Why We Still Need Plato

Summary

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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

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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.

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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).

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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]

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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]

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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)

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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.

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Transcript

[Shiloh Brooks]

I'm Shiloh Brooks. I'm a professor and CEO, and I believe reading good books makes us better men. Today I'm talking with Dr. Cornel West. Dr. West is a renowned teacher, theologian, and activist. Plato's Republic, written over 2,000 years ago, changed Dr. West's life. Today I'm asking him why this is old school.

[Jack Miller Center Announcer]

Old school is proudly brought to you by the Jack Miller Center. The Jack Miller Center's mission is to reinvigorate education in America's founding principles by empowering professors, supporting teachers, and bringing civic education to millions of students nationwide.

[Shiloh Brooks]

If you believe in educating the next.

[Jack Miller Center Announcer]

Generation to sustain American ideals, join [e-mail].

[Shiloh Brooks]

Dr. West, pleasure to have you here. So let me start this way. You were born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is kind of the middle of nowhere. I was born in the middle of nowhere in Lubbock, Texas. We both ended up studying philosophy, teaching the best books that have ever been written. So I want to hear the story of how you got from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to the life of wonder, the philosophic life. How did you get there?

[Dr. Cornel West]

Wonderful question. I actually would deeply tied to Granddad's church, Metropolitan Baptist Church, which today is still the biggest black Baptist church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And so for me, it was always a matter of wrestling with the book of Job and wrestling with the life of Jesus and trying to make sense of the world by leading with love and trying to love your way through the darkness, the cruelty of the world. And when I encountered Kierkegaard in a bookmobile, it changed my life.

[Shiloh Brooks]

That'll do it. How old were you when you found out?

[Dr. Cornel West]

I was about 14 years old, living on the chocolate side of Sacramento. You see, I only stayed in Tulsa, Gloma for a few weeks, moved to Topeka, Kansas, where my sister was born, Cynthia. Then I made it to Sacramento.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Sacramento, absolutely.

[Dr. Cornel West]

But I was reading all the time. I mean, for me, reading has been nearly as integral as music. The only thing more integral to me other than reading and music is loving Mama and Daddy. But it was Kierkegaard that opened the world for me as one deeply shaped by a Christian father formation.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Well, tell me about finding the Republic. You mentioned you found Kierkegaard at 14, but when I asked you to select a book that had changed your life, you selected Plato's Republic. Do you remember how you found it the first time you read it? The impact that it had on you at that time?

[Dr. Cornel West]

Yeah, it was in Stanley Cavell's great course on Hum 5 Humanities 5 at Harvard that he had assigned Antigone. And then we read parts of the Republic, and I had read the Apology, you know, an unexamined life is not worth living. So I already had viewed Socrates through an existential lens, through a Kierkegaardian lens, really, through a Book of Job lens, that great work of world poetry and Hebrew scripture. So that for me, when I got a chance to read Republic as a whole, my God, brother man, I mean, Plato is in the same zone as Dante and Shakespeare and Cervantes and Dostoevsky and Milton and Faulkner's and Toni Morrisons. These are the great literary artists wrestling with what it means to be human. But Plato also was a philosopher with no peer in the West. But when I read the whole thing, the fusion of the poetic and the prosaic, of the philosophical on the one hand and the literary on the other, and then the political and the personal, the existential and the economic and the social and the spiritual.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Let me ask you this question. So the Republic. You know, one of the most remarkable features about the Republic, and really about Socrates, is that he begins with ordinary opinion. And by that I mean he begins with a simple question that people on the street to whom he speaks can understand. In the case of the Republic, it's what is justice? It's not a categorical imperative from Kant, where you got to, or Hegel's phenomenology. It's not like most philosophy, where you begin with this complex linguistic word salad. Socrates meets you where you are. What is virtue? What is justice? So let me ask you this about the Republic. Let's say you and me are just sitting, having drinks. I've never read the Republic. Can you tell me, what is the Republic about? What is that book about?

[Dr. Cornel West]

I would say that it is the answer to the most fundamental question that sits at the core of the human condition. William James put it this way in the Gift of Lectures of the Varieties of Religious Experience, the call for help. And what is a republic? 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.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Philosophy itself is nothing but a weapon.

[Dr. Cornel West]

To be used by the strong against the weak. That's Thrasymachus. And you got the young brothers looking to Socrates. Can you provide a response? Can you help us deal with this kind of nihilism, this kind of unbelievable, not just relativism, but of a. Almost a fatalism, a refusal to really want to elevate oneself and transcend oneself beyond all of the ugly greed and hatred and envy and resentment that they see in everyday life.

[Shiloh Brooks]

The republic is medicine for an affliction. That affliction is bound up with in a certain way indignants about the world about what justice is. You mentioned might makes right A young person, a young man who looks out on the world and says, you know what? There ain't no such thing as justice. Everybody's out to get what they're out to get all they can. Who gives a crap about anybody else? Let's go get and take for ourselves. Now that's Glaucon. One of the major characters position is he comes to Socrates and says, Socrates, why should I be a just man when I could live the life of a tyrant and I could live the life of pleasure and taking in power. Defend justice to me, show me that justice is a worthwhile way of life. Even or especially when nobody's looking, I should still be just. Even when nobody sees me, I should be just in my own house, in my own room. You know, those kinds of things. That's a very powerful statement. It's a heavy burden to place on Socrates. So I'm curious what you make of Socrates attempt to do that for Glaucon to say, Glaucon, look, we could look in the soul of an individual for the goodness of justice, but in fact the let's build an imaginary city in which we make justice our animating principle. And every policy and every aspect of this city we're going to create so that it achieves justice. And that way we can see justice writ large rather than in your soul. What do you make? How do you evaluate the defense of justice that Socrates makes against the nihilists, against the Cynics that you're talking about?

