Charlie Thomas on Plato's Female Drama

Welcome back to the new Think Green. My name is David Barr and with me is always my good friend Alex Priya. How are you Alex? I'm doing well, though.

I'm being infested with Moth. There's a moth migration coming from the Great Plains to Rocky, so they're just everywhere. Really? Clothedeing Moth?

I don't know if they're eating clothes, but they infested my doorway whenever I walk out. Have you considered that this is a divine retribution for your constant impiety? Or I was going, yep, yep, he's Persian too, so they're all making sense. No, but in mind my wife of something funny, my aunt once posted on Facebook a picture of this disgusting moth, and she's like, look at this beautiful butterfly without a touch of my getting.

And we're still laughing about it years later. But I don't think she listens. I think we'll be okay. How are you, Greg?

That's good. I'm great. I'm excited for our guest tonight. We've met in person sometimes.

She's a big supporter of the show. I'm just glad to have her on. Yeah. So we have to date David.

So we have Dr. Charlotte Thomas, goes by Charlie Suck, correct? Just for close friends. So Dr.

Thomas, she's a professor of philosophy at Mercer University. You also have like a host of four or five other titles. Yeah, a little, a little much. Director of Great Books, Director of Philosophy and Art Study Abroad, and then co-director, and it's just too long, but it has to do with America's founding principles.

But I think what, I don't know how we were, I don't know how Greg and Alex, we were all kind of linked up with you, but you were named more or less recently as the executive director of ACTC. That's right. So that is, what does that actor do? That's fantastic.

No, it's the Association of Poor Text and Courses. And you guys were kind enough to, I took the job in January of 2021, Belly the Beef, Pandemic Time, and my first challenge was to run a virtual conference for all of these folks who are people of the book, not really people of the screen. And you guys were great and came and did your podcast as a part of one of those virtual conference sessions. And it was, it was fantastic.

And I appreciate it very much. And as a man of the show before that. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, we were, we recorded an episode with Eric Adler, just the other day on Tacitus. And we were all talking about how we want to link up in person for the next conference. And maybe Alex and Greg, you guys could talk about why you love this kind of, you guys are, there are other associations that are more well known perhaps, but I don't know how many associations are devoted just to the study of the great books. But what you guys described is the atmosphere of the gathering.

It's your most favorite conference hands down. And you called other conferences, especially APA impoverished. Yeah. That's what Alex Rios said.

Yeah. Just made that up. I don't know. I was very, very, very little science association.

I mean, it's the, nothing but the highest marks of scholarship at the American Global Science Association. So much of very serious people devoted to very serious and great and political things. And this is what gets me is we're making lewd hand gestures. I would never do that in front of Charlie.

So two things. First off, we're going to, I'll talk about it. So Eric said he would join us next year in Memphis, Eric Adler. Great.

And spent a while in the U.S. A huge following in the future podcast. He also just listened to our episode. He also said he would go to the XCTC that was highly worth.

He'll just down the road. We need to have like a podcaster panel where you guys can talk about the importance of having podcasts as a way of having conversations. We want to do that. There's one podcast that we hope is not invited.

Sure. No, no. They're partially examined. Oh, right.

Right. He's very invited. He'll turn into a different kind of conference. But I'll say a new name.

Yeah, I'm talking about that. And Alex is jumping too. But I mean, I've been going for 10 years actually. I think 2013 was the first time I went.

I want to say it was in Canada that year maybe. On any event, most academic conferences are very boring, very professional, very little time for any kind of serious conversation. It's mostly people just trying to hobnob and jockey for jobs and sort of show how smart they are. This is a really collegial atmosphere.

I mean, there's genuine conversation people give a take. I've learned things at this conference that I brought back to the classroom. One was on an ancient great tragedy that got me thing more seriously about polytheism. Actually, it was David Sweetnake.

And it was a really good talk on the statue David by Michelangelo, that I then used in a Nietzsche lecture that I was working on. But anyway, I've learned a lot. It's extremely cordial. I mean, folks come from some of the institutions that listen to the show.

I know you were in Dallas, obviously in a number of other places. And a lot of our friends go there, Sam Stone, who's known as the show. That's where I specifically see Sam. I mean, Josh Perrin is of course, who's also with ACTC.

He's been on the show. So it's a lot of fun for me. It's the one conference where there is the only conference I go to where there are multiple panels at the same time I'd like to go to go to. Every other conference I go to, I'm trying to find one that's interesting per day.

And this is their three or four per per session. So anything else else? And usually the conversation stays in curious over the hotel and then occasionally not me, but some people will imbibe adult beverages, the late and evening, not me. But some people do that in the conversation keeps going.

So it's a lot of fun. I highly recommend it. You spend more time with the adult films. Yeah, I think I'll look at everything you said, Greg.

And I'll just add that the sessions are nice and long in the present. But you're short. So you're forced to distill your ideas and then the emphasis is on conversation, whereas a lot of other conferences, people talk the little time and then you get two seconds of questions. And off you go, you've got a line on your CD and nobody gives a give.

And that I think is really the heart of it, is that there's very little professional advancement to be had from the Creet books, unfortunately. But the good side of that is that when people are there, they're generally there to talk and listen. And some really smart people from great institutions go. I mean, it really is a fantastic place.

And it's only getting better under the leadership of our Supreme Leader and Dictator. I need to put you guys on a tainer. You can buy a five second slot at the beginning of every new thinkery and just run that tape. We can actually just do that.

