Plato's Phaedo - Jay Dyer

Summary

Jay'sAnalysis: Plato's Phaedo – In-Depth Review by Jay Dyer

Date: January 6, 2025
Host: Jay Dyer (with frequent interjections from an unnamed Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst)

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Main Theme & Purpose

Jay Dyer's episode delivers an in-depth philosophical exploration of Plato’s Phaedo, focusing on the dialogue’s dense metaphysics, its treatment of the soul’s immortality, the doctrine of forms, dialectics, and the esoteric traditions that permeate Plato's work. Dyer’s aim is to make these ancient and often esoteric philosophical ideas more accessible and relevant to listeners, offering both classical exposition and contemporary critique grounded in his own intellectual tradition.

“What I want to do in this talk is make it more... down to a more general level where it can be understood by people that maybe haven’t read Plato in depth or are not too familiar with a lot of the philosophical concepts.” — Jay Dyer (02:23)

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Making Philosophy Accessible

• Jay emphasizes his desire to provide a deeper, more accessible discussion than typical academic overviews, aiming for practical application across disciplines (music, business, theology, etc.)

  “I can give you a better education, a better insight into Plato for a lot cheaper... You won’t have some useless piece of paper, but you’ll have the knowledge and the critical thinking…” (03:54)

2. The Context of Phaedo

• Phaedo is situated after The Apology, with Socrates defending his beliefs about death, the soul, and the afterlife.
• Discussion of Socrates' charges (corrupting the youth, impiety) sets up broader questions about tradition and the transmission of knowledge.

  “He’s going to give his view of the afterlife, immortality of the soul, and why he doesn’t believe that he’s wrong in his decision to submit to the elders of Athens in their decision of death.” (07:10)

3. Tradition and Esotericism

• Plato borrows from Eastern thought, especially Egyptian and perhaps Judaic traditions.
• The concept of tradition as a body of wisdom—contrasted with modernity’s competing ‘traditions’—is crucial to Dyer’s interpretation.

  “Socrates is the bearer of a tradition... the ancient world was one based on tradition. Ironically, the modern world, although it derides tradition, is not actually anti-traditional. It’s... a new narrative…” (13:53)

4. Apollonian vs. Dionysian Religion (11:02)

• Jay draws on Nietzsche’s distinction:
  • Apollonian = rational, ordered, solar, masculine (e.g., Kurt Gödel)
  • Dionysian = chaotic, irrational, natural, orgiastic (e.g., Jim Morrison)
  • The dialogue’s mention of the Priests of Apollo signals its alignment with rational, ordered spiritual inquiry.

5. The Doctrine of Forms and Dialectics

• The discussion transitions to dialectics—pleasure vs. pain, permanence vs. flux, body vs. soul.

• The doctrine of forms is central: absolute realities (beauty, good, bookness) exist independent of sensory experience.

  “Man sees by his soul, not by bodily sight. So the sight that Plato is concerned with is the inner eye...” (26:49–27:14)

• Jay notes Plato’s anti-physicalism and the primacy given to reason, tracing the historical impact of this move through Descartes and later rationalist traditions.

• The ‘one and many’ problem is teased as the pivotal argument in Phaedo (see 44:47 and 50:21).

6. Knowledge, Universals, and the ‘One and the Many’

The One and the Many (51:24–64:07):

• Explores how we connect particular objects (like ‘books’) to a universal essence (bookness), which cannot be reduced to mere sensory attributes or subjective constructs.

• Numerical example (62:18 onwards): Erasing “7” from a chalkboard does not erase “sevenness”—indicating universals transcend material instantiations.

  “Numbers are a really, really great example... numbers seem to present this truth even more clearly.” (63:19)

• Critique of empiricism: Sensory experience alone is insufficient for knowledge of universals; Plato’s forms offer a necessary metaphysical grounding.

• Transcendental Arguments:
  Kant’s idea of the “transcendental unity of apperception”—the mind's inherent structuring activity—is compared with Plato’s metaphysical arguments (79:04; 81:02).

  “Transcendental arguments generally are arguments from the impossibility of the contrary.” (84:12)

7. The Immortality of the Soul and Afterlife (88:11+)

• Socrates’ argument that the soul, unlike the body, is simple and akin to the forms—hence, immortal.

• The debate over reincarnation: Jay criticizes cyclical views of history (influenced by Far East thought), preferring a linear, biblical perspective. He also raises practical problems with reincarnation and population growth (95:07).

• The soul’s journey after death, as described in Phaedo, is traced through classical, medieval, and even modern echoes (Dante’s Inferno, Kubrick’s 2001).

  “None of us knows exactly the logistics of what goes on after you pass on... The idea of the soul’s katabasis, the trek to the underworld, and then the return in literary theory, this is standard.” (105:11)

8. Evil, Negation, and the Created World (99:10+)

• Jay critiques Platonic and Gnostic tendencies to denigrate materiality or particularity as inherently ‘lesser’ or ‘bad’.
• He affirms the Genesis account—“creation is good”—arguing evil is a privation or negation, not a positive substance.

9. The Philosophical and Existential Challenge (102:30+)

• The ultimate task is a love for truth and use of logic and argument.

  “Argument and logic are crucial to obtaining truth. And that should be your guiding goal in philosophy, is to obtain truth.” (102:31)

10. Esotericism, Myth, and the Katabasis Motif

• Jay explores the layered, symbolic aspects of Plato’s cosmology and afterlife teachings (104:09+), the motif of descent and return (katabasis), and their echoes in religious, literary, and even cinematic traditions.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Value of Philosophy:

  “So the profession of the philosopher is death. Not a morbid obsession on death, but a noble courage facing death.” (33:17-33:20)

• Central Argument for the Forms:

  “When the professor drew the number seven on the chalkboard, erased it, and said, have I gotten rid of the number seven?... No, obviously, he had not destroyed the number seven, because the number seven still seems to be. We intuitively know somehow that this is the case.” (62:18–62:50)

• On Empiricism’s Limits:

  “Do we learn by the senses? Of course, absolutely... But... what’s going on in the process of learning by sense experience is... a real interaction with eternal principles.” (70:37–70:51)

• On the Esoteric Underpinnings of Plato:

  “How in the world would Plato have known that unless there was some truth to traditionalism and ancient mysteries?” (104:11)

• On Rationalism’s Dangers:

  “When we see reason raised to that primacy of godhood, we end up with French Revolution, we end up with nihilism. That’s where it goes. That’s where we are today. Techno nihilism...” (90:22–90:33)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:23 — Jay lays out his aim: approachable, practical philosophy
• 11:02 — Discussion of Apollonian (order) and Dionysian (chaos) religions in context
• 19:29 — Early introduction to dialectics and the origins of the doctrine of forms
• 26:49-27:14 — On the soul’s perception vs. the body’s sensory limitations
• 44:47 — The centrality of the ‘one and the many’ problem
• 51:24–64:07 — Long exposition of universals, forms, the number seven example
• 79:04 — Kant and the “transcendental unity of apperception”
• 88:11 — Immortality of the soul and the critique of cyclic views
• 104:09 — Esoteric cosmology, colors, and what Plato “couldn’t have known”
• 105:11 — Katabasis, literary archetypes, and afterlife journeys
• 108:28–109:36 — Socrates’ death, the ambiguity of the gods, and allegorical vs literal religion

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Structure & Tone

• Language and Tone: Jay’s delivery is lively, informal, and often polemical, with spontaneous asides and a frequent use of sarcasm (“utterly retarded,” “not just some guy in a chat room...”). He is keen to link ancient topics with today’s intellectual battles.
• Method: Freestyled analysis, not scripted; references both classical texts and modern philosophers; substantial critique and personal synthesis.
• Critique: Dyer interweaves Orthodox Christian theology with his analysis, especially in critiquing Plato’s rationalism, body/soul dualism, and cyclical metaphysics.

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Conclusion

Jay Dyer’s deep dive into Phaedo is both an introduction to Plato’s metaphysics and an application of those ideas to modern philosophical, theological, and even esoteric debates. Blending traditional exegesis with topical critique and humor, Jay underscores the continuing relevance of Plato’s arguments about truth, knowledge, and the soul—while warning of the dangers (both intellectual and spiritual) in misapplying or misunderstanding them.

