Jacob Howland on Glaucon's Fate & Plato's Republic

Welcome back to the new think. Reminding David Barr and with me as always. This is my good friend Alex. Pretty good.

How are you doing? Well, interesting. Don Diaz, David. Usually you're recording during your basement that has these white walls, like some sanitarium.

Today you're in your office. Yeah, I'm at work because this is a little earlier and my wife insisted I leave the house because the kids would. They like me better. So they'll be being at the door.

Yeah. I mean, we should say hi to our other friend, Greg Green-McBarre. Hey guys, I just wanted to I feel like it was only appropriate for us to begin with David. I should express our condolences to Alex this week.

He lost. Oh, yes, right. Well, his dear uncle, plus Samuel Custro. It's a long story.

He hasn't called him Uncle Haas. So, just iron and shake. We're hoping you don't okay Alex, I hope you're doing okay. Very.

Iron shake was that big or he was a star in WrestleMania, and he fought call and Alex, I know that your loss is different, the first Persian world wrestling champion and not the last Alex, but he was here as a Yeah. As a frank side. Let's go to a series. I'm going to the stage where the show now.

I think all of us are pumped up for our gift. I'm stoked. I'm really excited. Our guest tonight is Professor Jacob Hallen, who is the Director of intellectual foundations at the University of Austin.

Actually, he just corrected us prior. He's now been promoted already. This is how quickly things happen at this new innovative industrial industry. We don't have to deal with the version of bureaucracy.

That's right. He's just like, we want you to be Provost now. So Jacob Hallen is now the Provost of the University of Austin. He's the Director of their intellectual foundations program, which is about the first two years of the undergraduate curriculum, which is mostly liberal arts based.

He previously been at the University of Tulsa, where he had a fantastic time, fantastic career, ended on very amicably with the University of Tulsa. He just moved on to every one of the greener pastures. He's also a senior fellow at the Tick-Poo Fund. He's the author of several books, a couple on Plato's Republic, including one we're going to talk about tonight called Glaucon's Fate, History, Myth, and Character in Plato's Republic.

He's published all over in the New Criterion City Journal in the nation. And David insisted that I also mention his book with Cambridge University Press called Plato and the Talmud. Maybe we'll have you on again to talk about that at some point. But it's a real treat.

I met. I ran into Jacob at the bar at the ACTC in 2023 in Dallas. And again, I wasn't drinking at the bar, but I was standing at the bar and Jacob came in and introduced himself. And I said, oh, man, you've got to come be on the show.

And without batting an eye said, yes, of course, I love being on the show. I love what you guys do. Even David seems like he even likes you. So we're good to go.

Well, thanks for seeing the press. The press. All right, books. All right, books.

All right, fantastic. Wonderful man. It was should I. Promised best go pick it up.

But no other book from Paul Dry Book is coming out on Plato. This is the only Plato book from Paul Dry Press that you should be picking up, right? No, they should pick up a bunch of them. OK, no, Greg's trying to make a joke.

Greg, a point of correction. I think Alex's new book is coming out from Mercer. Oh, OK, all right. OK, so some friend, you are Alex's book, is a collection of Lawrence Burns essays from Paul Dry.

Yes, that's right. And that's the one that Lawrence Burns learned. How did you hook up with Paul Dry? He does have a really fabulous little imprint.

I mean, you obviously published in Cambridge, published wherever the hell you went. But how did you decide this time around? Well, you know, so my first book actually was on place for a public, it was called The Republic, The Odyssey of Philosophy. And that was written for Twain.

It was a Twain masterwork. They used to have these things called masterworks where you kind of take a great book, could be Hamlet or whatever, you know. And you kind of lay it out for the educated amateurs. And that went on a print.

I don't even remember how I met Paul Dry, maybe through Ibabran. He's a good friend of hers. But anyway, Paul Dry reprinted that book. And then this book, I've kind of spayed.

Believe it or not, I shopped it around to University Press's. Nobody was interested in it. Oh, man. I mean, they just weren't.

So I decided, well, there's a real advantage to having a well-produced book. I think Paul Dry does a really nice job. The books look good and well edited. And there are actually people can afford to buy them.

That's exactly it, right? I really, you know, as you guys know, writers want readers. That's what we want. No one's going to get rich on a book, whether it's Cambridge or Oxford or or Paul Dry.

So, yeah, I think it's a great press. They do actually publish a bunch of stuff on Plato. He does literature. He does history.

He does just memoirs. It's all kinds of language for language manuals, even. Yeah. Yeah.

I think they're great. They're sturdy, man. It's not like you're. Yeah.

It doesn't look like a fall apart. But my favorite part is books that cover actually. The people cover. Yeah.

I thought it looked like Glaukans. The sea Glaukans, you know, the guy holds up from the right. Right. Right.

You see. So tell us maybe it was an abstraction. Yeah. Sort of.

Maybe a good starting point, Jake, would be just tell us. I mean, how did you get an idea for this book? Where did it? I mean, this is obviously, you know, Glaukans made.

It's a book on the Republic and it really focuses on the central interlocutor, the central character in the Republic with whom Socrates is talking Glaukan, there are other sports that amazes, but he's really talking Glaukans. So how did this book idea come out? Yeah. Can I add just one little detail to that?

I get the feeling that you were really picking up on Stanley Rosen's book on the Republic in addition to other things. So I'd like to hear if and to what degree his work influenced this particular thesis. Yeah. OK.

Actually, let me say something about that first. I think Rosen's book on the Republic is quite challenging, but it's quite interesting. But he really emphasizes the sort of project of political construction. He sort of says that Plato invented this kind of political construct of them.

I think this is right. And my reading of Calypolis, the Noble and Beautiful City of the Republic is this awful tyranny. I mean, it's a totalitarian regime, basically. And it's quite corrupt.

And so that whole notion, I think, plays a big role there. I can probably say more about that. But let me say a little bit about how I thought of writing this book. And it was sort of this ah-huh moment, which I had once before in my life.

So I'll tell you that part of the story. Years ago, I went to a Liberty Fund conference. I was in honor of Joe Cropsy and was on the Republic. And it was fantastic.

And there were lots of people that you guys would know over there, Charles Griswold and obviously Cropsy and other people. And it's been a couple of days working on the public. And I knew that the third wave was more or less in the center of the book. But it's like, I'm going to the plane.

And I thought, just this thought hit me. I just had this insight that the third wave was like the exact center of the book. So I quickly took out my Greek text. Look at the first stuff on its page.

Let's say it's 312 or something. The last one's 617 ended up. Didn't work out. Then I realized that they skipped pages in between the books.

