Welcome back to the new thing. My name is David Bart with me as always. This is my good friend Greg McBrayer. How are you Greg?
I'm good, but you're not always here, David. That's true. I'm not. And a few episodes I've been replaced by Tom Cleveland.
Yeah. In the last episode I heard I had fallen into a bit in a biz. And then Richard Belpley wrote me an email. He was worried.
Oh, no, no, no. I wrote him an email asking a question about Nietzsche. And then he responded, I'm happy you're alive. I heard you would fall into the biz.
That's pretty good. Oh, yeah. So how you doing, Alex? Doing all right.
Today we are talking about. Do we want to have an anecdote? We like to start with an anecdote, right? Yeah.
So Greg, you were an extra on a movie set for the film Wormtown. Wormtown. That's right. Yes.
When this little dog and pony show we have here goes belly up, as I'm sure it will, I'm just going to try and make sure that I got something to fall back on. And that's acting. Did you have to turn a belly down before you go belly up? Yeah, I guess that's probably right.
Yeah. You have to turn a profile. But you should, it's good deed entertainment. I think you guys should all look for it on another Cannes Film Festival or a straight DVD, whichever it does.
I don't really actually know. But the Walmart DVD then? I'm a worm infested drum store owner number two. That's my part.
You sent us a picture of your makeup. I legit thought you had fallen, but you didn't look for it. You just looked pockmarked. So I didn't understand.
I thought maybe you got hit with some buckshot or something. The worms don't bruise you, Alex. They just come out of your face. Yeah.
Apparently. Anyway, I was going. I was once in a film as well. Seymour?
I think we know what it was called, but we can't save it from our listeners. Yeah, you can only buy the film in a specialized video rental store. I mean, they don't rent the newspaper. We'll land jokes.
What are we doing today? You can do a couple of nickels in New York in the 80s. You have just a sack of quarters and a few hours. We come into a little booth in the talkies.
Yeah. So today is book one of the Republic. We've touched on the Republican number of episodes, one with Arlene Saxon House. The question of women in the Republic of book five.
Alex and Greg presented a nice overview of the Republic. I thought it was just okay, but I appreciate that. You might consider listening to if you haven't. Greg, the operation for this episode, this is the first of our deeper dives into the Republic.
So we start with book one, not simply because that's the beginning, but it sets up a number of things. I guess it is just because it's the beginning one of when we're trying to say something interesting. It's the beginning. This is where we start.
But it's also a bizarre beginning, right? Alex? Yeah, I mean, it's, I personally find it, especially after you've read the whole book, I personally find it very, very, I mean, not me personally. I think a lot of people find it very different.
from the rest of the book, whereas the rest of the book is by and large constructing a city in speech, right, trying to build or found a city, talk about its institutions, etc. Book one is a series of very strange kind of wermy refutations. It's one of the ugliest dialogues in terms of how angry, especially the placenticus gets. And for that reason, I think it raises the question of why does this book that has so many sort of positive proposals begin with this sort of style of argumentation.
It's very memorable as a result, right? You know, everybody comes away with a strong opinion about what happens, especially between Socrates and this rhetorician or Semicus. And so, and in many ways, I think it's an apt introduction to the question of justice because that's how people are when they discuss justice, right? They really worked up.
Yeah, but you know, it's like you need a good guy to take your, I think, book one and probably book two, because Socrates advances bizarre weak arguments. It's confusing you if you knew nothing about if you didn't have a good guy, you think, well, I thought Socrates was supposed to be smart. What's going on here? And there's, and for those who are interested in such a guide as a great book by Devin Snalfour, called Plato's introduction to justice, and it's, it's a nice small volume, it's a hundred or so pages, and it takes you through very clearly what's going on in the drama.
So if anybody's interested after listening to this episode and reading more about book one, well, one is your book one, but two, I think Stauffer's book is a must read. And I think he does half a book two, maybe as well. So where does it start, Alex? Where does the action of the, it starts in a place, there's movement right at the beginning, where it starts is not where the conversation actually begins in earnest.
So right at the, so we should know right at the beginning again that the dialogue is narrated, apparently the day after Socrates goes through what must have been a 12 hour conversation, right, 300 pages of text with a conversation, he goes back to it again the day after. So everything is narrated, but to just kind of go within the narration, aside from the questions and there's a lot of questions that the narration raises, Socrates has gone down to the parreas with glaucon. That's one of Plato's two brothers, the other being Idemantis, the two brothers in the dialogue. They've gone to see what seems to be a couple of processions by the Athenians of the Thracians, as well as to pray to the goddess who appears to be Bendis.
I think Greg is going to talk about this a little bit afterwards. After that they decide let's go back to Athens, but along the way they're interrupted by Polomarchus, who's with Idemantis and some others. There's a kind of playful banter about possibly compelling Socrates to stay glaucon ultimately wants him to stay and Socrates agrees to go along with what the group decides. He's enticed in part by a conversation with young men.
They go back to Polomarchus' house where his dad, Keflis, is as well as a bunch of others. I'm forgetting all the names here, but Nicaratus, the son of Nicius, is there. Klytophon, who comes up later in book one, is there. Instead of having the dinner that they were going to have, they end up having a conversation about justice partly because Socrates gets into a conversation with Keflis, a kind of pie as old man.
After that you get two more interlocutors, after Socrates gently pushes back on Keflis' notion of justice. Keflis quickly departs and his son Polomarchus comes in. They talk a bit longer. They have a few arguments.