[Dr. Cornel West]

Well, it's an interesting paradox, and this is true for Plato as a whole, because on the one hand, Plato is always revolutionary, subversive in the generic sense of calling into question what is in place, unsettling conventional morality. And of course that's what gets Socrates in trouble. Plato's end and aim in life is to make the world safe for Socrates, to make sure that every generation that comes after him has to come to terms with, with the life and witness of Socrates. And Socrates himself never writes a word, just like Jesus.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

So the only way in which people.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Will know about Socrates will be the Socratic writers.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

But making the world safe for Socrates.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Is what it's a matter of saying that there is a response to nihilism. There is a response to the kind of fatalism, the sense of believing that the world is not so much about the ten Commandments, but the eleventh commandment, thou shalt not get caught. It's more than just survival of the slickest and the riches and the clever. That there's something about virtue and the virtues, about courage, about justice, about temperance. And then of course, for Christians like myself, about faith, hope and love. And so on the one hand, Plato is defending virtue in the face of the most formidable challenge. On the other hand, when he's writ large, he becomes very authoritarian, he becomes obsessed with control, the very freedom that's at work in his form. And he's using the dialogue. Yeah, the dialogue is an open form. Democracy will produce the tyrant because democracy is about what? Unruly passion, pervasive ignorance of citizens who are obsessed with pleasure and not virtue.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

And of course, we gotta keep in.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Mind, it's the democracy that killed his master. It was the demos that voted for Socrates going under, just like the demos.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Who voted for Jesus to be crucified. But that's another issue.

[Dr. Cornel West]

So that Plato, on the one hand is an example of open mindedness, of unbelievable commitment to parrhesia and free speech and plain speech. And yet when it comes to his thought experiment, politically and socially, it is deeply authoritarian.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

The poets have no role unless they sing songs. The great men and the gods. He bans the flute. And of course that's upsetting for me.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Well, I wanna ask you about that jazz man.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

You know, anybody who created a social regime, you can't have the flute played. Come on, Plato, what's going on?

[Shiloh Brooks]

Well, let me ask you about this authoritarian aspect of the Repub. So for people who haven't read it, Glaucon asked Socrates to defend justice. Socrates says, all right, I'm going to do that by creating an imaginary city that is perfectly just. We get into this imaginary city and things end up happening, like censoring poetry, like banning music. There's a communism of women and children in which children are taken from their mothers at birth. There is a elaborate system to sort all of the natures of human beings into classes. The gold, the silver and the bronze.

[Dr. Cornel West]

That's right.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Based on their quality and characteristics. So there's extraordinary social engines, engineering and censorship. Now, this can be read several ways. One, it could be read. Plato advocates for social engineering, eugenics and censorship. But another way, and the way I'm tempted to read it, and I wonder what you make of this is Plato shows us what would be required for the kind of justice that we Hope for, namely, it might be radical politics. The problem with those radical politics is that they themselves seem to produce injustices with which we are dissatisfied. What that leads to is not a perfect definition or solution of what justice is, but rather a moderation of our hopes for the justice we can realize in this world, given the political limitations of what we can do. I see young people chanting the words justice, writing it on the walls, screaming for it always and everywhere in all sorts of circumstances. I think that's good. But at the same time, our hopes for justice, that justice can be good for everyone when it's done. You know, Socrates brings this out. It has to be good for the doer and good for the person to whom it's done. It has to. You know, you want to help friends, but you may harm enemies. But then how can justice be harmful to people if it's good and you get into all these contradictions? So my question for you is, at the end of the day, when you see this imaginary city with all of its richness, but also all of its tragedy, what are we to take home about the question, what is justice from this bizarre utopia that's been constructed?

[Dr. Cornel West]

Now, you're right. When the triple waves that he generates, the elimination of family and abolition of private property, and then philosophers being rulers.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

You know, he reaches the point where.

[Dr. Cornel West]

He says, look, I am so desperate when I look at the human condition that the only sense of being able to. To defend justice is to create a situation in which those who have access to the idea of the agathon, the idea of the good, those who have.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Access to truth, or at least are.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Interested in the pursuit of truth, they also should wield power. Plato's desperation leads toward him being a control freak. Surveillance, eugenics, infanticide, all the things that.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

So many of us, if not all.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Of us, view as unjust and immoral. He's wrong about that. But he's not caving into the callicles and the Gorgias or thrasymachus in the republic, who are outright defenders of nihilism. And I think the message for young people these days is that you live in a culture which is 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. Now, Plato also is going to argue that any society is going to have its mechanisms of censorship, of control forms of education that will shape the souls of the young folk. And by souls we mean their fundamental orientations toward the world.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

But those of us who are committed.

