Politics of Plato’s Republic (The Nietzsche Podcast #53)
Вставка
- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- Visit us on spotify: open.spotify.c...
Support the show on Patreon: www.patreon.com/untimelyreflections
Here we examine Nietzsche's political philosophy by considering one of his antipodes. Plato’s Republic is one of the most important works of classical philosophy, and also one of the most infamous. In this episode we examine a series of questions concerning Plato: is the Republic a work of ethical philosophy only, or must we read political implications in it?; is it a utopian work?; is Plato responsible, as Popper charges, for the horrors of the 20th century?; finally, what was Nietzsche’s response to the politics of Plato? While the episode involves an introductory discussion of the major ideas of the work, our focus is primarily on the issues that would have interested Nietzsche and which would concern us in studying the politics of antiquity.
#ancientgreece #nietzsche #plato #platonicmind #socrates #history #ancienthistory #politicalphilosophy #politics
I'm only ever dumbfounded by the quality of the content on this channel.
I’m 1:57 in, so idk if it’s mentioned. But the ideal state was not the republic. Recall that early on in the dialogue, Socrates described a simple life where people are figs, roots and simple foods and had a simple life. But his interlocutors were repulsed by such a state and wanted the finer things in life. So, what Socrates describes is the ideal arrangement for a luxurious lifestyle. A lifestyle of excess. And it is for this reason that we need powers to put a check on the people, that would parallel, it seems, self control or temperance in the presence of that which would appeal to the appetites.
Socrates’s original ideal arrangement sounded more like a simple band of people, friends and family, living together off the land, just getting enough for what’s necessary for life, and no more.
He said that inevitably people would want more than a simple life. Therefore it can't be his idea of a perfect way of living cause it would naturally evolve from there. That's his starting point not his ending point.
@@Laocoon283 yes, he said that he suspected that many would want the simple life. That doesn’t mean that the simple life is not the ideal manifestation of the constitution of a state. That’s like saying we should eat healthily, in moderation, avoid excess simple carbs, sleep 6-8 hours a night, exercise regularly, for the ideal constitution of the body, but then say, “well most people won’t go for that, so let’s really make a lifestyle of couch potatory, sugars and fats, and staying up all night.”
What say you?
@@tatsumakisempyukaku I guess what I mean is he understands the difference between ideal and what's actually possible. I mean that's his whole theory of the forms. That we can never ever live up to the ideal. So he has his impossible ideal society and than he has his realistic ideal society. I think I worded it incorrectly initially.
00:00 📜 Plato's Republic, despite its influence, often alienates readers due to its calls for censoring art, eliminating private property, and downgrading democracy.
01:25 🧠 Socrates argues that Justice is achieved when everything is in its proper place, even if it challenges conventional notions of fairness and justice.
03:42 🏛 Plato's Republic is primarily a moral text exploring how to live justly and manifest justice in one's life, with the ideal city serving as a pedagogical tool for discussing virtue.
12:41 📚 Philosopher Karl Popper criticized Plato for being anti-democratic and blamed him for inspiring totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century.
15:11 🤔 Popper's argument against Plato's Republic using its own reasoning highlights the paradox of advocating for censorship in an open society.
18:28 🌍 The Republic's discussion begins ethically but inevitably delves into the political realm, emphasizing the interconnectedness of ethics and politics in human lives.
20:47 🤔 Thrasymachus presents an argument suggesting that the just man often fares worse than the unjust, reflecting a pessimistic view of morality's real-world impact.
22:22 🤯 Thrasymachus's argument challenges the conventional idea that adhering to a moral code guarantees real-world success, akin to Nietzsche's perspective on domination and Will To Power.
24:12 🧐 Thrasymachus is often compared to Nietzsche, despite differences in style, as they both express similar ideas about the world's nature and morality's role.
27:14 🏛 Plato's "Republic" is a political text framed within an ethical context, aiming to define Justice and create an ideal city while acknowledging utopian ambitions.
30:41 🤔 Plato's ideal city may not be seen as utopian but as a response to the historical context of political upheavals and the need for reason to rule over violence.
34:50 🧐 Nietzsche criticizes Plato for elevating the ideal above the real, preferring the abstract world of the intellect, thereby creating a morality that judges reality itself.
40:57 🔄 Plato's philosophy, like Platonism and Christianity, revalues values by emphasizing that what ought to be is good, which Nietzsche contrasts with the noble Master morality of accepting what exists as good.
