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Classical Stuff You Should Know
285: The Democratic Man: Plato's Republic Revisited
01:07:38
Love hobbies? RIP your life.
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- [00:06]
A
Hey, everybody, and welcome to Classical Stuff. You should know this is my second take, take two. Right now, Donaldson is looking very cranky because I get to restart when I screw up, because I have control of the laptop.
- [00:18]
B
I don't screw up. You guys just interrupt with how bad it is.
- [00:21]
C
Is that what we do?
- [00:22]
B
Which is always debatable because they're not bad.
- [00:25]
A
Anyway, if you're new, welcome to the podcast. We talk about the classical world, old books, old ideas, philosophy, that sort of thing. My name is AJ Hanneberg and I'm joined by Thomas Magbee.
- [00:34]
B
Hello.
- [00:35]
A
And the cranky Graham Donaldson.
- [00:36]
B
Hello.
- [00:37]
A
And today we are talking about. We're talking about all the Kratts, Aristocrats, Timocrats, Democrats and the Aristocrats.
- [00:45]
B
You already said that.
- [00:46]
C
You said that.
- [00:47]
A
I was trying to make a joke about Aristocats, but I think I missed it.
- [00:50]
C
You missed it?
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B
Did you ever watch that movie?
- [00:51]
C
Yeah, of course.
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A
Yeah, it's great.
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C
Yeah.
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B
Did you watch.
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A
Have you not seen the Aristocats? Oh, there's like a jazz interlude every once in a while. It's super. The songs are great. Anyway, that's my intro, Donaldson.
- [01:03]
B
So we are going to talk about Plato's Republic, book eight today. We have a whole 10 part series that AJ did on Plato's Republic a long time ago. And I was concerned. I've also done a series on soccer team.
- [01:17]
A
Concerned that mine wasn't good enough.
- [01:19]
B
No, I know. I was concerned that I had already done a book seven or book eight and I went. Because I had done a soccer tease series a little while ago and I went back and I scrolled through old episodes and I have not done one on book eight, so that's fine. So anyway, even if I had, I probably still would do this episode. Anyway, so Plato's Republic. So this is a Platonic dialog and let me do a bit of a refresh. Does anybody remember what virtue they are trying to figure out the nature of in Republic?
- [01:51]
C
New Masters of Justice.
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A
Justice.
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B
It is justice. And quite famously, the way that they try to figure out what justice is. Because the dialogue starts off with some dude coming in, he's like, you know what justice is? Justice is punishing your enemies and helping your friends. And everyone's like, I like that. That sounds awesome. Yes, that is the cornerstone of society. And Socrates is like, I don't know if that's true. And one of Socrates's friends is like, I believe it, but I don't want it to be true. I want. I want justice to be something High minded and noble and good. But in the world around me, all I see is people standing up and saying that they want to crush their enemies. And that doesn't seem right. And so Socrates is like, well, let's try to figure it out.
- [02:33]
C
Doesn't the guy go to bed like the.
- [02:34]
B
Well, actually the guy there is an old man who goes to bed and he gives a good definition of justice. And he says justice is giving everybody what they deserves. Both. Both correct, both positively and negatively. So like giving people what they're owed. And he's like, when people do you solids, you do them solids. And when people do evil, you need to. They need to be punished. And Socrates is like, can you prove, can you like tell me how you know that? And he's like, I don't know, man, I'm old. It's just worked and it feels right. And so. And he goes to bed and Socrates is like, I kind of like that.
- [03:02]
C
That was a good definition.
- [03:03]
B
Yeah, it was a good definition. Even though he doesn't know why he does it, he still has come to the quote, right opinion. Anyway, so long story short, they built. The only way that they can find justice is they decide that they're going to look for it in the city as opposed to look forward in the individual.
- [03:18]
A
Let's look at, look at it on the large scale.
- [03:20]
B
Let's look at it on the large scale because it feels like they can understand what justice is in the city. And they build out this sort of idealized city that is really sort of tightly controlled and bent towards like the strong creation of citizens. And there's some really cool stuff in there, like really strong education program. The leaders are chosen based on their merits, both in physical prowess and in both. It says their kings must be those among them who've proved to be the best, both in philosophy and in warfare. So you kind of have this meritocracy. It has nothing to do with birth, it has nothing to do with name and has nothing to do with popularity, but really does have to do with merits. You have some cool things like that. You have some also questionable things. Like I think everyone's married to each other. There's like wives are in common. Do you remember this, aj?
- [04:11]
A
Oh yeah. And there's a sex lottery.
- [04:13]
B
There's a sex lottery. So it's also kind of unclear if Plato.
- [04:17]
A
It's like on the sly, run by the state.
- [04:19]
B
That's right. Yeah. And there's like a lie that you tell people.
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A
Yeah.
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B
You tell the quality of their soul.
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A
And you tell the army, that they have golden blood so they don't steal your gold.
- [04:28]
B
Yeah. So there's the noble lie that exists, which is essentially in order to keep control, we kind of need people to believe that there are, they are greater and lesser than or whatever. And so then that's opened up a huge debate as to whether or not this actually is a good society. That's not really what I want to talk about in this podcast. In book eight, Plato starts talking about through Socrates, how both societies fall apart and also how individual humans fall apart. How you can go from being someone who has an aristocratic soul to being someone who is frantic and timorous and wrathful and who's completely controlled by their passions. And Plato says it kind of follows this well worn path. And so he talks about this in terms of the city and he talks about this in terms of a person or he also talks about in terms of generations, like someone who's had a father, like this is going to come out like this. And this, you know, this, this 2600 year old text or whatever, you know, we. This idea of generational theory in societies is still very popular, in fact even probably very popular, more popular today. I don't know if we've made reference to it on main episodes or on, in between episodes, but there's a famous book called the Fourth Turning which sort of takes this idea. Strauss. Strauss. And how they take this idea and say like there are, there are sort of like temperaments of societies of generations. And so like the silent generation has an overarching temperament, the boomer generation has an overarching temperament. Millennials have this overarch arching temperament that has not predictive power but has like a, that creates certain kinds of problems and also create certain, that are reactions to old problems and then engender new problems. And so anyway, we're not talking about the Fourth Turning, but that the idea is still very popular. But Plato talks about it. So the aristocratic city, you, you sort of, they go into these inferior cities. So let me read a little bit of republic here. So book eight begins with saying like, all right, we've got the aristocratic cities. Socrates says this. Well then, Glaucon, we have agreed to the following. If a city is to achieve the height of good government, wives must be in common. Children and all their education must be in common. Their way of life, whether in peace or war, must be in common. And their kings must be those among them who, who have proved to be the best both in philosophy and warfare. And Glaucon says, we have agreed to that. Okay, wow. So you know, that's all book one to seven kind of summarized Glaucon's like.
- [07:08]
A
Think of all those wives.