The conclusion of those really irritates the Arrittates, who comes in a wildly and the remainder of book one. I guess more than half of it. Yeah, well more than half of it is just Socrates and the Arrittates have a conversation. I count six arguments along with a couple of interludes.
The Arrittates gives a few speeches. Klytophon and Polomarchus come in briefly after the first argument and glaucon comes in after the third argument, I believe. After that, it's just Socrates and the Arrittates. It ends again after the Arrittates has been sweating, and splushed, and he's very upset.
Lissakri is saying, well, I really haven't answered the question. What is justice? All I've done is talked about whether it's advantageous or harmful, et cetera, et cetera. That leaves you again with this feeling of what did I just read?
30 pages or so of chaotic conversation. What purpose did it serve? And glaucon comes in at the beginning of book two, actually, with a similar objection in mind. So I think part of what you need to do in reading book one is to understand its purpose.
I think part of the purpose you need to understand it as meant to provoke glaucon to objects in book two. Why that involves then a shift from ugly, chaotic argument to much more smooth exposition of these different set pieces, almost topics of discussion, they talk about poetry, they talk about philosophical education, this, that, and the other thing to solve. Why that entails that transition is another question that maybe we'll have to get to later on in double life. But that generally happens in the course of the course.
So if I remember correctly, Socrates is compelled to stay and have this conversation. He's compelled three times by Paul Marcus. It's glaucon who answers every time on behalf of Socrates. The glaucon events is a kind of earnestness and interest in the conversation right from the start.
I don't know. I don't think this is one of these cases where Socrates is feigning disinterest or doing some kind of sleight of hand, but really has a plan for the conversation. It seems that his day was interrupted. But one thing I'll say is, I'd have to double check this, but last time I was reading this, I became suspicious.
I'd always assume that that Polymachus was trying to speak to Socrates. But the last time that I read it, it became less clear to me. So Polymachus, at the very beginning, the prologue, as it were, Socrates is compelled to participate in the conversation. You're right.
But what happens is that Polymachus sends a slave away after Socrates and glaucon who are walking together and commands them to stay. But it's not clear in the text, as I had remembered, that the slave is trying to stop Socrates. And so then I was thinking myself, is it actually does he want to talk to glaucon and not Socrates? Just a question.
It's not clear in the text in a way that I'd always assume that it was crystal clear that Planck was trying to get Socrates to stay. Maybe what he's trying to do is glaucon to stay. And then it's, and then you're right, glaucon is the one who keeps responding. And it's like glaucon is trying to stay, but maybe he wants to also persuade Socrates to stay.
Anyway, just something that I happened upon the last time. And then it sort of, maybe that's not right. Maybe it is Socrates. But if it's glaucon that he's trying to get to stay, what does that do about what's happening here?
What does that do for the drama of the dialogue? And then you're right that there are these series of enticements glaucon's replays that roll of trying to forge some kind of compromise and keep them all staying. But it's not even, excuse me, it's not even plemmachus then who lists all the possible reasons why they should stay. And one of them is the one that seems to stick with Socrates as the prospect of conversing with young people, which seems to be thrown in as a kind of a side.
But the other things seem to be much more named and enticing people to stay, right? Like a race, drinking food, these kinds of things. And then, oh, we need to talk. I'd always thought that last one was the clinter.
Like they knew that that was the one that we could stop. I'm suspicious that the first three are actually meant to be enticements. And the last one just kind of an afterthought. And I would say those are enticements that specks with glaucon, right?
Who we know. Yeah, right. Exactly. Has real inclinations towards the luxury of Athens, right?
He objects early in the books when they're building the city and speech saying, I want relishes with you. I want all the stuff, court is ins, chorus girls and all that sort of stuff. So certainly, now none of that happens. And Socrates effectively replaces that with this afterthought, Greg, that you bring up, which is, I think, a great irony.
You had some thoughts on the setting with the festival. Oh, yeah, that's good. That's always been a mystery to me. What's going on?
I remember what I said. I'll try and reach the fore. It's a foreign goddess. And Socrates seems to take interest.
Right. And so I guess, yeah, maybe if I repeat myself or if this is something that just the three of us have talked about before. So at the very beginning, Socrates makes clear that he wanted to go see this festival. And the question is, why does he want to see it?
Well, he says that he wanted to see it. He wanted to see the introduction of a new goddess. And he also went to pray. So the the omission there is that he didn't necessarily want to pray, but that was most interesting to him was to see the introduction of a new deity.
And I just wondered, and this new deity, by the way, is as Alex alluded to is Bendis that's actually confirmed later in the text, not here in book one. And Bendis, of course, was the Thracian version of Artemis. So the Thracians were introducing the Athens, kind of barbaric version of the goddess that was already in their Pantheon so to speak. But I just wondered if Socrates wasn't drawn to this place, because he was interested principally in seeing what it would take to introduce new divinities.
And so therefore, Socrates, as most of our listeners would know, was convicted of impiety and corrupting youth and the impiety consisted of introducing new deities, not believing the conventional gods but introducing new deities. And you're saying he wants to take what notes for his scheme? I wondered if part of what wasn't drawing him here was to see how one successfully introduces new deities into a city. Yeah.
I mean, I realize that's a little out there, but never thought of it. And for what it's worth, later on, I think we do see this if we ever get around to book seven, I guess book seven principally, when he introduces the forms or ideas that he does basically introduce a new kind of deity in the Athens, especially among these young people. So it would seem to be the flip side of this barbaric introduction, because it's the fill of thought. And they're on horseback, right?