“This is a platform to go on to become an excellent philosopher... the kind of stuff that makes the world meaningful and wondrous.” (87:34–87:38)

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For more lectures and exclusive content from Jay Dyer, listeners are encouraged to support the show via subscription.

Transcript

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[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

All right, jsanalysis.com this time we're going.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

To discuss Plato's Fido in depth. I thought that it would be helpful to readers of the article that did.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Pretty well for a philosophy article dealing.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

With the esoteric side of it, which is generally passed over. If you have any kind of academic treatment of the Tereides of the topic, you do a cursory glance in Philosophy 101 and then you don't really deal with it again unless perhaps you take an upper level philosophy course on Plato. So what I want to do in this talk is make it more.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Bring.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

It down to a more general level.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Where it can be understood by people.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

That maybe haven't read Plato in depth or are not too familiar with a lot of the philosophical concepts. So since Jay's analysis is growing quite a bit of late, and because my field is philosophy and classics and ancient.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Philosophy, medieval philosophy, etc.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

What I want to do is try to make things more accessible so it's not all totally on an advanced level. Also, if you would, what I'm trying to do is I'd like to get to where I can do this full time. So if you would go ahead and subscribe or donate and what I do is I give extra lectures, extra talks and information ahead of time to those that have subscribed. So basically for $4.95 or a donation, you're going to get something better than university style education where you're paying thousands and thousands of dollars, know, $2,000 per class or whatever, $1,500 a credit hour, which is crazy for, you know, for a statist Marxist to stand up there and tell you how Plato is gender warfare and class warfare, which is utterly retarded, utterly ridiculous. And I can give you a better education, a better insight into play DOH for a lot cheaper than that. So you could go this route. You won't have some useless piece of paper, but you'll have the knowledge and the critical thinking and the ability, the.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Skill.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

That I've been blessed with, that I could bless you with, at least help you with, to go in and smash these teachers, if that's who you have to use these principles and apply them to whatever field you're in. If you make music, Pythagoreanism, Platonism ties in very well with music. A lot of it's based on musical theory. If you are in business, you can use logic and critical thinking. You might have had a basic critical thinking course in your, in your, you know, your undergrad or something like that. Maybe that's being phased out as we go into this global technocratic economy. But you know, again, critical thinking is very useful for business and thinking in multi dimensional levels, right? So not just us against them, but in 3D and 4D and 5D chessboard levels of reality. It can help you to see things from different perspectives and different angles. Getting a different viewpoint to help you think strategically, say in whatever business endeavor you're in. In religious thinking, it can be advantageous. Have a lot of theologians, academics and religious affiliated readers and listeners so you can get a better understanding of these ancient texts that can help you in understanding where you're at in your theology. And again, for $4.95, you can't beat that. That's a lot better than paying thousands of dollars for some guy who is an idiot basically, and not very well trained in anything, standing up there telling you what the text doesn't mean. So let's get into this. There's some really interesting elements throughout this dialogue that build on the previous dialogue of the Apology where Socrates is giving a defense of why he's on trial by the people of Athens, the elders of Athens, for inciting, inciting the youth. So he's charged with rebellion and turning the youth to unsavory opinions and inciting revolution or rebellion and offending the gods. And so what we find in the second dialogue in my copy in Phaedo is Socrates defense. He's going to give his.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

His view.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

Of the afterlife, immortality of the soul, and why he doesn't believe that.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

He'S wrong in his decision to submit to.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

The elders of Athens in their decision of death. He also will give an interesting approach to the gods, where he will in one way speak of them allegorically and in another way he will affirm them in reality. So we're going to get into that. Talk about why that might be.

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[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And exclusions as usual, I don't do.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

My discussions with a bunch of notes and outlines.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

I just kind of freestyle. I like that better.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

That's my improv coming through. But what we know in terms of more recent and scholarly deeper studies is that Plato is borrowing a lot from Eastern thought. Of course, obviously this is Greece, but ancient Far Eastern ideas precede this. We know that there's a body of tradition doctrine coming out of Egypt that informs Socrates, and this is explained in the Timaeus at the beginning.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Another important dialogue.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

But here we are focused on the question of the afterlife, and the other interesting, crucial Platonic idea that will come.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

To the fore is.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

The doctrine of.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

The forms.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

And the eternality of truth. I'm also going to, throughout this discussion, give my own personal critiques and thoughts on the dialogue and why I don't believe we should accept a cyclical view.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Of history, or.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

Panpsychism or transmigration of souls, reincarnation, and some other theological issues that we would take issue with where I come from. So there's a discussion at the beginning.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

About.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

The priests of Apollo and Apollonian religion. If you've read Nietzsche, you know Nietzsche categorizes it as the rational. It's focused on the sun as opposed to Dionysian religion that is focused on the irrational, the force of nature, the.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Chaotic, the.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

You know, the Dionysian banquet.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Where you.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Get drunk and you engage.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

In, you know, a Saturnalian.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Orgy or something like that.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

So if we were to.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

You know.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

We could contrast maybe, I don't know, who's somebody who's. We could think of maybe Jim Morrison as somebody who's a Dionysian and say Kurt Godel as somebody who's an Apollonian. So two very, very different people, but good images of the Apollonian and Dionysian. So it's crucial that we recognize the mention of the priests of Apollo at the beginning of the dialogue, because Apollonian.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Religion is again going to be characterized.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

By masculinity, rationality, order.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

In contrast to.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

Chaos and flux and brute forces of nature. There's an interesting mention of the providence of God early on in the dialogue.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

So.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

It'S a debated topic in scholarship.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

As to.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

What exactly the notion of God is that was bequeathed from Egypt.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

To Socrates and Plato.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

Very possible. A lot of the early patristic fathers, Augustine, for example, and City of God, speculate that perhaps the Egyptian thought was influenced by Moses and the Jews in their, their time in Egypt, their sojourn there.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

But we don't know for sure.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

Regardless, there's clearly cross cultural influences here between ancient Egyptian and Greek thought and, you know, very, very possibly Jewish thinking. We know from the text of Exodus that Moses was learned in all the mysteries of the Egyptians when he was young at Pharaoh's court, before he decided to go over to his native people, the Jews. So Moses learned the esoteric side of Egyptian thought. And it's very possible that.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

In that.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

Interaction between the.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Jews in Egypt, in the Egyptian court, Egyptian religion, that there was some sort of a blending or.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

Body of doctrine that was passed down. And that's another important understanding, or an important point to understand here is that Socrates is the bearer of a tradition. So while it's in vogue in modernity to deride ancient thinking, ancient wisdom, perennial teaching, traditionalism, this is a very different stance, a very different approach to the world and to living. And so the ancient world was one based on tradition. Ironically, the modern world, although it derives tradition, is not actually anti traditional. It's actually just a different kind of tradition. It's something more nouveau riche, something very or created by the nouveau riche, I should say. It's a new narrative, a kind of.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Technocratic.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

You know, empiricist narrative that gained sway at the time of the scientific revolution and so forth. So Modernity's grand narrative is still a tradition. It's just a different tradition. And it's also a syncretic blended tradition just as much as any other. So the real question is not tradition.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Versus no tradition, but ah, I'm sensing plumbing problems.

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[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

Tradition versus other traditions and which traditions are true?

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And that's really what the question, that's.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

The ultimate question of philosophy really is.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

What's the true tradition?