Yeah, Charlotte Thomas is erased. No, we're not going to go sandwich. We're not going to throw one of those signs in the air. We're going to get the word out.

We might need to talk through out of the ear. Yeah, I really appreciate all those things. I mean, I was I went to ACC meetings for many years and I started going early in the 90s, when I was a brand new baby academic. And then I was on the board for many years and the pandemic was really hard on ACC.

And I really became the executive director because it was so important to me. And I just I think it's actually an important institution in American higher education. And and it is going well. And and I'm really proud of that.

And we have a long way to go. But at the conferences here in Dallas, I saw some of those same people in the bar, not that I was invited by the Intergrag Force. Right, right. Of course not you right.

Conducting networking for my professional duties only. Aided that I had to enter the bar to do that. But same people showing up at the bar late and right there at breakfast the next day for the plenary talks. So that people are really into it.

And we really do protect the short paper long-second model because the conversation is what we're all about. So yeah, thanks guys. Thanks for saying all those nice things. I think I think they might be true.

I hope your listeners will think about joining us in Memphis, April 11th through 14th next year. That's right. And then I see listeners of this podcast are in the nation. Not Egypt.

Not Egypt. We should talk about what we're here to talk about. Oh, thanks. Do you mind if I hold it up here?

The female drawer holding up. The filter. The filter. Actually second to last book, right?

I mean your last book was an edited volume. I added volumes through one of these physicians that I have at the McDonald Center. And so Alex and Greg have both been a part of this. So we host an invitation-only conference every spring and then it takes then papers based on those presentations we publish in a volume.

So I've done several volumes through Citi's Play-Doh. I'm working on the online center fund right now. Greg's in Smith, Montaigne, several things. This is your photograph.

Yeah, the one that we're talking about tonight is a long graph. Not an edited file. It's the female drama, some title that feels often feminine in the soul of Plato's Republic. Right.

Charlotte CS, I'd like to know what the CS is. Maybe that's better for them. Oh, wouldn't you like to know what the CS is? I think we'll hold on to that.

We'll hold on to that because- David, you had something about the cover of the book. It's a ghoul, a some sort, that reminds me of my C.I.O.C. Or Aphrodite. You know, one of the two.

It's a very cool cover. She's got like a spirit. She's got like a spirit. She's in a broken nose.

Isn't it amazing that people, this is an Aphrodite. It's housed at the Acropolis Museum in Athens now. And her eyes were originally, they were inlaid with some sort of metal. And when they aged and corroded, it made it look like tears coming down her face.

I love it. I love it. Yeah, that's beautiful. We're here to talk about- Not about the cover.

You don't want to get talking about the cover? No, I did you choose it. I seriously, did you choose it? I did, I did.

Yeah. That's nice that you get the choose on cover. Yeah. The talk a little bit about the thesis and then Greg maybe go into it with the deeper dive for today.

Yeah. Because it's an interesting one. Oh, so do you like me to- Go ahead and talk a little bit more about the little bit. Okay, yeah.

A little bit of the story. A little bit of the listeners will love it. And then we can drill down to a word subject. Sure.

Great. So this is one of those projects that came out of teaching. I've been teaching the Republic for many years, coming into my 30th year of teaching, and I've taught the Republic pretty much every year, and sometimes in multiple classes. And I used to get very angry when I got to book five.

I would just get very frustrated and confused and angry. And Mercer's the kind of place where that sort of in the upbeat of the basis of sabbatical proposal. So I proposed a sabbatical that started just like that, but I think I counted up how many times I taught the Republic since I've been on faculty. It was a big number.

And instead I'd really just like time to read everything I can and think about this, and I'll write something. I promise I'll write something. But really the project is to try to make sense of it. And so actually it turned into two sabbaticals.

I did a sabbatical that generated an article, and I came back with the basic thoughts in mind and taught it, and then took another sabbatical in the book. And so the basic thesis is that in books two through four of the Republic, you're constantly reminded that there are two arguments, interrelated arguments, closely related arguments, working at the same time, one on the level of politics and the one on the level of psychology, the city and the soul. In book eight and following it sort of resolves itself. You also have two clear threads, arguments, levels.

And I think it's part of what's interesting is to think about the relationship of these two things, whatever they are. But again, when it's clearly politics and clearly psychological and and and Plato Socrates talks about the relationship of the two very clearly, not that it's easy or straightforward, but there's no question that the accounts are related to each other in important, defining, orienting ways. Book five through seven, that's just a bit harder to see. So it was implausible to me that this argument would be happening in these two in a related ways in two through four, and then eight and following, and not happen in five through seven.

But there's actually there's a really good scholarship that said, yes, of course, the soul continues to be an issue in the middle books. But I didn't really find anyone who kind of just seriously tried to figure out how it how it might work and just sort of go book by book and think about what happened to the soul, what was happening to the soul in books five through seven. And another thing that's clear is that the soul that becomes the central part of the conversation in book eight is altered from the soul in book four. So something has happened, something has changed and so I'm trying to see that and track that and think about what it meant, why it would be so much more subtle than in the rest of the book.

And also books by through seven famously are where philosophy is considered kind of the most seriously in the Republic. So why also when we start talking about some of the highest and most important things would the relationships between politics and psychology be the most obscure. And so the book is an attempt to figure that stuff out. Just a small point, you say this in chapter four.