[Dr. Cornel West]

To more libertarian and democratic social experiments, highly critical of Plato's authoritarianism, recognize that Plato is always that major skeleton in the closet with which we must wrestle with and come to terms, even if we disagree with his conclusions, because we agree with his starting point.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Young people looking to Socrates, we must.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Look to traditions that provide us with resources to come to terms with meaninglessness.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Hopelessness, lovelessness, touchlessness, grinlessness. That's what nihilism Lived is all about.

[Shiloh Brooks]

I mean, you're talking about having to come to terms with Plato, especially for young people. I think that's true. One aspect of this book that always strikes me, though, is the, of course, famous Socratic irony. It's not obvious to me that Plato is an authoritarian, that he does recommend these things I. Or that that's not in some ways ironic, meant to show us something deeper about what justice is in the world and how it's deployed and what it looks like when we, you see, when we get it out there. So I hesitate myself to say this is what Plato teaches, primarily because Socrates claims not to teach anything and he only ever asks questions. And this is a feature that our listeners should be acquainted with. Socrates only asks questions. He claims not to have knowledge. It's, in a way, his antagonists, the sophists who do.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Plato is a catastrophic thinker.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

He's born during the plague, he's wrestling with authoritarian rule of the 30s, he's wrestling with elites out of control, but doing what?

[Dr. Cornel West]

Engaging in the highest philosophic achievement, which is in many ways the Republic and his 25 dialogue as a critique of.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

The highest political achievement, which was Pericles.

[Dr. Cornel West]

And in democracy, he's got a deep suspicion of the Demos. Yeah, he really does.

[Shiloh Brooks]

He does.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Now, Socrates is very different. His master is very different, because Socrates really doesn't have any positive alternative. He doesn't have any constructive. He says, I go about infecting others.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

With the perplexity I have. That's what he says in Meno, right?

[Dr. Cornel West]

That's my calling. I'm a midwife, but all I'm doing is allowing things to be birthed. Whereas Plato, his student, comes along and says, I follow that Socratic spirit and energy, a sense of inquiry, but I've got a positive vision that my master doesn't have. And yet I do agree with you. He's so slippery and it's just hard to know where he lands. In that sense, he's like Shakespeare. What does Shakespeare believe?

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Nobody knows what was Shakespeare's religion? Nobody knows what was his philosophy, where he carried Montaigne in his back pocket, the floral translation of Montaigne and the Bible on the other pocket. But what did he believe? We have no idea, really.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Hamlet doesn't speak for him, Lear doesn't speak for him. In the end, Socrates doesn't really speak for Plato. I agree with you there. There's an ironic distance again. Great artists, great literary artists, yet we know he's much more constructive than Socrates himself. You would agree with me on that?

[Shiloh Brooks]

I do. I would agree with that. You've done a good job so far saying why this book is the cornerstone of Western philosophy. The Republic is that book with which every philosopher, worth any weight at all, reckons at some point, somehow it is that book. It's the one book. It's the urtext of Western philosophy. Right. And so I'm curious why this thing continues to endure. Why should somebody pick it up? Because I think a lot of students would say, you know, this thing's 2,000 plus years old, the world has changed. Who cares about what some ancient Greek thought? And yet you and I are sitting here saying, the greatest minds to have proceeded after Plato for 2000 years all had to confront the Republic. Why is that? And why in 2025 should a young person sitting at home wondering what to do next, say, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to stage a confrontation with the greatest book that intelligent people say has ever been written. How does it hold that sway over us?

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

We tell our young precious brothers and.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Sisters of all colors, of all countries, of all sexual orientation, the religious and non religious identities. Plato sets the scene of instruction for any philosophic inquiry, especially in the West. But I think in the world, what is the scene? The distinction between reality and appearance, the.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Distinction between knowledge and opinion, the distinction.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Between nature and convention, the distinction between.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Philosophers and sophists, the distinction between a.

[Dr. Cornel West]

World that is recurrent, that is constant, what he'd call a realm of being versus a world of becoming, as changing, drifting, flowing all the time.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

And you can take a position against Plato. He certainly takes a position in favor of reality and knowledge and philosopher and so on. And Nietzsche says, no, Platonism is one of the worst things that come along. But you want to flip the script? Okay, Nietzsche, you're still on the same.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Terrain that he laid out. No young person can come to terms with their lives with what it means to be human, what it means to live a life from their mama's womb to tomb without wrestling with reality versus appearance. Things seem to be this way, but they're not.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

You don't say. I thought she loved me. She doesn't. I thought he. No, I thought that what the scientists said in 1900 was a nature reality.

[Dr. Cornel West]

They changed their minds.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

They got better theories.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Things are forever changing. But that doesn't mean, in fact, that there's not some reality behind the veil of appearance. Same would be true in terms of the struggle against Homer. I mean, there's a sense in which the Republic is the first effort for.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

The Greeks to replace Homer as the source of paideia. The source of education.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Yeah.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

And what's going to replace it? Dialectics. What's dialectics? A sense of the whole. What is the sense of the whole philosophy? That love of wisdom philosophia emerges in Plato over against the inferior wisdom that he thinks is at work in Homer. So you get this wonderful clash of philosophy versus poetry.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Well, that's going to persist up until this very day.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

You could tell the young folk, oh.

[Dr. Cornel West]

I see you listen to a little Kendrick Lamar, huh?

