there? What's the overview? Before you did, who did you publish this with?
Oh, right. University Press. Shout out University Press. It came out when, Ariel.
December. This past December, 2023. Okay, so this is a general role now, wherever academic books are sold. Yeah, that's right.
You're looking at it. It is handsome, isn't it? It is handsome. It added a new color to those books by the colors.
But yours has a nice blue. They gave Greg a royal purple. That's right. Purple is lovely.
Very fitting. Okay, so there were a lot of questions there. Let me see. All right, so I'll try to launch in, but just stop me if there's, because I'll ramble incessantly if I'm allowed to.
So the traditional catalog of platonic works includes 35 dialogues and 13 letters. Traditional canon refers to the list we have from the, I believe, fifth century of our era biographer, Diogenes Laerius. And he refers to these catalogues of platonic works made by earlier thinkers, Thrasalists in the first century, Aristophanes of Byzantium in the maybe second or third century BC. And so that's what we mean by the traditional canon.
35 dialogues, 13 letters. And of course, for the last several hundred, couple of hundred years, that is no longer considered by scholars to be the canon, the corpus of platonic works. Many of them have had suspicion cast upon them as to whether they were really written by Plato. Generally speaking, it's taken as commonly and as well understood that there was a time when the libraries of Ergomom and Alexandria were competing to have the fullest collection of works by ancient philosophers and other writers and that that made for a great opportunity for forgers to come up with works and sell them to the libraries who would of course bid against each other to be the one who had the complete who had all the, and a very easy thing to forge, it is thought were letters where you could say, oh look, I have this letter by, you know, Pericles, the ancient Greek tyrant, Statesman.
No, no, Pericles, Statesman, I'm talking about, I'm going to give another one. I think he's a terrorist. Fallerus, allerus, allerus. Yeah, it's interesting.
There's this whole narrative around, so you talk about this guy Richard Bentley, who's like the first to debunk these letters and how it's industry of the bunkers who have badly accepted the letters as authentic. He was letters, yes. But he rejected, I forget the name of the guy. Fallerus, the epistles of phallerus was the first one.
But then he proceeded to debunk a whole bunch of other ones, the mysticlies and stock, the socratic epistles and your rippides. So, but it's funny, out of the sense that way back when there are all these people just inventing fake letters, like there's a cottage industry of fake letter writing creates a cottage industry. Or a deep bunking or real letter debunking or something like that. You love a little letter.
That's true. A complete lack of self awareness about how they're doing the very thing or they need a clue. That's funny. That's true.
It's a different context. Yeah, that's true. It does have to be stressed. There really was, it seems, a cottage industry of letter forging.
And so, the cottage industry of debunking was, in many respects, legitimate. There really was a lot of debunking that needed to be done and Bentley was especially masterful in the way that he did. It is very convincing. All the more reason why his approval of the platonic letters as authentic should carry some weight because he really was not going to pull any punches and was very careful the way he proceeded.
But yeah, that is funny to think about. And so, in the 19th century and then into the 20th century, the platonic letters, of course, it just became, it came to the point where it was more or less letters by ancient celebrities from the classical Greek world were presumed guilty, unless proven innocent and innocent is a very hard thing to prove in this, in such a matter. And so, and so the platonic, you can find all kinds of reasons to say, oh, I don't say this one. What do you really write a letter like this?
Why would you say this? Why would you say that? I mean, the things that were missing from anybody's argument were the kind of really airtight arguments that Bentley advanced about, for example, the letters of followers that this was not the dialect of Greek that would have been spoken at that time, or this person makes reference to historical events, centuries following the death of the first who was supposed to have written the letter or something like that. Nothing like that in the case of Plato's letter.
So it becomes much more speculative and in a way subjective because the arguments are always based on what I know Plato thought he wouldn't have said this. But of course, what Plato thought is an enormous interpretive debate and always has been. And so, so Ariel, you're telling us that you were so filled with wisdom from the German, that you only now in this point in history when everybody else has thought the letter spurious, you've seen, you've seen through it. That's what I'm telling you.
I accept what you're putting down. Yeah, I mean, you know, as I say, I'm not the first and the one that I give the most credit to, I think is Sranz Dornseif, a German classicist who in the 30s wrote a short article called, I was really like those Germans in the 30s actually. Oh, is that a fact? Yeah, called a scholarship so much as anyway.
Well, this was a scholar and he wrote an article called Platon's Bochbrifa. So he's played those book the letters and he goes through, he says, you know, look at it. They look how they fit together. So I guess that leads me to your other question about the structure of it, 13 letters.
And one very long, and that would be the seventh. And when I say the seventh, they come down to us in the manuscripts in a certain order. And there are some manuscripts in fact that don't have them where that don't contain. So we have, you know, there are some texts we have from, you know, 14 to 15, 16 centuries where the hearts of the letters are copied, sometimes just frat, even little quotations like snippets, other times a few letters but in different order.
But the authoritative manuscripts and the majority of them have them in this order one through 13. And the seventh is just about as long as all the others combined. And then on either side, you have six, the first six and the last six. And among those six, in each case, you have two sort of longish or longerish ones and four rather short ones.
So there's an interesting symmetry where the whole central half of the collection is the seventh. And you have the sort of group of kind of somewhat similar group of six on either side. And the content of almost all the letters pertains now they're also they're all addressed from Plato to someone, one or more people. The middle three letters six, seven, and eight are addressed to more than one person.