So maybe they'll be forced to have honest pages like book 1 will end. And then they'll be forced to have honest pages later. So I did on the math. And it turned out that the third wave was two-fifths of a stuff on its page from the center of the Republic judging by a stuff on its page.

And I got an article in the review about physics out of that. Because it was sort of this hint. I realized that you're not going on. So then, OK, fast forward to this book.

I read a book by Mark Munn, the historian Mark Munn that was published in 2000 called The School of History, Athens and the Age of Socrates. And I've been thinking about the Republic a lot and thinking about the centrality of the kind of which I can talk about it a bit. And Munn sort of just says in passing, he's talking about the 30 tyrants. And he says, I think Glaukon probably died fighting alongside prettiest and carnities in the Battle of Manicchia on the side of the 30 tyrants.

And I just had the same feeling. It was like, yeah, that's right. So then my task was to try to read the Republic of that in mind. And I just found lots of evidence in the Republic to support that view.

So that's how I changed to write this. And it's not simply some alternative history. What you're saying is this reading it with this new lens unlocks the book in a manner that would be difficult. Otherwise, what we're trying to do without this lot of Glaukon's state of mind is that accurate?

Yeah, I think that's right. And look, I don't, I mean, the same about ancient history as we don't have an abundance of evidence. And I mean, I'll talk a little bit about the evidence for months hypothesis. But somebody could look at the Republic and say, well, later doesn't say that Glaukon died this way.

And my thesis has been met with some skepticism on the part of some readers. And I don't know if it's true, but I do know that what it does is reframe what's going on in the Republic in various ways. And one of them is the contest between Socrates and Credius. So Credius is this, basically, I mean, he is a relative of Plato and Adam Antis and Glaukon.

He's actually their older cousin on the mother's side. And Carvides, weirdly, although he's younger than Credius, is their uncle. OK. And Credius was the head of the 30-time.

So who are the 32-literate listeners might not know this while very briefly? At the end of the company's war, after the Spartan sense, star of the Athenians had a submission, the Spartan set up a public government of Laconophiles, Sparta lovers, aristocratic or oligarchic Athenians who were headed by Credius. And he and Carmides, for whom a dialogue is named, but it's also of course one named for Credius, assumed leading roles in this regime. They proceeded to murder 1,500 of their fellow citizens.

And so the Democrats, this was a sort of tail of revenge. I mean, they thought not wrongly that the democracy had made incredible errors, don't stupid things like the Sicilian expedition, and so forth, and the whole place needed to be reformed. And so they ruled for about eight months, and the Democrats, who were supported by the way, among other people by Liscius, who is a character in the Republic, who doesn't speak, he's a And the hypothesis that Golacan might have joined them, brings to front and center the significance of Credius, who is constantly talking about how he's descended from Sol and ready to appear as in the Tameus. He really sort of wants to outstrip Sol and right, Sol and was a poet and a statesman and a philosopher.

And Credius, I think, had this ambition of going beyond Sol and producing the greatest kind of poetry, which is political poetry, that is to say, creating a state, well, an ideological tyranny. And actually, I argue that the 30 times might be the first ideological tyranny in history. So what I mean by ideological is kind of decay philosophy. So Credius is constantly kind of stealing ideas from Socrates and so forth, but he thinks of himself as a philosopher.

He's a very vacuous idea of science. He thinks that he can be a scientific ruler, and he's going to put his political plan into play. And that's what he did, attempted to do in leading the 30 tyrants. So these two guys fish in this range, St.

Walter Treadabic Credius, his friends with El Sabaidis, he is the uncle of Carmody's. We know that Glaucon wanted to impress Carmody's, the Glaucon associated with Credius. So there's a kind of contest over the soul of Glaucon. And the really interesting thing, which we'll talk about tonight, is that the 30 tyrant, the regime of the 30 tyrants, had a close resemblance to Sparta, and also a close resemblance to Calypolis, the way Calypolis was set up.

So it begins to raise questions about what were the influences behind this regime that Socrates sets up? And why would Socrates, a heroic philosopher, who clearly would not be tolerated at all in this regime? Why would he have laid this out and praised it? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, just for listeners, this is, I was telling Jake beforehand that one of the features of this book, that I think is a feature of so much of what you do with Plato at least, is you get a sense of the richness of the history as well as the literary influences of Plato. I mean, most recently I was reading a piece you wrote on the symposium at the Frogs, and that does a similar thing. But I mean, to get to the sort of first topic about the centrality of Glaucon, I thought one of the most valuable things, and we'll get to this maybe more in depth later, those valuable things I got this, is that this isn't really just a study of the republic, but it's got in way a kind of nutshell reading of most of Plato, specifically. And Xenophon.

And Xenophon, according to that. But coming out of the carmities, for example, the Tameus Critius, you really do set up a really persuasive narrative about, again, Socrates and Critius fishing in the same stream of youth. And your central point to think about Glaucon, maybe you can spell this out a bit or add to it, is that on the one hand, Socrates is worried about Glaucon. On the other hand, the only way to get traction on him is to appeal to his prejudices somewhat.

And so he effectively has to make concessions, could you say concessions to Glaucon, that could ultimately compromise. And you argue, I think really well, in many features does compromise Socrates teaching. You point in particular to this infamous moment where Socrates says he gets angry or thematic about philosophy being having much splatter on it. But maybe you could talk a little bit about this, this sort of double-edged sword of socratic irony here and elsewhere, right, where, I mean, similarly, in the Theateans, he needs to present, philosophy is culminating in a true opinion.

That's what Theateans needs, he's a mathematician. That's the only way to get him to actually take the risk that he's unable to make. So when Glaucon, he has to appeal to the crediencean that's already planted in his soul, to get him off the ground. So to speak.

Yeah, I think that's right. I think in this connection of what Socrates does in the first Elle Sivites, which I know you guys have talked about on your show. And so just to recap there, Socrates has been hanging around Elle Sivites almost like a pervert or something, really, but again, it's like, I guess somebody tells Elle Sivites like, he's got all I had to observe you do it. I watch you all the time, he went to your grammar school and he did this with the wrestling school, whatever.

But he approached his Elle Sivites when I don't know, maybe 16 or something like that. And he plays this game with Elle Sivites. And he says, essentially, I know who you are, I know what you want. In fact, he has this amazing line.

Your earos for renown is greater than that of anyone that's ever been for anything. And so you want to be clips, Xerxes. It's not enough to be the top guy in Athens. You want to rule the world, basically.

And that's great. He doesn't even challenge that, but you got to come to me. And after he shows him, you don't really know what you need to know to be a ruler and so forth. And so you have to come to me.