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Did you listen to Mortal man and his wrestling with Tupac?

[Dr. Cornel West]

How come Tupac was silent? Tupac, how do you pass on the.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Wisdom to the younger generation?

[Dr. Cornel West]

Stops.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Tupac, Kendrick, what are you saying?

[Dr. Cornel West]

Everybody has to have traditions of education.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

That allow people to draw distinction between reality and appearance and knowledge and opinion, be able to cultivate the capacity to love, not just wisdom. Because, of course, Socrates never cries, never sheds a tear, which means he never loved anybody.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Right?

[Dr. Cornel West]

Right.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Had to get to the prophetic legacy of Jerusalem for that.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Love neighbor. Yeah, Jesus loved neighbor and enemy.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

That's different than love and wisdom.

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[Shiloh Brooks]

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[Shiloh Brooks]

The word of the day is dialectic. What does dialectic mean? It's something that we don't do enough of today. Maybe it's easier to define by saying what it doesn't mean. What it doesn't mean is you're sitting with a friend and you're holding forth and you're saying all the things that you think are true, and then they wait for a pause in the conversation so that they can say all the things that they think are true, and then you walk away. That's not dialectic. Dialectic requires listening. It requires asking precise questions, listening to your interlocutor's response, and then furthering the discourse on the basis of that response. So what you get with the dialectic is a deepening, a gradual deepening over time of a conversation by way of the reasoned exchange of ideas which respond to the specifics as they are exchanged. That's very different from what we do on social media, which is just shouting your view and then the other person shouts their viewers. But you engage in correspondence and exchange of ideas in pursuit together of the truth. Dialectic doesn't simply imply or require a clash. It's not a clash. It's not an argument. It's an attempt to come to some mutual understanding, to pursue the truth in steps. It's a collaborative effort, not a combative one. And I think we've sort of lost sight of that.

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[Shiloh Brooks]

Let me ask you this. You. You just mentioned the. The. You know, the. The way the Republic seems to venerate and show the superiority of the philosophic life.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Yes.

[Shiloh Brooks]

This is a. This is a. A canonical question. You know, Aristotle talks about the priority of the philosophic life and the political life or the life of the poets. We should talk. You mentioned, and I want to ask you about that because you strike me as somebody who lives the philosophic life in a certain way through their deeds, acknowledges its superiority. And yet you're a poetic man. You love music. And you mentioned earlier that of course there's much music outlawed in the Republic. And I wanted to get your reaction to that. But more than that, I wanted to get you to evaluate this claim and tell people why Plato would say the philosophic life over and above the political and the poetic is the best way. Because today, as, as young people say, you don't want to be too judgy. You don't want to say what's best. Is the, you know, is it better to be on Wall street or is it better to go to a nonprofit? I hear Princeton students arguing about this stuff all the time. What's the. But. But Plato comes out and says, pursue the life of philosophy. It's the best way of life. Why is the philosophic way of life the best way of life? And how do you make sense of that in your own soul, given your well known and powerful attractions to poetry and music?

[Dr. Cornel West]

Well, I can tell you this, my brother. I think one of the reasons why your courses at Princeton were the biggest courses and you won the teaching awards was that you recognized that the young people had to have some alternative, especially the young brothers of all colors. They had to have some alternative to the careerism and the opportunism and the hedonism and the narcissism that is so pervasive in contemporary culture. They want something deeper than that. They want something that's more real. They want it to be nourished by something more than just commodities and possession and spectacle and image and position and status. That's a human thing.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Plato was making the same point thousands of years ago. 20, 25, same point.

[Dr. Cornel West]

We human beings are constituted in such a way that we have a need to love and be loved. We have a need to have some sense of meaning. We have a need to get outside of ourselves and feel as if life present to us ways of nourishing and flourishing that goes far beyond money, which is to say richness, measured in terms of what money cannot buy. Love, trust, faith, quality, relationship, friendship, sense of community. You can't buy those things.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Yeah.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

All the money in the world, all the billionaires running around praying for, I pray for them because it looked like their lives are so empty.

[Dr. Cornel West]

They're not really rich in the way Plato's talking about.

[Shiloh Brooks]

You know, one of the things that comes up these days, as you know, is that something like these classical authors and classics as a discipline is an utter disarray in my point of view, because people will say these. These authors have nothing to teach diverse peoples. Now, you obviously don't think that. And I was reading Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail in which he quotes he mentioned Socrates three times in that letter. So my question for you is, how do you see these classic books, classic Greek books in particular, animating the black intellectual tradition? And what would, since I think you and I are on the same page on this, your critique, be of those who say these books by old white pagans can't teach us our people anything. You seem to disagree with that. So how do you see the classic authors who I can tell are near and dear to your heart, fitting into that intellectual tradition?

[Dr. Cornel West]

Oh, I mean, I wouldn't say they just fit in. I think that they are integral and constitutive in the same way that black life, black thinkers, black music is integral and constitutive of wrestling with what it.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Means to be human.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Anybody who engages in the fallible quest for truth and beauty and goodness and holy. Whatever tradition you come from, you're going to be grounded in your roof, your roots. But the routes that you take to R O U T E S is going to be headed toward the most fundamental efforts to make sense of meaning in the world. That's variety. Different religions, variety of different philosophers. Within the west, that means you're starting with Plato. There's no way around it. I mean, what's distinctive about my own tradition of black folk is that, see, the best of what we have been able to do is to deal with 400 years of being chronically hated and yet still teach the world so much about love. So Martin Luther King's love ethic, John Coltrane's Love Supreme, Stevie Wonders, Love and need of love. We can go on and on and on.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Same is true in terms of being traumatized.