And I'm passing torches to one another. Yeah. Tell me more about that. I don't know.
I anything I would say would just be grasping too much about the grass away grass away. No, the significance of light. I'm sure that's a big part of it. Yeah, torches, torches versus later on in the Algory of the cave, right, right, right, the sun is the idea of is the sort of the son of the image of the god, the good, she's good, and then the fire in the cave.
And so you have this kind of artificial light, they're passing from one to another. Yeah, there's a lot of the other danger. That's right. And we do learn something else that Plaucon thought it was interesting enough to accompany Socrates.
Right. Yeah. So then there's a question of why these two are hanging out, which I only can go to Zenefen to for answers because it doesn't seem to be a very good answer and attacks for why these two hang out. Yeah.
I mean, if as you know Greg, he's going down there to see how new divinities are introduced and independent of that, Glaucon would take an interest in just the sort of novelty of everything going on. It seems like there might be just a kind of mutual interest in going to see this, but it falls after that, maybe not so much. Yeah. Maybe the other step there would be if Glaucon were interested in seeing novel things, Socrates could potentially be having Glaucon along for the ride.
Just sort of think, well, let's see how this guy receives these new divinities. Let's see how these ambitious young people will accept these kinds of things. Greg, now you mentioned Zenefen. I don't know if we covered this in our introductory episode, but I think it would be important to tell the folks in our web.
Yeah, you mentioned I don't remember if we did this in the last episode or just when we were talking in the run of show and the lead up that we can't actually date the Republic. Many of the dialogues are pretty easy to date when they actually would have happened in Socrates' life. Some of them are hard to date. Some of them have weird dates.
Some of them have excellency apparently happens after Socrates has died. There seem to be anachronisms in the Republic so that we can't actually make a precise dating. One of the curiosities to me is that in Zenefen, we learned that Socrates took an interest in Glaucon after having been specifically asked to look after him by Plato. So that Socrates' interest in Glaucon was driven by his affection for Plato.
There's a little bit of problem andachronistically there because it seems like Plato would have been too young when the Republic takes place. So there's some fudging here going on, but I do think that I suspect that that's what Zenefen is implying. He's more than implying. He's very clear about this.
I think Plato doesn't play it actually, the public seems to bear it on. I wonder how much Plato was trying to sort of get Socrates to convince Glaucon to this brother's not just some tasty face, but he's actually essentially useful to society. So the interesting Glaucon is because Glaucon has this more impressive younger brother and he's trying to make his brother interested in philosophy, or at least taller than philosophy, I suppose. Yeah.
And that's in book three. They're all leading young men, right? This is in an ordinary collection of Athenian. Right.
Glaucon, we didn't talk about this last time, but the reason Plato asked Socrates to take an interesting Glaucon is because Glaucon is trying to basically run for president when he was like 18. He's a little bit more than that. And so he has this impressive political ambition and he wants to set himself up on a political stage at a very young age. And Plato is asked to try and temper his political ambition.
Yeah, that's very good. As you write, these are all leading lights. These are all sort of very impressive types, very impressive human beings. And wealthy and connected to.
So it's not just an ambitious guy who's like sitting off in the corner, you know, he's and a lot of his family got involved, right? At the end of the Peloponnesian War in Oligarchy, the violent Oligarchy that was set up there. And so a man with that kind of ambition of those kind of connections, many of the other members of his family as a result of that ended up getting involved in some pretty ugly things. So there's, I think a lot hangs on what happens to Glaucon here.
Right. And we mentioned that Jacob howland has this interesting book about Glaucon that just came out sort of because we don't really know what happens to Glaucon, right? I think we should have him on to talk about that would be fantastic because he has this great thesis that Glaucon actually is a bit too much of a 30. I think he's involved in the 30s.
Oh, okay. But in any event, this book one, we have the prologue, which I guess we've now kind of beaten. There's still a ton more. I mean, the first words are I went down, which of course, the famous allegory gave to comes later.
There's the compulsion, as you mentioned earlier, there's the justice of slavery, right? So that, I mean, there's all kinds of questions here already, right? In the beginning, Peloponnes is ordering around like he said, kind of a tyrant or an autocrowd or something like this. There are all these political questions that's around the prologue.
But as Alex mentioned, the bulk of book one takes place. There are three separate conversations with three primary enoligators, Kefelis, Pelamicus, and Tristemicus. And I guess maybe a quick sort of, they're in the Pyreas, Glaucon, and Pelamicus are there and some others, and they persuade his actions to go back to the house of this old guy, Kefelis. So 95% plus of the Plato's Republic, at least the internal dialogue, the internal narration takes place at his house, where all the men, and I try to draw this out when I couldn't do it to my satisfaction, all the men are seated around a circle, it seems.
Kefelis seems to be at the head of that circle, and he sort of seems to be talking about something, I'm guessing religious and nature because he's just sacrificed. He's isn't he dressed out, he's sort of wearing a sacrificial garb. He's not crowned. That's what that was my recollection.
Yeah. And so he's the main guy there, so they go to his house. What do we know about Kefelis? The first main conversation takes place between Sakhshin and Kefelis.
Kefelis is old. They even, he's even described as, oh gosh, should we actually find this passage right? There's this nice line from, is it from Homer? He's at the threshold of old age.