So he's trying to get Elle Sivites to join himself to Socrates and then presumably, Socrates will work on him and redirect his sort of pheumatic erotic desires toward philosophy. In the case of Glaukhan, I think something similar is happening here. And with regard to the centrality of Glaukhan, Glaukhan is undeniably the main doctor in the dialogue. And Socrates is undeniably interested in Glaukhan, right?

The first line I went down to the pair yesterday with Glaukhan. He spends the whole day with him. The myth of her is directed to Glaukhan. Socrates repeatedly uses his name, including very close to the end of the dialogue, right?

He's kind of giving this sort of punchline of the myth of her. Glaukhan is by far the main intellectual auditor in the crucial central books of the republic. So why is he interested in Glaukhan to begin? Well, Xenophon, just line up this.

And it's really quite an amazing story because actually I'm right in front of me and it tells us about Glaukhan's ambition. Xenophon writes in the memorabilia, this is book three, section six. When Glaukhan and the son of Aristotle was attempting to harangue the people as he longed to be a leader of the city, although he was not yet 20 years old, which means by the way, he couldn't speak any of something like that he would get up, right? And none of his other relatives and friends were able to stop him from being dragged and laughed down from the platform in the assembly.

Then, he's alone being well disposed toward him when I caught up with Carmody's, the son of Glaukhan and on account of Plato was able to make him stop. I love that end on account of Plato because Plato must have been pretty young. Yeah, so he intervenes with Glaukhan and he does much the same, right? He kind of interrogates, you know, but you want to be powerful and so forth.

You know, economics, what you know about military things and so forth, oh, you're ignorant, right? And there's a sense in which, right? So if you want these kinds of things, you're gonna have to associate with somebody who can help you to prepare for them. And then in the dialogue, I just had this, so I kind of have a musical understanding about Socrates is doing, like he's trying to find, he's trying to sort of take the measure of Glaukhan's soul.

So he gives them these different cities and sees if he's attuned to that, right? So the first one is what I call the true city, which is what Glaukhan tells the city of Paix, which he clearly rejects. So then we have sort of, this is up, and actually argument about that. I think the true city has a lot going for it, right?

It's this peaceful, it's not even a political regime because it's just by nature, these people are good and they're moderate and so forth. Then we have the fever city, right? Which sort of looks like all other cities that actually exist. And then we have this third quasi-sparan regime, which I call the virtuous city.

And actually Glaukhan likes that. But it's interesting, I think my argument is that he probably would have been happiest in a city like that, where there's a kind of enforced moderation, but there's certain kinds of pleasures. He's a good warrior, there are also pleasures of hunting and sport and so forth. But then of course, we have in the beginning a book called Epilemicus is like, hey, what about one of my children, right?

And then everything goes downhill from there. So it's clear that Socrates is interested in him, perhaps for the same reason he's interested in El Sibayadis. This is a person who is highly ironic. In fact, in book five, we know about glaukhan's like, but you love boys, right?

You know how you love boys, well philosophers, well, you listen to the way you love boys, right? And then of course, in book two, Socrates says, you know, you're a lot of vermin, a very good poem about you, right? And he's noble and he's a good warrior and he's intelligent, clearly. And he's fairly well educated, actually.

So there's a lot of potential there. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm going to be okay. Just a digressionist question.

I mean, this will take us a little bit and then we'll be back to, I'm interested in hearing the evidence, but one small question, I've been reading a lot of Zenith and lately, and it seems like in Zenith and at least, a lot of us to credit conversations are not for the sake of the chief and a locator, but for the sake of the passive auditors. So until I bought into the fact that this all seems to be very much the sake of Blaucon and I think the evidence in Zenith and even is that right, Socrates has this interesting, but I've always suspected that maybe it's for one of the other guys listening, and my plumbercuss would be the chief example, right? Because we learn, is in the Phaedrus, we learn that he is the Philebus or the Phaedrus, that plumbercuss becomes a philosopher. And so I don't know if you have any thoughts on that at all.

Like, I mean, he could of course, obviously, Socrates could be doing three or four things at once playing six-dimensional chess. Yeah. And then can you tack onto that and take really quick just reminds of the way that your book concludes. It's just the final paragraph.

The Republic includes that the Philebus glaucon might yet be rescued by Plato's saving myth, even if he fails to heed Socrates' words in this life. Souls are reincarnated in glaucon soul, looking back on his life in death and Athens, and its otherworldly consequences. But once again, have an opportunity to choose the saving path of philosophy. And so far as Socrates has in mind, other onlookers in the real conversation, are you indicating that glaucon may be a recurring human type?

And that this is, okay. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. I'm sorry, my head. No, no, no, absolutely look.

In fact, you anticipate what I was gonna say? I was gonna mention that the dialysis opens up at the end with the Myth of Earth, right? So you could be glaucon. I could be glaucon.

That is, we could be the reincarnated thing. So this is a human type. Another thing that's interesting is, he narrates this dialogue. So who's he talking to?

I mean, I thought, maybe he's even talking to Plato, right? But that wouldn't be like yesterday, literally. It'd be like, So I actually thought this through his students. Here's why I don't think it's Plato.

I mean, I realize this just, but like he says, glaucon son of Aristotle, something like this. And it's like, you wouldn't say, I mean, it wouldn't be like, you know, so and so howland. You'd be like, no, no, your brother, Jake, right? I don't know.

Yeah, it's true, except that of course, glaucon son of the best. And he is really the second best, right? Because they argue about like, you know, so actually one of the things I wanted to say about this in Trilty Darwin is, I think it's unique in the dialogue that people talk about glaucon, right? Like, for example, I mean, I just mentioned, you know, Sarvide says that this poem that your lover made glaucon about you and Adam Antis, that your two like noble warriors or whatever, that's really good.

But for example, in after the guy who's meant, right, Adam Antis says, well, you surely don't think the most important points have been made, right? And then Sarvide leads to stand by his brother. And then Adam Antis talks about a guy who looks a lot like glaucon. And then quite explicitly in book eight, second best man, the son of the best man, right?

At some point, Adam Antis says something like, well, he reminds me a lot of glaucon here, in terms of his love of victory. And Sarvide's like, yeah, a lot, but, you know, glaucon is more musical like this, right? So there's actually a talk that's a rare joke from Adam Antis who's otherwise like a cold fish. Like, well, he's very adamant about a lot of things, but you know, he's not adamant about being humorous, that's for sure.

But, you know, I think that's interesting. In other words, like glaucon isn't just a main guy in the dialogue, like people aren't reflecting on glaucon. But yes, like the six dimensional chess thing for sure, right? I mean, you got your readers, you got whoever Socrates is talking to, you've got, you've got, well, who else have you got?

I mean, yeah, they're also listeners, right? Yeah, I mean, I really like that. You know, it's something I thought about like, like Lizzie is an animal piece on Lizzie is who listened to the conversation. And then, Pilevercase, of course, was killed by the 30 times.