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B
That's right, yeah. Now, now, like I said, we're not really. I don't really want to talk about the wise and common thing because we do talk about that in the, in your episode on.
- [07:18]
A
Yeah, we've talked about it.
- [07:19]
B
But suffice to say the vision they have of this aristocratic society is one that is ruled by the love of virtue. And that is sort of. It's a very, it's a very small society. Like it is not a decadent. Decadent. An opulent. I was combining those words. It's not decadent and opulent. People aren't quote, mixing their jobs. So like those whose job it is is to roll out the laws, the guardians are just guardians. Those who rule are just rulers. Those who make the things that society needs are makers. And it's a pretty like. And everything is sort of geared towards the good think it's supposed to be this like, almost like this pastoral, picturesque, small scale village. Right. And. And then problems begin as sort of gets bigger. Plato says then, you know, the society sort of falls apart and follows a predictable pattern of. I'm setting up a timer here, so I don't go over. Follows a predictable pattern of. Well, he calls them diseased cities. He says now we've already described the one that's like aristocracy, which is rightly said to be good and just. Then mustn't we next go through the inferior ones, namely the victory loving and honor society, followed by the oligarchic, the democratic. Democratic and tyrannical. So that having discovered the most unjust of all, we can oppose him to the most. Just in this way we can complete our investigation into how pure justice and pure injustice stand with regard to the happiness or wretchedness of those who possess them and either be persuaded by Thrasymachus to practice injustice or by the argument that is now coming to light, to practice justice. And Glaucon says that is absolutely what we have to do. Those little intocular interlocutor interjections are so delightful.
- [09:11]
C
Yeah.
- [09:13]
B
Okay, so the timocracy emerges from aristocracy. So what is a democracy?
- [09:20]
C
The one where it's like strong warriors are the best. It's like the spirited one.
- [09:24]
A
Yeah. Military. Right.
- [09:26]
B
It is where. So all of these various cities are ruled by something that the people love. So when Plato says an aristocratic city, a timocratic city, he's not talking about an oligarchic City. He's not necessarily talking about the form of government. He's not saying like, all right, they wrote down on a piece of paper how they're going to organize their government. And that's. Here's a good one, here's a bad one. He's talking about more like a temperament or like a zeitgeist of the people that the majority of people, and the majority of people who are kind of like the cultural setters, the cultural pacesetters in society operate out of a certain kind of preference or an ordered loves. And the best city is ruled by those who love virtue, who love the good. They want to do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. And they want to be ruled by. They don't care what people think about them. They don't care about money, they don't care about even their own lives or maintaining power. They just care about, you know, the pure good. And it's kind of unclear throughout the republic whether you even think that Plato or Socrates believes that that's possible. One, because the purely good city seems to be pretty like heavy handed and also just. Well, like, it also doesn't seem to be very functional. Like the leaders are willing to die to do the right thing. But if they're, you know, are they really gonna. Is it. Does that make them sort of preg. Are they gonna be pragmatic in the face of like gray moral decisions? Because Socrates himself, when he doesn't know what to do, he's just like, well, we shouldn't do anything. It's like that doesn't seem to be something that you can do as a city anyway. But you have the aristocratic city and it degrades into the timocratic city. And it does it because they neglect how to raise their children to be honor, to be virtue loving. He says that at some point you have, you sort of neglected to be able to pass down this love of virtue from, from the elite rulers or the founders or the people who operated out of this pure love of virtue. You're unable to fully pass that down to the next generation. And the next generation gets torn between love of the higher things and love of the lower things. So he talks about, so he uses this by talking about like, let's imagine a kid who grew up with an aristocratic father. His dad loved the good, and his dad only wanted to order his life based on the right thing to do and on virtue and didn't care about reputation. He himself was never going to do an injustice. When an injustice was done to him. And, and this is him. So he has a son. I'm going to read it. And he, the kid comes into being in such a way as this. He's the son of a good father who lives in a city that isn't well governed, who avoids honors office lawsuits and all such meddling in other people's affairs, and who is even willing to be put at a disadvantage in order to avoid trouble. So in other words, like, you had an aristocratic city, but it's very hard to create new aristocratic, like, prospects to rule that city. And so you're going to get, eventually you're going to get a city that doesn't. Isn't sort of maintaining this perfect government that's ordered by the love of virtue that it had. Had maybe a generation ago. And this kid, I think AJU called him Tim, the Timocrats, we'll call him Tim, grows up in the city. So he, his dad avoids honors office lawsuits and all such meddling in other people's affairs, and who is even willing to be put at a disadvantage in order to avoid trouble. Plato seems to think that, quote, lawsuits and, quote, meddling in people's affairs is essentially and almost by necessity not unjust in and of itself, but is a breeding ground for injustice because you win court cases not necessarily by appealing to what is right, but by convincing people through rhetoric. And so, and of course, in Socrates Died this way, Plato sort of has this concept that if you enter into public life, you are going to be. You are going to benefit from injustice at some point that, like, you know, some sort of bureaucratic error is going to be in your favor and you're going to benefit from it, but it is going to be unjust. And so people who really love justice say, you know what? I'm not going to meddle in and like lawsuits and public affairs because it's just a breeding ground for, like, moral quandaries. And I want to keep myself sort of pure and unstained. Another argument as to maybe why an aristocratic city can't exist. But anyway, so the dad doesn't involve himself in this. He kind of sticks to his lane and stays true to his, like, I don't know, philosophical project. And how does he, Tim, come to become democratic? Well, when he listens first to his mother complaining that her husband isn't one of the rulers and that she's at a disadvantage among the other women as a result, then she sees that he, the aristocratic husband, is not very concerned about money. He doesn't fight back when he's insulted, whether in private or in public, in the courts, but is indifferent to everything of that sort. She also sees him concentrating his mind on his own thoughts, neither honoring nor dishonoring her over much. Angered by all this, she tells her son that his father is unmanly, too easygoing. And all other such things that women repeat over and over again in such cases. Yes, Adamantis said it is like them to have many such complaints.
- [15:19]
C
That's pretty tough.
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B
That's pretty brutal. Yeah, but then it continues on with this. You know too, I said that the servants. So the people who work for this, for the. For the man, for the aristocratic man of men like that, the ones who are thought to be well disposed to the family, also say similar things to the son in private. When they see that the father. When they see the father failing to prosecute someone who owes him money or has wronged him in some ways they urge the son to take revenge on such people when he grows up and to be more of a man than his father. The boy hears and sees the same kinds of things when he goes out. Those in the city who do their own work are called fools and held to be of little account, while those who meddle in other people's affairs are honored and praised. The young man hears and sees all this, but he also listens to what his father says, observes what he does close at hand and compares his way of living with those of the others. So he is pulled by both. His father nourishes the rational part of his soul and makes it grow. The others nourish the spirit of and appetitive parts. Because he isn't a bad man by nature, but keeps bad company. When he's pulled in these two ways, he settles in the middle and surrenders the rule over himself to the middle part, the victory loving and spirited part. It becomes a proud and honor loving man. So this is the growth of the timocratic man. He's got like I always think of in this story. I always think like dad sort of has like a middle management job. He's like really smart, he's very moral. He's obsessed with doing the right thing. He's thrifty, he doesn't care what people think about him. And he's got some like grand project that he's working on in his spare time that isn't making him any money, but he thinks is sort of like an important thing, whether philosophically or academically or something he's concerning with the high minded things. And his wife is frustrated at this. She's like, when I married you, you were smart. And I thought if I married a smart man, we'd get to go to like dinner parties or something. And she's upset. It is kind of a dunk on. Yes. Adeimantis doesn't say very nice things about women.
