Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

In this episode, James Myers and Michael Fitzpatrick continue to discuss modern Platonists with an introduction to Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), a mathematician who ended up as a professor of philosophy at Harvard University even though he didn’t hold a degree in philosophy. Whitehead hadn’t formally trained as a philosopher but came to be highly regarded for his mathematically-informed process philosophy that relates the oneness of all things to the continual becoming of many things. Whitehead viewed the universe as an organism of unending interconnections, and mathematics as describing the transformations of the particular connections that shape the physical world. The transformations Whitehead called “process,” and his book Process and Reality is discussed in this introductory episode where we begin to look at the current relevance of Whitehead’s thinking and how it connects to the thinking that Plato introduced to the world 2,400 years ago.

Our choice and use of words has a profound effect on the operation of justice, and a particular legal dispute now before the United States Supreme Court hangs on the meaning of three words. In this episode, Plato’s Pod host James Myers explores what eight of Plato’s works have to say about the meaning of words, and the ways that words shape constitutions, justice, and governments in our time as they did in Plato’s time, 24 centuries earlier. Socrates was executed because his jury judged him guilty of two words – impiety and corruption – which we now interpret very differently, and it’s an ancient example of how justice and injustice can still hinge on word meanings. The justices of the Supreme Court will soon render a decision on the meaning and usage of three words that have evolved from 1789 to 1977, and from 1977 to 2025. If we wrote our laws with a lengthy preamble setting out the lawmakers’ meaning and intent, as the Athenian in Plato’s Laws suggests, then justice might not be as difficult to establish at later times as it now is.

We followed our discussion of Plato’s famous Letter VII by looking at his lesser-known Letters VI and VIII. Together, they form a powerful trilogy in which “Love your neighbour” emerges as an overarching theme, and a principle that Plato says applies above all to kings, whose rule must be tempered by a love for their subjects. Plato’s concept of kingship is very different from the history of misrule by kings who exercise absolute and arbitrary power for their own benefit. The lessons that Plato provides in the three letters, from his own experience in politics 2,400 years ago, are especially important to our modern world, as tyrants and authoritarians impose injustice on their slavish followers and destroy the social harmony of their subjects. In Letter VI, Plato calls on members of The Academy to form a bond of friendship with a king who respects reason, and in Letter VIII he exhorts would-be tyrants to “shun and flee from what senseless and insatiate men call happiness; let them try to change into the form of kings and subject themselves to kingly laws, thus acquiring the highest honors from their willing subjects and from the laws.” A good king is the servant of the laws and justice, not one who enslaves his people with false images that, like the prisoner in the cave of Plato’s Republic, are mistaken for reality. More than two millennia after Plato wrote, we live in a world awash in false images that are broadcast to our screens with the speed and power of technology and cloaked as “opinion,” but what if we were to relinquish what we think of as a right to opinion? In our discussion, a proposal is advanced that we need to forgo claiming a right to opinion so that we can exercise reason, because reason and not opinion is the road the path to true freedom. We argue that this would be a step in the right direction on the divided line of knowledge that Plato described in The Republic, to us toward knowledge and then, with social harmony, to wisdom which is the greatest good.

In our first discussion on Plato's letters, we look at his best-known Seventh Letter. In the letter, Plato relates his experience with Dionysius, the tyrannical ruler of Syracuse, and the philosophically minded Dion was was persecuted by Dionysius. Plato's extraordinary recounting of his time teaching both Dionysius and Dion demonstrates his success with the latter, and failure with the former. There are many intriguing parallels between the situation in Syracuse 2,400 years ago, when Plato wrote, and the political and social environment in which we find ourselves today. Plato's account highlights the ills that befall a society whose rulers don't practise philosophy, and we see such rulers now, in the 21st century. The philosophical principles and observations about human nature that Plato expressed over two millennia ago remain relevant today, and in our next episode on the Seventh Letter we'll explore the age-old question "Can virtue be taught?"