And then Lizzieus has a famous speech felt against here on Tossity's where he's like, he hasn't learned the lesson that Pilevercase learns, which is that it's not the part of a just man to harm anyone, because then against here, Tossity says, you know, the man and his whole family and everybody should be killed from what they did. I mean, we don't even know who's there, because there's some anonymous companions that we don't know if they go to the house, we don't know who else might be there. So it's in a way, you know, the question is open in, but that's how so much of politics is, right? That you're sort of speaking to identifiable audiences and wondering what the unidentifiable anonymous many there might be reacting.

But so we have, I think we have a sense that clock on is central, right? Before we transition, I have a question. So like I know we're interested in transition to the evidence, but one small point before we move on, sorry, I think you're right that there are these clock on types that recur, and I think you're right that also bodies is one of them. So I guess my, if I were being a little pushy, I would say these types always fail.

Like they can't, they never actually get the education. Is there, I mean, am I wrong to push in that direction? Or I mean, do we have anything like a successful conversion of a glaucon type or is this victory loving, honor loving type somehow? Like you don't be so hard on yourself, right?

Don't be so hard on yourself. Oh, I'm not glad, I wish I were like, I'm going to need the glaucon type. Yeah, that's what's really fun. I'm proud of the Adam Ants type.

Wish you well. Yeah, that's what's awful. Like we look at these guys and you're like, they have a lot going for them. Yeah.

I don't know, you know, I would, you know, I wonder about Xenophon, right? Like remember that. And I thought of like founding a city at this place, right? At some point, right?

He's definitely ambitious. Now, the thing is he's better at this bring it, right? He obviously is. Play-Doh is a bit of a mystery.

Although it is interesting, by the way, in connection with this. I mean, one piece of evidence for, well, at least the case that glaucon was almost certainly approached to join the regime is that Play-Doh was, right? And that Play-Doh was ambitious. And Play-Doh was like everybody else.

I'm kind of very first, you know, I want to make a name for myself. And so what happened to my relatives were heading up to this regime. And I thought they were going to bring the city to goodness and justice, you know, and they were going to take care of all these explicitly anti-democratic. It's not that he opposed to, we opposed to them because they were oligarchs.

He's opposed to them because they began murdering people. They're bad oligarchs. They're bad oligarchs, exactly. So Play-Doh is, you know, Play-Doh is great, right?

So, you know, but you're pointing to something that is an undeniable fact of the botanic dialogue, which is Socrates just craps out pretty much every time he rolls the dice with these guys. No, he does. I mean, it's, you know, but. The story, if the story ends better, we don't really know.

So we'd like you have Phagorson, the Phagorson, and then the Symposium. And there's certainly a kind of kindled interest that, but who knows where it ends up afterwards. Play-Doh doesn't give us the results of some of the, or pull the markets or theologies. Obviously these people are set to turn to philosophy, but we don't get those conversations or a conversation with Play-Doh.

Yeah, that's fair enough. But we do, I mean, let me accept that critique and sort of reframe my point. There are records of failure that are not just dramatically displayed in the dialogue, but like alluded to, like remember, Aristodemus? Yes.

Who at the time was like, why was that Socrates, right? Where's he? Yeah. You know, I think probably he fell out of love with him or something.

But nonetheless, of course, I mean, it's a really mixed record, right? Because Socrates has two of the greatest thinkers and souls as his students. So, but yeah. Yeah.

So I think we've got the centrality of Glaucon, and we've got the stakes, right? So let's talk, and I think we can do both of these things in a way at the same time. Let's talk about the evidence for, which you mentioned is not much, but maybe there's some details you can go into about the evidence that Glaucon died on the side of the 30 in this Battle of Banychia in the Paris, or halfway to the Paris. And then let's also talk about Credius'us influence, because for me, this was one of the most eye-opening features of it, is that, yeah, I really do get a sense that at least in his early career, before he starts getting more interested in poets and things like that, like around the phages and supposed and stuff, that there was this kind of influenced Socrates head on Credius that failed, and at least in his kind of competition or something like that, right?

There's this kind of weird kind of backstory that we need to piece together. So, yeah, maybe you could talk about both of those features, maybe the whole narrative of Glaucon's life in this. Yeah, so that's interesting. So, you know, so one thing that I always was aware of in reading the book is that it's just saturated in this bloody conclusion to the Peloponnesian War, the regime of the 30, and sort of like, you know, clouds on the horizon, right?

So, you've got, Pilemmrakis was murdered by the 30, and Rod, and of course, let's see if then, Pled Athens and used some of the money from his family's shield and arms factory to, and he actually armed them with that material as well to support the exile Democrats in their civil war. Nick Caratus, the son of Nickius, who himself met at a tragic fate, was killed by the 30. He's going in Paul Ray, Artus de Pledefond probably, was murdered by the 30, although the evidence is less clear for that. Obviously, Socrates was casualty of the 30 in some way because we had this kind of revenge trials and so forth, and he was suspect because he stayed in the city of Athens, the Democrats either went to the Pyreus or fled the city, but you know, Socrates, as he says in the apology, he goes one example, standing up to the democracy and one example standing up to the 30, so he's kind of politically neutral in that way.

Now, one points out something really, really interesting that I have known, which was really striking, and that is that creating some comedies were defeated in the decisive battle of Manicia and fell pretty much the exact place where Glaucom and Socrates are stopped going back up to Athens on that road, which is really striking. And then if you sort of take the dialogue, and I know it was a scroll, but let's just pretend it was, let's just spread this rollout, and then fold it like a book, right? So you have the third wave and you fold it like this, or awakens from his death at pretty much the exact point where Glaucom and Socrates are stopping others, those parts of the book line up, right? It's a comparison from the beginning paragraph from the end.

So you can sort of like almost overlay that dead warrior, right, onto Glaucom, which is kind of interesting, just kind of interesting fact, but played a lot of play around with this stuff. So I already mentioned the seventh letter, it's pretty certain that Glaucom would have been sought after by predius and carmities, and by the way, they both, both Glaucom and Antimantus participate rather enthusiastically in playing their own anti-democratic regime in the Republic, and Antimantus however, in one point, this shows up at the trial of Socrates, but Glaucom doesn't, right? Now there might be a couple of reasons. If he had joined the 30, it would not be useful to have him at the trial, but if he had joined the 30, and he's a great warrior, I mean, why wouldn't he have died fighting alongside predius and carmities, and was kind of a bloodbath?

So there's that. And we know that he was ambitious, we already saw the Xenophon. We know that he was a good warrior, and obviously he had the courage, and I would say the moderation, at least of a soldier, right? Except that we also know he was a moderate, you know?