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

There's some really good thinkers who deal.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

With that very well.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

One of the best essays I can think of is there's an essay by Dr. Philip Sherrard called Tradition and the Traditions, and in this he details what he sees as the traditional central distinguishing factor between perennial thought and biblical theism, or a personal theistic God. But that's not where we're going to.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Go in this discussion per se.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

There will be a little bit of that, but suffice to say that the idea of a body of tradition passed on is crucial here and something that informs the Platonic approach to knowledge, that distinguishes it from others. So when Aristotle takes his departure from the Platonic tradition, although we can still place Aristotle in the school of Platonic tradition, the Aristotelian departure with hylomorphism, and I'll get into that later, marks a very distinct departure from the body of doctrine that is passed on here. But again, tradition is crucial here, and it's an oral tradition. We don't know exactly when it was written down, because the oldest copies that we have of Socratic dialogues are actually pretty late, you know, 800-1000 AD so not actually BC and if I recall.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

These are housed at Oxford or somewhere, I don't know, something I read a long, long time ago. But.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

The Greek view here, somebody like Spangler.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

Is very good in Decline of the west in encapsulating the Greek approach to things. And it's very much based on fleeing from the temporal, fleeing from time, fleeing from the here and now. So there's a Greek fascination with eternity. And that's what will lead Greek thought in Plato, from Egyptian thought to. To basically positing the forms at the expense of everything in the finite material, temporal realm. And that will be crucial later on as well. But before we get into all that, we begin with a discussion of pleasure and pain and how the two seem to be dialectically connected, dialectically related. They seem to necessitate one another. Now, dialectics is going to be crucial to understanding.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Platonic thought.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

And this is one of the key indicators that it's borrowed heavily from other Far Eastern cultures, Possibly some syncretic Far Eastern view from perhaps Persian thought or, again, Egyptian thought. But again, we should point out there are distinct markers that set Egyptian thought.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Apart from the other ancient traditions.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

And this could also have, like I said, resulted from an influence of the Jews and their sojourn, because the Egyptian belief in the afterlife and the positive view of the body and the resurrection is something that is distinct from Greek thought and, say, other Far Eastern traditions.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So we've got. I've got my book out here.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

We've got.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Discussions of art and poetry.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

That's a debated topic in Greek thought in terms of the Platonic view, because in the Republic, Plato talks about how art is dangerous because art can be marshaled by oligarchical forces or by brutish forces to incite the mob, incite the masses. So art has to be controlled, poetry has to be banished. But Socrates, interesting change of thought here. He talks about writing poetry. I cleared my conscience by writing poetry. And then he goes on to talk.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

About how philosophy is the highest of the arts.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

So a lot of unanswered questions in some of the Platonic teachings and dialogues. Perhaps Plato modified his views over time. Perhaps. Perhaps there's a little game at work here, play on words, a little paradox that he intentionally included in the works. Who knows? We don't know. That's a long debated discussion as to Plato's actual view of the arts. But what we do know is that.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

The reference to Aesop's fables seems to.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Connect to the idea of religion and allegory.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

Because.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Plato, Socrates says he has a.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Recurring dream, and the recurring dream keeps telling him to.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

What was the exact quote? Socrates practice and cultivate the arts.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And so he tried doing poetry. He wanted to write his own Aesop's favorite fable, Socrates says. But he said it didn't come out very good. So he just kept doing philosophy and he came to the realization that philosophy is the greatest of the arts and that he thought this was the meaning of the recurring dream.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

But the recurring dream.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Seems to suggest recurring life. Because when we dream, we are in a different realm, the ether or whatever, and the soul or the psyche is experiencing things that seem to transcend the here and now.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So is there a possibility of Plato.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Thinking that dreams indicate this metaphysical past life or higher dimension or so forth? Very possible, because the discussion begins to divulge or diverge into. The issue of whether or not.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Excuse me, I lost my page here. Whether or not we had a past.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Life and dreams could be the indicator.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

Of that, Plato thinks, or Socrates thinks.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

So when we are asleep, we're out of the body and we're experiencing things in that psychical realm. And the early on statement here in the dialogue is that.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

He says, very well, then, let me try to make.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

A more convincing defense to you than I made at my trial.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

If I did not expect to enter the company, first of other wise and.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Good gods, and secondly of men now dead who are better than those who.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Are in the world. Now, it is true that I should be wrong in not grieving at death. As it is, you can be assured that I expect to find myself among good men. I would not insist particularly on this point, but on the other, I assure you that I shall now insist most.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Strongly that I shall find their divine masters who are supremely good.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

That is why I am not so.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Much distressed as I might be talking about his death. So he has an assurance that in the next life he is going to.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

Be with the blessed, with the good.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

The good gods, the men that have gone on to the afterlife, to Valhalla. I'm kidding, to the Elysian fields. And he says that philosophy is the preparation for death. So not fearing what happens to the body in this life is preparation for passage into the next life. But because the body in the Platonic view is ever changing and it's material and it's in flux, it has to be derided. So he talks about not giving in to the pleasures of the body and the passions of the body, and to flee them and to instead acquire gnosis. So the later Gnostic traditions of patristic era would definitely derive a lot of their impetus from Platonic thinking and Platonic dialogues.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So the philosopher is the one who.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

As we know, lives the examined life, the one who is interested in thinking through matters.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

But unfortunately we have at this point an erection of the primacy of reason.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Of ideas, of rational thought over against anything else. This will be, in my view, the chief dialectical problem at work here. Nevertheless, we're going to plumb this for any insights and good that we can.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So the dialogue then transfers to discussions of absolute beauty, absolute goodness, absolute uprightness. Man sees by his soul, not by bodily sight. So the sight that Plato is concerned.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

With is.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

The inner eye, the inner.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Man, the soul psyche, seeing the true forms of things and not the variegated variant, changing objects for his perception, presented to his, to his senses, that must be transcended, gone over and against and rejected for the ultimate eternal truths of things.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

There's an anti physicalism here.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And like I said, this is key to understanding the rest of the track of Western dialectics, because from Plato and Aristotle on, reason and rationality will be given primacy over other modes of thought, other primaries to existence, other approaches to morals, ethics, whatever. It's all based around the functioning of.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Reason, where the nous in Plato, which.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Is identified with intellect and rationality, is also identified with the soul. So there's a soul body dialectic here that will of course reemerge with Descartes, most notably in the scientific revolution. But as James Kelly pointed out in my interview with him, the intellect, this.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

You can almost call it a third.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Eye, perhaps even though it's actually identified with the soul at the same time.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Throughout life, is seeing a bunch of.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Images that pass before him. You know, as you live your life, you see the phenomena of experience and these are all transient and passing.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

But the goal, what you should be doing, is seeing through these to the eternal forms. And there's going to be an awesome argument that will be presented that I think is is philosophically one of the.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Best arguments ever for how we know that truth is eternal and how we can actually have certainty about objective essences or forms or existence.

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[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Objective metaphysical principles that are not purely dependent upon our individual minds. That's really going to be the crucial positive argument that we can derive from.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Plato in this dialogue. So he says that the quest that.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

The philosopher on is for reality, quest for truth.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And this is good.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

This is the approach that we should take to life. Because life is full of con men, con artists, deceptions, rigged games all around.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Us, from money to relationships to all.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Sorts of things, jobs, meaning the future.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

History, all bound up with multitudes of, of psyops and deceptions and marketing scams and pitches. And so the philosopher can make practical.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Use of this in seeing through all the scams, seeing through the mirage to the reality.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So the first step, he says, is.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Not being a slave to your passions. A man is a slave to lust or to alcohol or to greed or whatever, whatever vice. He's going to be consumed with that. And he's not going to be able to critically think or reason, not going to be able to live well or.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Come to truth, just common sense, because he's going to be obsessed with something.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

That'S fleeting, a fleeting pleasure. And the eternal truths, Plato argues, which.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And this is true, eternal truths of.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

God, of truth itself, absolute beauty, absolute goodness, uprightness.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

These pleasures are actually better. They will give you a higher level.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Of satisfaction, pleasure and fulfillment than any of the baser passions and delights of a fleshly nature.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So the philosopher has to kind of.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Undergo a purification.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

To be prepared for death.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And that's the goal of the philosopher.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

Because if you don't see through the.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Mirage and the deceptions to the truth, then when you go into the next life, you won't be prepared. And that's really the crux of what we're getting at here. That's his. We might call it the Gospel of Plato, if you will, the evangelion of Socrates.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So the profession of the philosopher is death.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Not a morbid obsession on death, but a noble courage facing death.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So detachment and apatheia.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And in Eastern thought, particularly Eastern Orthodox theology, apatheia is the idea of becoming passionless, not in the sense of having a love or something like that, but in the sense of not being dictated by baser passions, not allowing selfishness and lust and greed and addiction or whatever to dominate the way that we live, which will again cloud our thinking and our judgment. So through, according to Plato, through thought Critical thinking and rationality, apatheia can be achieved.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