[Dr. Cornel West]

To teach the world about healing, terrorized.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Teach the world about freedom for everybody. Wrestling with the depths of sorrow. Teach the world about joy. Look at all the joy in Louis Armstrong. Look at all the joy in Richard Pryor. Like the Bel Shem Tov in the.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Jewish tradition, overflowing with joy because Jews themselves, hated, terrorized, traumatized. Teaching the world so much about justice, teaching the world so much about joy. Right.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

And there's a whole host of historic.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Peoples who have made these kinds of contributions. I'm just using these two examples of black folk and Jewish folk here. Many, my God, we can go on and on with a variety of different cultures.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Persians, Irish and so forth, just in.

[Dr. Cornel West]

The West, I mean, in the east and African indigenous peoples and so forth have their own very rich and deep traditions. But I'm thinking of myself as a black man born in Jim Crow America in the 50s.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

How am I Gonna make sense of the world.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Yeah.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

And I have access to first, this black church and the west family, Ireal and Cliff. And I have access to the music.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Curtis Mayfield Z. Aretha Franklin, John Coltrane and Sarah Vaughns. I have access to American tradition of.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Faulkner and Twain and Henry James and Baldwin and so forth. And I have access to the best.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Of the west where we started before.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Shakespeare and Dante and Goethe and Beethoven and Schiller. Plato sitting at the bottom, but then Proclus and Plotinus playing fundamental roles. And of course, I don't want to downplay aristotle here and St. Thomas, but all of these folk mean so much.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Why? Because they invested so much of their genius and heart and soul trying to make sense of the world.

[Shiloh Brooks]

That's right.

[Dr. Cornel West]

That's a beautiful thing.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

If I'm gonna play the violin and can't say a word about Hyphus, I need to put the violin down.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Yeah.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

If I'm gonna play the piano, I can't say a word about Chopin or Art Tatum or Mary Lou Williams or Litz. Franz Lich. I got to put this piano get. Move away from the piano and picks up. Maybe pick up the flute.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Yeah.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Band in the republic. So you got to deal with the best. You know what I mean? If you go play basketball, you got to come to terms with Michael Jordan and that's right. Back to Jay and LeBron and so forth.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Yeah. I mean, you know, that's a really nice way to put it. And I would only add to that that Plato or Homer, they're equally alien to you and to me now, based on our skin colors. That's not what I'm talking. I'm saying neither of us lived 2,000 years ago. That's true. Neither of us wears togas and walks around. Neither of us, as Achilles did, rages with our sword and shield.

[Dr. Cornel West]

That's right.

[Shiloh Brooks]

So you and I listen to the same music. We use the same phone, we read the same newspaper. We travel in the same cars. You and me, we got some life experience, commonality together. Despite our background differences, neither of us knows what the heck was going on with a sword and a shield in our hand on the battlefield, cutting men's throats and cutting off arms.

[Dr. Cornel West]

That's true.

[Shiloh Brooks]

So, I mean, no matter who you are, no matter where you come from, these books are disorienting. They are alien to you because they have a more profound axis of difference than almost any difference we could come up with today just on account of the chronological distance that's passed. You know, they're Pre Christian, for crying out loud.

[Dr. Cornel West]

That's exactly right.

[Shiloh Brooks]

You know, I think in that way they're great equalizers. So you and I both are in universities. Universities are sick today, there's no question about that. And you and one of my colleagues and friends, Professor Robert George, traveled the country. Travel the country talking about that.

[Dr. Cornel West]

That's right.

[Shiloh Brooks]

What do you think universities have lost with respect to the Platonic spirit? You just talked about, you know, the whole understanding the whole and sitting with the longings of your soul and these sorts of things. I wonder if universities still do that, still call back to and represent accurately the platonic origin of the academy. Right. I wonder if you have thoughts on the return of the universities to the Platonic spirit.

[Dr. Cornel West]

I mean, Harvard's motto is Veritas Truth, Good God Almighty. What audacity. But Harvard is just one example. It's the. The peak of an iceberg that the.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Universities, especially the elite universities, have become.

[Dr. Cornel West]

So corporatized, presidents and CEOs rather than moral leaders, that the administration becomes center rather than students and faculty.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

It's become so commodified because they're mainly.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Looking for money, money, money, not just from the government, but from private wealth. They become so thoroughly obsessed with. With ongoing fashions rather than being Socratic, which is always being suspicious of any fashion, including itself. You see, Socrates is actually critical of himself.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

That's right.

[Shiloh Brooks]

That's right.

[Dr. Cornel West]

See, so skepticism has to be skeptical about skepticism.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

There's a difference between retail skepticism and wholesale skepticism. Wholesale skepticism is nihilism, but retail skepticism is healthy forms of criticism.

[Dr. Cornel West]

But you're looking for an alternative.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Wholesale skill doesn't allow you.