All the others are addressed to one person. And almost all of them pertain in some way to the events surrounding Plato's involvement with the regime of the city of Syracuse in Sicily, which was ruled by tyrannical family or ruled by as a tyranny by a hereditary tyranny, of which the ruler with which with whom Plato really became involved was Dionysius the Younger, to go over from his father and of the same name. And then with Dionysius's sort of uncle named Dion, who was a had become in his youth a great devotee of platonic philosophy. And in a word, the story is that Dion invited Plato to come and tutor the young tyrant Dionysius with the hope of making him philosophic and so bringing to life what Plato has described in the Republic as the confluence of philosophy and political power.
And what's the timeline here in Ariel? Sorry, like the live recently dead? Where are we dead? You know, Plato was pretty young when Socrates died.
He was in his 20s, I think. And we also learned that Socrates died of a urinary infection. And we don't learn exactly that. There is mention of Asocrates suffering from straggery, which is a bladder infection or a urinary infection of some kind.
Yeah, interesting detail. Right. Sorry. Good eye for the important details there.
I assume he really has a tear going on there. It's a Socrates old and gross. But you know what? I think you're 110 and he would be instead of beautiful, he'd be having, you know, p problems.
You're we can come back to that, but I think that actually very very much the point is that the line to which you're referring, of course, very famous from the second letter is that the Socrates of the Socrates to whom the works ascribed to Plato are devoted is a Socrates made beautiful and new or become beautiful and new or noble and young. And so the implication of that, of course, is the Socrates of the dialogues is not the historical Socrates. I beautified him. I made him young.
And whenever, you know, one of the things about the letters that really I think strikes you once you step back and think about it is where is Socrates in all of this? We turn to these letters of Plato sort of hoping that we're going to get insight into his relationship with Socrates. And Socrates is almost absent from these letters. And where he is mentioned as as a historical person, inevitably, our attention is drawn to his elderliness and sort of, I don't know, certainly he's never described as a philosopher, as a teacher.
And so it's the opposite. It's the real historical Socrates was this elderly man, a friend of mine, very good guy, stand up guy, just pious and nothing about him as a person. I think it really is, Alex, exactly. Now the thing about this line that Greg brought up from the 11th letter is where it begins with Socrates with Plato replying to a request that he go and join in the founding of a colony.
But it turns out actually the thing that was wanted most of all was that Socrates would go and help join in the in the founding of this colony. And Plato says he can't come, he has strangery. And the difficulty is that in the course of the letter, Plato explains that he's Plato very old, which means that Socrates must be long dead. And so scholars presume, well, this must be the young Socrates of the of the of the office and statesmen.
But to me, that is missing the point. I think this is a sort of playful reference to Socrates, Socrates, and and and and fits together in an interesting way with this thematic or this kind of motif of wherever Socrates is presented as historical figure, it's his elderliness as opposed to the youthfulness and beauty of the of the Socrates of the island. So since you pointed us to this, I realized that we've lost the thread of whatever the I know, I would say something else. You started talking about bladder infections and as you read that, that's okay.
I know where I was I can always go back, but go ahead and we're gonna I have a since you pointed this passage from letter two, which is around 314 to see. Yeah. So you're pointing out how the Socrates of the dialogues may not bear any is different from perhaps the historical societies. One other thing that you know, all these Plato scholars we encounter who want to insist on sort of this certain reading of Plato and who take letter two and seven at least as as genuine as David mentioned.
I mean, here in later to not only about Socrates, but Plato says about himself, I he says, I have never written anything at all about these things, which is presumably nature or natural sciences and like this, nor are they nor are they're there Plato says, no, are they're written works of Plato. I have not told you guys my philosophy Plato says in letter two, and like it blows my mind how few scholars take that seriously like, yeah, I didn't actually put any of my actual thought about nature philosophy in my dialogues. It's spurious, Greg. That's the answer.
Yeah, that is the answer. This is one that they all take seriously. By the way, the two that they take seriously are well, I shouldn't say that it's not like led to second letter has some is on par with the seventh in terms of how seriously they say but letter seven is the one taken most seriously and there there's a parallel statement. I wouldn't say nearly identical, but saying something very similar that and elaborating in fact in much greater detail, that Plato won't write about the things about which he's most serious, which include what he calls there the highest and first things considered nature and and why he won't.
And so yeah, it's their important statements and and certainly for someone who's inclined to to take Plato to have been you know, what what's just calls an esoteric writer, their important statements to consider to try to understand how what Plato was saying there about his manner of writing and what he put in his right. Of course, it admits of another interpretation too, which is taken by the followers of the cool of which the name escapes me right now but German group. That's right. Yeah, what do they call the line?
What's that? Not schlamer or whatever. No, no, much. No, no, it's more too big.
Yeah, exactly. That where they think that, you know, Plato's genuine doctrine was represented above all by this lecture on the good that he gave in the Academy and that it was sort of mathematical and and that we have some inkling of it from Aristotle's discussion of Plato and book one of the metaphysics where this this platonic doctrine of what you might call the determinate diad is referred to and which we can get maybe from the phile visit from anywhere otherwise it's hard to say where it's coming from. And so between that and this statement in letter seven, you can get to thinking Plato never taught what he thought really in writing only orally. But of course, there's this other possibility also contained in that same passage in letter seven where Plato says, if I were to write about these things, it would be in such a way that some people would have one impression of what I was saying others another and how he describes those specific things that are like free wine and tea over it.
Yeah, I should get my text that actually. That's what I was worried. Yeah, go ahead. Great.