His takes were aristocrats. You know, he bred fighting noble cocks for fighting, and he has these erotic love for boys and so forth. Some other clues, and then I'm gonna come to the main point of evidence, when Socrates and Glaucom come down from the Pyreus, they're identified as men from town, and the other group is said to be from the Pyreus, and those are actually political destinations, because in the time of the 30, the ones from town from the Osteu were associated with the oligarchs. So that's rather interesting, and of course, Polemrakis is the leader, and of course, he's, you know, obviously one of the people was murdered by the 30, who is trying to keep them in the Pyreus.

Another thing is that there's this kind of repeated references to Asculicist seven against the, which is a story of brothers fighting against each other in civil war, and I'm not making a claim for Adamantus, but I don't think, like if Plato withdrew, I think Adamantus will live as well, because he holds off, he is so adamant, as he says, is to hold off from justice. I mean, he's not talking about himself, but he says, you know, who would not be persuaded by these stories that are told that corrupt, nobly, unmanned, other than those who are adamantly opposed, right? And so that's kind of interesting, I'm talking about that. There's an interesting reference to the sea Glaucoms, which is actually sort of what I was thinking of in the cover of my book, and it's a phrase that appears in the text, it's remember that in book 10, he's like, let's haul on, like the soul is like this, Glaucoms that came out of the sea, and he's actually referring to an ancient myth there, but who's covered with scum and seaweed, and flots and the jets and the little shells and stuff, and you gotta knock all that stuff off, because it's been so corrupted as to resemble a beast, right?

More than a human being, and then you could maybe live at the soul, but in the Greek it's the accused of the seaglaccus, tons de la tian de glaucom, which is kind of interesting. But here's the thing. So then the accused of in Greek, it now sounds synonymous with Glaucoms name, Glaucoms, the S at the end, changes to a new end, and so therefore it's Glaucom. Yeah, that was fantastic, of course.

Yeah, that's interesting. But here's the most important thing, and I think it's a really chilling moment. At the beginning of the five, Socrates is super hesitant to talk about the race was pertaining to women and children. And he says, you know, I don't wanna do what I'm endowed.

It's a slippery place. I don't wanna, it's not being laughed at, he says, but it's slipping from the truth when you at least should slip off, and it's deceiving friends, right? I don't wanna deceive people. And he actually says, I prostate myself before address day at Glaucom.

For what I'm about to say, for I suspect it's a letter, it's a lesser error to be an involuntary murderer of someone that is deceiver, about noble good and just things and laws, right? It's better to run this risk among enemies rather than friends, so you've done well at exhorting me. And then Plato writes, and Glaucoms laughed and said, about Socrates, if under the power of the argument we should experience any discord, we will release you just like a man who is purified of murder. And what I realized is that this actually in Athenian law, you could be, you could be indemnified in this way by the victim himself before he died.

So that's what he's doing here. So I mean, there are just these little clues, there's more, but these are the main things that make you think like, you know, dark, silly and tragedy, civil war, you know, and then there are other things, right? We can sort of see these concepts as constant reference to contests. So for example, in book six, Socrates describes someone just like Glaucom, he says he's noble and intelligent and brave and da-da-da, he'll be sought after by relatives and they'll be pulled away from philosophy, right?

By relatives who want to use them for political power. And finally in book 10, it's the same situation. It makes me think of periods of carnities, on the one hand, again, on his mother's side, the Timma crap, who that matches comparison walk on to, is a guy who has a noble father who looks like Socrates, who doesn't care about injustice, doesn't bother about it, is too busy sort of living his own life, to worry about, you know, honor and things like this. And then a mother who's constantly hammering, like your father never stands up for himself, he's not a man of power, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I think that is, and again, that matches is already remarked on that resemblance to the Democratic law, that looks like it's through the situation of law of them being fought over by these two kinds of parties. I'll just say, I don't know if, I mean, that's good evidence, it's interesting, I don't know if you're right or wrong, but I don't really care, you use say on page six, look, I'm not sure if this is right, but it definitely opens in unsuspected depths on the meaning of the Republican sheds, fresh light on neglected but crucial dimensions of the platonic dialogues. And that's right, I mean, this is provocative and it really gets me thinking about it. It's at least possible, it's maybe likely even, and it definitely makes things interesting.

There's no question. And it challenges, I think, a standard assumption that you said you yourself had, but in which I, I hard read it, it certainly shook it up for me reading this, that even if the evidence isn't decisive, as you say, for ancient history, it's very difficult, especially about an individual person's fate to figure something like this out. You do, you are the only person, I think, who lays out this case, and what the reading of the Republic would look like, what the impact is for understanding of Socrates, and also for understanding of Plato's relationship to Socrates, so I think there's something very, very valuable. No question.

Even by people who are adamant against this reading, I think there's a lot to be said for this. I think David wants to ask a question about noble cards I can't remember. Now I know all about that. Before I forget the question, since we're on the topic of your interpretation, Jacob, I was hoping that since graduate students seem to, can you talk a little bit about how to opening up one's imaginative faculty to kind of produce a work like this book, CloudCon State?

I think a lot of graduate students, even young professors, like my two idiotic co-hosts, they're like, well, I gotta do standard reading, is that a lot of law, is the way it's always been done. And then here, but I could see young person say, wow, howling, he's just a big old brain, and I can't copy it, but I mean, do you have any kind of, how would you encourage a young person to think imaginatively about fresh interpretations of the dialogues, which it seems like everybody's covered, right, in a way that's really an awesome task to write on Plato, look at what Alex did. He wrote on, what's that dialogue nobody can access, Alex? Did you read your book on?

No, go to the bar, I mean, it's not a joke, right? But not a lot of people have written on it, so Alex found his lane. I mean, a fresh look at the Republic just seems like too awesome to task, so how do you give any advice? Yeah, sure, I mean, look, it's funny because I've heard from other people who say like, oh, you're writing on Plato, that must be so hard, you know, it's all been written about, right?

But that's really not the case at all. These are really deep writings, and I think it makes a lot of sense to simply have the assumption that everything in the dialogue is there for a reason. One thing I would say, and I just sort of did this with the Republic, and incidentally, there's a lot more to cash out. I mean, you can't, this is the first of all, it's a big dialogue, and one has to be selective in what one can talk about it writing on it.

But were there allusions to myth, for example, where Socrates mentions the name of a character from a play, or where a play is quoted or something? You know, go back and read the line. Always think about the characters. Think about, I mean, there's so many depths here.

Think about the structure of the dialogue. I mentioned my story about the Senate Republic, right? But there's sort of other aspects of it. You know, the dialogue is around Trev, and I did the calculations, it might be right there, might be wrong, but there's a way within a standard deviation or whatever, probably the correct thing.

