Plato II - Seventh Letter

In this lecture, Roger explores Plato's Seventh Letter — the closest thing we have to his own spiritual autobiography — in which he reveals the central conviction of his life: that the perfection of the individual soul and the perfection of society are inseparably linked. Through the story of his three fateful journeys to Syracuse and his encounters with tyrants and philosopher kings, Plato lays bare the practical stakes of philosophy as a living discipline. At the heart of the letter is one of the most profound passages in all of Western thought — the doctrine of the five levels of knowledge, culminating in a reality that can never be captured in language but is ignited in the soul like a flame from a leaping spark. Rooted in the Hermetic and Pythagorean wisdom tradition, this presentation reveals the Seventh Letter as an initiatory testament to the path of enchantment that thought itself becomes when pursued with honesty, stamina, and the love of wisdom.This series is a basic introduction to a major root of the entire Western Philosophic Tradition. This is a rare opportunity to survey an essential heritage. We will follow the translations in the Collected Dialogues of Plato, Bollingen Series LXXI, Princeton University Press. These Dialogues also appear in the Penguin Classics Editions: Phaedrus & Letters VII and VIII, Philebus, Early Socratic Dialogues, Timaeus and Critias.More information about these presentations can be found athttps://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/platohttps://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/platos-theory-of-educationhttps://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato-iiMore presentations by Roger Weir are available at the Shared Presence Foundation website and on our YouTube channel