41:54 🧠 In a time of social revolutions and moral change in Greek society, Plato emerges to articulate the concept of the ideal city, contrasting with the past where people lived without questioning their beliefs.
44:12 💡 Socrates describes the tripartite self, consisting of intellect, spirit (or willpower), and base urges. The real essence of a human is the intellect, and the just individual keeps these elements in harmony.
47:30 🏛 According to Socrates, justice is best described as "minding your own business" and ensuring everything is in its proper place, focusing on the right tasks according to one's role in society.
52:36 😇 Socrates criticizes the portrayal of gods in Greek literature, arguing that the gods must be inherently good and do not cause harm to humans.
57:09 🔄 Socrates presents a metaphysical argument against gods who reward injustice, suggesting that there is a cosmic orientation towards the good, and ultimately, one's own choices determine their fate.
01:01:05 🏛 Socrates outlines the three classes of a Greek state: rulers (corresponding to intellect), soldiers (corresponding to willpower or spirit), and productive laborers (corresponding to base urges), providing a fundamental structure for society.
01:02:26 🏛 Plato's class division in "The Republic" includes owners of capital, managers, and proletarians, focusing on political rather than economic distinctions.
01:03:36 🌍 Plato believed that productive classes needed rulers and soldiers for defense, justifying their existence in the platonic scheme.
01:05:38 💰 Plato disapproved of the rise of wealthy merchants, viewing them as unfit to rule due to their focus on fulfilling desires and economic activities.
01:06:23 🏛 Plato saw the conflict between oligarchies, democracies, and tyrannies as rooted in the dominance of economic classes, leading to societal fluctuations.
01:09:37 🛡 In Plato's ideal state, the Guardians (soldiers) and Auxiliaries (philosopher-rulers) live without private property, share everything, and focus on the unity of the state.
01:16:08 ⚖ Plato defines justice as each class doing its own job without interfering with others, believing that injustice is the worst evil for a community.
01:17:04 🎭 Socrates permits artistic expression that aligns with the emotions and virtues appropriate for each class, censoring art that promotes undesirable emotions.
01:20:08 📚 Education is central to Plato's political project, emphasizing the importance of shaping and molding individuals' minds to ensure proper governance and unity in society.
01:22:42 🧒 Parents care about what their children are exposed to because they know children are malleable and not perfectly rational agents.
01:23:11 📜 Plato's concept of the "noble lie" refers to creating magnificent myths or falsehoods that give citizens an identity and foster social unity, not necessarily the lie itself.
01:24:20 🌍 Socrates emphasizes a common unity and ancestry to unite the community, breaking traditional familial religions and beliefs.
01:27:40 🏆 Plato's Republic promotes a meritocratic system based on education and abilities rather than bloodline, subordinating family identity to the larger community.
01:30:01 🧠 Plato's political philosophy centers on education as a means to shape minds and create a just society, focusing on culture and ideology over system tinkering.
01:39:10 🌟 Nietzsche acknowledges the connection between the state and genius in Plato's Republic but criticizes Plato's exclusion of artistic genius and narrow focus on intellectual genius.
01:41:53 😴 Nietzsche criticizes Plato for his contrived dialogues and finds him morally prejudiced and influenced by Christian concepts, dubbing him "Superior bunkum" or idealism.
01:43:45 🕊 Nietzsche suggests that Plato's idealism and fascination with the "ideal" contributed to the misunderstandings and the development of Christianity, connecting Plato's influence to the concept of the church.
Thanks!
I enjoy the way you took the time to discuss Popper’s ideas. Before you, I watched the first part of a Yale professor’s take on Plato’s Republic. He was saying to his students that Plato’s ideal republic was what Yale university was and students of this university are a part of this ideal republic.
He totally ditched Popper’s ideas, saying his book was badly written.
Thank you for this video.
This channel is awesome, reading "Nietzsche on Art & Life" edited by Daniel Came right now - highly recommend, thanks for your work!!!!
Are all the texts you mention linked on another platform?
23:28. Not just thrasymachus but also Polus is against the idea of temperance, if I recall. See the dialogue, Gorgias.
Thank you thank you thank you thank you
Posted this and found this at exactly the right time, thank you so much! Can you link or name that Campos [sp?] article you quoted from?
Everything....
In its right place
Excellent discussion. It's absurd to "blame" Plato for anything 2500 years after his death, particularly when a very conscious and gutter mind like Karl Marx literally created an entire hoax interpretation of Life that called for weak, psychotic, gutter minds to "revolt" against "the system", because it was "unjust".