Therefore, there is no writing of mine, at least concerning them, these principles you talked about that something you talked about, nor will there ever come to be, or does in no way speakable as are the other subjects of learning, but rather from the coming to be of such intercourse, much of course, excuse me, concerning the problem itself and living together suddenly as from a jumping fire light is kindled and having come to be in the soul as straight away nourishes itself, skipping down but had they appeared to me to be sufficiently writable and speakable to the many what no other thing could have been done to do that. And then he says just to continue, he indicates that he does give some small indications of what he's actually what his actual thoughts are. Yeah, I mean, he says, if I had written them down, then they would have been written in such a way that they would have, I think what if I'm going to do by my way, something like would have filled some with disdain, others with vain and empty hopes and maybe only to some few able to follow by means of a small indication. I've put you a little bit, you see?
Yeah, yeah. I do not hold it be good for human beings except for maybe some few. But there are many and the others would read it. They would disdain it incorrectly or with lofty and empty hopes.
They'd learn some august things, nice and the august is related to God. Yeah, I'll give her a gift to God's Reverend. Yeah, there's a religious question I would throw back to later. In other words, is here Plato makes somewhat clear, something that I've always expected that Plato understood that one major misreading of his works would be Platonism.
Yeah, yeah, I think something to that effect, yeah, that he, I mean, in a way, that seems to me, I know you were talking about that when we met and spoke about these things a bit in Chicago. And we never actually got around to that topic, which is very interesting. Well, I don't generally speak about these things. I think the word is speaking about them.
It would be audienceless. Yeah, yeah, follow by some authentication. But in a way, isn't it sort of unsurprising? Because Plato's presentation of philosophy is as this culmination of or this ultimate fulfillment of erotic longing directed toward or fueled by or defined as a longing for immortality.
Right. And so would it be any wonder that Plato sort of realized that he was kind of taking something of the driving force of religious belief and trying to direct it onto philosophy? I think that to me is sort of... Yeah, I put it a slightly way.
I think he's trying to piggyback philosophy onto the wounds that there will be this permanent erotic longing and therefore sort of philosophy can write a law. Yeah, that's an interesting thing. Yeah, I mean, maybe another thing is what we'd say is Plato, one of the things he was very astute about or clear-sighted about or kind of incisive, insightful about was in what way the pursuit of philosophy was inherently an erotic pursuit or something that already sort of drew people along, at least in part, by means of a hope that it would fulfill them in some deep way that would help to resolve the problem of their mortality. And what he did was in a way to amplify that.
See, if that's a possibility that exists regarding philosophy, then maybe there is a way of presenting philosophy that makes even much greater use of that than has been made by philosophers in the past. So David, I think you want to say that. I was going to pivot us because I think this is related to the next topic. I want to talk about this if that's okay.
Yeah, go ahead. Just a small point then. So my argument, and this comes out of Aristotle, but not just Aristotle, it's also Plato, it would be that Platonism is a perversion of what Plato was up to. It's just to sort of make explicit and we can move on to the next point here.
What I think is going on here is that Plato himself understood and either accepted or even intended for Platonism to come about. Yeah, I mean, that's a possibility. And then there are somewhat more kind of modest versions of that same thing. You know, that Plato wanted something to happen.
Well, this gets part of the question that he's going to take us to. Sorry, Alex, but I was actually wondering if Plato foresaw that Monotheism would be attractive, and sort of he also hints at that a long. Well, that, yeah, yeah. I mean, so and there again, it's not like we need the letters.
There's book two of the other discussion of the infinity there. But the Republic as a whole, where there's a conscious sort of, I mean, this is these two chronic dialogue are excellence. It is the only the longest of the related dialogues that Socrates has. And it's an explicitly an attempt to advance for somebody like Glaucon to advance a kind of religious version of philosophy.
But Greg was asking about monotheism in particular, although I agree with you completely as far as, yeah, I mean, the Republic in that sense goes with this symposium or the Phaedrus in, it's just in a way it's less, it's much less explicit about philosophy as the fulfillment of arrows in part because for complicated reasons, arrows is being denigrated throughout the Republic. And so it's not exactly arrows in the Republic explicitly, although I think you could say, in fact, Glaucon as an extremely erotic man is having exactly this done to that. I agree with all that. I just also had a decision to do that.
I wonder if, and I've read this somewhere, I can't find where I read it, but the notion that by Aristotle's time, nobody believed in the Olympian gods anymore, I think it's probably a little overstated, but similar to how the elites at the end of the Communist regimes no longer believed in communism. Right. And so I wonder if there wasn't a kind of recognition in Glaucon might be the type of human being who's a typical type for whom, typical types were silly, but who's typical, sort of, who would be open to this. Like, there's something deeply unsatisfactory about, or unsatisfying about the idea that there are many gods.
And so a singular god offers some prospect. And I do wonder if it's tied actually to the decline of the polis as well, which would probably be going a little too far. Well, it's all interesting. I mean, there's a lot of you to be fleshed out, I guess, and I don't think I have the answers nor are they in the letters.
I mean, I did bring it up, and we can pivot at this point. But in the letters, there is this one sort of long account of the god. Maybe it's not that long, but there's a sort of pointed account of the god in one of the letters. I don't have it.
I can find it real quick. But it seems like it can incline the reader to the view that way to himself actually was this sort of monotheist or something like this. Yeah, I mean, the thing, I think the letters is I think actually, if I'm thinking of the same thing, it's very brief and cryptic. And it's this odd thing in letter 13, where he says, I assume you recall what we've agreed upon as the kind of code word, so to speak, of how to recognize my authentic letter, my genuine letters from the fraudulent ones.
On the top of the serious letters, I write a god of the fraudulent ones, gods. And so there's an implication there that among those with whom Plato has such kind of secret agreements to convey his real thought, there is an understanding of platonic monotheism. I mean, that's kind of the implication. But of course, anyway, there's much more to be said about the interpretation of that passage.