[Dr. Cornel West]

So what happens in university these days? It becomes reduced to how much money you have, what your reputation is, what your image is. And you got these precious students coming.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Through, hungry for a quest for truth, beauty, goodness and the holy. And they are being shaped into what? Pre professional subjects. Soon as they arrive. What are you majoring in? Major tied to what? Tied to the job you're going to get.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Well, you've got to make a choice. Choice between what? We're highly specialized. What are you going to major in? Well, I'm stem. Well, if you're stem, are you going.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

To read Plato's Republic? Well, why should I read that?

[Dr. Cornel West]

I'm concerned about science and technology and mathematics. How are you going to live your life?

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

What kind of human being you're going to be?

[Dr. Cornel West]

How are you going to be courageous in moments of crisis? How are you going to understand the.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Sense of the whole sense of the whole is lost.

[Dr. Cornel West]

It's a very sad affair. But the good news is that Socratic spirit is not dead. It's not dead. And the legacy of Plato at his best is not dead.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

And the legacy of Plato at his worst is very much tied to the.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Worst inside of us.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

And so in that sense, the very fact that you have this show is.

[Dr. Cornel West]

An effort to keep alive the Socratic legacy at a moment in which the American empire would organize greed and weaponize.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Hatred, institutionalize indifference toward vulnerable, makes it.

[Dr. Cornel West]

More and more difficult to. People even want to generate trust with each other. That's what brother Robbie and I try to do. You know, we exemplify a certain kind of trust. We love each other and respect each other. He's deeply conservative, Republican, Catholic. And I'm. I don't know, whatever I am, you know, I'm just revolutionary Christian, I guess, trying to make sense of the world.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

As I was telling you the other day, crack vessel. Just try to love my crooked neighborhood, my crooked heart, you know, but the. But it means that we can't give up.

[Shiloh Brooks]

That's one of the beautiful things about the Republic is it's a book. When you have tragedy in your life, maybe one of your loved ones is diagnosed with an illness that you didn't foresee, your wife divorces you, you get laid off from your job, you know the bad things that can happen to you. You lose a child. It's a book like the Bible, like so many truly, truly extraordinary books that you can fall back on and seek wisdom in for how to deal with those sorts of problems in human life. That technical education you mentioned, stem, that technical education alone doesn't prepare you for. You're not going to program your way out of a divorce. You're not going to code your way out of losing a child. You need something that's sustaining to fall back on. In the kind of book that the Republic is, that the Bible is. You've mentioned Shakespeare, Kierkegaard. Those are the kinds of books that can sustain the hunger that a soul needs to sustain in order to navigate those aspects of human life which are the most serious.

[Dr. Cornel West]

You know, eloquently put, my brother. Yeah, that is. And that's part of that call for help I was talking about.

[Shiloh Brooks]

That's right. That's right. So one of the things I asked you to do is give us a passage from the Republic that you think is profound, that we ought to read out loud, talk about, and focus on one of your favorite passages.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Let me first do this. Let me Put it in context. The Republic is structured in such a way that there is the Piraeus of the prologue that first I went down yesterday. Dissent.

[Shiloh Brooks]

That's right.

[Dr. Cornel West]

And it's going down into Hades, the hell for him, democracy. Because Piraeus is the site of commerce and democracy. And so I went down yesterday to Piraeus. And then there's the epilogue of Hades itself in the midst of error, where you actually go down after 10 days of being a corpse and comes back to life two days later and then tells everybody what the underworld is like. The sense of going down into darkness. Crucial. The night festival of Bendis and Hecate, who actually is a figure who invites the people into the underworld, that is precisely the kind of festival that Socrates has just attended.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

So when people are interested in dealing.

[Dr. Cornel West]

With nightlike situations in their lives and then find themselves right at the center of chapter seven, the cave of the parable. The cave of the Parable. Maybe I should.

[Shiloh Brooks]

The allegory. It's interesting because you mentioned the book begins with the words I went down. And of course, the cave is underground. And so it seems to begin with the allegory, or at least foreshadowing.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

But you got all three of those connected.

[Shiloh Brooks]

That's right. That's right.

[Dr. Cornel West]

You got Piraeus, you got Hades, and.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

You'Ve got the cave. Now I will read a little bit.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Of the cave here.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Compare our nature in respect of education and its lack to such an experience as this. Picture men dwelling in a sort of subterranean cavern with a long entrance open to the light on its entire width.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Conceive them as having their legs and.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Necks fettered from childhood, so they remain in the same spot, able to look forward only and prevented by the fetters from turning their heads. Picture further the light from a fire burning higher up and at a distance behind them and between the fire and the prisoners, and above them a road along which a low wall has been built. As the exhibitors of puppet shows have partitions before the men themselves, above which they show the puppets.

[Dr. Cornel West]

And it goes on and on and on. But the crucial thing is, and this is where I want to provide some light for our dear brothers and sisters, especially the younger generation.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

But it's for older folk like myself too. And you turn, for example, to line.

[Dr. Cornel West]

368C, my brother, which is in book two, 368.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Got it.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

And this is where, with Glucan, who.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Is historically, of course, Plato's brother, it.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Says, glukon besought me.

[Dr. Cornel West]

This is Plato.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

By all means, come to the rescue.

[Dr. Cornel West]

As the response to the help.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Yeah.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Darkness of Piraeus, the darkness of the cave and the darkness of the mists of air.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Right.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Which must come to help. And what is the coming to help? It is philosophy. But what does philosophy do?