I first read The Republic when I was 14. Around the same time I started reading Nietzsche. Now, a few decades later, with a massive amount of historical research and personal experience under the belt I can say without doubt Plato was the biggest HATER/LOSER ever imagined- only surpassed by Marx. Plato was hell bent on escaping an Athens he could not control just because of his family's history and wealth. In my youth The Republic was somewhat seductive and intriguing but thanks to Nietzsche's ruthlessly historical/psychological/biological analysis along with actual historical studies of Athens, I see The Republic and Plato for what they truly are- the ultimate escape mechanism for a former "aristocrat" who turns to "philosophy" to vent his frustrations and live out his fantasies, under the guise of "philosophy" and "reason". The realm of the "Ideas/Forms" is literally no different than the Christian priest teaching that "the real world is beyond this world", that is to say, pure fantasy.
Thankfully we have Plutarch and his histories of the actual Hellenes that made the word worthy of study and emulation, I refer to the Kimons, Perikles', and Pelopidas.
Whoa. Two decades of research and you haven’t realized that Plato thinks that perfection can actually be achieved. Contrast that with the Christian idea of salvation only being found beyond this life and tell me “they’re no different.” This is such a naive take in general. It really just reinforces my belief that Plato needs to be really understood before moving on to his critics. All you’ve done is inherited the strawman attacks of his intellectual descendants.
Is IDEAL really such a bad thing? Sure we are animals but we are capable of being MORE than animals... is that not a NOBLE persuit? I think it is. What route to take of course is debatable.
17:04. “Plato’s work is dangerous”
I think, if you read Plato’s Theatetus, you learn that Plato has a low estimation of empiricists, “those who cannot believe in anything unless they can see it with their eyes and hold it with their hands,” to these he called “barbarians.”
And it’s to this point, that when you have people who don’t understand the Forms and try to manifest that which is, by definition, not particular, or relative, then, yes, it is dangerous in the hands of those who don’t get it, who try to manifest absolute ideals in the “realm” of concrete particulars. It’s like Walt Disney’s fantasia ,where one plays with something they have little understanding of.
The question then is, if empiricists are so empirical, how do they know what the ideal is, as they obviously notice how things should and shouldn’t be?
Peterson gave a clue when he talks about seeing “meaning” before seeing the cliff.
Meaning, for Peterson, whether he knows it or not, are the Forms. When you see a cliff, you don’t recognize it as rock or w/e, one recognizes it, among various possibilities, as a “falling off place.” (Per peterson). The meaning you see is what? A concrete particular? The rock formation that would have one fall is partaking in the Form of “falling off places?,” and so it is, the cliff, an instance of it?
But this is a digression.
It's easy to see how these ideas influenced socialistic and communistic states and theorizers of modern education like Montessori, thank you for this content.
I'm wondering if any scholars see Plato as almost libeling Socrates by having him propose such a rigid concept of an "ideal" just society. Socrates doesn't seem so sure of how everything should be in other dialogues.
You done well in presenting these lectures, it saves me the reading.
Moral is the expression of mind, transcendental refers to things that transcend the intellectual deductions and reaches the mind. The measure of moral is the quality of the individual mind. The variation in the quality of mind makes life possible and gives life continuity. The perfect state is not possible.
When one reads Plato, you find yourself in the dialog.
When I first read Plato's Republic as a teenager, I thought 'this is stupid, it's just some crazy guys insane fantasy about a dictatorship'. Took philosophy in university, and the professor said Plato's Republic was a 'watershed of modern philosophy' because it was the 'first example of a planned society, which is one of the main goals of philosophers through the age' and even if Plato was wrong about the details, 'we still need to appreciate the important step it represents' since, in the professor's mind, the 'perfectly planned society' was an ideal that needed to be strived for even if it couldn't be achieved.
I realized then that 'philosophy' as taught in universities is itself a tyrannical ideology, while they debate and disagree about the particulars of this or that topic, at their core the 'respected philosophers' in academia agree that a planned, centrally controlled society is inherently a positive goal. This is accepted without question within the field, and anyone who disagrees with this notion is driven out of academia in general and especially philosophy.
All of the worst points in human history are a direct result of 'brilliant, respected and educated' people trying to implement their vision of a better world through a centrally planned and controlled society.
Yes true, but also all the highest points in history come from the same source. Literally everything which is not stone age hunter-gather society comes from philosophy