- [17:24]
C
And yeah, if we're gonna blame the degradation of this whole society, there is not great. But.
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B
But it's not so much that it's being blamed on women as like a gender. It's being blamed on people who are wanting their life to be centered around things other than the ideal of virtue.
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C
That's right.
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A
I also think that it's not just the unsuccessful virtuous man who get breeds a Tim.
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B
Yeah.
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A
I think it's a successful virtuous man. Right. If he has won his acclaim through being a good man, he's going to try to give that to his kid. But the kid definitely enjoys all of the trappings that come with a claim. Right. He's going to enjoy the money. He's going to enjoy everybody out in the town being like, you guys are awesome. I love your dad. And what he's going to fall in love with is the honor. Yeah, Right. Not necessarily the good that his dad loves, but he's going to fall in love with the life that he's been given by his father, who is an honorable man. And he's going to want that same thing. But he is there for the honor and the acclaim, not necessarily the good. And so I think even the successful.
- [18:21]
B
I think you're right.
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A
I don't think it's just the. The middle management guy. I think it's the CEO who's going to have a kid that wants that same life, but for the sake of the life itself, not for the sake of the good.
- [18:30]
B
That's right. So it's one of these things where it's like, you know, it's hard. The thing that got you there is a. It's a hard thing to pass down to the next generation. Yeah. And even earlier in this dialogue, Socrates says, listen, societies go through this just like how plant. The natural world. World goes through this. They go through seasons of barren and seasons of fruit, and it's kind of this natural thing. And Plato's. What he's teasing out in this book is that what engenders this is an inability to pass on the virtues of the previous generation to the next one. And the blind spots that. That a generation has ends up being a new sort of like weakness for the next generation. Every generation has a norm that gets stripped. So like the, so the aristocratic, sorry, the, the, the timocratic loves honor and that's going to. But then his son, the oligarchic man is going to take something that his father would have never dreamed of and make that a core part of his identity. And then so too is the democratic man. It's going to take something that his oligarchic father never dreamed of, a line he never dreamed of crossing, and make that part of his identity. And so to the tyrant. And so you kind of get this, you've. And yeah, you kind of get this like this inability for a culture to pull itself out from the brink. Well, that's not necessarily true. There is definitely a point of no return and that's kind of what I wanted to get to. So let's get through the timocratic man faster because I want to get to the point of no return that Plato says as soon as a culture has done this, like the tyrannical man is going to arrive on the scene.
- [20:12]
C
Yep.
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B
There's no getting out of it.
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C
We might get there with tyrannical, but this is not a circular thing. This is just a degradation.
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B
It's a degradation and then I can't remember enough about the rest of the public to know how you, how you can swing out of it. And of course modern critics have read this and they're like, yeah, this is, this is an interesting thought experiment. It's a lot more complicated than this in societies. And you probably see more of this ebb and flow between more virtuous or more idealistic and more sort of like pleasure loving societies as time goes on.
- [20:41]
C
True.
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B
So the democratic man, if he saw his father's downfall, he will conclude my dad just didn't care what people care thought about him and it, and it bit him in the butt. I'm not going to be that way. I'm going to pay attention to my reputation, unlike my dad or I've got.
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A
To keep this reputation or I've got.
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B
To keep this reputation. You know, I can take the virtue of my father and I can tie. And I can also like combine it with the love and adoration of the people. And I can be even better than my dad maybe. And that's going to be the seed of, of the next problem. So this timocratic man, he knows he's supposed to love the right things, but he doesn't love them for the right reasons. So like he loves speeches and music and the right music and the right art and the right speeches, but he doesn't know why he likes them. He just knows he's supposed to like them. But really deep down, he likes simple things like hunting and physical activity. And he. He really honors people who are good at that.
- [21:39]
C
And then this is the Timocratic.
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B
This is the Timocratic man.
- [21:42]
C
Sounds great.
- [21:43]
B
Sounds great.
- [21:43]
C
Yeah.
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B
I actually think the Timocratic society is the one that Plato thinks is the best. The Timocratic society ends up being incredibly successful financially.
- [21:54]
A
And I'm thinking it's like early Rome.
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B
Early Rome.
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A
It's all about honor. It's the spirit of society. Military.
- [22:01]
B
Yeah. Maybe on the in between we can do. I have a theory that I want to float by. It's probably not. We. We kind of want these. Are these open episodes to be like, not timeless.
- [22:12]
C
Right.
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B
But to be, you know, I have an idea of like, maybe is there an error in American history that we are more Timocratic and that kind of thing? Maybe we'll talk about the name.
- [22:20]
C
Patreon.com classical stuff.
- [22:22]
B
Patreon.com classical stuff.
- [22:23]
C
Find it there.
- [22:25]
B
But sort of the. The Timocratic society becomes a really successful. Turns out that caring about reputation and also wanting to keep up the appearances of being moral is good for business. And they end up accumulating a lot of money. And they don't spend this money because that's bad for your reputation. If you're like a spendy dude and you're like flying in with like a gold toilet car or whatever, I don't know what that is. Gold toilet.
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A
Gold toilet car.
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C
I have questions.
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A
You can get from point A to point B and be empty when you get there.
- [22:54]
C
Good. Thank you.
- [22:55]
B
And do 1 and 2. Anyway, your reputation is going to take a hit. Obviously, that people are going to talk. And so you end up becoming thrifty. You're like living the little house that you bought in Nebraska when you started off, and you don't want to upgrade to a mansion, but you have like.
- [23:11]
A
$2 million in stock.
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B
Exactly. But as you get older, you realize that all the other people that you honor in this world also are successful. And you begin to equate financial success with honor. Not because you think you love their money, but because the money must be the measure of their honor. Because if they got money by being honorable, well, then rich people are honorable. You're obviously making a logical fallacy that you can make money without being honorable. But generally speaking, if you are like, you know, in Boca Raton and you're. And you're retired and you're with Somebody that's also made a lot of money. And you kind of got like the same cultural values. And you're, you're probably thinking like, man, we know what's going on. Like we know the way to live, people love us and we've also made some money. We weren't as idealistic as our dad for sure, but he got himself into trouble because of this. We've sort of got the best of both worlds. And so you begin to associate money and honor together.