And the point is, I guess I always kind of been dimly aware of it, but your the couple chapters we read in preparation really brought it out to me that yeah, it sort of, it does seem to be suppressed the psychological investigation, but you do a really good job of pointing out that it's always there. And actually what's actually seems to try to keep going back to it despite the fact that it seems like the political is what's really about. So you said that Socrates continues to be focused on the city and speech as an image of the human soul and because glaucon focuses on the elements of the image as if they had their own reality. So there's a distortion that glaucon and the other interlocutors, they're focusing on the, of course, all those readers were all focusing on the political but really it is meant to be an image from the very beginning, it's meant to be an image of the soul.

And so that's why I mean, I don't know very persuasive. And it's it's it's enticing. I think I mean, I think everything I think the political parts of things like to be a trice like that, of course. Yeah, that's exactly right.

And, and I, you know, of course, I assume that everything Plato does is intentional and still proven otherwise. So, so yeah, I mean, presenting in a way he, I think the middle books among many, many other things show us how it is that politics can be this sort of shiny thing that distracts us from important things, even in this circumstance, you know, even with Socrates sitting right there reminding you of where the conversation started and what's important about it, we can still be drawn off into other things. Now, I am careful in the book to say that it's not that I don't think there are important political arguments in this part of the republic, everywhere else, extraordinarily important. I don't mean to be doing anything reductionistic with this account.

But so one way I put it, I think, which is I think kind of provocative, but it seems right to me is that in the Republic, Plato is extraordinarily interested in politics. And as interested, perhaps almost interested in politics is because of philosophy. That's just not true of Socrates in the Republic. Socrates is not as interested in politics as he is in philosophy.

And but the interlocutors are seem to be more interested in politics than they are. I mean, one way that shows up really clearly is that Socrates in a couple of places readily admits he doesn't have the education necessary to found this city. And he seems kind of okay with it. It's not tinged by any kind of lament.

And this is early on in the moral education and later in the philosophic education, whereas the whole drama outcome of book seven is glaukon being completely decected by this idea, which suggests that Socrates is questionable that he thinks this is the best regime. But even if it is, it's not going to be a lot, it's not going to be the worst thing in the world if it could. It doesn't mean he can't do it. It's serving another purpose in his exposition.

But so to get to the book five, what's going on there, right? So it's picking up off of this passing mention of the birth generation and then finally the education, which is like a formula that Greeks use for childhood, right? You start they have to be born the right way and then they have to be nurtured and kind of tended to the right way. Then they have to receive the right education once they reach that age.

And in a way, that's the focus of the three waves that come up to book five. And you argue that this is ultimately should be taken as an image for the birth and nurturing and education of our desires into something like character states. So why don't you stall that out a bit? How precise is that I did?

Yeah. So, so yeah, I do focus quite a lot on Ganesis, subberth origins, trophy, trading or formation or another way that I don't know that I put this in the book. But another way I like to think about it is, you know, when you think your kids, I don't know if you guys are sending kids to kindergarten yet, but they have to be school ready, right? What does that mean?

Right? They got their things that they want them to have in order to be educated. And I think in the Republic, trophy kind of generically works like that. Of course, it's not the same things, standing in line, sitting in a circle and keeping your hands yourself.

But it's the same kind of idea that that there are certain preconditions for the possibility of philosophy. Some of those are given or dispositional in the account. And I think that's kind of what's going on with Ganesis. And some of them are the product of certain kinds of habituation and acculturation that make it possible, make you open to education.

So in the three waves, really looking at kind of what needs to sort of, and some of the stuff, you know, I hesitate to talk about it. I mean, I mean, not to you guys. Obviously, I know that other people here, but it is tricky business because it's not particularly, I should say the other way around. It's problematic, I think, to talk about disposition and the contemporary terms, the way that I think Plato is talking about disposition here.

But I think he's being clear about it. I think he thinks that there are certain things that have to sort of be in place for it to be possible for you to become educated and certainly possible for that education to become philosophical education. So in the three waves, it seems to me what you're seeing, those sort of, what are the sort of givens, the dispositions of the epithymetic and the thematic and the logistic, I guess, that's kind of hard to put that one into English, but the calculating part of the soul. I like rachiosinative.

Rachiosinative. I like that too. So what has to sort of be true of them, dispositionally, such that they can be trained, such that, or the person who has those qualities of soul, such that that soul can be trained, such that that soul can be educated. So I break it into the ganesis of epithymetic, and this is where it gets kind of fun because the three waves are famous part of the Republic, and the first one is this idea of women exercising together, which kind of moves towards old men and old women exercising naked together, despite the fact that it seems to be ridiculous.

And so I really think the ridiculousness is key to that argument. It's this idea that you have to, you're a part of part function, you're appetite, have to be curable to do another neoliberalism. That is, in the two through four, I mean, we learned that the rational soul that has to calculate soul has to pick charge and put things into order. But I think what's happening here is that we're saying that, yes, this activity of ordering and befriending the spirit, so the spirit who must become a part of that project is key.

But it's also important that the competitive part of your soul be capable of being curbed. And so you have to be somebody who can overcome this tendency to just lose if women and men, if old women and old men exercising naked is what's good for the city, you've got to be able to get over yourself. And if you can't, you're not going to be able to, you're not going to be able to, even with decent, DC calculation decent, if you're a headed part is just too strong to and really, you're not going to be able to do it. The older I get the easier I see it for the old people wrestling naked, I still see as a problem for the young people.