It's roughly a day, right? It's like a 24 hour trip from down to the night along the back to Athens, right? So there's a kind of holdness there. Think about who's listening and who's present, what they say, where they go, what they do.

Look at sort of the drama of the thing. And like, for some of us, it really is fascinating. I have a soft spot for the Pacific, as I have to admit, you know, here he comes to Athens. He's from this San little city that tried to rebel from Athens, it was punished severely.

And you know, yeah. You made me sympathetic from me, like, well, of course he thinks justice is just the powerful empowerment. He's from the city that Athens just beat up. Right, okay, so yeah, yeah.

I'm actually really glad you mentioned that, because we had a set of fun, you know, the historian, right? I mean, to me, it was like, I mean, to be honest, I hadn't read the Hellenica. Okay, my ignorance is vast. It is vast.

So I'm wondering. I think it's great because it's translating it for. Which is, which is god bless you. I mean, I think that's fantastic, you know, because it's so rich.

And I, so I'm, so why don't read it. I'm like, what are, who is this third? Like what the hell's going on? What about the Rams?

What's going on? And like, you know, you never calls them the 30, right? I don't know. I'm just thinking.

I should know the answer to that for I say that. But so, so maybe I should have started at sort of 30,000 feet, which is this. All of these texts are interrelated. It's like one of my thesis here is that the Republic sheds light on history history, so that's like the Republic.

We've gone so far from it. And obviously the people are listening to your podcast are, I would bet like none of them is persuaded by the notion that like it was a philosopher, philosophers make arguments. If you read the dialogues, you look at the arguments, you have like everything else, ignore, right? No, yeah, of course, exactly the opposite.

So in the ancient, in ancient Athens, you had a contest for wisdom, poets were competing for wisdom, politicians were competing, philosophers, right? So anything you can lay your hands on. And, and you know that also goes to, I mean, actually in writing this book, I picked up a bunch of low volumes, some of which I haven't worked through at all, with little fragments from the Trigidians and stuff, right? I'm like tracking, like, okay, what is this the loud?

It turns out to be some, I can't remember if it's the rippities or escalists, you know, who wrote a tragedy about this. And the only things you can find out about it are these little snippets in a low, right? So look into everything and understand that these guys were talking to each other at a very high level. This is always a dialogue.

Yeah. Just one small point to the economics, right? I think he's writing on economics talks about relationships between Calius and his comicus, if it was this particular stomachus, right? And also, you realize that this guy had his wife stolen by someone else, and he's giving advice about how to rule your wife the whole time.

It just completely changes what's going on in the dialogue. And it makes Zenofen much more funny. And you realize he's like, he's like, in fact, he's like, he's like, here's this paragon over virtue whose wife runs off with somebody who's in the sessions lover of the mother or something like this. And just similarly, like, this is why I find this entirely plausible.

Here's this dialogue about justice. And the chief interlocutor might be like the chief victim of some major injustice or something like this. You know, it's an apnotic of Socrates failure and moderated, like he encouraged him as a chief, which does make a tragic, Greg, I mean, look, I mean, my mind was blown when I first read the Anabasis. It's found out that Mino is not crazy.

It's not a B, right? I mean, this guy, you know, Zenofen like writes with a poison pen about me. He's an anabicist. He's an anabicist.

He's an anabicist. Yes, he's one of the girls. He's a nasty guy. Mino is like, Zenofen describes him as a man who took pleasure in stabbing his friends in the back.

Like in other words, Mino is like what we know of Mino is he was a vicious man. And he's the guy who's talking with Socrates about virtue. Right? I mean, it's tough like this just blows your mind.

And I know that there are 20 other such things out there that I don't know about. We don't know. Of course. Well, not just because we can't.

Callius is in the Hellenica, for example. And I was like, wait a minute, it's not ducalius, right? And I had to go back to the Devornails. I was like, crap, it is callius.

Right, right. So I mean, and I didn't mean to say that. We don't know about like 20 people know about that I could know about if I had read the book, right? But so when you read these dialogues, like, you know, these are blue depths of meaning.

And cast your lines in and just keep waiting for that. It's really strike, right? Because you'll find it. And you'll find it if you sort of fill your head with stuff that other people say, why are you reading that?

Because I heard this guy's name in the book. I want to know more about it. Yeah. And also just one small point to take back on is like, just rereading.

Like, I mean, you teach the Republic year after year after year and you start like, oh my god, now I see it. I can't remember if I missed this the first time I read this. I always wondered why guys like Ben would teach him over and over. I was like, do you think of the mind like a colossal mind like that or Strauss is here?

I mean, these guys are teaching the same books, but no. I mean, every run. And that's not even to say what they do in the private time on the same two. Yeah.

All right. I didn't mean to do it. We can put this up very end. Oh, that's great.

Yeah, I think that was good. So in the interest of time, let's try to get through the last two points maybe in one fell swoop. We've got the sort of Socrates contest with Krius over the souls of the youth. And then maybe in conjunction with that, you can talk about the resemblance of Calibolas to the regime of the 30 tyrants and some of the illusions to it.

I mean, this is one of those things. I mean, I'm working right now on a project on the Republic in light of Thucydides. And every time I reread the Republic now, I pick up on just another subtle illusion to specific events or specific political structures, even. I mean, one that you point out is with the recipient saying that the best regime will be or the best city will be a tyrant over other cities.

Like, I mean, obviously he has in mind their Athens there. But yeah, so I mean, there's something to be said for developing these lines and then he revisiting the text and seeing. So why don't you talk about the contest with Krius and how you see it playing out in the Republic, specifically with the structure of Calibolas? Yeah, sure.

So there's a nice little book, The Tamayas and Krius, or maybe just The Tamayas by Warman Welliver. And he describes Krius as, and this is a quote, an ingrate and transgressed through the laws of hospitality of last femur, at least in Socrates opinion, a boar, a cheat, a perfidious partner, and a liar, which about sums him up. As I said, he fancies himself a poet and he sort of fails to distinguish between his idealized conviction and historical actuality. He confused his mere opinion with scientific knowledge.

He thinks he's a philosopher. He thinks he's a politician or a politically prudent or wise person. He's a kind of file and he overestimates the greatness of the Spartans and he just copies them and so forth. So speaking of other sources of illuminating things, I wondered if I could, he said, of course I ran across this thing, called the Cisipas Fragment in a play that is alleged to have been written by Krius and I'm pretty certain it was.