- [24:04]
A
And especially if it's like a militant society, right? If you, if like the people who are the bravest and take the most towns are going to be the most wealthy ones. And so when you see their cash, you're like, ah, this is a brave man, this is a honorable person.
- [24:17]
B
Then the timocratic man has a son. And the son is the oligarchic man. And the oligarchic man, of course is growing up in a society that, where money and honor are slowly beginning to be conflated and the rich and the honorable are slowly beginning to be conflated. And it's pretty easy to see how he becomes into loving money that he trying to find. So the timocratic son emulates his father, but then he realizes that, you know what, like, money solves a lot of problems. And hey, even if people hate you, but you've got money, you can still solve some problems with your money. And he's being ruled by the love of money, no longer the love of reputation. Let's see. So here is how he's described. He makes the rational and spirited parts sit on the ground beneath appetite, one on either side, reducing them to slaves. He won't allow the first to reason about or examine anything except how a little money can be made into great wealth. And he won't allow the second to value or admire anything but wealth and wealthy people or to have any ambition other than the acquisition of wealth or whatever might contributing contribute to getting it. Now in our minds we think, oh, he's probably like this big crazy spendthrift who like spends all his money and has the gold toilet. But he's not. He has because he doesn't want to spend his money, he wants to keep his money. But whereas his father cared about reputation, he doesn't care so much about his reputation as he cares about having money. Because that can solve every single problem he has.
- [25:56]
A
Because he doesn't need to anymore.
- [25:57]
B
He doesn't need to anymore. Someone doesn't like you. Well, you know, take him out, buy his house, buy his house, take him out to dinner, wine and dine him. Even though you. And even if he, at the end of the day, he still kind of hates you. Well, it doesn't matter because you've got your fortress of solitude of your money, right?
- [26:13]
C
Yep, yep.
- [26:14]
A
Have all the security.
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B
And then in society, they sort of move society towards either a hard oligarchy or a soft oligarchy. And the hard oligarchy is where they actually put like a wealth cap or a wealth floor needed to rule the city.
- [26:33]
C
Oh, wow.
- [26:34]
B
So you actually have to have a liquid net worth of a certain amount of dollars to run for office. That's a hard oligarchy. The soft oligarchy is you don't have that as a. As a, as a law, but you have that as a de facto reality of the state that, like, you can't.
- [26:52]
A
Run unless you have enough cash.
- [26:53]
B
You can't run unless you have enough cash to do it. It's not a law anybody can run, but in reality, only the wealthy person is going to be able to run. And, and, and so then that ends up being sort of a hard or a soft oligarchy. And then the oligarchy is when you begin to have a lot of the problems. Problem number one, you cre. You end up creating two states. Does anyone want to guess what those two states?
- [27:21]
C
The rich and the poor. That's right.
- [27:22]
B
You end up creating two states, the rich state and the poor state. See, if I have the quote on here.
- [27:31]
C
It's like those people who have the minimum wealth to run, they actually only represent that upper echelon.
- [27:37]
B
Correct.
- [27:38]
C
But there are people, like, people who can't reach that level, still have to organize a government.
- [27:44]
B
Yeah. Okay, so here's what he says about this. He says the oligarchy's got two main problems. One, just if you get the richest person to rule you, that's like getting the richest person to, to like steer your boat. And that's not going to be good because he doesn't know how to steer a boat. Turns out somebody who knows how to make a lot of money maybe doesn't really know how to run a city. Yep, some. Some of those skills overlap, but not all of them. So that's problem with oligarchy number one. Problem with oligarchy number two is the fault is. So he says, what about the second fault? Is it any sim. Smaller than the other? And Glaucon says, what other fault, Socrates? That of that of necessity is it isn't one city, but two. One of the poor and one of the rich living in the same place and always plotting against one another. And then the oligarchs. So you have. And as time goes on, you get less and less and less oligarchs because they have all the money and they are going to admit eventually the greatest of all evils in the city. So now we're, now we are at the tipping point. Up till then, you know, maybe you were able to pull back from the brink, but Socrates says that this is the tipping point of society. So this constitution is the first to admit the greatest of all evils. Which one is that? Asks Glaucon. Allowing someone to sell all his possessions and someone else to buy them, and then allowing the one who has sold them to go on living in the city while belonging to none of its parts. For he, he's neither a moneymaker, a craftsman, a member of the Calvary or a hoppolite, but a poor person without means. This sort of thing is not forbidden in oligarchies. If it were, some of their citizens wouldn't be excessively rich, while others are totally impoverished. Now think about this. When a person who sells all his possessions was rich and spending his money, so the guy who like literally sold his means of making money in this world, he sells his farm to an oligarch, or he sells his shop, or he like takes the thing that can make him his possessions and he sells it. Now he's got a lot of cash. When the person who sells all his possessions was rich and spending his money, was he of any greater use to the city in the ways we've just mentioned, than when he had spent it all? Or did he merely seem to be one of the rulers of the city, while in truth he was neither ruler nor subject, there was but only a squanderer of his property. And Glaucon says that's right. He seemed to be a part of the city, but he was nothing more than a squanderer. And so this is going to be the problem is that in the oligarchic society where the, the general sort of ethos, the zeitgeist of the culture is one of sort of the maximizing of money, they will permit themselves to create environments of making money and losing money, but you end up creating this second city, not the comedy club, this second city, which is one of someone who has squandered their property. Now, to me, this makes a lot of sense when you have like an agrarian based society, when, like the way you make money is literally, you have a farm, you own your tools and you make money from this. Or like Plato doesn't seem to have a concept of like, like sort of the modern economy we have right now. Like, Magby, you don't own any part of the business that you're part of unless there's shares in it. But like, functionally, you are the thing. What, what are you selling?
- [31:23]
C
My labor?
- [31:23]
B
You are selling your time. That's right.
- [31:25]
C
Yeah. Yeah, it's the time plus the work that's being done there. But it's. Say more about the.
- [31:32]
B
Well, I'm just saying that like Plato seems to be saying, like, as soon as a society allows its members to sell their, their sort of like personal means of production, like, you've hit the sort of point of no return.
- [31:45]
C
So in these earlier ones, there are all these kind of small businesses, like each person or each family owns their own.
- [31:51]
B
Seems like it. That's how he's describing it.
- [31:53]
C
Interesting.
- [31:53]
B
But now you get this point where you create a class of people who, you know, want maybe money was something they needed to rule, so they decided to take a shot at ruling. And so they like literally sold their farm to get enough money to pass the test to rule. And then they've squandered all of their property and now you have this like, permanent underclass. This is going to become a bigger problem in the democratic state. But anyway, so you've got this permanent underclass and you've got a society that sort of allows this kind of business to take place. As I was teaching this to my seniors this this year, Plato was now immediately labeled as a communist.
- [32:39]
C
Oh.