And but you know, just another thought about this question of the state of religion in Greece at the time, you know, one thing that of course has occurred to me before is in the Republic in book two, it's Adiomantis, who is frustrated with what religion, what Greek religion is doing to morality, right? And so it's a sort of so to speak typical young aristocratic man who is, it's not like Socrates is bringing in a shock in it. No, no, no, no, no, no. Right.
So but I think it goes to your point that Plato was indicating there. I think it's, I think it's, that type wasn't as prevalent during the marathon time, for example. Right. I would think not.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are earlier sort of anticipations of this line of thought, like in Xenophanes, for example, you get a critique of gods, yeah, and assertion of monotheism that I think is in the air in that Plato is using and then those same criticisms that are echoing into Plato also find their way into the metaphysics, sort of, yeah, which is a corporalist, sort of understanding. So it just seems like there is this tendency and preexisting player and even Socrates and that's the way to not move by and develop.
Although what you're referring to, of course, are philosophers as opposed to someone like Alyomantis. So the question is kind of what was the, what was the trajectory of, of, you know, if you read he's, even if you read he's, go back to he's, right? You get all the stories of the gods into theology and then there's this law spoke, the catalog of women and what's going on. This is way far field of.
I'm a tiny low for that book just for the record. Yeah. And then I'm always reminded of the rhondys binders full of women. Right.
Right. And then you get to the, you get to the works and days and especially in the farming instructions and you're, you're, you're praying to the different gods, but it is this kind of singular God, Zeus, whose mind is governing things almost as a kind of divine plan. And so even there, like the sort of, we tend to think of Homer and really the Iliad and like the fighting of the gods, but I think even, you know, by that time there's, you know, by he sees time and then later it's becoming more muted, you know, the, the tensions between the gods. But let's, we have a topic that we need to get to all of this stuff about esotericism has a major problem in trancy to letters itself, which is like, Oh, yeah, it's plain as them.
Oh, yeah, there's like this invention of this. But then apparently, on the surface, at least it seems like what's going on the letters is Plato's trying to establish the city and speech in, in Sicily. And so there's this, there's this other counterpoint that seems to go completely contrary to the straws and turbitude. Now, to some extent, this is solved by your thesis that this is an epistolary novel.
But then why, why Plato would represent himself this way is I think a real question. So just give us a sense of the problem and how you think people ought to navigate it if they're going to read the letters. Well, I mean, how you navigate it, I think it's there's a lot of room for interpretive ideas. But the problem, all right, so the question is, was Plato serious about the rule of philosophy as he presented in the Republic?
And above all, if your answer is no, then you have to deal with the letters, where it seems that Plato accepted an invitation to go and try. And if he didn't think it was possible, or if he didn't think he was serious, then why on earth did he go and try in a context in which he was associating himself with a tyrant? Seems he got pretty close with that tyrant and came involved in his political affairs, which always means, you know, potentially some ugly business when you're involved with the tyranny. And so, you know, threatened to tarnish his reputation.
And where ultimately, because he was sort of the inspiration for this kind of plit, this starry, idlytonic, philosophic reformer, Dion, it wound up being the case that though it looks like Plato would have liked not to see it not happen, Dion's zealous disdain or his nephew, something like his nephew, the tyrant led to a civil war, plunged the city into civil war. And so, and Plato in certain places indicates, you know, kind of awareness that if it hadn't been for Plato, that might happen. And so, an enormous kind of debacle resulted from Plato's involvement in Syracuse. And if he wasn't serious about philosophic rule, then why did he go in circumstances which it sort of, it seems it should have been very clear to him.
These dangers were significant and the prospects of success were slim. So, that's the problem for someone who wants to say that he's not serious about the doctrine of philosophic rule. And I don't know, that I have something that I forget how you phrase it, but you know, how to handle it or how someone should think about the letters. I mean, I really think it's still quite open.
I have my suggestions in my interpretive essay, but I think that, you know, I don't think they amount to something dispositive that's open and shut that no further interpretations are possible. But I think what I have in mind above all is the possibility that Plato came to see over the years following the publication of the Republic and in, you know, as his fame as his celebrity grew as the champion of the idea of philosophic rule, that there was a problem, that there was sort of bound to happen at some point that someone was going to try this and that it was going to go very badly and that it going badly was going to seriously create a serious problem for the defense of philosophy that the Republic is actually meant to represent. So to step back for a moment, I don't think Plato was serious about philosophic rule as a political possibility. And so my thought is that Plato came to think at a certain point in his life, it was important that if as it seemed was almost inevitable, there was going to be an attempt to put the ideas of the Republic or at least the idea of philosophic rule into practice, better it be Plato himself, even if it was almost sure to fail, better it be Plato so that Plato himself could be involved in how it went, and also how the story was told, so that maybe you could say from the first time he went, he had in mind the idea that he might write something something like the letters.
And more of the point, I think, if the letters is as it seems they probably would have to be just by the fact that Plato was writing as an old man and one of his very last works together with the laws also seems one of his last works. I wonder if there's not an indication coming from that sort of combination letters and laws that Plato, late in life, was trying to issue a kind of correction or trying to course correct somehow, or what was in the Republic for the possibility that was being held out in the Republic, and that was becoming a little bit too things, getting too real in a certain way that people like Dion out there were creating a possibility Plato was worried about and that the letters and the laws are Plato trying to bring into his corpus a more sober way of addressing real practical political possibilities, not so pie in the sky, something more usable, something more concrete. And then as far as philosophical goes, one could all of his then turn to the Platonic corpus to the letters in particular and say, well, if Plato couldn't do it, you know, what hope is there for any of us or something to that about it, and that is the biggest surface thing and then and then as a more detailed, I guess, or in more detail, what does Plato say about how it went when he tried? What does he say about why he went?