But to be fair here, it's not just through thought.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

It's not purely rationalistic endeavor because you.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Also have to practice the virtues.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

You have to have courage and you have to have justice and so forth. Love truth, love wisdom, to attain apatheia and thereby attaining wisdom.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Now, there's an interesting mention in section 69 and D about ritual initiation.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

He talks about the allegory of the.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Priests of the different religions, particularly, I'm.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Guessing, of the religion of Apollo that he mentioned earlier.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And he speaks of it allegorically as.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

A message about passing over into the next life. And he reads it as the Gnosis of the philosopher.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So there's a kind of a death.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

That one goes through in this life where he's resurrected, that anticipates the death.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Intellectual resurrection, not bodily resurrection in the next life. For Plato, resurrection in the next life appears to be reincarnation, not a bodily resurrection.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So dialectical dualities.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And what we mean by that is.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

You know, think of, if you're familiar.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

At all with Far Eastern thought, it looks at. In my analysis, it over time looked at operant principles in nature. So you would have night and day, male and female, black, white, things like that. And these, these dialectics, these contraries, these oppositional forces seem to at the same time be intention, but also work together in unison for a balance.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So I don't want to unfairly paint.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Eastern thought as believing that there is no true harmony. They do believe that these oppositional forces need to be in harmony. Where I would disagree with Far Eastern thought, whether, you know, Buddhist or Taoist or whatever, Confucian, where I would disagree with them is the means or way by which the harmony is achieved.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So we'll get into that later.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

But.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

When Plato discusses the soul and.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

The body and God, it's important to.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

Understand the medieval chain of being on.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

The ancient world too. The medieval chain of being that we.

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[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

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[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

See in medieval Catholic theologians like Aquinas, people like that. That goes back to Aristotle and Plato and the Greeks and ultimately probably to Egypt, where you have this scale, this continuum kind of arranged, maybe like a pyramid, where everything that exists is structured on this pyramid. So you have, at the bottom you have non being, which is the heaviest kind of being. Things that are less mobile. Rocks. Well, you have non being and then maybe rocks or the dead, because the wicked dead are placed in an immobile state of being for their crimes in this life. Then you would have, like I said, inanimate things like rocks. And then you would have vegetative life, which does have a kind of moving principle in a way, although still very limited. Then you would have animals and then men, and then above men, gods, celestial intelligence or beings. And then above that you would have the most thought like entity, God or something like that.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And so when we place all of.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Them though, on the same chain of being, this is the problem that we have in Western dialectics. Because they're all. They're all essentially on the same chain of being. They just share in different degrees. So it's flattened out, if you will. It's isomorphic. It's all the same stuff. It's all the same stuff of reality. It's just different degrees of it, if you will. So God is the lightest of stuff. And then all the way down to hell or rocks or whatever, that's the heaviest, most compact stuff. And because everything is on the same continuum of being, that's why you would have a cyclical view of history. Nothing ever ultimately gets out of that cycle. Even though Plato does believe that I think inconsistently, you know, you do pass on to the realm of forms. Well, if you pass on the realm of forms, why would you come back to this life? Unless there's a dialectical problem that's fundamental at work here.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

He talks about permanence and flux and.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

The immortality of the soul. And that's what I'm getting at with this coming back.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

This reincarnation, transmigration idea is that the cycle, in other words, this Greek view of, of time and of reality requires.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

A cyclical view of history. I do not believe in a cyclical view. I think that a linear view is actually what makes sense. I know it's very much in vogue to believe in a cyclical view, largely.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Due to the influence of Far Eastern.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Thought in the West.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

This does not of course, mean that.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

I'm advocating every aspect of Western thought. It's just that I believe that these.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Two views are probably reconciled in some.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Way which we don't understand because we're finite. But the problem with cyclical views is that you never. It ultimately becomes irrational to the point of the world that we experience in this life not making any sense, okay? Not, not nothing being the case. So, for example, if you were to posit this view, if you were to say, well, you know, I believe Platonism, or I believe, you know, some Far Eastern view, and, you know, I've realized the great Enlightenment, that all reality is.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Illusion and so forth, well, the realization that all reality is illusion is unfortunately.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Part of your experience in this life of illusion. And so therefore the realization that all reality is illusion is also illusory. So you can't have that as your great linchpin upon which to build your philosophical system of thought.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

And again, what it shows is rather.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

That Plato's borrowing older, ancient ideas of Far Eastern cyclical views, but because he.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Thinks this life is one of illusory flux, we must pierce the veil and see through to the eternal truths.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And since the body doesn't do that.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And the soul does, the soul has.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

To be more like forms, soul is more like eternal truths, more like God, more like absolute justice and so forth. And because it's more like that, it can't be composite. It has to be absolutely simple. Now, in Pythagorean, Platonic and Aristotelian too, thinking the belief about God is that he's absolutely simple. Whatever he is, whatever kind of stuff he is, he's on the same continuum of being. The God stuff is the absolutely simple stuff. It admits of no composition, no division, no partition, no varying multivariate aspects to it. It's absolutely simple. And the reasoning behind that is because one numerically has to be perfectly one to be one. It can't have any, any separate, any aspect of it cannot be oppositional to itself, okay? So if the one had some other aspect that was equal to it or next to it or part of it, that would in Greek thought, be in opposition, it would be in contradistinction to it. And anything separate or in contradistinction is by necessity in a dialectical opposition to it. So if we think about the one and the many, and that's going to be the crucial philosophical concept to understand that I mentioned earlier from this dialogue, the problem of the one and the.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Many, which is also the most important.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Good aspect.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

The bad part of the.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Problem, problem with the one and many for Plato, is that the many is in contrary opposition to the One, the One has a little bit of a higher primacy. So the One is the goal we're shooting for. We want to get to that. And so anything that's particular or many is in somehow or some way a lesser status of being. Because the idea here is that ultimately God or the Source or the absolute was at 1.1. And for some unknown reason there was a schism or a fall or a division that brought about particularity and brought about multiple forms, multiple emanations from the One. And the idea here being that when you look at Egyptian mythology and you know, Ra and Osiris and all that, and him losing his dick and all that, that's an allegorical telling of the original division that happened from the Monad, from the One, and then the particular aspects or emanations that came from it, which then sort of fractured like a fractal into potentially infinite variations all the way down to the solar system and the planets and the galaxy, planet, solar system, down to our reality, all the way down to minuscule atoms, molecules, so forth.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

This Big.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Bang fracturing from the 1, if you will, is an eternal emanation that our goal is to transcend by leaving the body and then returning to the One, ultimately, if we've lived well.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So you can clearly see that the close parallels to Far Eastern thought, Hindu.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Thought, the wheel of time that has.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

To be escaped to return to the source, all the same idea here very clearly. And that's what I meant in my article.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

That's what we're getting at here with the idea of escaping the realm of flux, escaping the realm of time, escaping the body.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Because all these things are viewed as bad.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And why is that?