But one of the things your chapter drew out here for me, Charlie, was this connection between ridiculousness and convention. And let me try and, I've always thought it's ridiculous, this idea of men and women wrestling naked, especially young people, I think, maybe there's a different ridiculousness of old people doing this, I suppose, you know, their backs aren't very limber anymore. But you tried to get me to take seriously that there's, that Socrates is doing something serious here, because it seems like what I thought we were saying in the chapters, Socrates is implying to block on that the only thing that's in your way for thinking this is good is your convention that like this is unconventional and so therefore talk to the box. But you seem to be implying that there's a kind of it, it's necessary for education to be able to think through these ridiculous things and see them to what they are.

So I mean, I don't know that this is actually a serious proposal to go ahead and make it wrestling, but it's somehow an image of the kind of character or turn of mind that would be necessary to do this. That's exactly what I think. Yeah. And I think it's important to note that there have been many ridiculous things proposed, not just things that are ridiculous to us that might have been, you know, had some different status in the moment, but things that would ridiculous to everyone.

But this is the first time that Socrates focuses in on that. And he says, that's the glaucon. This is really ridiculous. What do you do with the ridiculousness of this?

So yeah, I don't think he's serious about going naked wrestling, although I think, you know, and so I've just pulled up period. I don't think he's serious about going to be a period. There's always this sort of Spartan specter throughout these arguments. And I don't want to dismiss the possibility that there are outlandish, what we would think of or what Athenians would think of as outlandish, Spartan conventions that Socrates might actually think we should take seriously.

I just wanted to kind of testing a glaucon. I mean, I wonder if there couldn't be a sort of, you know, someone who sees the ridiculous, but can sort of think you're okay, what would be the benefit to the city of doing it this way? And then could make up one, okay, actually, this isn't the idea for falling reasons, but there's a kind of testing of glaucon, therefore, like, can you actually even ponder why this would be good for the city or something like that? Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

I mean, it's the capacity to think about things which might be apparently or conventionally ridiculous that's important, but the outcome is less important than capacity to do that. Right, right. But so therefore, I wonder if glaucon doesn't fail us as far as he's not able to sort of say, well, these are simply ridiculous, actually, I mean, like, I don't see them. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm too conventional myself, but just like, I'm wondering what does anything or a Plato would have said in his stead?

Like, is this, I mean, glaucon is late in the middle of the night, but it's probably like three o'clock in the morning at this point, I don't know. But I don't know, like, is there a serious response to this? I mean, they raise it, right? This is kind of ridiculous.

You're right, actually, I'm stressing it, but it's the very beginning of the five, the whole thing's initiated by others, right? Planner goes to capitalist. You know that this is the one, the only thing they all agree on in the entire world. Yeah, out loud.

Yeah. The whole dialogue. And so, I mean, but then they quickly, you know, glaucon sick, quickly, bold over. Okay, I guess we'll just have them wrestling naked.

Totally fine. Right. So in a way, in a way, it should be impressive, right? He's sort of moved past the ridiculousness.

This is tricky, Greg, because it the way that the way that it's presented is that we start with dogs, right? We immediately go from dogs to people. And the argument, I mean, Arlene Saxon, how's that some really great stuff on this, by the way? She was somebody important to me when I was thinking through some of these things.

But so, you know, we, they insist that against his better judgment, the non-authors and that Socrates take up this question of what to do about women and children in the city. And he, after lots of pretty crazy drama and reluctance and cross-baiting himself to nemesis on the strain, all of that stuff, he says, okay, well, then we have to go back to the beginning. But what's the beginning? And it turns out the beginning, in this case, is the sort of selection of the guardians, who has the temperament to be a guardian.

So again, it's about this particular beginning. It's not about education or training. It's not about the most necessary study. It's actually about the temperament of the guardians, which fits with this idea that we're focused on, and he says, okay, so what we've talked about male dogs, what about female dogs, shouldn't they be useful to the city?

There's a lot of things that go on. But if the female dogs, and then immediately, they just don't pass go, don't collect a hundred dogs, you want to dollars, you get straight to female guardians. I mean, there's really, there's no gap in the argument there. And he says, okay, well, female guardians, if they're going, if they're going to be useful for the city, then they need to be educated.

And so, that's how you get to this training thing. And so, I think it's not ridiculous for Glaucon to be on board with the premises. And therefore, it's not clear to me that he failed the test by not immediately rejecting that particular conclusion. So that, he might be failing it.

So I'm open to that. But that's one way he might not be. The other way he might not be is if he, unlike the others, on some level, is tracking that we are talking about the analogy, that might be giving him too much credit. Because I do think he is distracted by politics for the most part in the dialogue.

But if he's sort of still at this early moment of the, the excursors that is five through seven, keeping that argument in mind that we're talking about the soul as well as the city. And again, it wouldn't be a failure for him not to reject the idea. So again, it might be a failing, but it's not clear to me that it has to be a fail. I'll add on the point about Glaucon is that Socrates presents the laughter, not only as conventional, but also as quite vulgar and love.

Like it's a part of something that many would do is laugh at this and it's in, then they'd have statistical arguments presented, right? And so I think it's perfectly in keeping with Glaucon's sort of love of victory and his want to be sort of the many that he would readily just give up us, I don't think without questioning it. Yeah. Too much.

I mean, that's, I think the danger there. And that might play into your line. It could be a serious proposal and Glaucon doesn't question it enough. And it could be that the thing he doesn't question about enough is, wait, what does this have to do with the soul?