What does he say about why he tried, about the figures involved, about what was wrong with their understanding and so on, and so gives something of a supplement and even, I think, a correction of a kind of a kind to their books. Sorry. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting.
One of the difficulties with the letters that you point out is, you know, he's talking to different audiences and it's easy to take straight what he's saying. As you paint really helpful pictures of the characters, and as you mentioned, especially Dion as a kind of overly zealous kind of plate in his figure. And one possible way of reading kind of what you're putting there is that in a way the letters, when we interpret what's going on, he goes to Syracuse, he ends up talking to time goes nuts with his stuff. It's not only he's got a situation on his hand, and there's a sense that Plato's to some degree responsible or will be held responsible unless he does something.
And so part of it seems to be about to put it in the straws, see the terms, right, about the dangers of having an exo-terror teaching that you think of an exo-terror teaching is that's for them. And this is for me. But the problem is, but you gave me this. And so to some degrees, not just for them, you are beholden and you will be held under the structures of that and make certain demands on you.
It's not just written, unless you're Machiavelli and you have your friends publish things after you're dead, while you're alive, it can really have an effect. And it strikes me almost as if the republic is kind of the cautionary tale of Blaucon's ambition, right? The letters would be a cautionary tale of Plato's ambition. And the strange thing is, they get kind of close in quotes, right?
Revolution, faction, right? All these kind of possibilities are there on the horizon and the religiosity of it and the zeal. Plato may not share that, but he gets wrapped up in it very easily, it sounds like. You think that in this respect, it seems like a nice, almost companion to Aristophanes clouds, because you see how things get derailed.
I don't know if that's a subtle jab at what Plato rock, or warning or what? Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting question. In general, it seems to me, the response to Aristophanes clouds probably pervades Plato's and Xenophanes works and portrayals of Socrates much more than we tend to think about or realize. And so that there would be something there I kind of don't doubt.
I mean, the big difference, of course, is that this is the one place where it's really not where Socrates is the most absent. And so in that sense, it's the one that's most removed from response to the clouds, in that sense. But in general, on the question of, yeah, of the exoteric doctrine and this kind of problem coming home to roost or Plato having to give an account or having to deal with the as a living human being, the effects, the rippling effects of it. I mean, I think the thing that is sort of interesting about this possibility I'm sketching is on one hand, I would say that of all the philosophers in the history of political philosophy, maybe no one has been more careful and sensitive in thinking about exactly what will be the misinterpretations of this.
So it's not that he just said, well, this is what I'll say and this is what I'll mean and let people think what they want. I haven't said clearly enough what I think for them to get it. So I'm not worried, which maybe describes, I don't know, that's probably wrong to say, but you know, one could criticize Nietzsche for not taking careful enough account of or having having deep enough insight into what the effect of his writings would be on the bottom. Yeah, he moderate exactly.
I think could hardly say that that is Plato's problem in a way, just in the sense that, you know, take that passage, you were reading from the seventh letter, he thinks it's explicitly says he thinks about how readers will think about his writing who don't understand it correct and what impressions they'll come away with. I mean, he's thinking about that. I think you could say that's if one thinks of him as an esoteric writer, that's sort of almost most of what it means is that he's not just giving a surface impression, he's thinking carefully about what the misunderstandings, the misreadings of his work will be and what effect they'll have on people and trying to make sure that he has a kind of salutary effect on the on the community around him, even if people won't understand him. And even still then I'm saying, after some years, so I looked at him and he said, ah, I think I still screwed it up a little bit.
I still left this possibility to open up a really zealous kind of mission to implant philosophy as, as the ruling power in a city. And so he may find it to do something to correct that. But I think that's that's it. I mean, that's more or less the meaning of the title of my book, The Political Challenges of Philosophical Life, that you know, Plato ultimately, I think, is his deepest concern and interest and passion was the study of philosophy and he tried to protect philosophy, which was a, you know, just a political necessity or a political goal.
And yet it was it was no simple thing. He tried to do it and it became more complicated and the challenges multiplied. So one of the things you're talking about was the notion that he's trying to lower the regard of which people might hold him in a way you said it was analogous to Zenefic's analysis. And with one thing you said in your marks in Chicago that I greatly enjoyed that are in your book, by the way, is that so why would Socrates excuse me, why would Plato actually have gone to Sicily the first place?
I mean, you've had this very highfalutin reason why to show people that well, Flashkink is really possible, but it used to just an alternative reason why Plato may have gone. And it's the same reason that Zenefic may have gone on his little journey. And then by the end of the analysis, Zenefic says, at the end of the analysis, you'd be like, well, he's this good guy, he did this amazing thing. And then he's like, but I'm broke.
And so I can't have to do it in ransom, then you're like, how the hell people still admire Zenefin? I mean, what kind of human being would look at Zenefin is that he's a model of excellence. And he's just kind of something kind of similar here with Plato. Don't I mean, I think that the letter suggests it.
Let me so by the way, this is a good chance to circle back to where we got derailed at the beginning with the latter infections. Yeah, because what I was saying is what the letters is. So 10 of the 13 letters, as I was saying, is our address to people directly or indirectly involved in the business at Syracuse, three of them are not. And it's as far as one of you was asking at the beginning about the chronology, right?
It's letter one. So all right, I'll also give the sort of the timeline of events Plato's very first visit to Syracuse was actually before Dynasty is the younger, even took over. Dynasty is the elder was still in charge. Dion was a young man of 20.