So Sakhriti's not, you said he treats him very politely. I don't think that's right. I actually think he's very rude to Kefelis, because one of the first questions is basically, you're about to die. What's that like?
Which I don't, I don't think that's very polite question. You ask me that sometimes, and I never think stuff on that. I don't think it's very polite at all. It's extremely rude.
Hey, how's it going? You're about to die. What's that like? So we know these old, we also know these wealthy, how do you make his money tanning?
Is that right? I thought he inherited it's, okay. No, it's a war profit here. Pericles, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one.
He seemed to have a factory. I think he was kind of innovator. That's right. I was thinking of the high conditions and plastics.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's wealthy. We know he's a foreigner. He's not a Athenian.
He's a resident alien, so he has sort of some rights. He's there legally, but he's not a town. So we know he's wealthy. We know he's not a Athenian.
And he's sort of, what else do we know about him? Well, we know that he's not a very pious. Well, we know that he has recently become pious as he's about to die. And he tells us that when he was a young man, he laughed the stories about the gods.
And we also, I think, can safely infer that he was a fairly immoral young man, that he probably robbed and stole. And I suspect he was in a... Whoa, yeah, he was a young David Barr, folks at home. I think that's all they need to know.
And so, yeah, that's it. I think that's what we need to know about him. You're right that he's very outwardly pious, but this is something new that he's discovered in old age. He tells us that now that he's about to die, he's become filled with fear at the stories that have been told about what happens to people in the afterlife.
So his new found piety is connected to his new found awareness of his own mortality. He actually draws out of him a definition of justice. He basically, sort of, as I mentioned, he says, what's it like to be old and about to die? And he's like, actually, it's not that bad.
I'm sort of free from the compulsion to commit injustice like I used to be. I used to do these natural things. And now I don't have to. And I can actually pay back to debts.
I owe people and all these things. I can tell the truth. And Socrates draws out of Kefelis, a definition of justice that is paying back what you owe and telling the truth. Now, this isn't immediately obviously connected to his piety, but I've done a little bit of work on this.
And I've shared this with Alice before. I think Kefelis' definition of justice comes pretty much verbatim out of Hesiod. And by the way, also, his stories of what happens to the souls of the dead, I think also comes out of Hesiod. So from the beginning, I think you get this very quick connection in Kefelis' character between ordinary piety and justice and his conception of how he ought to live.
Just very quickly, he's been a very unjust human being. He's having a kind of deathbed conversion. And he's trying to atone for all the wrong things that he's done. Socrates not very indelicately asks him whether or not that's possible.
By asking whether or not it is simply the case that justice demands telling the truth and paying back what you owe. He gives the following thought experiment to Kefelis. He says, oh, so you should always pay back what you owe. And Kefelis says, of course, and he says, well, what if you've loaned a weapon to your friend and they come back muttering the name of their ex-girlfriend and saying, I'm going to kill her?
Should you give the weapon back at that point? Or is justice the man that you're not? And he's like, no, no, no, first you should. And so, Socrates says, well, then maybe justice doesn't simply mean paying back what you owe.
And at this point, Kefelis abscons. And I think he leaves largely because he has too much at stake in the question of justice at this point. He's about to die. He doesn't want his understanding of justice rocks.
And so he's like, I'm out of here. Justice is paying back what you owe telling the truth. I don't want to go to hell. I don't want to burn eternally.
Pelimachus, why don't you take over the conversation? And he turns the conversation over to his son. I guess it may be worth pointing out that Kefelis, our medical doctors in the audience will know this is related to the Greek word for head. So the head of the household, his name literally means Kefelis literally means head.
So he hands it over to his son, war, battler, or something like that. Pelimachus. Do you think I have a question about the handoff? Sure.
Do you think it's an unthinking handoff? I agree. I don't want my preconceived notions to get rocked, especially as I'm in advanced years. It's just too destabilizing, potentially.
Do you think that he's interested in his son going further and understanding deeper? Or is it simply a lightning quick reaction? I think it's the latter. But one funny thing about the handoff is that I didn't mention this entirely, but when he talks about the stories about what happens to you when you die, one is that you will be annihilated and your household, your entire household will also be annihilated, wiped out, darkens off the face of the earth.
And so when he talks about handing over the argument to Pelimachus' son, and the son talks about getting what's hereditary right, I think that there is this joke about his entire inheritance being wiped out or annihilated. That he may not have anything to give to Pelimachus or infer that Pelimachus himself, I mean, implicitly, even Pelimachus might be wiped out as a result of Kefelis' injustice. I think if you trace it out, I think he's just scared. And I don't think he actually cares about another secret.
I've never thought about that. We have that laugh. Maybe he has that laugh. And one question that I feel like is really rich because I think it's essentially impossible to answer, but it's meant to be questioned.
Why does he laugh? Is it the nervous laughter of somebody who's like, I think I'll go back to my sacrifices? Or is it the laugh of confidence and his piety? Like, okay, Socrates, look, you can't explain these things.
It's just what the gods have ordered us to do. I think there's a lot that hangs on that. You know, one other point there is if he is, I mean, as he must be, I think, dimly aware that he doesn't understand these things sufficiently. Maybe you're right, David.
Maybe he is hopeful that his son will sort of understand these things better than him because he did. Before it gets, it turns really nasty. He does say, you know, I actually am interested in having these kinds of conversations now. Well, it's quickly shown that he doesn't actually believe that.