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Because of a fundamental presupposition that particularity.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Or the many or distinction is either bad or lesser.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And that's just simply not a belief.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

We have to have.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

It's not true. We don't have to believe that somehow.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Ultimate absolute unity has primacy over against particularity.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And interestingly, if you read, say, Rushdini's book, the One of the Many, he makes a great point in there about how political systems throughout history have had.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

The same idea that developed into all.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Consuming, absolutist empires or tyrannies on the.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Basis of ultimately this philosophical presupposition that. And I'm not saying that monarchy is.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Bad or that having a single ruler is bad. No, rather what I'm saying is just.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

That the idea that absolute, monadic use.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Unity is our operant, basic philosophical presupposition, then informs the whole Praxis of how we would live or how a society.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Or an empire or civilization would be structured. And it has the tendency to.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Exclude.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Legitimate distinctions and particularities. Right. So if we look at something like Mao or a communist international, it's a great idea, or it's a great version of this, because what does it seek to do? Well, it seeks to make everything uniform. Why? Well, because distinction and particularity have to be the source of what's bad. Right? You being distinct, distinct from me has to be the source of the bad. No, this is all based on a wrong philosophical presupposition.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

There's no reason to believe that variance or difference is bad. In fact, it's good. So that's a very fundamental presupposition, positional.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Flaw in Platonic thought that I would definitely take issue with and is not the view that I believe or support. Rather, we have to have a balanced view of the one and the many. And we'll get into where I think that is later.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

But again, back to Plato and the dialogue. What we want to look at now is the central awesome argument from the.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

One and the many that Plato gives.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

That is crucial.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

That in my own life, when I learned this a long time ago, really.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

Revolutionized the way I think and the.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Way I approach the world. And it's been a.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Even though I've grown a lot since.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

My early twenties and changed views on different things, this aspect of my thought.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Has never changed, and I don't think.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

It ever will, because I think it's true and it makes sense. And it's the only view that makes.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Sense about how metaphysics works, about how epistemology and thinking works, and about how.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

We approach meaning.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

In the world and our lives.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So let's get into that in terms of unity and destroy, distinction and the.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

One and the many.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So the one and the many, unity and difference. For those who are less instructed in Plato, this central question for philosophy is about. It's a metaphysical and an epistemological question.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

So being and knowledge that revolves around linking objects in our experience.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So when we talk about an object, a tree, book, whatever, an earthworm.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

We.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Link this object to other similar objects that we've seen in the past, or.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

That we will see.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So when we think of a book, we classify it as a member of a category of other objects that are.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

The same, that are in the same, although they're not the same. So books are all similar in that they're the same type of object. They often have, for the most part.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

The same shape, the same Function and.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Structure, so forth, form.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Yet they all differ, right?

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Because they're not all the same book.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So there are many books. But there seems to be some principle that they all share between them we'll call bookness. This is a universal.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

This is the form of a thing. Might also be the essence of a thing, depending on which philosophical system you're working with.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Excuse me. So this is central to Platonism. It's central to realist philosophy in the.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Middle Ages, Late Middle Ages, the idea of realism.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And it's set over against Aristotle and all other philosophical systems that come out of empiricism, because those systems will locate.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

This unifying characteristic in the mind.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

It's not anything objectively out there in.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

The world or in the thing or in the realm of form somewhere. It's only a human token term or a socially constructed symbolic form or term.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

That we've given to these objects. There's nothing actually in the book that.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Links it to another book to share that property of being a book other than what humans have conceptually created.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Because, for example, in the Aristotelian system, the book has as its unifying characteristic.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Prima materia, prime matter, the stuff that everything's made of. And it is then later given form.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Into the shape of book.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And might have other qualia or central characteristics of it being a book, but.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

The substance itself is.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

No different than another book. So they're both. They're both just.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

In other words, the linking essence between.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Them is not something that is linked outside of human conceptual reality. In other words, it never pierces the veil into the external world. Objects themselves out there in the world do not participate in any sort of unifying objective characteristic of bookness other than, I mean, in other words, in aerosol system, yes, they do have objects, do have form, they do have substance and essence, but the essence is all contained within that object. Okay? So there's nothing outside of that, outside of the temporal, that links these things.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And this has drastic and dramatic implications for our epistemology. And so Plato's answer is that what.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Links these things is the form.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And the form transcends the realm that we're in. It transcends time and space and the flux that we experience in this life.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

To give objects an eternal grounding, the being of an object, that the existence of these objects is grounded not in the temporal, but in the eternal form of the thing.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So there's a form of book.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

By.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Which all existing books share in or participate in. So the idea of Plato, that's very distinct from Aristotle is that objects can have a substantial form. In other words, multiple objects, multiple substances can inhere in an object, and the.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Object still retain its unity without destroying any of the variance or multiplicity.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So a book might share in redness and in squareness and in solidity, so.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Forth, all of which would be universal.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And these distinctions are all real in the object.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And the object is participating in multiple forms at once.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

For Aristotle, that's not really so. And of course, for straight up empiricism.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

It'S absolutely not so.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

For Aristotle and later empiricism, the object.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Can only have one substantial unity. And then all the other aspects of the thing, the redness and so forth.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Those are qualia, those are secondary characteristics.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And the form would be the structure.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Given to prima materia, prime matter that.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

It exists in before us. So the book has this, you know, squareness to it. That's a secondary quality. It's a qualia, but it's a substantial unity as identified as the matter as it is. What's before us is what that's what is. There's not another level of reality or another level of being that makes us it. So and so this will have a lot of tremendous implications for the soul in Aristotle's thought, because the soul is the form of the body in Aristotelian thought. And there's a big debate in Aristotle as to how that can be, since Aristotle would seem to believe in the soul existing beyond the death of the body. But if the soul is a form of the body, once the body is gone, how could there be a soul? The soul would have to be annihilated as well, it would seem, although Aristotle does try to. There are Aristotelian explanations of this. But anyway, we're not getting into Aristotle.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

We'Re getting into Plato. And Plato thinks that the one in the many is the central argument against the sophists and the naturalists of his day.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And the naturalist would be comparable to the empiricists or the person who believes in scientism. The sophist would be comparable to the relativist who believes that nothing is true, everything is opinion. Both of these kind of go together, because once you adopt empiricism, you're pretty much at skepticism and relativism. Relativism is of course, the great enemy of Platonism and truth and everything that I've ever believed. And that's the dominant perspective of the modern world. Pretty much everybody is a relative.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

And they are trapped in that matrix because.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

They don't know the truth. They're not willing to, or they willingly want to stay in that matrix of relativism for various reasons.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

But for Plato, he gives us a great. Ultimately a transcendental argument doorway out of.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

That trap, a doorway through which we can exit the matrix, if you will, to use the pop analogy and step into absolute truth and objective truth. And what he does is he says.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

There has to be basically some unity between objects that cannot be merely mental, that unifies both objects and experience and.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Objects in our understanding. And that is the form for him, the universal.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So when we look at objects and.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

We compare book to book and look for that unifying, whatever it is between.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

Them, that essence.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

What we come to is that it's a transcendental category.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Now, this is obviously an argument that would be used later by Kant in the wrong way. And Aristotle also uses transcendental arguments first, as I've pointed out many times.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

But the unity that Plato is talking.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

About here in the question of the.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

One and the many, is a unifying something. That is what connects these objects, book.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

To book, tree to tree, even though they're distinct. Okay, A great example that I had in my 101 class was when the professor drew the number seven on the chalkboard, erased it and said, have I gotten rid of the number seven? And of course, debate ensued in the class and. And we came to the conclusion that, no, obviously, he had not destroyed the number seven, because the number seven still seems to be.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So we intuitively know somehow that this is the case.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Even though we may not understand numbers.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

We intuitively have this sense that sevenness still seems to be the case. Well, how can that be, given that.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

We'Re not immediately looking at sevens or we're not drawing sevens.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

We just erase the seven from the.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Chalkboard or the particular example of seven. And that's because Plato would say there.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Is something beyond mere sense experience.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And numbers are a really, really great example of how we can figure this out. Even better than essences and objects, numbers seem to present this truth even more clearly.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So when he looks at objects, he says, there's no. We don't have a direct experience of.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

The unity between one tree, an oak.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

Tree, and a pine tree.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

They're both trees, but they're both different. So this classification that we've given.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

You.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Know, it can't just be based in.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

The matter itself, the material of the object, because we don't.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

There's something that transcends the mere matter of the object or the. Or the mere human naming of the object that links these two things. And we know that because we never have a direct experience of that. We have an experience of a tree, we have an experience of another tree, a sensory experience, but we never have a sensory experience of the unifying essence.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Or principle that links them. Now, you might say in response to.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

This, yes, we do. You look at one tree and you see the color and shape that it has, and.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

And then you look at another tree.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And you see the color and shape that it has, and that's what links the two. They have similar colors and shapes. No, again, you're simply pointing out secondary characteristics that link or make the two trees similar. But the color and shape that's found in one tree is a particular instantiation, and the color and shape that's found in another tree is another particular instant.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Right, so what it's.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