And Plato met him for the first time on that visit. Plato was 40. Dion was 20. So around 387.
And so Plato goes home, and it's only 20 years later, the Dynasty is the elder dies and the younger takes over and Dion says, now is the time Plato goes back in 367 or so. And these dates, by the way, are not, we can't get them from the letters themselves. We can refer them. Some of the ages mentioned, or we know others not from the letters that is.
So Plato goes back. It goes very badly down as exiled, never to be recalled, in fact, Plato manages to get out of there at some point and goes home. And maybe six years later, there are renewed calls for Plato go and keep trying or try again. Apparently, Dionysseus has really come alive with with the interest in philosophy and Plato doesn't want to go.
But at a certain point, he feels he has to and he goes a third time, a third time altogether, a second time as hopefully Tudor of Dionysseus. And of course, doesn't work then either. And on his way home, he crosses past with Dion, Dionysseus decided it's enough for this exile. I'm going home to depose the tyrant Plato says, well, count me out.
And Plato goes back to Athens, Dion goes and initiates the Civil War. So pre visits, the first of which we barely ever hear of in the letters, it's only mentioned briefly in in letter seven. And so much is it is it is it kind of swept under the rug in a funny way that very often the second and third visits are referred to as the first and second visits, which is a funny thing. But so I bring this up because the very first letter seems to immediately follow Plato's return home after the final visit.
So the first it starts after everything is over. And the first three letters are all from Plato to Dionysseus. And there's there's something going on. I mean, their dynamic is changing.
And that seems to be due to the fact that Dion's campaign is taking off and Civil War is sort of setting in or looming. And so letters one, two, and three seem to proceed chronologically kind of from Plato's first arrival back home to a moment where things now seem like it's, you know, the relationship between Plato and Dionysseus is very strained because of what Dionysseus is doing and Civil War seems to be imminent. And letter four is now from Plato to Dionysseus and pretty clearly in the midst of Dionysseus of Dionysseus' campaign. So we get a one, two, three, four that is very Dionysseus and also Dionysseus and which proceeds chronologically.
Five and six clearly represent a digression of a kind. They're obviously a pair. And without going into detail about them, I'll just say we kind of it's at the moment when it seems like the disaster was going to fall upon Sicily, we step away. And when we return with letter seven, Plato was writing to the followers of Dion, to his intimates and companions, his Oceois and his tyros, in the wake of Dionys death, he's been assassinated.
So it's kind of like the curtain falls for an intermission, we have a little digression. And when the curtain rises again, Dion's dead. And yeah, snap indeed. And then we have this long letter seven in which Plato writes to the kind of Dionian party in this conflict and letter eight where he writes to them much more briefly and succinctly and to the point, I think you could say.
And after that, the chronology becomes hard to piece together anymore. There's a couple letters to Arcey Toss, who's an interesting and important figure in this whole story. There's one of the other completely unconnected letters, the one where Socrates has straggery to the guy who wants it to be a colonists. And there's one to a friend of Dion's that's extremely short, the shortest of all of them.
And finally, then letter 13, and letter 13 can be fixed into the chronology quite cleanly and easily. But it belongs to the period just after the middle visit, the second visit, it's within a year of his returning from the second visit. And so long before any of this other stuff with Dion in the Civil War, long before Plato's even gone back for his third visit. And accordingly, whereas the first visit is very cententious, high-handed, moralistic, you're a tyrant, you're a scoundrel, take your money back, I don't even want it.
And all throughout the first three letters, by the way, Dionysius, there's repeated emphasis on the fact. I, above all, let no one think I went there for the money. It wasn't for the money. And then letter 13 begins to Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, never addressed him as tyrant in those earlier letters.
This is to Dionysius the tyrant. And we're in the first letter. It was all, it was a reprimand of Tyr, of him as a tyrant, and it was the announcement of Tyrity. Now it's to Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse.
And how's it going? I mean, things are kind of cheery between them. And he says, remember that time we read a party together? And so on.
And so there's a shock in that, in that we're kind of thrown backwards in time to this earlier, much friendlier period of the relationship between Plato and Dionysius. And then it turns out that a good portion of the letter reads kind of like an expense account where Plato was talking about the money he is receiving from Dionysius and what he's spending it on. And so you say, Greg, this was my suggestion, I would say it's the letter suggestion. I mean, it's so, it's so kind of directly contradictory to the impression that Plato seems to have been at pains to give throughout all the earlier letters, especially those first three, that it seems to me, it has to be a kind of, it has to be by design that this letter 13 in one way after another keeps shocking us with these apparent reversals and revelations of things that it looked like Plato was denying all before.
And above all, that Plato was really getting a lot of money from Dionysius and from this theory. So I think the idea is that the letters leaves us with the suggestion that the dirty secret is that Plato went for the money. And what do you want the money for? Now, that's I think what one kind of discovers more and more on reflection is yes, but what for?
Well, for the academy, for, you know, to support his friends, to support his family, he says, I have to buy a tomb for my mother. And then he says, she's not dead yet, but you know, one day she will be, which I always felt sound like a Woody Allen line or something. And so I think there's this kind of double motion or a kind of shock and then a dampening of the shock where it's, wow, this is really surprising. This is a kind of revelation of what it seemed like Plato was denying.
And then you think about anything, wow, but isn't he actually doing better things with this tyrant's money than he would have otherwise done? At one point, he says, I'm sending you gifts, your wife took care of me when I was saying it. So like a sculpture of Apollo from an Athenian sculptor. So basically, this is like, Denisius is like the ancient version of like the Koch brothers or something.