But yeah, that's what I'm saying. My conversations, how do you think old men talk about sex? I mean, that's what he's conversations that he writes as well. It's kind of good old days.
Are you still able? Yeah, I think that's what he's doing. How do you party and have a good time? Yeah, that's right.
One thing I'll note about Kefelis' remove onto Polemarchus is that, and this I think is a transition because I think the same holds true for Polemarchus is that Kefelis seems to be unique among his friends in that he doesn't lament the loss of his libido on the fact that he came. Oh, yeah. And I think that's because he's not actually an Athenian and probably most of his friends are actual citizens. Athenian citizens.
Athens is in, again, this is what we talked about this last time, but Athens is in political and world decline. It's decadent. It's part of the introduction of these new gods is, you know, is an element of this. And Polemarchus too seems to really care about defending his father, but also defending justice, right?
Showing that it is good. And he's even won over to a kind of universal beneficence, whereas there's semicus who seems to be disfocusing on for the many and for their kind of moral corruption comes in in praise of tyranny, more or less. And that's really the whole problem of the book. And so one of the things that I think is important to recognize what Kefelis' as silly as he might be and that he doesn't have really good support for his view.
In a way, his his contentment, whether it's Shiger or not, it seems to be that he's more content with justice than anybody else. I think Polemarchus is in a way also very content with justice, certainly more than say glaukon or adenia desert with your semikas. And it might be that as you read the rest of the Republic, you have to ask, I don't, you know, can Socrates actually give you the kind of confidence that Kefelis has through their arguments alone? Can he actually prove that justice is good or is the best that you can do if you really want to be just to just listen to what's said about it?
And I hope that it all works out the way that Kefelis does. Right. You mentioned in passing the arrows business. Kefelis, as I mentioned, I suspect that he committed adultery or was a great flander or something when he was a young man and he's now released from this.
I mean, the theme of love or erotic longing is sort of central to what happens in the Kefelis conversation. I think that's very important to see. As Alice mentioned, when he's talking with his buddies, they're all lamenting the good old days and he's the sole person who says he's actually glad to be released from the tyrant eros and love. He's moved on to polemicus, the polemicus section.
I would just want to have the Kefelis section just to summarize their three main conversations I see there. There's a conversation about old age, then they turn to a conversation about wealth, and then finally a conversation about justice where Socrates draws up this definition of justice from Kefelis. So what he leaves and so he turns it over to his son who seems eager to defend him. Tell us about polemicus, Alex.
You're jumping? Yeah. So, I mean, we don't know much about him outside this dialogue. His brother, Lisius, who's there, wrote a speech called against Eratosthenes.
This was his speech against, well, Eratosthenes, who had quit polemicus to death. What we get from that speech, which is not a whole lot, is that polemicus was courageous in defending his household. And that's it. Aside from that, we know from Plato's Phaedrus that Socrates says that that polemicus ended up being very much engaged in philosophy.
I think that's an important thing to put emphasis on because polemicus doesn't have the cynicism of the symbol or the ambivalence of Glaucon. He seems really good willed. He doesn't want justice to be good and he really cares about justice. And I think it's very easy to think that you're being philosophically insightful in just tearing everything down.
But I think if we take seriously that polemicus cares most about justice, it seems, among the people, and is most open with himself about his care about justice, maybe out of that concern that you actually do want justice to be good, but you want to think it through adequately. Maybe something like philosophic insight can come from that. I think he's less than a cynicism of the systemic. Sorry, Greg.
I think he's less attached to justice than the sake of glaucon or animatus. I don't know if I can defend it. I don't know if I can. Sorry, I think this is connected to something I would say about polemicus.
He's the only one who changes his mind. He seems to change his mind legitimately, which I think means a kind of openness, which I think means therefore he's less attached to things, including his own conception of justice. He's initially very patriotic or very, you know, what's the better way to say that? He's eager to defend his father.
He has a very conventional understanding of justice like his dad, his dad, as I understand it. As I mentioned, but sort of very heseotic view of justice. And I think polemicus, but it's very Homeric view of justice. So we still have both of these religious views, but he changes his mind.
And I don't know, it's weird to say this because I think glaucon is deeply confused and he's also deeply attracted to injustice. So it's weird to say that I think glaucon might be more attached to justice, even though he's more obviously attracted to injustice. But go ahead, Alex. Yeah, I think that's helpful.
He's more tractable for sure in many ways. And I think he's more honest with himself, that he does, because there's, you know, there's a civic is it's easier to see him maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves, but he's easy to see him as a kind of jaded idealist, right? Like he's gonna, he's gonna, he seems almost upset that justice isn't better, right? That it seems unjust to justice to lay claim to our allegiance while not fulfilling its full claims to be good.
And in a way, maybe that honesty opens him up to taking seriously in what sense justice might be good. But you know, I agree, in a way, he might be less attached in the sense that he's, he's less trying to solve the problem and more sort of concerned with justice. But yeah, I mean, it's the sort of, I mean, he's depressed back against myself. But I mean, he's also, he seems like the most decent guy here.
So maybe you're right that he is the most just and he's sort of, we're getting ahead of ourselves, but through plemmachus, he's me, I'm careful as defines, he doesn't find it, sorry, he's defines from him that justice is telling the truth and paying back what you owe. And plemmachus sort of basically arrives at the homeric position that justice is benefiting friends and harming enemies. And sovereignty sort of leads him to the view that justice actually means harming no one, which is a really nice, attractive account of justice. But I mean, then we have to put some people in jail, don't we have to execute some criminals, don't we have to fight wars occasionally.
