Old School with Shilo Brooks

Episode: Why We Still Need Plato
Date: October 23, 2025
Host: Shilo Brooks
Guest: Dr. Cornel West
Podcast: The Free Press

Overview

In this episode of Old School, host Shilo Brooks sits down with renowned teacher, theologian, and activist Dr. Cornel West for an intimate, wide-ranging conversation about Plato’s Republic. The theme centers on why this 2,000-year-old work remains the cornerstone of Western philosophy, its continued importance for anyone seeking to live a meaningful, examined life, and its relevance to today's struggles with nihilism, justice, education, and the soul’s longing for truth.

Brooks and West dissect the Republic’s major themes—justice, the examined life, suffering, authority, tradition, and education—using personal stories, literary references, and musical analogies to breathe fresh life into the enduring questions Plato raised.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Dr. West’s Intellectual Origins and Encounter with Philosophy

• Early influences: Growing up deeply involved in Metropolitan Baptist Church in Tulsa, wrestling with suffering and love through biblical texts.
• Discovery of philosophy: Life-changing encounter with Kierkegaard at age 14, “living on the chocolate side of Sacramento” ([01:53] Dr. West).
• Reading as necessity: "Reading has been nearly as integral as music. The only thing more integral...is loving Mama and Daddy." ([02:05] Dr. West)
• First encounter with Plato: Through Stanley Cavell’s Humanities course at Harvard; initial view of Socrates through an existential, Kierkegaardian, and biblical lens. ([02:37] Dr. West)

Socratic Method and the Nature of Justice

• Socrates starts from ordinary opinion: “He meets you where you are. What is virtue? What is justice?... It's a simple question.” ([03:53] Brooks)
• The Republic’s glue: The attempt to answer Thrasymachus’ “might makes right,” and the young generation's hunger for an answer to nihilism.
• Fundamental human question:

  “It is the attempt to turn to Socrates of the younger generation. You got the young brothers hungry for an answer to the challenge of Thrasymachus: Might makes right, power dictates morality.” ([04:38] Dr. West)

• The soul’s struggle: The book presents “medicine for an affliction,” tackling the pervasive despair about the possibility or practicability of justice ([05:49] Brooks).

The Republic’s Political Paradox: Revolutionary & Authoritarian

• Plato’s duality: Plato is both “revolutionary, subversive in the generic sense...but...also...becomes very authoritarian, obsessed with control” ([07:19] Dr. West).
• Dialogue form versus political content: Open dialectic in the form, yet an authoritarian city in blueprint.
• Democracy, tyranny, and the death of Socrates: Plato’s suspicion of democracy partly rooted in Socrates' execution by democratic Athens ([09:22] Dr. West).

Reading Plato Ironically: Utopia as Cautionary Tale

• Socratic irony: Plato may not advocate these extremes literally; the imaginary city exposes the impossibility of perfect justice, prompting moderation and realism ([10:41] Brooks).
• Role of the city:

  "Plato’s desperation leads toward him being a control freak.... all the things that so many of us...view as unjust and immoral. He’s wrong about that. But he’s not caving in to...nihilism." ([12:47] Dr. West)

• Practical takeaway for youth: Modern culture offers distraction, addiction, and fleeting pleasure, but leaves the soul empty—a problem Plato diagnosed just as acutely as anyone in 2025 ([13:09] Dr. West).

The Enduring Terrain of Platonic Thought

• Cornerstones of philosophy:

  "Plato sets the scene...the distinction between reality and appearance, the distinction between knowledge and opinion, the distinction between nature and convention, the distinction between philosophers and sophists..." ([18:33] Dr. West)

• All must reckon with Plato: Even Nietzsche, Plato’s philosophical “opposite,” argues on Plato’s ground.
• Living tradition: The struggle between appearance and reality, knowledge and opinion, is “existential for everyone born from the womb to the tomb.” ([19:35] Dr. West)

Poetry, Music, and the Philosophic Life

• Plato versus the poets: The Republic banishes much poetry and music—an authoritarian move with deep symbolic implications.
• Poetry’s lingering power:

  "Anyone who created a social regime, you can’t have the flute played. Come on, Plato, what’s going on?” ([10:03] Robbie)

• Philosophy’s promise: The philosophic life offers meaning “far beyond money... measured in terms of what money cannot buy: love, trust, faith, quality, relationship, friendship, sense of community.” ([26:28] Dr. West)

Classics and the Black Intellectual Tradition

• Rejecting exclusion:

  “I wouldn’t say they just fit in. I think that they are integral and constitutive [to the black tradition]...” ([28:07] Dr. West)

• Black genius and classics: "The best of what we have been able to do is deal with 400 years of being chronically hated and yet still teach the world so much about love.” ([28:21] Dr. West)
• Universality of ancient texts:

  “No matter who you are...these books are disorienting. They are alien...because they have a more profound axis of difference than almost any difference we could come up with today...” ([32:21] Brooks)