It's not something like that. I mean, it's the dawn of philosophy. Yeah, that's right. If you're listening to home right now, Kim Jong-un, Alex is absolutely willing and able to be or live in philosopher.
I mean, he was kind of tied to the Iranian regime. You're president. You're president. You're president of Iran.
If you need, if you need some advisors, you're looking to get an injection. So we're kind of low on time. David had a really good question, which I think will help situate the letters within the larger Potonic Corbus, but before we wrap up with some by wrap. Let me just say though, by the way, I think everything I said about that letter 13 just now, I just want to add, but that's what Plato designed to be, the sort of closing impression of the book.
But that doesn't mean that that's the most important answer to the question why Plato went. It's just the one he wanted to leave you with. And I think he wanted to leave you with this shock, which then could be dampened. And I wonder if that's not in some ways, just say what Plato wanted.
Yeah. Yeah, because better to be shocked that he's just out for material gain. I love the shocker. The question I have is not the two of them that I can't ask alive, but why don't you just give a version of what I asked?
I'm losing my voice. I have a version of this question. Let me, let me, so Plato writes $35 dialogues. And he writes 35 dialogues.
And he writes one book of letters, let's say. Why does he choose these two mediums? He's got the dialogues and he's got the letters. Is this part of a larger strategy?
Why did he write an epic cult, a play to incorporate some of David's suggestions? Does this suggest a larger immediate and long-term vision? And how did he play out? We've touched on this, but maybe you can sort of lay this out.
And just one small dishing is he collect your thoughts. Like anything else, you any big points that we missed as you want to incorporate on this as we transitioned as your biography after this, probably. Okay. Well, yeah, I mean, that's a tough one.
Why didn't Plato write plays? I mean, it's a funny thing. He's critical poetry and poets. On the other hand, obviously he is a poet.
But as a poet, he's an innovator, an or radical innovator. And so I don't know what to say about why this and not something else except to say it's another innovation. I mean, in a way it shouldn't surprise us that he had it in him. But I guess what I would say is, why not?
Okay, I guess I can answer the whole question sort of along the following lines. One of the scholars I read on the epistillary form of the epistillary novel, it was only 10, intentionally touched on Plato, but she made the point very well, which is one of the features of the epistillary novel is the kind of dramatic tone of candor that a letter always has. You're getting access to someone's private correspondence. They're private correspondence.
It's them just sort of, and I think that that was quite important because if the letters is meant in part as a defense and an explanation of what he did in Syracuse, then just a statement by Plato or even the dialogue by Plato, you know, with Plato with diamonditis, he's his character in which he gave his, you know, account of what went on, it would strike any reader as sort of obviously apologetic and therefore not likely to be, not to be trusted because of course Plato would say such and such. But if you see him in the act of speaking to people about it, it kind of sort of speak in real time, then one says, this is what Plato wanted us to hear about his affairs. This is what Plato said to people at the time. This is, in fact, there's a thing about letters where they straddle the line between speech and deed in an interesting way because in a way it's speech, it's written, but in another way it's an act.
He's sending the letter and he's doing things by means of the letter. He's advising, right? And so it's a way of kind of seeing Plato. It seems more inaction actually than might have been true otherwise.
And it also means the following thing. Maybe one of the reasons why it has been so underappreciated that these letters may form in themselves a kind of corpus and belong together as a facility novel is because Plato was quite happy for them to be taken as a chief of letters because they carry their effect better if they are taken to be a chief of letters. And so I think that's the reason for why this is not something else. I guess you could boil it down to because part of the reason was Plato wanted to sort of unauthorized, I mean, an authorized history of his affairs in Syracuse.
And he thought that this was the most effective way to have that history preserved and carefully considered. Yeah, and one last thing on letters with the chronology and these little games that Plato was playing, you have to wonder how much the light Montesquieu took in Plato's letters as an inspiration for his Persian letters where chronology, dating, all of that he's having to be found with. That's interesting. I never thought about that.
I mean, of course, one thing that people talk about when they when they have very briefly taken up and then dismissed off-handedly the suggestion that Plato's letters were real is that well that nobody had thought of that yet. So there were no epistolary novels in those days, which of course overlooks the possibility of maybe Plato's thought of it. But that's literally an insane thought. Like that nobody can do something unless it's a plot.
But some scholars have pointed that out. But nonetheless, it was kind of common. But by Montesquieu's time, of course, the genre existed. And I think Seneca is often pointed to as an early good example and many others along the way.
But then he would have read Plato's, I think there's can be no doubt and that he would have had them in mind. I mean, who knows? Yeah. Okay, Ariel, thanks for what's pivot quickly to the bio and then Greg has his lightning round questions.
Oh, let me try it. Since we are again running low on time, talk to us briefly about your turn and your interest in political philosophy. Were you a young man that just always kind of delighted in these old books? Or was there something like Alex was a biology major and then I like a coconut fell on his bald head or something and he just decided to start studying political philosophy.
But what was your your socratic turn? Yeah, same coconut. Okay. Can I ask this question a different way?
You dedicate this book to Tom Pingle? What the hell do you ever do for you? That's all right. Well, maybe I'm a better way to put it.
Well, he was my I mean, I don't answer to these questions are different. Tom Pangle was my teacher and supervisor and friend at the University of Texas. And where you did? What's that right in my PhD?
Yeah. And well, I I don't know where to begin with how much I owe him. But my turn to to socratic philosophy goes back from before then. I was a physics guy.