And so I wonder if he's a little too naive about the nastiness of the world, if if their stomach is as too jaded by the nasty, so we're all I wonder if plemmachus is insufficiently tuned to it. Yeah, you wonder the conclusion is very open ended. There's a lot of questions you have at the end of it. But I think one of the questions you want to ask is how would he view punishment?
Like you said, would he, right, you're supposed to make somebody better and more just. And in that way, make them also more excellent. This is the basic sort of view they come to. Would that without rule out punishment or would you have to understand incarcerating somebody as actually going to make them better and teach them a lesson?
This is a big question in Plato's Gorgon, where they have to try to justify punishment. And if you want to figure that out, the plemmachus is there, so you don't know what he would say around him. Maybe I could just a couple of arguments. Yeah, let me lay out a couple of the arguments.
Okay. I mean, the first argument is basically something like this, but they want to know what good the Justman provides, right? And he goes through all the different arts, right? You go to a shoemaker, the naked shoes, those are good for your feet, right?
You go to the butcher, they give you meet us, good for your, you know, your health. You go through all of them. Now, what does the Justman provide? Now, one of the things I think is revealing about this argument, and he gives some some answers, but I think one of the important implications of this argument is he never questions whether the arts are inherently morally neutral.
It seems like he goes around town and he basically expects that his transactions are all going to be just, right? Then you go to the guy, you're not going to get a snake oil salesman, right? You're not going to get a guy who, you know, the can't who rips you off on fixing your car. And then with the second argument, he actually argues, after they've come to the agreement that the Justman keeps things safe, he's a kind of guardian, he then argues that the arts are morally neutral.
And this deeply shocks Pola Marcus to the point where he says, no, no, no, no, that can't be the case. But I don't know what I meant. I'm confused, right? And so that's sort of where that argument kind of goes.
And I think this goes to show that what he's bringing out for Pola Marcus Socrates is that he hasn't actually thought through the way that justice and injustice operate in your normal day to day activity. So I do think you get an idea or impression of Pola Marcus here. That's kind of good in nature in that way. The next one he brings up, and they're operating with this definition now of justice as helping friends and harming enemies is, well, how do you know who your friends are, right?
Can't you be mistaken about that? And Pola Marcus again is shocked. He says, no, I know I am. Yeah, tell me about it.
Yeah. With any comes to the conclusion, well, okay, the person who is your friend is the one who both seems to be good and is good, which is when you really think about it is nuts. How do you know anybody is actually good? How do you actually gain that knowledge of somebody's deepest intentions and how they operate in what they're doing?
And all of a sudden, he's completely intellectualized justice, right? You have to go past the sceneings, ordinary assumptions you make in life as you go around town, assuming people aren't murderers and thieves and all that sort of stuff. He wants to go around that now almost and say, well, no, you'd have to kind of do that inquiry. I figured that out.
Finally, soccer is the last argument. It just argues that just man never harms anyone. And this all turns on the agreement that's never questioned that justice is human virtue. Pola Marcus just agrees to that.
And I think that shows the extent to which as great body is just a decent guy, but the fact that that assumption is so you don't harm anyone because to harm them is to make them worse. And to make them worse is therefore to make them more unjust because you're making them less virtuous. And that just makes everything worse. So he's immediately won over to that that view, which it's frankly, it's easy to see it as naive.
Maybe the correct position is to say it's underdeveloped and they need to talk more about it. But the way it's presented, it's so underdeveloped that it might see naive, and it does see naive to a person like us who comes in extremely angry and objects to everything. You mind if I read that passage? No, no, no, no.
Go ahead. Okay. So first, your question of how do you know if somebody's actually good? Will you just look at their web browser history?
I think that's the answer to that. But so you're at the end of this conversation. Can I on that point, you remember when Pete Townsend of The Who was found with tons of child pornography? Yeah, how come he didn't get canceled?
Well, you know, why he said I was doing research for an important thing. Is that real? Yeah, that's all it is. It's always been terrible.
So you don't know what they're going to do with this information? Yeah. Right. So at the end of this conversation, which the conclusion of which can seem to be naive or can seem to be overly, was it Pollyanna?
Is that right? Is that right? You should have worked there? And Trismica says sort of been watching him.
Here's Socrates's account of Trismica's Socrates says not Trismica's had many times started out to take over the argument in the midst of our discussion. But he'd been restrained by the men sitting near him who wanted to hear the argument out. But when we pause and I said this, that justice is harming no one, he could no longer keep quiet, hunched up like a wild beast. He flung himself at us as it to tear us to pieces.
Then both Trismica and I got all in a flutter from fright. And he shouted out in her midst and said, what is this nonsense that has possessed you for so long Socrates? And what do you act like fools making way for another? If you want to know what the justice is, don't only ask and gratify your love of honor by refuting whatever someone answers, you know that's easier to ask than to answer.
But answer yourself and say what you assert a just to be and seek to it that you don't tell me that it's the needful or the helpful or the profitable or the gainful or the advantageous. But tell me clearly and precisely what you mean for I won't accept it if you say any such in antonies. So this is this man through Sympac. He's been hunched up like a wild beast.
Have you guys ever experienced that at an academic conference? Yes. Yes. Really?