Our final meeting on Plato’s longest dialogue, The Laws, concluded with readings from Book XII, where the Athenian expounds on the operation of a special Nocturnal Council that will act as the head and intellect for Crete’s new colony, Magnesia. On August 4, 2024, members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups considered many of the key themes of The Laws, in discussing how the Nocturnal Council would guard the virtue of the colony, its leaders, and its citizens. The unique aim of Magnesia’s constitution to be a virtuous and peaceful community, unlike constitutional goals many modern readers would be familiar with, requires a unity of principles, harmony, and laws based on reason, which will be the task of the Nocturnal Council to ensure. This led to a recollection of our first two meetings on The Laws, where we began with Book X and its justification that Reason itself is in the very centre of the universe, and is something far older than the physical matter that surrounds our immaterial souls. In concluding the dialogue, are we left with reason to think that Magnesia will be successful? The answer may depend on the meaning of virtue: is virtue, as the Athenian earlier stated, “the general concord of reason and emotion” and, as Socrates stated in the Meno, the account of the reasons why? Perhaps with today’s increasing global discord, some solutions might be found in Plato’s final dialogue, The Laws.

Book XI of Plato's last and longest dialogue represents a dramatic shift in tone from Book X, where we began our series on The Laws eleven episodes ago. On July 7, 2024, members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups convened to consider the thirty-three laws that the Athenian proposes to Clinias and Megillus for the regulation of trade and property in Crete's new colony, Magnesia. Some of the Athenian's laws are exceptionally harsh, including one that would allow a passer-by over the age of thirty to administer a beating with impunity to any seller in the market who quotes two different prices in a day for his goods. In this book, the Athenian is dramatically different from Book X and the previous books. Does Clinias, who is to be among Magnesia's first rulers, see any contradictions in what the Athenian proposes in Book XI? Has the Athenian been faithful to his previous assertion that all laws must be prefaced by a lengthy, reasoned preamble, or do his thirty-three laws on the distribution of wealth rely more on tradition and less on reason in the resolution of often extremely contentious disputes over property? Participants engaged in a spirited discussion on these and other questions, as we set the stage to complete The Laws in our next two episodes.

In our series on Plato’s longest and last dialogue, The Laws, on June 9, 2024 members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups turned to Book VII. There, the three characters – the Athenian, Clinias from Crete, and Megillus from Sparta – discuss the raising of children in Crete’s new colony, Magnesia. They begin by exploring the harmony of the colony’s laws with the customs and habits of its citizens, then they discuss the instruction of children. The Athenian ends by explaining that appreciating the relationships of numbers and shapes can deliver understanding of our individual limitations and collective potential in the universe. Some intriguing ideas emerge with respect to motion: that a harmony of the immaterial soul and material body in the motions of dance and song dispel the disharmony of fear, that the gods love us as a child loves playing with its toys, that idleness leads to corruption, and that there is fundamental incommensurability in the motions of the universe centred on Reason, whose role is to moderate the frequent conflicts between needs and pleasures.

In Book V of Plato’s Laws, only the unnamed Athenian speaks while the other two characters, Clinias from Crete and Megillus from Sparta, listen to his presentation on the power of the soul, harmony in human behaviour, and the just division of property for Crete’s new colony to be called Magnesia. On May 12, 2024, Plato’s Pod held its eighth meeting on Plato’s longest and last dialogue, with members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups participating. We began by listening to the Athenian’s compelling exposition on the nature of the soul as the master in us, with the body as its slave. The Athenian continues by explaining how the virtuous soul gains happiness by moderating pains and pleasures, and his proposition that the new community should be “purged” of those who cause disharmony provoked a discussion among the participants on questions of ethics and the distinction between religious and secular ethics and laws. Book V ends with the Athenian’s famous and curious proposal that 5,040 is the ideal population of a community. What did Plato, who sprinkled mathematics and geometry throughout his dialogues, intend to convey with this number?