- [32:39]
B
And they're like, oh my word. Like, I didn't realize Plato was a. Was sort of this communist socialist decrying those sins of, of like, you know, capitalism, of like getting means of production. Until someone whose family grew up under communism in class pointed out that actually like centralized ownership of the means of production actually is communism. And it's not, you know, anyway, so. And that, that actually Plato was probably. This formulation would be just as. Plato would probably decry that as an evil probably just as much as, as some sort of like unfettered oligarchy with like 5 companies owning everything.
- [33:19]
C
Right.
- [33:19]
B
1. If one state owned everything, you still have the problems of a, of an underclass. Anyway, we can talk about communism later. So.
- [33:29]
A
And by the way, that five companies owning everything is. Is the new show Alien Earth. Five corporations.
- [33:35]
B
Oh, really?
- [33:35]
A
Pretty much.
- [33:35]
B
It's like Craft and Amazon and who?
- [33:37]
A
Well, I mean, they didn't. I don't think it's like modern companies but it's, you know, it's way in the future and pretty much.
- [33:42]
B
Is it good? Alien Earth, I've only had it like.
- [33:44]
A
On, in the background as I do other things like do my dishes or whatever. But I've. It's pretty true to the source, like source material. It's pretty good. I would say, like it's a. It's worth a watch.
- [33:54]
B
Yeah. Anyway, so Ollie grows up with this timocratic father and he basically has everything, everything in his personality geared towards making money. The rational part of his soul cares nothing about virtue as long as it can make him some cash. He reigns in his appetites because his appetites are expensive and you don't want to spend that money. So he actually has like limits on his appetites. But he, but he's open about his wealth, which is something that his father would never have done. So the line that Ali crosses is that he is sort of nakedly open about making money, whereas his father was trying to do it secretly because his dad didn't want to seem dishonorable. Whereas Ollie is like, no, I'm. I'm making money and that's the, the aim of my life is to have as much money as possible. Which his father would see as like a terrible thing to say. Ol open with that. But Ollie is also controlling his desires and his appetites because, you know, that's expensive. He wants to keep that money. So he ends up being a thrifty, squalid fellow, says Socrates. A thrifty worker who satisfies only his necessary appetites. So like of home and food, makes no other expenditures and, and enslaves his others and, and enslaves his other desires as vain. A somewhat squalid fellow who makes a profit from everything and hoards it, the sort the majority admires. This man pays no attention to education and he doesn't know how to. Because he doesn't pay attention to education. He doesn't know how to raise his kid. He also says that. Socrates also says that he's very attracted to charities and working for charities, especially amongst like poor and orphaned people. To the guardian he says, do you know where you should look to see this sort of evil goings of such people? Where Askal Khan, Socrates says to the guardianship of orphans or something like that, where they have ample opportunity to do injustice with impunity.
- [35:57]
C
Wow.
- [35:57]
B
So if you want to find people who are, who are. Whose sole focus is the like, the accumulation of wealth, according to Socrates, you should look to like charitable organizations and people who are like vulnerable to being taken advantage of. Because you'll find people. You'll find those people there. That seems to make sense. Yeah, like the, you know, like, like predatory shark loans. And those aren't the people who are.
- [36:22]
C
Like, on the boards of like. And I wouldn't say like your adoption agencies.
- [36:26]
B
Right.
- [36:26]
A
Most orphans don't exactly have a lot of cash floating around to be taken advantage of. So. But I. But I do think, like, were you.
- [36:33]
B
Able to do impunity, would you do injustice with impunity?
- [36:37]
C
Because they're like vulnerable populations.
- [36:39]
B
Yeah.
- [36:40]
A
Predatory car loans, payday loans, that kind of stuff. Like, those people are.
- [36:44]
B
Now, you may not be rich, rich rich, but you have an oligarchic soul working there. Like you. You do not care. Like, you are just trying to maximize the wealth extraction. And so, like, you can be like an oligarch. You can have oligarchic temperament, but you're only making 70 grand a year. But that 70 grand is like being sucked out of the poorest of the poor. Right.
- [37:05]
A
Or people. People in pain.
- [37:07]
B
Yeah.
- [37:07]
A
Like giving them, like, pain meds and stuff like that stuff is easy to take advantage of.
- [37:12]
B
So anyway, and then so the elderly he. So then this creates this. The oligarchic state creates that problem where you're allowing people to sell their property and you've created this second state. And then the oligarchic society continues with this great evil. Since those who rule the city want to be as rich as possible, I suppose they're unwilling to enact laws to prevent young people who've had no discipline from spending and wasting their wealth, so that by making loans to them secured by the young people's property and then calling those loans in, they themselves become even richer and more honored. Glaucon says that's their favorite thing to do. So isn't it clear by now that it is impossible for a city to honor wealth and at the same time for citizens to acquire moderation, but one or the other is inevitably neglected. So you've created a society where the young people, who don't know any differently or who are young and have lacked discipline, are taking out exorbitant loans to the oligarchs and it is secured by their property. And then they call those loans in becoming even richer. And then you have an even bigger class of people who have now become disenfranchised. And those people, the disenfranchised, sit idle in the city, I suppose, with their stings and weapons, some in debt, some disenfranchised, some both hating those who've acquired their property, plotting against some and others and longing for a revolution. The money makers, on the other hand, with their eyes on the ground, pretend not to see these people. And by lending money they disable any of the remainder who resist exact as interest many times the principal sum and so create a considerable number of drones and beggars in the city. In any case, they are unwilling to quench this kind of evil as it flares up in the city, either in the way we mentioned, by preventing people from doing whatever they like with their own property or by another law which would also solve the problem. What law is that? The second best law. I don't know what the first, which compels the citizen to care about virtue by prescribing that the majority of voluntary contracts be entered into at the lender's own risk. For lenders would be less shameless than, than in their pursuit of money in the city. And fewer of those evils we were mentioning just now would develop. So the lenders have to take the risk in the loan. That is you would have no loans. You would basically ruin the credit market. So you now have these two cities and also then you. So now we're going to have this sort of, the, this moves on. So you have this, this sort of low grade animosity between the oligarchs and also the, the idlers as, as Plato calls them, the people that have sort of become disenfranchised, they are so indebted or they've sold their farms, they have no real path forward in this city and, and they don't know what to do. Now we can maybe sort of recognize this in terms of like city structures. Remember Plato's also saying that this can happen in your heart, that you can have that your desire to make money is also going to like rob, rob a part of you that wants that like should be trained in these sort of higher things. But by only caring about money you are actually going to begin to create in you this sort of like, sort of anxious, pleasure loving citizenry in your soul. We called the Democrats the Democratic part. Let's get to that. Okay, so yeah, like I said, we, it's. I think this is easy to see in the, in the city. But try to think about like, what does that look in a, like in a person? Because this is also a passage about how people fall apart, not just how societies degrade over time. How do you become a pleasure loving person? All right, so the, the Democrat kid, the kid who grows up with the arist, the oligarchic father, remember his dad limited his own personal passions and desires, but only because they were expensive. And the, the. The kid growing up with this doesn't have that same. He's going to overstep that bound. He's. He's not going to be. He's going to be cool with spending the money. In fact, he maybe thinks that spending the money is like a spiritual necessity. So this city is diseased. You got these two classes when the city is at this state. Plato says this then as a sick body needs only a slight shock from outside to become ill and is sometimes at civil war with itself even without this. So a city in the same condition needs only a small pretext, such as one side bringing in allies from an oligarchy or the other from a democracy to fall ill and fight with itself and is sometimes in a state of civil war even without an external influence. Okay, let's talk about the democratic city. So let's say that in our city there is some kind of like, rise of the. The rise of the people. So the democratic state is that they are free. That is what they love. If the oligarchy. So if Tim. Democracy loved reputation, oligarchy loved money. Democracy loves kind of freedom and the, and the, the. The. The freedom to indulge in pleasure. They're free and they're full of freedoms and freedom of speech. And everyone has license to do what he wants. And where people have license, it's clear that each of them will arrange his own life in whatever manner pleases him. And then in this city you will find all sorts of different kinds of people of all varieties. Then it looks as though this is the finest or most beautiful of the constitutions. For like a coat embroidered with every kind of ornament. This city embroidered with every kind of character type would seem to be the most beautiful. And many people would probably judge it to be so as women and children do when they see something multicolored again.