And so Socrates is constantly fighting against that as he, as he provokes it away. I think that sounds right. One thing that happened as I just spent, you know, years really thinking about this is I became more and more impressed with Glaucon. He has false, but one way, again, not reductionists at all, but one way I read book one now is a kind of parade of people who could not have this conversation with Socrates, you know, and with very particular limits.

So Kefless has certain limits that makes it impossible for him to have had this conversation with Socrates, you know, bull market, or scemicus and their limits are different and their limits are clear. And Adam Ants has limits, but they're very different. But Glaucon, you know, in book nine, where where Socrates says, you know, we give me back an argument what I what I lent to you, Glaucon needs a little bit of a nudge, but he's got it. He's been here the whole time.

So another way, and I think I think Alta is right, this idea that he doesn't want to be associated with this vulgar kind of laughter, but another way that we might think about Glaucon in this moment is thinking, all right, I'll hang with you here. Where are you going? You know, let's see if we're going, because I mean, he does that, he continues to do that. Even when we get to the third wave, even when it's clear that Socrates has jumped the shark, Glaucon is right there to say, wait a second, you know, we've got to figure out what you mean here.

We have to understand what you mean. So I think Glaucon's response to ridiculous things that appear ridiculous are to kind of have a kind of trust and friendship for Socrates, and also the kind of defer judgment that just kind of try to hold it all in line together at the same time. I mean, he's certainly indefatigable. I mean, he really, for says, I think to be a noise at least of Iron Man, this is like this guy will not stop pushing the argument.

You see that even in the beginning of book five, when it's Paul Marcus, who seems to introduce the objection, hey, what about the genesis point? And Glaucon's like, yeah, I'll talk about that. And he just takes it over. And he does the same thing with Iron Man, this is getting bold over too easy.

Just takes it always, no, let's go. Let's go. Yeah. Yeah.

Also impressive. It's not without his limits, obviously. Yeah. Can I push back on this a little bit?

I mean, so this is all Socrates telling us. And I'm reminded that in the Eudhymus, at one point, Socrates says, I think about protodulus. You know, protodulus then said this and Crido interjects. He's been silent since the beginning.

He's like, wait a minute. There's no way that guy said that. And Socrates says, ah, yeah, got me. Yeah, let's go to somebody else.

I'm just, I'm just, I'm going to stop because the very beginning of the book eight, we don't have to, obviously, this is taking us apart from, but like, I'm sorry, says, oh, I gave a detour. I read the whole book. Good, good, good. I don't want to spoil the ending for the folks at home, Charlie.

So the very beginning of the book is just, that's two, 21 in the bloom. If you have it, he's like, oh, yeah, there's this detour blah, blah, I forgot where we were. And then Glaucon gives this completely very excellent summary of what they've done. And I'm like, where did that come from?

This guy, like, it's like, oh, we did this and then two a point a and then two b and a two b one. Yes. Yeah. And then we were interrupted at this point.

And that's where Plum gets in it. And we were doing like, come on, there's no way that was that sharp. Okay, fine. Maybe I'm wrong.

But um, yeah, I mean, we're taking Socrates narrative at face value, but that there's no way to accuracy. Of course, of course. And I'm presenting Glaucon. He's presenting Glaucon is someone who's hung with the argument.

Of course, of course. Which I think means that he's going to be somebody who's going to like, give Socrates some room to develop these arguments, even when they look ridiculous. And again, there's a lot of ridiculous things. I mean, the myth of metals is ridiculous.

And there's a lot of ridiculous things here. So, um, and yeah. Yeah, of course. I'll just bring us back to the, uh, your book for the timing.

One of the things I really finished and was how, I mean, we've already covered this, but can you speak about a relationship between the female drama and the male drama a little bit? So back to the beginning and going back through it. I mean, that was, again, yeah, please go ahead. Yeah.

So, and of course, these are, this is Plato's language or Plato's Socrates language. I didn't make this up. When at the beginning of five, the interlactors and sit that Socrates account for women and children in the city, which you've mentioned in book four, but kind of just rolled over. Uh, it's, it says, okay, I suppose we've done the male drama and now we have to do the female drama.

Um, so this is his language or what's going on. Um, and my sense of this, and it's, it's speculative. I found a lot of reasons in the text to think that it's not entirely wrong, but I'm, this is the kind of thing that just because I've published the book doesn't mean I'm not still thinking about it. Uh, we'll probably be through the rest of my life, but, um, um, but it seems to me that, um, the male drama gives us kind of, uh, and I talk about it in different ways in the book.

One way of talking about it is in terms of telos, right? It gives us the kind of, um, the kind of complete or actualized shape of these different parts of soul and city, but city has an analogy to soul, uh, that are put in, can be put in a, in a particular order. And that order is called justice. So, um, the book for, I don't know how you guys think about this, actually be curious about what you guys think about this, but I think if you think of the different books of the republic as if they were sort of independent dialogues.

Um, and then you think about all the dialogues in Plato, the book for is one of the most straightforward things we have in the whole corpus, not to say it's easy, but it's, it's so straightforward. Um, book eight is also very straightforward. I feel like there's something interesting to be said about that, but in four, you get it. Here's what this part of the city is.

Here's what it's analog is in the soul, here's what the other part here's the relationship that needs to exist between them in order for the soul to be just. Um, here, both find out later, all the different ways that can go wrong. It's very, um, the sort of punch line of book four is, is very static in a way. I mean, you have to see some movement for it to be intelligible, but it's here is structure and here's what justice looks like.