There are two different trees. In other words, that's kind of begging the question what, what is. Where is the mysterious thing, substance, essence.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Whatever form, logoi that links these.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Where's the archetypal pattern that links these things? Because it cannot be merely something that we've created mentally. And you say, well, how could that. Well, maybe not. Maybe it is just something we mentally create. No, because again, think of the example of numbers. Numbers are not a human invention. It's not like if I erase the number seven from the chalkboard, there's no more number seven.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Or if everybody in the world suddenly.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Puts the number seven out of their mind, then seven ceases to be.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Well, that's preposterous, just utterly retarded.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

No, seven seems to have this eternality about it. This. Not just seven.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

I mean, any number, any mathematical idea or principle.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

You know, all of our experience is constantly bound up with number and shape, form, geometry, etc.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Right.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And these things don't disappear when we.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Close our eyes or forget about them. No, that's.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

That's completely an egoistic, you know, narcissistic.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Fallen view of reality that you know, well the mind.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And it's not, you know, some guy.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

In a chat room said this one time, my mind invents numbers.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Well, another way that we can show.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

That that's not true is by numbers.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

That are beyond the ability for humans to conceive. We know infinity is real. We know there are multiple infinities, according to Cantor, so the human mind can't encapsulate those.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

No finite mind is able to literally think of an infinite string of numbers or an infinite set, and then that set raised to the power two. And since that's the case, then obviously.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

There are Principles about mathematics as an example that extend beyond sense experience. Another good example is a chiliagon, a thousand sided figure. A thousand sided figure is impossible to see by the human eye or in human conception all at once. We can talk about this object. We know that you can, you know.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Diagram one out if you wanted to have the time, you're that bored.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

But when you look at it, you're only going to see, you know, either if you look at it up close, you're going to see very minute little angles or if you look at it far away you're going to see a circle. See, you're not going to be able to see every.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Vertice or whatever at.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

Every, every point in a chiliagon in.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

A thousand sided figure.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And because you can't see that, and we know that that object exists, we know that obviously bare empiricism is false, okay?

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Aristotle, I don't think knew about a chilio.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So these things are devastating arguments to empiricism.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Again, any infinite set of numbers, any idea of any irrational numbers that extend in crazy directions, PI, whatever. These also are very devastating to empiricism. Because ultimately in empiricism, unless you have, I mean there are some rare cases of people who are empiricist idealists, unless you have an empiricist idealist view, which wouldn't work anyway, that has serious problems. But majority of empiricists are not this view. They think that the external world is a bunch of matters and that we are the camp. Our minds are the camcorders that record just sensory experience. You know, we're just biological computers. You know, 99% of empiricists believe that. And so.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

We have no direct experience of a chilio gom. I mean you have experiences of aspects of a chili guide on and you have an experience of one far away that appears to be a circle. But you have no direct experience of.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

A thousand sided figure all at once. You have no direct experience of an infinite set of numbers. You have no experience of an infinite negative set of numbers.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

I mean, there's tons of different ways.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

To configure this to demonstrate the point that knowledge that we have is ultimately not grounded in sensory experience. Okay?

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Do we learn by the senses? Of course, absolutely.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Even Plato would not deny that. But the point is that, and the.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Correct and right point is that what we are, what's going on in the.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Process of learning by sense experience is something that is a real interaction with eternal principles. That's the point, okay? They're not merely again, Think from a third eye perspective about the empiricist perspective of how man operates in the world. He's a biologically evolved animal that has a mind that's a camcorder, that takes in these sense impressions and the mind kind of orders them somehow. So he's like a little bot that spits out and repeats like a parrot or something like that. And that Darwinian view, that materialist biological.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Flux view, that reductionist view, over time he develops into the socially constructed definition of a person as a child.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And then reason develops, whatever that is.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

We have no idea what that is. But, but reason develops and then maybe consciousness develops.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Then he's able to become a scientific individual.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

All of which is completely retarded, utterly nonsensical, total philosophical nonsense. But is the predominant view of most people and the world in general. Right. And there are a lot of variations. People might have different ideas about things.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

But they don't have, they don't generally.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Tend to challenge this dominant grounding narrative. This is kind of the bedrock of what everybody falls back on.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

They go about their lives and do.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

This and that, and if somebody comes.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Up, say, me, and challenges their predispositions and presuppositions, well, they can still fall back on science.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

They saw somewhere on Discovery Channel that science has proven that man's mind is a little biological computer that processes information.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

It'S just merely matter. It's merely chemical reactions.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Okay, so again, the mind, let's use this view. The mind is a chemical reaction computer that processes impulses and incoming sensory input. At no point in this view is anything objective or metaphysically the case ever obtained. All that's all that you ever obtain in this view is sensory input. See, so you don't really ever know if you are interacting with things out there in the world.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

All you know is that you're interacting with sensory input. Okay?

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And the enlightenment this is would come to be called indirect realism.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

You don't have a direct experience of real substances, qualities, essences in the world.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Or if you do, we don't know. What you have an experience of is.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Phenomena.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

You have an experience of sensory input.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

What Hume would call impressions.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So imagine.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

A guy with his eyes open, staring at a TV screen, and the TV screen for all his life is just beaming different images at him. He never interacts with the real world or whatever. It's just TV screen images coming at him. And maybe there is a real world, you don't know.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Maybe there are real objects that you can interact with. Who knows? Now you might Be a little weirded out there because you're thinking, well, now, wait a minute. That sounds kind of like Plato. Yeah. I don't want to get too in.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Depth here, because you could make the.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Case that an empiricist idealist is pretty close to Platonism in a way, but.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

That'S not really where we're wanting to go. We're not wanting to get into modern philosophy per se and the small branch of Berkeleyan empiricist idealism that has existed. But suffice to say that the central point that we do want to get across here is that the argument for objective invariant metaphysical principles that are operant in the world is given its strongest argument from the one and the many in Plato's dialogue. Phaedo here. And it's a great, great, great argument. That's what I was getting at. Something that has stuck with me since my early 20s. Thankfully, I did encounter this in Philosophy.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

101 at the State school. And this is great, because once you.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Grasp this, when your mind is awakened.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

To this, this revolutionizes everything about how you look at the world. Because we're taught, and we're kind of born with this sort of silly, rebellious.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Motivation and impetus to think that we can make meaning and reality what it is like, you know, we're all born kind of little. You know, we think the world revolves around us, and so we are afraid of moving towards objective truth and the idea of eternal truth, because we think that that's going to shake our foundations and challenge us to give up the petty little sandcastle empire that we've built.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

In our minds, in our psyches, that.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

We are the center of the universe. But again, as I said in the last talk, the real paradox here is that it's only by moving out of.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

That little mental prison of deception that we buy into towards what's objectively true.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

That we can actually be free.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So this central, central argument cannot be overstressed.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And this is the antidote to the modern world. It's also the basis of hidden metaphysics because it means that the external world is rational and it is designed and is created, and it is highly structured and highly formalized. And that doesn't mean that there's no freedom. I'm not saying that that's not what I mean by structure or formalized. What I mean is that it has inherent design and telos, okay? It does have purpose. Everything has all the way down to.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

The nucleus, and the electron has this.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Perfectly ordered symmetry to it.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

This is really how you escape the matrix. This part of Plato and leaving the matrix is great. This is what we do want to keep this. Another way we can look at this.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Later on in the development of Western philosophy. The question of. It's what Kant called a transcendental unity of apperception. And this is also related to the idea of identity over time in objects. So two different. Two different ideas or terms that relate to the same thing. One of them relating to the inner world of the psyche and the other one relating to the substance or essence of things in the external world. And so when we talked about that one in the many question, if we look in the inner realm of the psyche, Kant talked about the transcendental unity of apperception. And this is a good point, because if you think about it, why does the human mind link that tree, that tree and the tree I saw yesterday as having some connection, Right? Well, it can't just be because they kind of look the same, because sometimes things kind of look the same and they aren't the same. And even if you just say, well, because they look the same, that kind of begs the question, because why does the mind link things that kind of look the same? Why? We're not asking what does it do? We're asking why does it do that? And so Kant posited that there's not a direct empirical argument for why the mind does this. The mind just does it. And all of our experience is conditioned or, I'm sorry, is built around the precondition of the mind doing that. And that's an awesome argument. As a philosopher and as somebody who revels in transcendental arguments, that's such a killer argument.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Because if you're an empiricist.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

This is the point Hume made as an empiricist.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Trying to be consistent system. You can never explain why the mind links similarly appearing objects. You can give statements about. You can you. All you can do is restate that it does it.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Okay, so if I say why do I.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Why do you make a connection between.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

That dog and the big dog you saw yesterday?