The Decline (and Possible Renewal) of the Platonic Spirit in Universities

• Commodification of education: “Universities...have become so corporatized...presidents and CEOs rather than moral leaders...So thoroughly obsessed with ongoing fashions rather than being Socratic..." ([33:34] Dr. West)
• Loss of the sense of the whole: Education reduced to pre-professional, specialized training—students no longer called to pursue the "sense of the whole." ([35:16] Robbie; [35:19] Dr. West)
• Socratic spirit persists: "But the good news is that Socratic spirit is not dead." ([35:19] Dr. West)

The Allegory of the Cave and Metanoia

• Descent and ascent: The Republic is structured around descent into darkness—Piraeus, Hades, the Cave—and eventual ascent to knowledge ([37:39] Dr. West).
• Transformation:

  "How do you come up with ways of getting people to see the world differently, to feel more deeply, to have more compassion and courage?..." ([42:00] Dr. West)

• Metanoia—turning of the soul: Intellectual and spiritual freedom demands a conversion—a willingness to “die” to old dogmas and be reborn ([41:30–43:58]).
• Plato as “catastrophic thinker” grappling with suffering, catastrophe, and the conditions for hope ([15:46] Dr. West).

The True Meaning of Justice & Education

• Not mere legality:

  “When he’s talking about justice, it’s not just juridical and it’s not just legal...it’s justification in the existential sense." ([46:10] Dr. West)

• Liberal (liberating) education:

  "Liberal education...I just call it Socratic." ([45:58] Dr. West)

• Education for the soul: The Republic—and similar great books—prepares us for suffering, loss, and tragedy in ways technical education cannot ([36:19] Brooks).

Limits of Philosophy versus Music

• Music surpasses philosophy:

  "I would argue in the end that the musicians are deeper than the philosophers." ([47:23] Dr. West)

• Plato’s ambivalence about music: The flute is banned, but the lyre stays—suggesting Plato saw music’s unruly power ([48:39] Dr. West & Robbie).

Noteworthy Quotes & Memorable Moments

On reading and becoming:
"Reading has been nearly as integral as music. The only thing more integral...is loving Mama and Daddy."
– Dr. Cornel West [02:05]

On why the Republic endures:
"No young person can come to terms with their lives with what it means to be human...without wrestling with reality versus appearance. Things seem to be this way, but they’re not."
– Dr. Cornel West [19:35]

On liberal education:
"Liberal education...I just call it Socratic."
– Dr. Cornel West [45:58]

On Socratic irony and humility:
"Socrates only asks questions. He claims not to have knowledge. It’s, in a way, his antagonists, the sophists who do."
– Shilo Brooks [15:46]

On the universal value of the classics:
"The best of what we have been able to do is deal with 400 years of being chronically hated and yet still teach the world so much about love."
– Dr. Cornel West [28:21]

On transformation:
"How do you come up with ways of getting people to see the world differently, to feel more deeply, to have more compassion and more courage?... There is no rebirth without death. There’s no learning how to live without learning how to die."
– Dr. Cornel West [42:00–43:58]

On hope:
"The hope that I have in me has everything to do with the love and courage and hope that’s poured into me by Irene and Clifton and West household... I am fundamentally who I am because somebody loved me. And that can never be taken away."
– Dr. Cornel West [52:26-53:05]

Important Segment Timestamps

• Dr. West’s early intellectual biography: [01:21–03:00]
• First encounter with Plato and Socratic method: [02:22–03:53]
• What is justice? Socratic method’s universal appeal: [04:38–07:19]
• Authoritarianism and irony in the imagined city: [10:41–14:19]
• Plato as “skeleton in the closet”—the essential interlocutor: [14:19–15:46]
• Core themes: Appearance vs. reality, the need for “the whole”: [18:33–20:06]
• On music and poetry in and beyond philosophy: [24:32–27:11]
• Plato and the Black intellectual tradition: [28:07–29:45]
• Universities and the loss of the Platonic spirit: [33:21–36:19]
• The Allegory of the Cave, metanoia, and death-as-learning: [37:39–44:04]
• Liberal education as existential transformation: [45:44–46:57]
• Music and philosophy—limits of reason: [47:23–48:57]
• Lightning round (books, politics, hope, etc.): [49:54–53:14]

Conclusion & Final Reflections

Brooks and West leave listeners with a powerful argument for reading Plato’s Republic: not as an old, irrelevant text, but as a perennial summons to justice, truth, and self-examination—a confrontation with the deepest afflictions and possibilities of the human soul.

The Republic is championed not only as the cornerstone of Western thought, but as a living conversation that transcends culture, race, suffering, and time—challenging every generation to imagine, and live toward, something nobler than mere survival or pleasure.

In Dr. West’s words:
“...you live in a culture which is in so many ways a joyless quest for insatiable pleasures. You can gain access to any kind of titillation and stimulation, any kind of addiction and distraction, but your soul can still be empty, your heart can still be cold, your conscience can still be coarsened. See, that’s what Plato’s speaking to even in 2025.” ([13:09] Dr. West)

Editor’s Note

For listeners seeking to join the “life of wonder,” or those just beginning their journey into philosophy, this episode is a stirring invitation: pick up the Republic—not for answers, but for the courage to ask life's most important questions.