- [43:33]
A
So, yes, again, Plato's never been applauded for his views on women. I don't think that's his.
- [43:39]
B
You wonder why Socrates's wife did like them. Right? Yeah. So when. Yeah. So it's. It. It seems the democracy democratic, the freedom society seems to be the best of all societies because it gives people a tremendous amount of freedom. You don't have to serve in the. If you don't have to rule. It seems like in the timocratic society you would be forced to be a ruler of the society. Like you have to be on the HOA at Some point, right? But in the democratic society, if you don't want to, you don't have to. If you don't want to be a juror in a, in a court, you don't have to. You do not have to serve in public office. There's no laws forbidding you to quit and not do it. Plato says, isn't this a divine and pleasant life while it lasts?
- [44:24]
C
Oh.
- [44:26]
B
And, and what about the city's tolerance, says Plato? Isn't it so completely lacking in small mindedness that it utterly despises the things that we took so seriously when we were founding our city? Namely that unless someone had transcendent natural gifts, he's, he'd never become good unless he's played the right games and followed a fine way of life from early childhood. Isn't it magnificent the ways it tramples all this underfoot? By giving no thought to what someone was doing before he entered public life and by honoring him if only he tells him that he wishes the majority well. So in other words, he looks at the rigidness of the aristocratic and timocratic city that says if we got to train young people to be in a certain kind of way and we need to give them the right music and the right games and have the right points of view and we need to sort of gear them towards the right kind of attitudes towards public service and sacrifice and all these sort of noble virtuous things. And the democratic city says yeah, maybe if you want to, but maybe there's other ways that kids want to grow up and maybe there's like a whole, there's all sorts of different things that ways to do this and we should do. People should have the freedom to kind of like raise their kids however they want and to have whatever sort of. And if you want your child to have, you know, certain views about what is the good life and it doesn't correspond with, with like, you know, the status quo or whatever. This is. We should be able to do this. This is, this is sort of the, the rights that we have. And this is the, this is the freedom that we all want and it would seem a pleasant constitution which lacks rulers but not variety and which distributes a sort of equality to both equals and unequals alike. He's meaning in terms of like, like systems of raising children and this kind of stuff. And then the oligarchic kid is like this. When he was a young man, he was reared in a miserly household whose dad didn't want to spend money. But when he quote tastes the Honey of the drones and associates with wild and dangerous creatures who can provide every variety of multicolored pleasure in every sort of way. This, as you might suppose, is the beginning of his transformation from having an oligarchic constitution within him to having a democratic one. He sort of has a. A. A civil war in his soul between part of him that says, I should limit my desires like my dad. But my dad only didn't limit my desires because it was right. My dad just limited his desires because it was cheap. And so he has this, like, I feel like I should be limiting my desires, but I've also got this thing in me that says, like, why not?
- [47:19]
A
I've got plenty of money.
- [47:21]
B
Yeah.
- [47:21]
A
People respect me. Like, I'm not gonna overspend it. Like, money is the thing that really matters. And so as long as I've got that, I can do whatever I want.
- [47:28]
B
That's right. And so he sort of has what Plato says, an empty citadel in his heart. Nothing is guarding it because he doesn't know who should guard it and says, see, in the citadel of the young man's soul, empty of knowledge, fine ways of living and words of truth. Sorry, who's. Who's empty in the ways of knowledge? Find ways of living in words of truth, which are the best watchmen. They finally occupy the citadel themselves. That being false, boastful words, and all sorts of beliefs and ignorances about pleasure. Then he describes the. The. The democratic man. And this never. This makes me laugh all the time because this sounds like they are describing, like, your average millennial. Oh, and like, how we flit from, like, you know, thing to thing. And, like. Anyway, listen. So he says, this is. This is the democratic disposition. And so he lives on, yielding day by day to the desire at hand. Sometimes he drinks heavily while listening to the flute. Oh, yeah. He's, like, really in. He's really into, like, the party scene these days. Like, I'm just feeling the music and just drinking and, like, the EDM flute music, and I'm just all about it. At other times, he drinks only water and is on a diet. Oh, so he's, like, on a cleanse. He's just on, like. Like a juice cleanse. He's. He's really sort of, like, taking care of his body. Sometimes he goes in for physical training. So, like, I've just been really getting into CrossFit and, you know, hooking those weights, hucking those weights. At other times, he's idle and neglects everything, and sometimes he even occupies himself with what he takes to be philosophy. He often engages in politics, leaping up from his seat and saying and doing whatever comes into his mind. If he happens to admire soldiers, he's carried in that direction, if moneymakers in that one. There's neither order nor. Nor necessity in his life, but he calls it pleasant, free, and blessedly happy. And he follows it for as long as he lives. So he just gets on these little, like, YouTube trails. He's like, I've really been learning about, like, military history. And then I started learning about, like, you know, people who make money. And then I've been getting into politics. Then I was like, doing some weights, but then I really get into fasting, and now I'm getting into, like. Anyway, so he's just talking about someone that's just sort of going from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing, and. And with no aim and no direction. There is neither order nor necessity in his life, but he calls it pleasant, free, and blessedly happy. And he follows it for as long as he lives. And.
- [49:59]
A
Oh, no.
- [50:00]
B
Yeah, yeah, right.
- [50:01]
C
Are you seeing. You're feeling seen right now? What's happening? Okay, cool.
- [50:05]
B
Let's keep on track of him. Don't worry, aj.
- [50:08]
A
Save me from my plight, please.