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Well, because they look like dogs. Because they have fur. None of these answers explains why.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

They only explain what is.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

That's such a. That's so devastating to empiricism.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And I love it. Right?

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And again, I'm not. Kant has serious, ultimately empirical, devastating flaws.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Because Kant ultimately is still an empiricist.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

But when we are looking at the inner realm of the psyche and we are looking at transcendental arguments, these are killer arguments. These are great. So as long as we don't adopt Kant's divorce between the internal world and external world. You can go through these transcendental arguments, and they're awesome. These are the strongest arguments you can make. So the only. In other words, Kant's reply, consistent with Plato here in the Phaedo, and by.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

The way, Plato makes this very argument.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So that's kind of a secret here.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Is that as you read these dialogues.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

You start noticing, hey, Descartes says that.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Hey, Kant says that, hey, Hume says that, right? Which is natural.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

I mean, that's what happens philosophy. But Plato actually says, when I was a young man, I followed the natural scientists in their scientistic empiricism. He's not using those terms, but that's what he's saying. He says, and I realized one day.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

That when I asked them why, all.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

They do is restate what is.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

So again.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So if we apply that to. In other words, this is kind of a version of the transcendental unity of that perception. The mind is so structured that it links objects and it just does it. We don't know why. And if you try to explain why, you can never explain why apart from experience. See, so you're in a loop there. And that's why Kant says, well, the only way out of that loop is to posit that it's just a transcendental truth, something that transcends experience. That's a presupposition for all perception, period. Okay, so if you were to say, well, how do we know that that's true?

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Kant would say with Plato, because if we denied that perception would be impossible. That is an awesome argument.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Transcendental arguments generally are arguments from the impossibility of the contrary. But they're not mere reductio or impossibility.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Of the contrary arguments because sometimes they.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Are so strong that they are actually.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

The ground of all experience at all, period. And this is one example extending this.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Then to the external world. We can talk about the identity of objects over time. This also comes up again in Hume, and this is just simply the transcendental unity of apperception that Kant spoke about in the inner world applied to the external realm. Why do we believe that over time that object is the same object that.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

We thought it was?

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Because, say, a boy grows into a.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Man and his body changes.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And so if we take a radical empiricist route, we have no empirical reason to believe or link that old guy.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

To the young guy or the fat.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Guy to the previously skinny guy. Because the.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Substance, the qualities, have changed, right?

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

I mean, unless you're An Aristotelian, and.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

You thought that the soul is the form of the body, you would say, well, it's still the same soul.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

But if you're a rank empiricist, this, this problem is tremendous because we have no reason to believe that objects actually possess some identity or special quality or essence about them that makes them that thing over time. Because the material makeup of the object is always changing. I mean, the book that you have is shedding pages, molecules over time. Is it the same book? Well, if we're an empiricist, no. And we don't have any reason to believe, purely based on empirical sensory data, that it's the same book. And so there must be some transcendent.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Quality or essence about the thing that makes it that thing over time.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Again referred to in philosophy as the.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Problem of identity over time.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And if an object does have that, then that means that, that all of.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Our metaphysics is very different than what empiricism says.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So that's why this is so good. We have the roots of empiricism annihilated in Plato and we see that this.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Is an ancient battle, this goes all.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

The way back to ancient Greek times between the sophists and the relativists and.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

The people who are arguing for objective truth.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And that's the chief use of Plato, even though we wouldn't. I don't agree with all the Far Eastern trappings of Plato that become problematic when we look at things like this. This is a tremendous argument. And if you get this down in your philosophical life and thinking and thought, this is a platform to go on.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

To become an excellent philosopher.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

This is a platform to go on to. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that makes the world meaningful and wondrous. This is how you'll go on. And if you're a scientist, with this basis, there's the potential for what you could discover is limitless because you're actually.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Understanding the real makeup of the world and not chaotic flux, Big Bang, nonsensical reductionist materialism, alright.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Following upon the discussion of absolutes and one of the many, he discusses the soul. And like I said earlier, the soul is not composite.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

So it's more like the one monad.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

It's more like.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

The forms, the realm of the eternal. And so he reasons that they're in a dialectical tension. As I said at the beginning, dialectical arguments, dialectical tensions are what we want to avoid. And the chief difference that I would have with Far Eastern thought in solving or harmonizing that is not through.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

Dissolution.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

From this realm into the absolute, or into non being or nirvana or, you know, eternal.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Cyclical reincarnation process.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

But what we find in, say, Eastern Orthodoxy, all where you have, instead of dialectical tensions, you have harmonization through divine energies. And so body and soul are not in tension.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

The soul is submitted to, or should be submitted to the heart or the nous.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

In Eastern Orthodox theology, that the nous is the heart, it is not the intellect, but rather the heart submitted to divine law. Then.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Has reason.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Placed in its proper arena, not as primary. So rationality is great. It's an amazing tool that God has given us to work in the world.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And deal with the world world.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

But it is not the primary.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

God that we find the history of Western philosophy making it.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And when we see reason raised to that primacy of godhood, we end up with French Revolution, we end up with nihilism. That's where it goes.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

That's where we are today. Techno nihilism, the. The height of reason embodied in machines.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

That could potentially destroy us, then turns around and gives us complete nihilism. So we've created these advanced technologies that are amazing not just in what they do, but in the philosophical underpinnings behind how it's even possible to make such machines, advanced computers, so forth.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

The philosophical underpinnings and the worldview required for those things to be, as I've argued many times, is completely opposite of.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

What we're all indoctrinated into in the dominant system, the empiricist, nihilistic endgame where we are today.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Techno nihilism.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

It's so bizarre given the fact that.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

For such creations to be. They're actually a mirror of how.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Intricately.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Detailed and designed the universe as a whole is. In other words, to be able to.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Bring together electronics and electricity or matter.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And circuits and chips and crystals and all these different ways to create a computer. What that says about the world is.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

That the world as a whole is.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Is just so fabulously and wondrously designed and ordered as to be able to create the conditions or possibilities for such.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

An entity to exist. Because, as I've said before, what advanced.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Labs like DARPA and places like cern, everything that they're doing is actually modeled.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

On principles in nature. So like the advanced tech that they.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Do say with drones mapping things with.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Light, well, that's modeled on light itself.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Something that exists in nature. You look at something like.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

The battle.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Gear that they're developing for super soldiers to be able to skip scale.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

A glass surface, a vertical glass surface that came about from studying frogs and the ability that frogs have in their little.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Fingers to scale glass.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

So in other words, modeling the technology on the secrets of nature means that nature and the world and the universe.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

As a whole can creates the conditions.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Because of a lot of different metaphysical.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Truths that are the case that do not make sense or comport with the dominant worldview that the system teaches.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Darwinian flux, aeons of cyclical time, reductionist.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Materialism, scientism, all of these dogmas and.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Propaganda of the system do not make.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Sense with the things that the system actually does.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And that suggests then a Platonic metaphysic, roughly speaking.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Again, not endorsing all Platonism, roughly speaking, that kind of view, Pythagorean.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Type views of how the world is.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

But back to Plato, I didn't mean to get all off into that. But he goes on to then discuss different arguments about the immortality of the soul and reincarnation. One reason we don't want to reincarnation is that it doesn't make sense to when we consider the fact that new souls, in other words, we would have to have like a fixed amount of souls that are continually being reborn.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

But unfortunately the population is growing. So you know that we have 6, 8 billion people now, whereas previously there were not near as many people just 100, 200 years ago.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So if reincarnation is the case, where are all these people coming from?

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Is it just animals?