And the characteristic of this tells a story about the discovery of the gods or the invention of the gods, although he used the word discovery and it goes on like this. First I was chaos and lawlessness and then people invented law, right? But then the problem was that, and then people were good for a while until people realized that you could elude the law by committing injustice in secret. And so then a wise man, right?

Discovered as he says when I was saying invented the gods and fear of the gods and said the gods watch you all the time and they know when some of them were. And thus injustice was quenched, okay? This is totally in accord with Krius's atheism and if you study the carnities, but don't ask me a lot of questions about it because it's complicated, you will see the Krius is an atheist, right? That, you know, he understands the oracle at Delphi as a kind of like the notion that this is where this is a place of encounter with the gods and acts exoteric saying the inscriptions on Delphi are produced by a wise man who has kind of esoteric view.

So Krius basically, I mean, it's interesting if you look at him in the Tameus, which fascinatingly is prepped by the statement that Socrates yesterday gave us an account of a good regime and it looks a lot like a republic except up through the second wave of book five that is the sharing women in children's common, but no philosopher kings. And then Socrates had asked to see this regime put into play, and then Krius tells a story which he claims to be historically actual and it's about the Egyptians and he describes this scientific Egyptian versus a regime of priests who are demithologizers, right? So one goes to Egypt and tells a story about faith and writing the charity of the sign of the ground and the scientific priest says, oh, that's stupid, you bring so so much children, it's actually a meteorological phenomenon, you know, fire came up from heaven and burned up stuff. And the regime is one in which these priests rule scientifically, they're separate from warriors who are separate cast, who are separate from the farmers and so forth.

So here we have Krius' idea of a kind of scientific regime. In the carmities, it's extended even further, there's a whole debate and a discussion in which Krius imagines a meta-science, a ruling science that is a science of sciences. And that abstract science is there to confirm that other sciences or putative sciences are in fact sciences. And science runs everything, okay?

So it's an epistemic regime, right? It's a scientific regime by scientific knowers. But the ruling science is this kind of vacuous science of sciences, right? Turns out there's no place for philosophy in there and the Socrates makes that clear.

Even Ron, by the way, has picked up in her writings on the fact that Krius' or sorry, that Krius prefigures a modern totalitarian ruler who rules by abstractions. And what I see in the Republic is influenced of Krius in various ways. For example, Glaucon's myth is very much like that of his older relative in the sense that it's ingenious, it's a beautiful poetic construction. And it actually addresses the problem of the Sisipha story, right?

Because the problem is, or I'm sorry, it points to the problem of the Sisipha story. The problem is this, what happens if you've got people who don't believe in the gods, right? Because remember, the Sisipha story is, a wise man invented the gods. Well, obviously that person doesn't believe the gods.

And Glaucon's story about this guy who goes down to the ground, which takes place in ancient ancient times, right? So way long ago. And he goes underground and he looks in this big horse, in the ground, right? He sees a huge corpse, which is in a way, like the way I interpret this.

Like here's this, like a Trojan horse, but he goes underground and he sees all the things the poets tell of underground in the sand, but he's not afraid at all. And so inside the constructions of the poets, are just this large human being, right? So there's a kind of really atheistic talk to this. And that points to the problem, what do you do with people who don't believe the gods?

Well, the answer in short order is, you have a totalitarian regime. That is, if there are no gods who see everything, that's what we have in Calipolis, right? So we already see this kind of tension. I mean, creating sort of enters into it in this way.

And one point I say in the book that Calipolis is like a child of Thrasymachus and Glaucon, right? You know, like Thrasymachus, or well, like Thrasymachus, they advocate like a conception of politics as a master science. And he supposes that knowledge can be stated with clarity and precision. And then I'm gonna argue that Calipolis is, like if you live in Calipolis, you don't need to eat the ikis right, if you're at the top of the heat, because you can have multiple sexual multiple partners, your reward with cuts of meat and drinking and all this stuff, that Homer that was purged out of the virtuous city, and you can beat up anyone you want, because there's no laws against the salt and so forth.

Yeah, I think that was a really valuable point that I don't think many people recognize it. And it was certainly new to me. Was this, we just kind of assume, oh yeah, the city's purged, you know? It's all better.

And then you start to realize, wait, no, no, no, no, a lot of the stuff sneaks back in in a very subtle way. And so it becomes decadent again. It's one way to put your thought on this, and correctly if this is putting words in your mouth, but there's a kind of tragedy involved here where philosophy is supposed to be about replacing opinions with knowledge or trying to and encountering all these problems, these obstacles, discovering how you're in your own way and all that sort of thing. But to get people interested in the first place, you have to kind of appeal to this other way around, which is this transformative and constantly engaged activity, this dialectical search, ends up being turned into what you end up calling ideology, which I think is really helpful as a way of thinking about this, at least in contemporary terms, that it gets ultimately vulgarized and turned into a kind of, a paradigm or model that you can just apply to politics within difference to the distinctive in each person.

Anyway, it makes the cautionary tale, so the Republic is, I think, by many Straussians interpreted as a cautionary tale about glaucon. In a way, you expand that and you get a cautionary tale about Socrates and his own sort of possible shortcomings in the style. Yeah, that's an excellent way to put it, Alex. I really appreciate that because I mentioned earlier how hesitant Socrates was to talk in book five about narrations pertaining to women and children.

And part of his hesitation, I think, is that he knows he's going to say things that will make the regime more attractive to glaucon. Now, again, if you're not glaucon, and by that I mean, so speak, cock of the walk, right? Like you are the top dude, right? He is a well-known warrior, you know?

He is smart, he is all this stuff. Okay, so a guy like him is gonna have everything. It's the city of haves and haves, not, right? Because remember, you've got this technically manipulated lottery of marriages, quote unquote, right?

And the lesser warriors keep losing, which is sort of funny because in books three and four, when they educated the warriors, Socrates argued. There was one point when I think out of Antiseur, someone says like, well, what if they're finding a bigger city, that's not a problem, right? Because these guys are much more fit, these warriors are gonna be great, right? But then it turns out, even those guys aren't good enough, right?

Because like for Calipolis, so in Calipolis, those guys keep losing, they don't have sex at all, then these other guys are getting sex all the time. And then they could beat up anyone they want, you know, like Socrates kind of is a melee mouth. He's like, most really young men won't beat up older men, unless they're instructed to do so by older men. But of course that's crazy.

And you know, over it had been pushed out, I mean, in books three, depending on books three, it's like, you don't wanna tell stories about these heroes, you don't get any trauma, you're eating all this food, and stuff. And now it's like, no, you get that stuff, but I mean, and there's like a war I had when it, I mean, it's like a war, it's like you get warship, it's a demigod when you die, right? And Golcus, like, tell me how to bring the city to be, and he's like, let's do it, you're so excited, but it's very dangerous. And you're right, so this is what happens when you kind of wander into this kind of game, where like life's actually it's not what he's doing.