- [50:10]
B
Well, it sounds like you need a strong man to tell you what to do.
- [50:12]
C
Oh, no.
- [50:13]
A
Oh, is this okay? Is this where you get things like the Alpha boot camp?
- [50:19]
B
I don't know about that. You just get. No, you're gonna be you.
- [50:22]
A
Like, for dudes that are kind of. I think so.
- [50:24]
C
Being told.
- [50:24]
B
Maybe this is where we get in our. In our time. Plato says that eventually the person is going to be completely overrun with erotic desire of all things. We'll get to that in a second. Okay, so you've perfectly described the life of the man who believes in equality and everything. Okay, so then how does the tyrant come to be? So we have this democratic society where everybody is sort of following after all of these seemingly really interesting things. Like, everyone is into all this stuff, but it is without order and necessity. But only people who want to rule rule, and people who don't want to rule don't have to rule. And it's kind of this like, sort of chaotic at will kind of thing. Then it says, democracy's insatiable desire for what it defines as the good also destroys it. When a democratic city, athirst for freedom, happens to get bad cupbearers for its leaders, so that it gets drunk by drinking more than it should of the unmixed wine of freedom, then unless the rulers are Very pliable and provide plenty of that freedom. They are punished by the city and accused of being oligarchs. So if someone looks at society and says, man, we're becoming decadent and like we are, you know, like getting into these sort of bad and unhealthy ways of making money, but also of like engaging in pleasure, we need to reform, we need to pull back. Someone's going to be like, well that sounds like the repression of the oligarchs. That's like this sounds like this is the, you know, the crushing hand of, you know, the man of the man or of the repressive hand of traditionalism or whatever. Right. And they get accused of being oligarchies. I wanted to do my Bernie Sanders impression, the oligarchy, but it's pretty good listeners.
- [52:17]
C
You'd be the judge of how good that impression was.
- [52:20]
B
I am once again coming to ask you for $5.
- [52:22]
C
Thank you.
- [52:24]
B
Yes, that's what it does. It insults those who obey the rulers as willing slaves. So people, so remember the oligarchs are still kind of in charge. And this younger generation that is like this like pleasure loving democratic generation. And if the oligarchs are like, guys, we need to reign in our desires but not for some high moral reason, but because like they just. That was.
- [52:43]
A
It's getting gross out there.
- [52:45]
B
It's getting gross out there and it's expensive and they're making like economic reasons as to why we should be moral. No one believes them. People who listen to them are called willing slaves and good for nothings and praise and honors. Sorry, it insults those who obey the rulers as willing slaves and good for nothing. And it the sort of democratic society praises honors both in public and in private. Rulers who behave like subjects and subjects who behave like rulers. And isn't it inevitable that freedom should go all the lengths in such a city? And it says it even makes private households inverted. I want to read this passage. This is a little bit of a long passage, but he says it even destroys sort of the families and inverts it. So how so? I mean that a father accustoms himself to behave like a child and fear his sons while the son behaves like a father feeling neither shame nor fear in front of his parents in order to be free. A resident alien or a foreign visitor is made equal to a citizen and he is their equal. Yes, that is what happens. It does. And so do other little things of that same sort. A teacher in such a community is afraid of his students and flatters them while the Students despise their teachers and tutors and in general the young imitate their elders and compete with them in word and deed, while the old stoop to the level of the young and are full of play and pleasantry, imitating the young for fear of appearing disagreeable and authoritarian. The utmost freedom for the majority is reached in such a city when. Well, we'll skip that little part. He's going to talk about criminals and slaves and dogs. He's going to say we let dogs roam the streets. But he's basically saying that you've got this like, inversion that old people want to seem young and carefree and fun because if you look old and like you have rules, you are someone who is imposing like this oligarchic squashing of freedom. And. And young people end up despising their teachers and tutors because they're either limiting their freedom or deep down like, or also deep down they hate the fact that the people who should know better aren't knowing better. And so they despise them. And so it's just like everybody is kind of this like immature, immature pleasure seeking person. Eventually these things make the citizen's soul so sensitive that if anyone even puts upon himself the least degree of, of control or of trying to control their passions, they, the democratic populace becomes angry and cannot endure it. And in the end, as you know, they take no notice of the laws, whether written or unwritten, in order to avoid having any master at all. So even if somebody says, you know what? I'm going to control my passions, they're like, you are a disease in our society. If that kind of mentality gets out there, like this is the kind of thing that destroys, you know, destroys our openness and destroys our sort of our pleasure and destroys our self actualization and self discovery of the, you know, the depth of the human experience or whatever. The same disease that develops in oligarchy and destroyed it also develops here, but it is more widespread and virulent because of the general permissiveness and it eventually enslaves democracy. In fact, excessive action in one direction usually sets up a reaction in the opposite direction. This happens in seasons, in plants, in bodies and last but not least in constitutions. And in fact. So now our democratic city gets pulled into three directions. You get the, where are we? You get the people, the idlers who are now in charge. So they are basically in charge through the sheer force of their idleness. Like there's so many of them and they are now the cultural majority of, and their entire way of being Is maximizing and indulging in freedom in all of its various aspects and turning that into sort of like the cultural norms that they end up being the rulers. Then you have the people who make a lot of money by being able to cater to all of those different desires. I don't know what to call them, so I've just called them the cool merchants.
- [57:18]
C
Okay.
- [57:18]
B
They're the people that can like, figure out ways to like, invent different things to sell to the idlers, to indulge in. They provide the most honey for the drones, is what he says. So they're the cool merchants. They're the ones that kind of like figure out ways to, you know, they're the ones that can like make this thing popular. Then all the idlers buy it and then make this thing popular. And all the others go into that and they sort of churn through this.
- [57:42]
A
So forever 21.
- [57:43]
B
Yeah, exactly. Or, you know, whatever. Yeah, whatever thing gets popular these days. Like there's Stanley mugs and now then it gets turned into other cups. Whatever. Whatever. It's in trend.
- [57:53]
A
Whatever mug.
- [57:54]
B
That's right.
- [57:54]
C
Yes.
- [57:55]
B
And then there are those who are.
- [57:57]
A
But I will be honest. I do love my. A good yeti tumbler.
- [57:59]
B
Yeah, they're just keeping.
- [58:00]
A
Keeping your stuff the right temperature. Gotta say it.
- [58:02]
B
And then there is the. The people who. Who work with their own hands are the third class. They take no part in politics and have few possessions. But when they are assembled, they are the largest and most powerful class in a democracy. But they aren't willing to assemble unless they get a share of the honey. And they do so whenever there's big political decisions that need to happen. The idlers, who are really the sort of like intelligentsia class who are in charge, but they are in charge purely based on their ability to sort of like sell this culture of permissiveness. Whenever they need to make big political decisions, they basically need to get a big bunch of money and bribe the people who work with their hands to. To go with whatever democratic thing they want. And so every now and then you get this big kind of like trickle down money. You basically bribe the. The voters. Okay? This eventually spins into tyranny because you basically have been swung in one direction and everybody is kind of. You get this. You get this sort of like. Like what we were saying, that the populace becomes so sensitive that anybody who puts. Anybody who sort of whispers an idea of putting a limit on their freedom and desire is like a thing that needs to get cut out of the city.