[Dr. Cornel West]

What the rescue is? It is Socratic dialectic in motion.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Yeah.

[Dr. Cornel West]

And it's in movement that affects people's hearts and minds and souls and bodies. And the culmination actually is.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

And I'll stop here now, cause I'm.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Just going much too long here. But the culmination. And this to me is one of the more sublime moments of the Republic.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

But our present argument indicates that the true analogy for this indwelling power in the soul and the instrument whereby each of us apprehends is that of an eye that cannot be converted to light from the darkness except by the paragog turning the whole body. Even so, this organ of knowledge must be turned around. Now, see, that's metanoia. Now, Christians might call it conversion of it might call it metamorphosis.

[Dr. Cornel West]

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? Because it looks as if forms of blindness, forms of indifference and forms of cowardliness are running amok. That's not just 2025, that's 368 B.C. plato was simply saying there's always got to be conditions under which turning of the soul. New ways of perceiving, new ways of living, new ways of loving, new ways of engaging people, sustaining people. Like the 32nd chapter of Genesis in.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Hebrew Scripture, where Jacob does what in the night, just like here, wrestles with the angel of death. Wounded, scarred, bruised, emerges with new energy, new vision, new name.

[Dr. Cornel West]

And it's interesting.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Israel means God. Wrestling.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Boy, that's a heavy.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

That's a heavy name for any people or nation or what. Are you going to wrestle with God enough to make sure you're pursuing justice for everybody and telling the truth?

[Dr. Cornel West]

Every nation state, every empire falls short.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Right?

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Plato's project thought experiment falls short.

[Dr. Cornel West]

It really does. That's why in so many ways, as a jazz man, I read this text and I can see the unbelievable power and spirit that affects my way of being. Because I'm forever wanting to continue my turning of the soul.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

And it is a form of death.

[Dr. Cornel West]

It really is. It is a form of death because anytime you give up on certain forms of blindness, certain assumptions and presuppositions and dogma and let them go, you are dying in order to live better.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Right.

[Dr. Cornel West]

So there is no rebirth without death. There's no learning how to live without learning how to die.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Right.

[Dr. Cornel West]

And the learning how to die. Unlearn slavery because it's free. This is freedom that he's talking about.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

No matter how authoritarian people might think.

[Dr. Cornel West]

The thought experiment is, he's talking about an intellectual and spiritual freedom here. Don't, man.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Sure.

[Dr. Cornel West]

And you can imagine, you know, Duke Ellington would appreciate that. Yeah, he's got a freedom.

[Shiloh Brooks]

It seems to me what you've brought out in the quotes that you've shared with us is that the Republic is, in a way the beginning of what we would call liberal education. And by that I mean what you've just said. It challenges us to call into question our deepest held convictions and either defend them or adopt new ones. And that's what you have in mind by the death, that if you call into question your deepest hell convictions and you find that they don't hold water, you have to shed them. But when you shed them, the person you were, when you hold those convictions, dies. And so that's why I think the Republic is in a course, like a freshman seminar, sort of the best book you can read, because it is instantiated in these pages is the full spirit of a liberal education. And it's really beautiful. The second quote you shared with us, where Socrates says, glaucon, if you're not satisfied with my defense of justice, I want to come to justice's assistance. I want to help justice. Why would you not want to defend justice? It's on me. Because justice is good and true and right. To make sure that its full luminosity shines forth to you so that you see that it's better. Let's continue forward. Put this burden on me, Glaucon. And so I just think, you know, Socrates as teacher, the message of the Republic as liberal education, it really is the beginning of so much.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Absolutely. But there's two things to keep in mind, my dear brother. One is that, you see, when we use the phrase liberal education these days, people associate that with a liberalism.

[Shiloh Brooks]

I mean, liberating, freeing.

[Dr. Cornel West]

There you go. That's. I just call it Socratic.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Yeah, I mean the liberating education.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

And I know, I just wanted to make that clear, just to be clear to everybody.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Freedom, freedom of the mind.

[Dr. Cornel West]

And when he's talking about justice, you see, it's not just juridical and it's not just legal.

[Shiloh Brooks]

That's right.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

It's not just political in a narrow.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Sense, it's justifying one's own existence. So you don't kill yourself tomorrow morning. Yeah, it's justifying your relation to your.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Mama and your daddy and acknowledging what.

[Dr. Cornel West]

They poured into you that sustains you as you deal with your own crisis and catastrophe. So it's justification in the existential sense, the way Job is looking for justice and justification. He's not just looking for some juridical standing. He's looking for meaning in life at the deepest level. Fleshified, concretized, enacted and embodied in his life. That's already in Plato.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Most of our academic philosophers with the language games, no, they got.

[Shiloh Brooks]

No, they got no idea.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

They're brilliant. Brilliance and cleverness, fine, but they not deep at the level that Plato is. But you get with Nietzsche and Montaigne and Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein and Whitehead and others, that's a different situation.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Yeah, it's blood. It's blood on the page versus, you know, games on the page. That's the difference.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Exactly. But, you know, I would argue in the end that the musicians are deeper than the philosophers.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Is it because they express something that language and reason alone can express? In other words, there's divine inspiration there. And that reason has its limits with respect to. To what it can say about the world. I mean, you have.