Here's what we're aiming for, but in the female drama, it seems to me, and this really was the, the driving question of the project, but it seems to me that the question is more, what has to be the case in order for one to become just and that argument, or that inquiry kind of moves into what has to be the case in order for one to become philosophical as the kind of highest form of justice. Um, and so I see the female drama in relation to the male drama as an account of the potentiality or potencies or modes of becoming that are necessary for the possibility of the structures that we are introduced to in books two through four to come to be. So maybe, I think maybe at this point, we could, uh, and we'd go from a 40 minutes, not to end it on this, but just a sort of, uh, kind of broader view of, of your thesis, sort of simple, but maybe not, that simple question is, according to books five to seven, how do we become just, what kind of advice can one glean about living a just and in good life that philosophic life? Is that is really what's, what's at stake?

Can I just add it? Can I just add something to that piggyback on that question? I kept thinking that you're, you're going to say at some point, maybe this is sort of obvious, that's why you've waited, but that somehow this is piggybacking on what Alice just asked. Somehow our nature seem to have some, we need to have some feminine, whatever that means, qualities in order to pursue justice or to pursue wisdom, that somehow the soul is somehow defective if it's simply masculine or something like that.

I don't know if that helps. Yeah, what's the practical item? Yeah. I think the closest thing to being in touch with what we would think of as a feminist really comes in a music and gymnastics section of book three, this idea of hardness and softness of soul.

I actually love that stuff. I love, I love thinking about music and gymnastics, but ultimately I don't think, and this is maybe one of the hardest parts of one of the most difficult parts of the thesis and probably more time that we could take. I think that's just should invite me back to talk about that. But I think ultimately those accounts are given to give us the shape of the soul, not actually as a kind of a curriculum or pedagogy.

So I think that's there. The feminine that I'm talking about in the book is what I think Socrates means by the female in books five through seven. And it only has to do with the feminine in the sense that you're talking about it in so far as the feminine is associated with receptivity and activity. And there's also, Mary Townsend is really good on this.

She knows a lot about ancient culture and actual women in the classic ways, which I don't really deal with in this book. But there's this, I mean, as a list is kind of a misogynist. And so maybe he's an outlier, but there's other evidence too that the female is associated with passivity, receptivity, and reproduction in the male with activity. And so the female that I'm focused on is about passivity and receptivity and becoming, not really about the kind of thing that music features you in the soul, which is more of what we think of as a feminine kind of softness or nurturing or something like that.

Do you think I've always, you mentioned this that the Republic may touch on some of these ancient theories of reproduction and biology. I've always been, I don't know who knows, but I've always been skeptical that it's actually doesn't actually buy it. But then it can still be something useful to him for appropriating to explain the psychology. All right.

I completely agree with that. But I do think that the childbirth stuff is there. I mean, just the word kuma is just that that's just too strong, one of its meanings, that sort of pang of childbirth, and the images are carried out. So I guess I should move to just that one point that's something that I think that would be a huge nugget for a folk listening at home.

Okay. Yeah. The three waves, just a small point. The three waves, the word that we translate as wave is also in Greek refers to a wave of pain during childbirth.

I don't know that I never paid sufficient attention to that. That's really fascinating. That's just a small point. But Alice's question.

But the nice thing that you and you link this to this sort of midwifery kind of motif that comes up in other dialogues and in the dialogue, but not very substantial. Yeah. So I mean, I read Plato. I love Plato because I feel like he helps me live in my life.

It's sort of the last paragraph of the book. It's not very popular scholarly position to say. This is why I do my scholar, but it's definitely true to me. So yeah, I'd like to have better answers for this.

I think that there's something very, it's not pessimistic. I don't want to say it's pessimistic. But in the same way that Aristotle says I'm going to set up a target for you to shoot toward, I think that that this sort of soul of books five through seven is presented as that kind of image that kind. In fact, he tells us that in books, he's talking to Adam and he sees these Socrates is very straightforward about that.

But this is this is a model that oriens are ambitions and is incredibly useful in that sense. In the same way that the statue, you know, polyclitis is the riferous is the canon of the human form. It doesn't matter that no human being has that it was based on an actual human being or that maybe no human being will ever embody in that form precisely. It's still, you know, it's still an icon.

It's still something that is important to our project to become the best version of ourselves. We can even have perfections out of reach. And so that's how I read five or seven. I mean, one of the things that you can say, how would you become the first one to be very lucky to become philosophical?

Because you have to all of you have to have all the right disposition. And then you have to live in a city or be in a family that the account of in book six of how easy it is. In fact, how it's more likely that a well disposed soul is corrupted than, you know, less well disposed soul. So to both have be well enough disposed for philosophy to be an option.

And for that, for your, for your virtues, for not to be a tragedy, for your virtue is not to be a good cause of your downfall. That's both really hard. And then the education itself is difficult and dangerous. And it lasts a very long time.

So I think in terms of what we do to be good, I think there's a way in which all of the sections are helpful in illuminating, but we don't we can't comport themselves to it as a as any sort of checklist or consider falling short as some sort of failure that we should be damned for. I mean, we're going to feel failure. We can't help that, but it's not it's not something that that's likely it's not a likely thing to achieve. It's not an easy thing to achieve.