I mean, you know, is he playing with the idea that he could convert elsabaisies or a Galcan and that that would have political consequences? Right? Or is he trying to just win them for philosophy? Or what's he doing?

But it's dangerous stuff. It's definitely dangerous. But one of the things, I mean, decline that the risks are reduced because things are going off the rails already, right? Like the office, the rhetoricians, like you see sort of the progression, right?

They're sort of this heseotic version of justice that capitalists put forward and then lemme guess kind of does a Homeric conception and then you get this rhetorical sophisticated attack on justice. And then you know, the glaup kind opens up a two by saying, look, we've been talked to death by these guys, right? So they're already kind of cynical, they're already been kind of corrupted. I don't know if I'm trying to excuse them too much in my head, but no, I think it's a good point.

And there's some analogies to our time too. I mean, as politics becomes more brutal, you know, you have voices on various sides saying, you know, we need to take up arms in the same way, right? We can't really this game of being dignified and decent, you know, but that's dangerous. That's an escalation.

Yeah, I know you're right. You know, you know, so let's see, where were we? Oh, I want to talk about the resemblance between Calypical as Sparta and the regime with the 30 tyrants, right? So, so here's the cool thing.

So here's what's interesting about pretty is he was one of a small group of oligarchic Athenians known as E-force, okay, after the five bottles, Spartan officials of that name. Now when the 30 came in, he called the five leading members of the 30 E-force. There were 30 tyrants and 30 is the number of the Gerusia, which is that the council elders at Sparta. There were 300 lash bearers, guys with webs who came around with leaders of the 30, the Spartan kings had 300 lash bearers.

There were 3000 citizens on a list of citizens. And as you know, like the Ramades was kicked off the list before it was executed, right? And there were 3000 Spartans citizens and there were 3000 citizens on the list under the 30. So, and there are other things like the Athenians from the lower orders were depicted from the city in the Spartans did the same thing.

They had these Peri Oika, these people who dwelled about Sparta that they sort of kicked out from the villages around Sparta. So there's a kind of thing like the Sparta, it's 3000, the Gerus, the other 30, and maybe like the philosophy of the Calypolis and so to speak these, these E-force, right? And it's interesting. I mean, you know, Calypolis practices this politics of aristocratic purity as well, and it does so in all these divisions.

One of the things I realized about Calypolis is, you know, Saturday talks about a community of pleasure and pain, but I think you guys would appreciate the fact that if like most people don't get any sex at all and a few people get all the sex, that's going to create a lot of hostility. And then if you have some, you guys always go mad at me and tell me about it. Tell me about it. Yeah, right.

So you guys understand this, I don't have to dwell on it. So that's like, I'm just keep playing the lottery. I'm just playing the lottery. So I just assume, you know, it's not a fake.

So are you guys playing the lottery? Next time I'm going to win the lottery. No, this is the new thing. Yeah, this is what goes out.

It's all fun to games Greg. So your kid comes out bald with a big nose and yeah, yeah, right? Listen, down Mount Tagueras or whatever it's called and started. But then also like, you know, the training for the philosopher things, if you read that carefully, it's like, yeah, kind of exit at certain points, like you got to go all the way through.

And then there's all these guys like, I almost made it, you know, it's just designed to, it's not a half these guys are not happy campers for sure. Right? No. So, so the question then is a right.

Like, are Socrates teachings reflected in the regime of the 30? Like, was Socrates behind the regime of 30 with these ideas? Or are critics of teachings reflected in Calypolis? Right?

I mean, which came first here is Socrates echoing pretty such ideas, right? And if so, you know, why is he doing that? Now, if he is echoing those ideas, then maybe it's because he knows that glaucon is already attracted to that, right? But this is not a question I can settle into in the book.

But yeah, so I think that's, that's a problem. And no, I mean, let's the regime itself. I mean, it's gosh, it's just a blueprint for some of the nasty stuff we saw in the ideological experimentation in the 20th century, you know, poets making state mandated content and, you know, any speech that calls into the question, the goodness of the laws or customs is outlawed. And then this kind of elite cadre, right, which I mean, the horrible thing about it is like in books that my friend, Russell, why I said the book and play this vlog, which is great.

And she points out, there's no mention of intellectual heroes in books, like, like, exactly, if you're one of these warriors, and you did all this stuff and you get to that point, you're really good. Now we're going to see if you're a coward, or you can really handle the grind, you know, you're going to learn philosophy. And it's this one kind of philosophy, it's not dialogical, right? It's bad.

Yeah, I read a quote of yours that on this exact point that I thought was one of the best stated points. It's not page 27207 at the bottom. Can one who does not love, so you're talking about this kind of enforced instruction, use this example of a piano student, right, who's kind of forced to sort of do their drills and everything. We say, can one who does not love the highest things truly know them is erotically detached proficiency in systematic metaphysics, sufficient when it comes to the good?

That's a good burn. Yeah, well, I can think of a professor. Hey, there's a point that yours at me literally right now. No, this is about somebody else.

No. It's not that good be distorted and diminished when those who are merely competent, approach it in the spirit of mathematics, independently of music. This struck me as a great indictment of like analytic metaphysics in a way by of any kind of non-arotic sort of attempt to just master a subject through whips and blows, right, in effect. But just to share discipline, to work your way through something, we've all had that experience of studying something.

Maybe you're curious at first, but you're just like, I'm going to get through this, right? I'm going to figure it out. And then you figured it out and you just don't care, right? Like there's no, and do want a person like that who treats everything like a math problem that just kind of try to force us off.

Don't they need that musical kind of erotic humane, you could just say, touch to it. I thought that was a really well put. Yeah. And you know, it reminds me something I wanted to say earlier.

Now, remember that the philosopher is introduced in the Republic to solve a political problem, right? Like, Socrates says it less philosophers rule. You know, the cities will, you know, not rest from hills. Now, when he introduces the philosopher, it's the erotic philosopher.

But then between book five and book six, the philosopher suddenly becomes wise, not a secret wisdom, but wise, right? Like the wise guy can look at the thing. So there's an necessity that the rulers be, and there's maybe a political necessity. Wise.

Like, if you think about what Socrates would be a good ruler, well, one aren't even against that possibility would be he'd be constantly questioning and thinking, now that might make a good rule. I'm not saying it wouldn't. But politically, it might be necessary to say, no, you're ruled by wise people. So the other thing I want to mention is this abstract metaphysics.

Like, what does it have to do with politics? Like these guys are getting all this learning, and then they're going to do what exactly? They're going to take this abstract understanding and like imprint it or something. I mean, exactly how is that going to work?