Our discussion on Book III of Plato’s longest dialogue, The Laws, began by considering the consequences of natural cataclysms that invariably befall humanity. Plato opens the book with the emergence of early human communities that begin with goodwill when people are few and resources are relatively abundant, and many fascinating observations emerged when members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups convened on April 14, 2024 to consider this and the other themes of Book III. One participant asked whether humans are inherently bad, and others highlighted Plato’s understanding of human behaviour in the context of political economy, a modern field of study, and that the rough edges of reason are best tempered by drink and music as we age. Book III focuses on the social benefits of concord between the extremes of pain and pleasure, on the one hand, and on the other hand reason – which Plato wrote in Book X is in the very middle of the universe. Book III stresses the importance of education, appreciation for proportion, and inculcation of a common sense of virtue among members of a community, which are topics that yielded some deep insights in our discussion.

If the constitution for Crete’s new colony, Magnesia, is to succeed in setting the conditions for virtue among its citizens, self control and courage will be required to conquer the pains but equally the pleasures that visit every human life. This is the conclusion of the Athenian, Clinias, and Megillus in the second part of Book I of Plato’s dialogue The Laws, which highlights the benefits of harmony to a society that equips citizens both to govern and to be governed. Members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups met on March 3, 2024 to explore these themes and consider parallels to modern social issues, when virtue is now seldom equated with happiness as it was when the U.S. Constitution was framed some 2,100 years after Plato’s writing.  And what of the Athenian’s encouragement for citizens to engage in drinking parties as a test of virtue and self control? It’s both a curious and amusing feature of Book I that we’ll pursue when we read Book II of The Laws in our next meeting, rescheduled to March 24.

Plato's Pod continues its series on Plato's longest work, The Laws, picking up where we left off two weeks ago with the second part of Book X, near the end of the dialogue. In Book X, the three characters - an unnamed Athenian speaking with Clinias (from Crete) and Megillus (from Sparta) - set out the logic for reason as the primary cause of the universe, and reason's central function in the soul's moderation of need and desire. But have the three gone too far in prescribing the death penalty for any citizen of Crete's new colony, Magnesia, who refuses after every attempt at explanation and reconciliation to acknowledge reason as a god? On February 4, 2024, members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups met to consider the arguments. Is it just to impose reason in the form of a "state religion," one participant asked, or have the Athenian, Clinias, and Megillus adequately established that reason is no longer a matter of belief but a matter of fact? How do they define "impiety," for which death is the ultimate penalty, and is it fair to see it as a disease and demand that non-believers justify themselves? Some fascinating perspectives were offered in our discussion on the very different view of the universe and soul that is presented in Book X, which we will revisit when we turn to the beginning of The Laws in our next episode.

Plato brought the legend of Atlantis to the world in the Timaeus, and in the Critias provided many details of the fabulously wealthy and technologically advanced society that fell into disharmony and disappeared in a great earthquake 9,000 years earlier. As the character Critias relates the story, over time the Atlanteans gradually forgot their divine origin from the god Poseidon and began to pursue material wealth, losing their harmony and bringing upon themselves the punishment of Zeus. On December 3, 2023, members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups addressed the curious ending of the tale told by the character Critias, just as he was about to quote the words of Zeus. Was this cliff-hanger, “and he said …” a theatrical device of Plato, or a case of lost writing, or was Plato telling us that no human can know the mind of a god? The theme of memory plays throughout the dialogue, and Critias says that memory is particularly difficult when opinion applies in representing human actions over time. Was the ancient story that Critias relates a warning to the Athenians of his time about social constitutions like those of Atlantis that become too rigidly rooted in the past, and are there warnings in it for our time? The mystery of Atlantis has endured for 2,400 years since Plato’s writing, and in our discussion we may have found some clues to understanding the lessons of Atlantean history.