Yeah. We're somebody just exploded at you. Several times actually, what else you there for the one that acted where the guy, I what we wish it named him, but I gave a paper on aerosol on the limits of science. Yeah, but he was joking.
He just called me insane. Yeah, he called me insane, which was pretty funny. That's not nice to Joe Sacks. No, no, it's not.
I think what I like about David's question is there are these moments in life where you get a glimpse of a platonic character. You and I once gave a paper, it's actually, I think of that same conference on the quite a fun. And there was a guy there who's like, I like the quite a fun better than the republic. I think it's way better.
And then when people push back against him, he just got up and left after 20 minutes quite fun, 40 days long. So it's like it was like he was he was quite upon himself, right? I remember this one time a guy giving a morally relativistic dressing down of the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq. But I just like there was a thesis was something like justice in the world on one hand, but on the other hand, what the Bush administration is doing is really unjust.
And I wasn't in any way trying to defend the Bush administration. I'm not sure that a big rock was a good idea. But I just remember pointing out to him how I was like, there's no morality in the world. That's right.
Because then why are you so angry? Because it was this very angry. And sort of like, I think you're angry, but you actually think that what's happening here is deeply unjust. So it's kind of fun to push people's buttons in that way.
And if you guys, you guys buttoned, push here, for sure. Before we get into the thersemic, do either of you guys have a theory on what Socrates was up to with Paul Marcus? More precisely, did you get the sense he was trying to move Paul Marcus like a chess piece to get to other young people in the conversation? So he was ensnaring him to raise the higher of a kind of there's just gets to get on to more interesting.
It's funny. Alex is shaking his head. Yes. And I'm shaking my head now.
I don't think so. I know Alex thinks that what's going on here is to talk to his England to cloud on him and it's all long. I'm not convinced of that. I'm not sure if he wants to initially.
I mean, I think he must know glaucom has the ambivalence between justice and injustice in his soul. I do think that the reciprocal is explosion here. He says that he's been acting this way all along. So he knows.
And doing that last argument again, it is so under determined and so open to misconstrual that it just strikes me as he might be trying to provoke the same. He's any know each other. I mean, it's clear that they've had some kind of interaction. Yeah, that seems persuasive.
I just I honestly don't know how much doctor he wants to be a part of this conversation. At some point, something changes and he's happy but I think initially he's sort of like, I guess I'll go along with this and see what happens. And then I think he's actually a little more ambitious. Maybe than others.
I do think that the suggestion of Alex is probably here. I'm talking to this kid. He's not that impressive. Okay, but wow, that guy's getting really riled up.
So let me keep going here and see what happens. I do think they're probably some of that mischievous intent there problem. I mean, you won't go a little further. Pull Marcus has insisted right on Socrates coming, Bretton came with violence.
Exactly. That's my point. Yeah, he's gone down and seen what he wanted to see. Yeah.
And he knows through some cases back at his house, right? Right. So, you know, some people have interpreted this as a kind of. So you think he knows that there's some of this is there?
Yeah, it's his house. He's not there. There's some of this is that the house when they get there. I'm aware of that.
You and you list some of the people that are there at the very beginning. We said there's going to be a conversation with young man, right? And that'll occur later. But one way one can read it.
People have read it this way. And again, this is these are hypotheses that are not, I think, essentially, like demonstrable is that maybe Paul Marcus has or I demand to talk about this and clock over. Maybe there's some kind of conspiracy to have Socrates and Pacificus go at it. Oh, the other people know, I see.
Okay. I thought you were saying Socrates. No, no, no, Socrates isn't. I meant Paul.
Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it.
Got it. And there's there's some evidence later in book two because that's that's persuasive. Well, Hong Kong says, look, we think you can defend just as best against the attacks of people like their semikis. So after their semikis, it's had a portion of his life.
I have this guy. Let me try to restate this better and see what the outcome actually is. All right. Our semikis in Aristotle's rhetoric and also played as a major, but it's really pronounced in Aristotle's rhetoric.
It said that their semikis his whole innovation was to imitate the emotions he anticipates or hopes to evoke in his audience. And so he's a kind of actor. So one of the one way to read this, I know stuff under Danny makes this claim just outright is that Socrates exaggerates. The semikis is routine as though he is actually the wild beast.
And so when he when he does this to whoever he's narrating it to, but he also does it to extend to the group there acting all afraid in part, I think to make their semikis look more irrational, less deliberate in what he's doing, precisely because he's imitating a popular kind of prejudice and therefore kind of paints him into the corner where he has to sort of defend this, I think, more genuinely than maybe he actually holds the view. So I'll let you reflect your his moment, maybe tell us a little bit more about this. I mean, we know that he's a rhetorician. So he sort of a professional, he's not from Athens.
So he's one of these professional public intellectuals, but the and we can talk about this in more detail. We probably could probably do an entire episode on just that through semikis part of the speech. But I imagine he is he the Keith Oberman of the conversation? That's a good comparison.
Why do you say that's a good comparison? Well, Keith Oberman always acts really pissed off yet he puts it together, these long tirades and it's kind of clear that he's kind of trying to make you feel the way that he's pretending to feel. There's this moment in... Why is it unique to him, though?
I mean, I feel like this is a pretty common cable news title. He was just the first I came up with. Oh, okay. I got it.
Right. Right. Of course. Have you ever seen that video clip of Bill O'Reilly?
Yes, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. With Geraldo Rivera about immigration. And it was around, and a legal immigrant had killed somebody, like in a car crash. And Bill O'Reilly wanted to say this is an immigration problem, Geraldo was like, that's not the point.