I mostly want one thing because I do think the way I read the cave is a little bit weird and I don't know if I'm right, but I really like it. And it's on this point. Look, go ahead. Is it the womb?

I was wondering. And one of your things you. No, it's not the sun is the sun. I was wondering.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No, I'll keep that.

No. So if you do if you think about the cave, and which is clearly explicitly in image of education, you think about the going up and going down and in psychological terms, rather than in political terms, for me, it just creates a lot of mostly questions, but some really interesting possibilities going from images to trust or faith to theories. And I liken that denoetic level to what we think of now as modeling, hypothesizing, creating these sort of models, and then having insight at the noetic moment. So let's just say you get there, right?

Let's just say you've done it. Well, it's a and then you go back down. What does that look like to have this insight and then to return to your the theoretical approach to things that modeling the denoetic part, go back and reconsider what you had faith in or trust in before you started being theoretical. And then the images, that's for me, this is really interesting, because the first thing kids read is have our images, right?

And we know that that images stick with us and our memory, what does it mean to return to those and to think about what they look like in the light of these higher ways of engaging the world. And also, if you go out again, especially if you take someone with you, what does it look like to now engage these and to sort of interactive and vocal and discursive way on the way up again. And to me, it looks like that kind of integration, right? It's one thing to have insight and it's another view to do the work of integrating that insight into all of the ways that you do and have engaged the world.

And as all of us know, it's another thing in another level and another set of project of development to stay that out loud and to make it be a part of someone else's experience or articulated and wasted, accessible to the experience of others. And so I really see that up and down and up movement of the cave as having those, that kind of among others, again, not a reduction of argument, but having the possibility of having that kind of psychological story to tell. Wow. That's great.

I always remember these moments, you study something, you realize, oh, I remember this moment, I was a kid thinking that, I remember when I was, I was asking, I asked my mom just about geology, I was like, what is a plate? Did you just, it's just a dot? I realized, no, that's actually a real question. Partless being, that's a sense of speaking of the person, all this is our transition, or thank you for your sense of Republican for more, pick up the female drama, the philosophical feminine in the soul of Plato's Republic.

I don't want to say don't judge a book by its cover because that's an awesome image, but well worth the price. But yeah, at one point, I noticed in what we read for today, we're in a few of these chapters, you mentioned that you could have been a doctor, but you instead became a professor. And then you later say this person who could have been a doctor, which is yourself, but for some reason, you still have a third person could have been an angry doctor. Charlotte does that sometimes.

Or even an indignant professor, we'd like to hear more about your bio. David can jump in here, but I'd like to be talking so glad I thought you were just saying you wanted to know more about what makes me an indignant professor. But this portion of the show, it's, it's, and Greg's liking rounds to the horse, which are so much fun. We, um, and Greg, I have the first, I have the first question.

If that's okay with you. I discovered something about Charlie. She doesn't know. We would do a deep dive, but we did, we did a deep dive.

But I'm, so, you noticed? No, no, no. So, so, Charlie, you, you began as an undergrad at Mercer, which is a great school. And then you, for some reason, took a massive step down and matriculated at Emory.

I can't understand that. We got your MA and your PhD, but you know, at both schools, who were some of the highlights that this is really, do you have any memories of teachers or, just for the folks at home, the insult that Emory was obviously loved at me because that's right in my undergraduate education chair. Got it. Got it.

I was, I didn't have the content, but I, I kind of, yeah, I soon. Yeah. Um, yeah. So, yeah, I'm lucky to have had many fantastic teachers.

I'll, I'll keep it brief. But the story of philosophy, I had no idea what I was doing when I came to college. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't even know what I wanted to do in high school.

I had, I applied to a bunch of schools, crazy lists, like Cornell, University of Texas, Austin, Florida State, I mean, it was just the most random list. I thought it'll all sort itself out. I got in everywhere and then nothing sorted itself out. And so I got to Mercer and I'm very, very happy I did, but I felt it, I mean, the major thing was the same.

I majored in, I thought I declared majors in half a dozen things. But Mercer has a great books program. And so even though I was hopping around from computer science to math, to literature, all over the place, I was always reading books. And so I was always doing literature and philosophy and all that stuff.

So I was doing great books. And I did come to Mercer actually because of the great books program. And so how, how, how, how, how, how a young person have been attracted to a great books program? I just, I was such a bookish kid.

I was a bookish nerdish kid. And, and you could, I was at Mercer, you could, at that point, you can, you can't do it anymore. I wish you could, but you could do a degree in engineering. And your gen ed could be a great books program.

And so for somebody who had no idea what you wanted to do, it just seemed like this place where I would have all of these options. And so, and so, as I'm taking all these sort of random classes and random departments, I would talk to my professors. I remember clearly a few of these conversations. I remember going to my religion professor and wanting to talk about the problem with evil.

And it's like, oh, you should have talked to Tom Trimble and going to my psychology professor and talk about Roy. He was here. He was retired now. But go talk to Tom Trimble.

And, and he was a philosophy professor. And I went, every time I was suggested to go to him, I would go and talk. And so I took my first philosophy classes at Mercer in the beginning of my junior year, but I declared the major before I was, I mean, I knew it. But once I figured out what philosophy was, I had no idea what philosophy was.

It was just the most obvious thing in the world that that's where I'm belong. So I finished the major for two years with Straight to grad school. And Emory was an interesting place. Sorry, David, I have to tell you it was an interesting place when I was there.