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And every animal is reincarnated, by the.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Way, why animals and bugs? What about going down to amoebas or.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Germs or germs reincarnated people? I mean, it doesn't, it just doesn't make sense.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

There's not really any reason to believe in it unless you had the presupposition.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Of cyclical dialectical views of history. But I think the biblical presentation of.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Linear history makes much more sense later. Philosophy was good in developing different analyses of how the mind is structured to.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Understand things in a temporal way, from.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Beginning, middle to end. There's some really good philosophy that was done by Alasdair MacIntyre or Alvin Noe in his book on perception, action and perception, and MacIntyre on how conversation is structured to have a beginning, middle and end that suggests that there's a transcendental category or quality to the way we are so constituted to experience things in time. Yeah, you might have a story that is told from the ending to the beginning, but even still, the way that the mind is going to compare construct it is from beginning to end. So this chronological aspect of how we're Constituted how the mind works is something universally the case for humans. And when we.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Experiments that have been done that Neu talks about in his book, where these sensory. These sensory experiments where these things were reversed or misconstrued or obstructed, for example.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

People that spent a long time wearing, say, a kaleidoscope mask or goggles or something like that, or people that were blind for many years that first gained sight.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

There have been cases of this that.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

They have to actually learn depth perception over time. These things suggest both empirical knowledge and pre. Empirical, pre sensory, a priori, intuitive, Platonic type, categorical knowledge, essential knowledge. So both of these things are the case, I believe.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So we want to avoid dialectics because.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Dialectics leave us in dead ends philosophically and morally. If we think that dialectical tensions are resolved through flight from the world, soma, sema, bodies, the prison, central Platonic dogma, then we are caught in a dialectic where the world becomes a source of bad. And that ultimately is a Buddhist type idea. The world's not bad, the world is good. In Genesis 1, God created all things and he said they were good.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So we don't believe that creation is bad. And I think that's a much more positive way to enjoy the world.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

To live is to not view the created substance of things as evil. So we also don't want to adopt, you know, dualistic or Manichean or Zoroastrian and ideas that there's two eternal principles of good and evil. So we don't give evil any kind of substantial existence. Unfortunately, even the Platonic tradition would eventually.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Develop an idea that the Eastern church fathers, the Patristic era, would liken evil.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

To, that evil is negation.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

There still is this lurking tendency to.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Think that existence in this world is somehow evil. There's still something kind of bad about matter and created existence, and that's locating the source of evil in the wrong direction. Evil is negation, has no substantial being, and it is simply a move of the will away from the good. It's the best approximation that we can give. Or we can think about negative numbers. Negative numbers seem to in some way.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Have a.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Conceptual existence, but not a real existence. I can't. If you have seven things and I.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Take away three.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

You haven't gained anything, you've lost. So these are analogies for evil. Like darkness is an analogy. But we don't say darkness is somehow an evil substance. You don't walk into a dark room and literally believe that the darkness in.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

The room is evil. That's stupid. So Analogies for evil can be helpful.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

From Neoplatonic thought, but unfortunately we must not accept the notion that particularity, this world, etc. Are in themselves you.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And that's a crucial philosophical distinction. And most unfortunately, a lot of, say.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Protestantism and evangelicalism actually sides with Gnosticism on this point. They would locate. Calvinism is a great example, tend to.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Locate evil, giving it a substantial ontological existence. So he goes on to talk about how arguments and logic are valid, contrary to the cynicism that one encounters, contrary to the sophist and the relativist.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Argument.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And logic are crucial to obtaining truth. And that should be your guiding goal.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

In philosophy, is to obtaining truth. You have to have a love for the truth and want it. Otherwise this is all a waste of time.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Then he gets into some interesting discussions of mythology and Homer, the crowning aspect of which is the mention of the higher realms. The afterlife is presented in a very traditionally Greek way with Tartarus, Hades, the four rivers of the world. And this is all located inside the earth. So there's a hollow earth where inside the dead go. And the four rivers of Hades flow from one side of the sphere of earth to the other side of the sphere. Very, very fascinating cosmogony here. He mentions ether, as I talked about in my articles. He says that the higher dimension above ours is directly associated with crystals and crystalline structure. He says we only know a few colors. Interesting. The color spectrum extends far beyond what we know. And modern science has actually proven this. We know that birds can see more.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Colors than we can.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Amazing, amazing stuff. How in the world would Plato have known that unless there was some truth to traditionalism and ancient mysteries? So he talks about Homer discussing the hollow earth, and he gives an elaborate account of how things happen when you pass over to the realm of the.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Dead and where you go and all these different levels.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Definitely, definitely showing up later in.

[Jason (Philosophy Lecturer)]

Virgil.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

I'm sorry? Well, not just Virgil, but, excuse me, Dante in the Inferno and in Purgatio.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So there's an amazing tradition about what.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Goes on after death here that Dante is clearly borrowing from.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

You know, in my personal opinion, I think there's probably something to this. None of us knows exactly the logistics of what goes on after you pass on. Eastern Orthodox tradition has the idea of the toll houses, which could be comparable to what Plato's talking about here, but just a literary note here, and possibly an esoteric hermetic note. The idea of the soul's katabasis, the trek to the underworld, and then the return in literary Theory, this is standard, where your central character undergoes the dark night of the soul before he reaches.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

The climax of his quest.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And for Plato, in the Phaedo, the reaching of the higher dimensions, that closeness to the forms of heaven, if you.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Will, is where you go if you're good, if you're righteous, if you're a.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Philosopher, a true philosopher, not a sophist. In the other, lesser realms, comparable to Dante's Inferno is where you go if you need to be purged.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

So it's kind of a purgatory here.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

But the Katabasis, as it's called in Greek terminology, the descent to the underworld and the return. We see this in Homer, we see.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

It in the Odyssey, we see it.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

In Phaedo, we see it in Virgil's and Eid, book six. And we see it in Dante. So the great pinnacles of the Western literary and philosophical tradition have this theme. And interestingly, in Christianity, we have the doctrine of Christ's harrowing of hell.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

This is also central to Roman Catholic.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Theology has the idea of Christ's descent.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

And ascent to death and return.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Orthodoxy has it a little more fleshed out with the idea of the harrowing of hell. Christ descends to the realm of the.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

To where the Fathers of the Old.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Testament were bringing them up to enter into the heavenly abode which had previously.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Been barred due to sin.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So the death, descent. Death, burial, descent, resurrection and ascension of Christ is very comparable to the katabasis of the Greek tradition.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

We also see this in the film 2001 Space Odyssey. That's the narrative that Kubrick is borrowing from the Odyssey. The journey that ultimately takes one to the realm of the dead and then to return. And again, in the Greek tradition, the return is cyclical reincarnation.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

In Christianity and the Egyptian tradition, the return is resurrection. So fascinating, fascinating stuff here. Crazy, esoteric stuff. Just.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Wild.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

The dialogue concludes with the recounting of Socrates taking the hemlock and dying. And he offers a sacrifice to Asclepius.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

The God of health, the God with.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

The rod and the snake. So that hearkening to that interesting tendency of Socrates to speak both of the gods and the myths as allegorical, the ancient religious mysteries as allegorical, and at the same time, following them literally, he's literally sacrificing to Asclepius. He literally talked about guardian angels taking you to your. Taking you to your everlasting abode in.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

The afterlife, assuming that you don't reincarnate something also very, very close to what we see in Dante's Inferno.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

So that concludes this. In depth discussion here. And again, if you want to see more of this, if this is, if you're listening to this and this is what you dig, please do subscribe. I need to gain more paid subscribers. There are plenty of free subscribers who don't want to pay. That's fine. I don't believe, I don't bother or I don't blame you, but I would really like to move into doing this kind of stuff full time and it would be mutually beneficial because all you.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Guys could get more of this.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And I think a lot of people are turning on to this, a lot.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Of people are liking it.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

And you know, we can just. The potential here to delve into philosophy and esoteric depth in all these different texts is tremendous. I mean, I'd like to go through every single platonic dialogue and work we could. What is this, 1500 pages? This is about 100 so far. In a few months you could have an in depth knowledge of all of Plato.

[Philosophy Co-Host/Analyst]

Right. If you're willing to listen to my.

[Jason (Host/Philosophy Commentator)]

Droning voice for that long, but help me do that. So subscribe for $4.95 a month if you can. I'll churn out more of this stuff. And I want to conclude thanking you for the people that have subscribed so far. Please tell your friends about jasonalysis dot com.