The point is that they're like at each other's guard screaming. And then I guess somebody off camera gives Bill O'Reilly a cue. And he's like, okay, now we've got to go to our sponsors. He just cuts off the passion.
And you're like, is that just him thinking, oh, wait, we've got to make some money? Or is that him saying, okay, drop the routine, let's go to the thing. What they were like. I mean, that's to me is like a percent of this type.
Yeah. But we all sort of do agree that one of the virtues of reading these dialogues is you do start to be able to identify certain types of human beings. And that there's some, you know, reading these books, you can start to identify these types of humans. I think that's really important.
That's one of the magical things of Plato and he's... Absolutely. It's the whole range of human nature is covered. It's really astounding.
You don't get that with too many other. It's kind of cynical, quasi-intellectual hybrid who somehow above and beneath convention at the same time, he sort of understands things maybe a little well, but he's not fully there and certainly somewhere else. So I count the conversation with the personicus. I have it following the four main parts.
There's this introductory scene, which I actually just read from where the personicus is described. And then there are three parts to the argument. There's a part where the personicus attempts to define justice. He defines it as the advantage of the stronger.
And then there is a series of refutations and responses from Socrates and the first one that begins at 338c. Then the second part I have, the second division is the semicus gives a speech, a rather long speech, beginning at 334b where he compares justice to shepherding. And then the third part, the third big part is a cross-examination of the sub-case by Socrates that begins at 344d. Now, the first line of argument can be divided further into 7.
It's not really important. I just added the three main parts. There's this first discussion. There's semicus as long speech and then Socrates' cross-examination of the sub-case.
I don't know if Alex wants to take us through any of that or wants to talk about particular passages. So let me point out, because this is a very meandering. Especially what I count as the fourth argument, this very complex argument that we can't really go through all that. Let me point out a couple of things that I think are important.
One is, for semicus consistently emphasizes that he's coming back to his after refutations. He's coming back to his definition exactly as worded. I think that shows that he's very concerned with the fact that his arguments be very precisely cleanly stated on the one hand. Well, he demands of Socrates that Socrates give a very precise account.
So I think that's actually plays us. Everybody inwardly is kind of screaming. I think, come on, Socrates. The semicus gives voice to some of the frustrations.
I think first-time readers of Socrates, no question. But I think one of the problems, of course, is that I often think that our demands of justice aren't realizable. But one of the things we would like is a neat definition of justice that is precise. I just wonder, so we get these three definitions here that we talked about.
It's telling the truth, but what you owe, it's sort of harming enemies, benefiting friends. It's the advantage that's stronger. In a way, they all seem to have a certain plausibility. And so in a way, they're also insufficient.
And so to give a single definition of justice that's precise, it might be to ask, it might be just to demand too much of the phenomenon. I think so. But yet he's got this concern. He does absolutely.
And he thinks Socrates also speaks precisely. In a way, he does. His arguments are very kind of technical at times, right? Though he doesn't have a precise definition.
So he emphasizes that. He even as he goes to the arguments, he says, and so it's just what I said from the beginning. He uses that a couple times. It's exactly what I said, just as the advantage of the stronger.
So that's one thing. Even as he's committed to that, though, he's also consciously aping a kind of common opinion of the Athenian democracy, right? And justice is just kind of drudgery. That's the way it's put, it's toil some.
It's not good for itself. It's just good for the consequences. You put up with it and hopefully good things happen as a result. But maybe try to cheat and scheme.
And if you're lucky, you can become a tyrant, right? That's kind of the view that's laid out there. And so the one question you have to ask is, how do you square these two things? Abing a popular kind of vulgar, imprecisely thought out definition with the definition being exactly, right?
A second point I'll second one, like he makes a couple longer speeches. And it becomes clear and clear to the reader, but also to the personicus that the group does not want to hear his long speeches. And this becomes especially pronounced when glaucom comes in later. And glaucom says, how do you want to examine it?
Do you want us to give big speeches back and forth? Or do you want to have a real kind of dialectical conversation where we're both coming to agreements and coming to a final conclusion? He says, well, I prefer that, right? And the system because eventually says, well, I'm not going to make another speech because I don't want to annoy everybody.
I know you don't like this. But isn't that on account of Socrates tweaking his arguments subtly and just frustrating? Socrates isn't engaged in a good faith conversation. It seems to me.
On a certain level, I think both can be true. They can prefer Socrates' mode of conversation, like philosophic debate over and coming to agreements and trying to build a conclusion to rhetorical displays. And a really good dramatic point is that at one point, the recipient tries to do a mic drop. This is after the shepherd speech.
He says, well, this is maybe the naive, you're so naive Socrates. He tries to play into Socrates' kind of polyanine. You need a wet nurse. And then he promises to force feed, which I conclude by stillages and means that he wants to press feed.
Soccer. Okay. One serious one. I don't know about that.
No. One serious one in that, what he turns to calling him a baby and you don't know anything, you're naive, you're a fool. He begins his anger begins from a position of, you know damn well what justices Socrates, you and me both know we are wise. These guys are stupid.
Let's stop playing around and tell them the truth. And then finally, he comes with, he's like, oh my God, you're actually stupid, Socrates. So there's at some point, there's a count of Socrates takes a switch. I think where he goes from viewing Socrates as like him and understanding the way the world is to somehow believing, oh no, he really thinks he really buys this.