[Dr. Cornel West]

That's a strong part of it, brother. It really is. The limits of language, the limits of words and the knowledge of the limits of language. You can talk, you can use language to acknowledge the limits of language in that way. Whereas music has a way of getting at things that cut deeper than. And of course, this is something that Schopenhauer probably understood better than most philosophers of the West. And Nietzsche's birth of tragedy is.

[Shiloh Brooks]

It's why Plato bans it at the beginning, right? Because music can make citizens do things that one might not want them to do disorderly. It can make someone courageous, it can make someone feel things that the situation in which they're in gives them no reason to feel. You go to the gym, you listen to music, you feel like you want to go to war. But that's only because the music's playing. Were you at home, sitting in silence, you would not feel that. So the music provides you an occasion to feel feelings. That's true. You wouldn't have st stimuli to feel otherwise.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

But he does allow.

[Shiloh Brooks]

You gotta ban it.

[Dr. Cornel West]

He allows for the liar, though.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

He eliminates the flute, but he allows for the liar.

[Dr. Cornel West]

He's got that one string.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Yeah, see, because that one string, he thinks is going to minimize the appeal.

[Dr. Cornel West]

To the appetites, the non rational the irrational. You're absolutely right. But I mean, it's interesting.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

When Plato died.

[Dr. Cornel West]

We were told, of course, again, these are all the tales told, that there's a Thracian girl who was playing the melody with the flute and she can't get it right. So Plato just. It's almost like James Brown trying to get Footsy Collins to stay on the one. He's trying to get the girl stay in rhythm while she's playing the flute. And what's beneath his pillow? Aristophanes, who had made fun of his master, Socrates.

[Shiloh Brooks]

A great poet.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Dr. Cornel West]

But the comic. Yeah, yeah, the comic poet.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Absolutely. So you say.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Oh. So Plato, your life, like every life.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Is so much more complicated and complex than one would have thought as put forward in so much of your philosophy.

[Dr. Cornel West]

But he's. There's nobody like him, man. Let's just be honest about it.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Turn to a lightning round. These will be quick answer questions. Can you name a book that you just simply couldn't finish? You just thought, I'm not. I can't do it.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Ulysses, really, Joyce.

[Dr. Cornel West]

I was just overwhelmed by his. I mean, overwhelmed both by the linguistic genius, but also by just a plethora of words. It just kept coming, coming, coming, coming, coming, and I couldn't make sense of it. I stayed with it. I stayed with it. I joined the little groups, thought we could read it together. Couldn't do it.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Who should the Democrats run in 2028?

[Dr. Cornel West]

You know, I think the Democratic Party is beyond redemption.

[Shiloh Brooks]

All right?

[Dr. Cornel West]

It's not a question of who they come up with. They got to get their act together at such a deep level that I think institutionally they're incapable of doing that. So I think they're beyond redemption.

[Shiloh Brooks]

So given that the Democrats are beyond redemption, is there anything that the right gets correct about America that you think is.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Well, I mean, Republicans. Far beyond redemption, too, but.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

But, no, but when you think about.

[Dr. Cornel West]

The right, you know, you never. Talking about a monolithic, homogeneous group.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Yeah.

[Dr. Cornel West]

At all. I have much to preserve and conserve. So I never want conservatives to think they have a monopoly on.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

On conserving things, but I know. I just think the level and depth.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Of corruption of our system is such that it's difficult to conceive of either one of these parties reconfiguring themselves. They're playing on a superficial level with messaging, and we need something so much more deeper.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Let me ask you this. The philosopher king doesn't want to rule. You ran for office. Would you run again? And are you a philosopher king?

[Dr. Cornel West]

No.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

No, no, no.

[Dr. Cornel West]

I'm a Christian. No, brother.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Christians have a king who's a servant.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Who dies on the cross because he loves so and was willing to give us all to empty himself in an act of kenosis. That. That's my tradition.

[Shiloh Brooks]

You got a desert island album, one that you take that. That's the one that you listen to on repeat. It's the only one you got.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Ooh. Oh. That's a Choice between Opus 111, the Last Sonata of Beethoven, or Opus 131, the Last String quartet of Beethoven Marvin gave us. What's going on?

[Shiloh Brooks]

Maybe we can take them both.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Maybe we can take all three of us. Yeah, yeah. Put them all on the same time.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Mix them together.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

Exactly.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Yeah.

[Shiloh Brooks]

And this be the last one. You know, what gives you hope today? What inspires you today?

[Dr. Cornel West]

Oh, I think all of us, in the end, have a sanctity and the dignity that the world didn't give us and the world can't take away. And 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 where I grew up. The traditions that we talk about, towering figures who gave so much sacrifice, so much. They are inside of me. They soak inside of me. They are embedded, and I try to enact it. And it means whether I'm in jail or in a classroom or marching or giving a speech or trying to sing a song in the shower, I am fundamentally who I am because somebody loved me. And that can never be taken away.

[Robbie (Friend/Colleague of Cornel West)]

And therefore, that is hope. And hope is always a verb as.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Well as a virtue.

[Shiloh Brooks]

Cornel west, thank you so much for being here.

[Dr. Cornel West]

Wonderful man. I salute you, brother.

[Shiloh Brooks]

My pleasure. Thank you for coming.

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