- [59:27]
C
Is that not what the tyrant does.
- [59:29]
B
But the thing is, they end up kind of desiring the tyrant, because the tyrant, he comes in and he is somebody who fully realizes the dream of the permissive democratic city by going fully into his desires. And it turns out that what's at the bottom of this desiring, sort of like what. What the democratic disposition thought they were working towards, was like a greater human freedom expressed through indulgence in all sorts of different desires. Turns out, though, like, the final boss of desire is violence against your fellow person. So it turns out that, like, at the very bottom of, like, someone who dedicates their life completely sort of hedonistic desire, Plato says you end up in two places. You get addicted to drinking the blood of other human beings, and you become like this sort of erotic tyrant. Like you. You get thrown into sort of like, sexually violent subcultures, and that also turns into a violent. Into sort of the shedding of blood. And then once. Once the tyrant realizes that once you shed blood of your fellow political enemies, in fact, instead of people turning away from you as being gross and scary, people actually look at you as. As some sort of. You've realized the apotheosis of, like, the desiring man. You've, like. You've crossed the last boundary. You've, like, fully actualized yourself in being the true free person because you were now free of the, like, most impious thing, killing somebody else. You are now the true. The true man. And the true man is kind of this, like, violent, uninhibited, murderous, sexual deviant. And he rules. And that's the tyrant. And people love that, because then the tyrant comes in. The tyrant says, all right, you guys are a mess, but you need someone who, like, knows everything about what it means to be a human being, to control you. And they're like, yes, govern us. We can't. We need. We're too free. We're too free. And then you get into this. Now, this is where book ends is at the rise of the tyrant, and book nine is the continuation. Book nine begins with Glaucon immediately. Doesn't. Isn't like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you mean when you say that? Like, misaligned erotic desire is the beginning of tyranny. Glaucon's like, I don't like that. I want my erotic desire. And so book nine begins with Socrates going through describing why Eros, the sort of why sexual desire ends up being kind of this engine for tyranny. And that's a complicated argument. I don't have that prepared to to go over today. So if people have those, we can do another episode on it.
- [62:20]
C
But.
- [62:21]
B
But that's where Plato ends. Is that the tyrant? Sort of the final. Yeah, like the final boss of the democratic soul or the democratic love of freedom is violence. Like that's sort of the final. And so it's. It sounds stupid to say that all the people that are like in. Into all these, you know, the flute playing and the drinking water and the fasting and then like the working out and the military history, like if they continue on this path of wanting to experience everything in the human life, they eventually get to bloodshed and sexual deviancy. And I couldn't help but thinking of.
- [63:00]
A
Dorian Gray or if you've spent any time as I have in like the downtown nightlife, if you've ever had a night out, you know that violence plays a part in it.
- [63:08]
B
It usually ends. Yeah, it ends up that way.
- [63:09]
A
I've seen people get like punched. Like it ends in pretty dark places.
- [63:13]
B
Yeah, I was thinking of sort of like. Yeah, the Dorian Gray where once he has complete permissive freedom to indulge every desire, it ends in murder and like sexual deviancy. Yeah, this is, you know, the ring of G. Right. As soon as you get the ring that makes you invisible, it turns. You become a murderer and like a pervert. I'm amazed that Harry Potter with his little robe of invisibility, like we got to take that thing away from him.
- [63:36]
C
Yeah, that's right.
- [63:37]
B
Yeah.
- [63:38]
A
That's not going to be a good long term possession to have.
- [63:40]
C
No.
- [63:41]
B
And so there's something about this. And so as far as Plato is concerned, the whole thing spins out of control as soon as you have. As soon as you don't take care of disenfranchised. A large disenfranchised population if you know, not the people who work with their hands. So it's not just like the working man, it's that there's like. If there is a subsection of population that's. That is idlers, that seems disenfranchised, that that is also wealthy, like has money and has the means to be able to give themselves over into pleasure. If you have the subsection of population that doesn't seem to have a role to play in society and decides that their grand life project is to try to like maximize their human experience through pleasure. That is sort of this tipping point that Plato says you are going to have this. It's a. And then the oligarchs, the only way that they know how to stop this is not some sort of appeal to virtue, but is like making economic arguments or saying like, well, we just need to limit our desires because like, you know, that's what our fathers did. And they're just appealing to their honor loving fathers and they don't have a like first principles reason why we should limit our desires and why we should have self control. Then the younger generation is going to say, well you're just doing this because you want to limit our freedom. Or you're saying, or you're just doing this because you're trying to extract wealth from us somehow, you money loving jerks. And then you've got this like this society that's basically going to burn itself out. Plato says at this point the society is sick, like with a fever and it's going to die, or it needs like emergency surgery and the death is the tyrant coming in and completely ruling it. But the tyrant is not some sort of aristocratic savior. It's somebody that like says true freedom is in murder, true freedom is in death. And then Plato goes on to say that like what you thought was freedom is actually a slavery because you are now slave to the worst kinds of passions. The wildness of the human heart. And now we are run by beasts. And we've gone from being run by gods with the aristocrat people who love virtue to being run by beasts, people who only know like the taste of blood and the unfettered openness of their, of their like sexual desire. And this is, this is a tyranny. And Glaucon and Adamantis get bummed.
- [66:14]
A
And on that happy note.
- [66:16]
C
Yeah, there we are.
- [66:16]
A
We can draw this episode to a close.
- [66:20]
C
Well, looking forward to the in between. We got a lot to go through there.
- [66:23]
B
The thing is, it's like this is a theory. Doesn't need to be right on this.
- [66:27]
C
Right, yeah.
- [66:28]
A
And he's also working with smaller cities than the giant sprawling countries we're working with.
- [66:33]
C
Anyway, this is also about. Sorry, we'll get to the image because it's about a person.
- [66:36]
B
It's also about the human soul. So like if you're reading this, you're like, oh man, America's doomed. I don't necessarily think that, but it's like we should be saying, wait a minute, if I am, if my whole life is like, I really want, I have like, I have disorganized desires in terms of just following things that I think are cool. Plato says that's dangerous that you should pay attention to.
- [66:58]
C
Yep, there you go.
- [66:59]
A
Anyway, well, this has been classical stuff. You should know you can find us on patreon@patreon.com Classical stuff. You can find us on the twits at CLSS C A L stuff. You can email us at theguys classicalstuff.net we will try to get your email if we can. We can't always. And I think that's it, boys.
- [67:15]
B
Cool. Okay, bye. Ciao.
- [67:17]
A
Bye.