I heard it was an interesting place. Yeah. Yeah. So this is a, this is the kind of person that Charlie is we have a friend of three of ours named Dustin Pion who was a PhD at Emory PhD.

He just dissertation on Vico. And so Dustin was the University of Maryland, Greg Knowsen, and well, his good friend, Valix. And she didn't know him. And I just emailed Charlie one day.

And I said, I was kind of kind of like an agile vortex. Could he teach? And he's still an instructor of Mercer. So yeah, he told me that there was a faces of Emory that I don't want to throw him under that that he faces different from the old days.

Yeah, it is. It's very different. And it fits through a couple of faces since I was there. But the kind of interesting thing when I was there, really, late 80s, early 90s, that was, that was kind of the height of acrimony between continental and analytic philosophy.

I mean, there was just open animosity and this day between analytical philosophers and continental philosophers at Emory, those guys were sort of aligned with each other because they were actually interested in sort of doing something that had contemporary cache whereas against the historians of philosophy, which is who I studied with. So Anne Hartle. I see what they can't. She was on my family.

Yeah. Well, can I tell you an Arnold story? You can get to the first. No, no, no, no, no.

She was. So when Anne, I was, I had a bunch for her. I loved Anne. And I love Anne.

She's filled with us. Thank God. And I TA for her upper division medieval philosophy class. And in that class, we're two TAs.

And we both read all of the papers for all the students and read all of the papers. And we would sit down and talk about how we graded them. So instead of using her graduate students just as grading labor, she actually took the time to teach us how to grade. And so we're in one of our sessions talking about papers.

And I gave this student a B. And she said, well, talk to me why you gave her a B. And I said, well, truthfully, I don't like the student at all. I think she's disruptive and dismissive.

And I don't think she works hard. And I didn't like her paper at all. But I was afraid that I was factoring in my dislike for her. And so I kind of compensated, right, giving her a little bit higher grade than I thought she deserved.

And Anne said, that's the factoring in. That sounds like it. It's one of the best lessons of a character matters, right? They're going to wait for me matters.

That's really gracious of you, by the way, Charlie, to hide. The student was our grand by Chating. I've never used that to be problematic. Yes.

But I studied with Don Bering. And I studied with Carl Page, who's been it. He was a very, very important teacher to me who was now on stage. John Livingston, it was fantastic group of people.

None of him did continental or analytic philosophy at the time. So well, we're done. Yeah. Well, let's start the the lightning round.

But I have a way to start it. In the Republic, you're a beef sympathetic to Bloom's critique of rock and roll music. Yes, Charlie. Where was the coming from, David?

Charlie fronts a band called Blue Sky Blue. You can listen to their latest single Athena. That's spot. He tell me what Athena's about.

Like a dad. Is that what all good? It's an Americana band. Greg, it's really good.

I was listening to it a little bit. And I was like, man, this is really good stuff. Thank you. It's a blue sky blues.

Yeah. So what happened? You guys know, you have two singles. Yeah, we actually, you know, bands aren't meant to last forever, David.

So you know, it's getting a little bit advanced. It's a difficulty. We actually in a new group, three women vocalists calling ourselves Blue Moon, you know, kind of a reflection of Blue Sky Blue. We were all in that band together, but some other people weren't.

And so we have a new record to come out in the spring. I'm really proud of it. We'll get it up there soon. I do want us all writing.

You know, I don't think so. I've had people trying to get me to bring the guitar to a conference before, but it just feels awkward and wrong. So we'll bring one for you. Memphis.

Well, you. Okay. Absolutely. We'll see.

We'll see. We'll see. It's a huge American music, huge Americana. That is my friend.

We also grew up in a musical family. He played the Jug. His uncle played the Washboard and his cousin played the stick on a bucket with us. It was also my sister Alex.

Yes. They did that for a number of years speaking of itinerant travelers. And that's how we afforded Emory. So Greg, this is your part of the show.

I can't wait to hear about it. This is called Lightning Round. Go on Greg. Explain.

No, you can't. I'd rather you explain it. Yeah. We'll think it's a massive round.

Yeah. We won the amazing difference here, but yeah, you can tell. Very good. Okay.

Number one. Favorite philosopher. Player. Favorite work of philosophy.

The alien. Ooh. Spicy. Spicy.

Spicy. Please address all email. Hate letters to Alex Prio. Favorite non-philosopher writer.

That changes over time. Totally fair. Yeah. I have been really digging in Marilyn Robinson lately.

Yeah. I mean, we could have traditional and I would just be boring and say Shakespeare, but it would be true. But yeah, I think it's a good thing about the digging in her lately. Very cool.

Favorite work of literature? Yeah. Yeah. I've already said the alien.

So I'm going to pretend like that we can just leave that off to the side. I am in love with the mabarta. The scientific. I am absolutely in love with it.

Did you do that? I'm part of it. I mean, the thing is, this time is as big as the alien, but absolutely. It's some part other than the vodka by Gita.

I mean, we can do the gita, but that's done a lot. The narrative of the mabarta is we haven't done it. I imagine. Imagine like an odyssey-length epic on every character in the ilead, every hero in the ilead, and then an account of the ilead where all of that backstory matters.

That sounds amazing. That's the mabarta. It is amazing. Well, what's the addition?

I'll show you two things. There's this Clay Sandslet library that has a lot of it, but I can't pull it out of the thing. Penguin has a series. It's massive.

Oh my God. It's a really good translation. This has the facing page, stands for it in English. I've actually tried.