I was a physics major. I got to and I got to Canyon College in Ohio already with the intention of studying ancient Greek political philosophy and ancient Greek philosophy and physics. And at the time I kind of thought but the the Socrates stuff is fun and interesting. But ultimately, I thought I was going to be a physicist and about halfway through, I kind of my thought became I think in the big picture, if I wind up getting to the bottom of all the questions I have in physics, but I never really seriously pursued Plato and understanding the atomic philosophy.
I'll be more disappointed than the other way around. So I kind of realized that I where I was headed and I switched, I mean, I finished the double major, but then I continued and that's actually interesting. He really was a turned. Yeah, but you know, I like sometimes I've you know, it's a that's occurred to me, but I can't quite flatter myself to say that it was the same because it wasn't one for the sake of the other, you know, but yeah, but it's true.
I started out as a scientist. And what point did it occur to you that Plato had a superior count of physics? Ah, well, Plato, I mean, does he Aristotle might yeah, but I don't know again, I remember in college picking up Aristotle's physics with this idea of kind of what's it and you know, could not make heads or tails of it. And so so I think I'm I think I'm still working on that.
Okay. Yeah. Cool. But I but at some point gradually, gradually.
Yeah. All right. Well, now it's time. We have you on next.
We'll dig deeper into the bio. But you great scenario with some time for the lightning round. Okay. Yeah.
Zip zip zip zip zip. That's not like I recognize anywhere. Yeah, exactly good. So who's your favorite philosopher?
Plato. Favorite work of philosophy? Other Republic. Favorite non philosophy writer.
P G Woodhouse. Favorite work of literature? Oh boy. Well, I really enjoyed reading climate punishment.
It's been a long time now. That's sort of my go to answer. I guess I'll stick with that. But I don't have to review it.
I don't know if I can if I can commit myself to that to read it again. Have you ever had any nicknames? Plenty. Give us one.
I just met her. I've never thought of that before. Oh, Ari, my middle name is Oscar. It's also my son's name.
He's still my Oscar. My brother still called me Oscar. Oscar. Yeah.
My friends have her little while asking you while you like that one. Ask you while while. Yeah. Came up.
Yeah. I'm short-lived. Favorite place you've ever lived it lived. I was trying to say that I was completely visited.
I grew up in Montreal. It's a it's a heck of a city. It's not my home anymore, but it really is a special place. Okay.
Favorite place you've ever visited? I have very fond memories of the time I spent in Paris after college a few months. First car. Hyundai accent.
I think it was a 2000 Hyundai accent. It had once been read and the sun had turned it a kind of orange and it was it was a real piece of junk. I called it the jalabi. One of the first things you'd notice if you stepped into drive it is that the little visor the sun visor, it that whatever the kind of spring tension it needs to stay up when you put it up didn't work anymore.
So it's sort of flopped down in your face. So I attached like a thumbtack and a straight thumbtack and string contraption to kind of keep it up when the sun wasn't in your eyes. Dude, that's classic. My car.
Student. Just a crap car. Yeah. I mean, there was a fellow grad student who was going away to do her field work for a year.
So she needs to get rid of it. She gave it to me for 1400 bucks, which probably was too much. And I paid it in two seven hundred dollars installments. And it was my first car.
Yeah. Awesome. Very cool. What's your first job?
I worked in a flower warehouse like flowers like you know, they go out of the ground. And we make bread with not what you make with that. Really? Really?
I'm trying to stress. And those factories I thought they were natural. No, the way it was a warehouse. It was a distribution place.
The farm, the flower farmers would send them in and as we would kind of distribute the benefits and the money of it. You know, I did not. I had to show up at whatever it was. You had to get there at like, because flowers needed to be in the florist shops at the opening of business fresh, you know.
And so we had to work kind of get there at one in the morning on a Saturday or whatever, and you know, move these boxes around and the flower warehouse has to be kept cold. So it was a winter in Montreal and you're going at one in the morning into a hold a giant refrigerator warehouse of flowers. It wasn't, it was far outside of town. It wasn't much much fun.
But you know, pay my dues, I guess. Well, that's good. Well, you were asked one question by David, I think earlier. How should one begin to go about trying to figure out the letters?
And you really missed the opportunity to give the correct answer. The correct answer was, I don't buy Plato's letters out with Cornell University Press translated by Ariel Helfer, who's our guest tonight with a very long longer than the letters themselves, interpretive essay. And so it's been a pleasure. I used to go out and buy the book.
We'll make sure to tweet it out. You can buy it. Amazon, Cornell, all that jazz, their bootleg copies in Times Square, if you happen to be there. But it was been a pleasure.
I learned a lot. I've looked forward to this book for some time. And it's really nice to see that it's out. Cornell almost has everything.
We'll just get close. We'll get close. They need the twigs of political philosophy than that. It's only if only somebody would finish the Hellenica.
Has anybody been working on that? Spent upwards of three hours doing a Photoshop of the School of Athens for the new degree to get eight likes onto an masterpiece. I mean, this is pathetic. You're a grown man.
You're you're always an eighty, ninety years old, Greg. And this is what you did. Did you use Photoshop? Because I still use Microsoft Paint and I like it.
Oh, that's nice. I used to, I use preview. All right. It only looks like me on me.
Alex slightly exaggerated. Hold on a second, but yes, I did waste time. Did I doing that? That's true story.
I applaud you. Thank you. I thank you guys very much. I have a boy.
Yeah, you have a boy like this boy needs to look up to a man. Well, he's out of luck. He's got me. You're a stupid guy.
Listen, by the time he's old enough to realize he needs to start making those kinds of comparisons. I'll be long gone. That's perfect. I don't think so.
Now I'm gonna swoop right in. Alright. All right. Don't forget like rate subscribe donate and buy Ariel's book.