Plato's The Republic, Book 1 Discussion, Part 2 (X0TrhyxjmYM)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=X0TrhyxjmYM

Okay, so I want to kind of do the same thing that we did last time, right? So we’re going to get into the argument this session. So the context will be a little bit different. It will be more philosophical related to the virtues, right? So I guess I want to set a group intention in the sense of, I think what we want to do is we want to spend time exploring, right? We want to take it out of the book and into our own understanding, our own experience. And then that will enrich in what we’re doing. Yeah, since we set intentions last time, right? Like I did with asking a why are you here question. Instead of doing a why are you here? I want to have like a short reflection upon what the reading did with us. Like did we see something new in our daily lives, right? Like is there something that is important to us now, for example? And also a small reflection on what participating with an intention was and then setting the new intention. So I’m going to do that for myself. I must say that fairly little changed in the way that I live my life as a consequence of last week. Although I did have some reflections upon the interactions and how people approach things, because that is my intent. I’m going to go with a similar contention, which is trying to encourage the engagement of other people. So I’m trying to lift that up a little bit. Adam, you want to go? In terms of kind of how I saw the world around me and all that, I can’t recall anything in particular. But there were insights into, I suppose, yeah, I mean, there were insights into how a kind of hierarchy between generations of men kind of helped me to frame things. We were talking about how it all started off with what was his name, the old dude at the sacrifice, basically having a barbecue. And kind of him and Socrates basically setting the stage and passing something on to the young men like Paul Amarcus. And I guess that kind of highlighted that aspect of viewing things in my life, which yeah, I was paying more attention to it, let’s say. And so far as my intention now, it’s much the same as it was last week, is to kind of take part in the conversation, learn more about what’s going on in the Republic. And trying to see how other people are relating to it and how I can relate to it through that, but also through the way I’m, through my participation in as well. So, yeah, I guess I’ll pass it on to Ethan. You’re not coming through, dude. Yeah. We can pick someone else, we can fix it. Okay, yeah. Danny, what about you, Danny? So, I mean, I have limited, pretty much zero time this week, but I think where my mind has been with respect to the whole plate, play dough and the Republic thing is I’ve been thinking about where the culture is in terms of like from kind of like the modern solution to where the modern, what modern solutions are coming out of the modern problems. So a lot of these like Nietzschean and ideas and Schopenhauer ideas that are kind of go back through Christianity into Platonism, gaining a better understanding of that. So basically, like, what’s the answer to nihilism? Right. So we have basically, what are the various answers to the meeting crisis? So gaining on it, because neo-Platonism is emerging, like from, you know, in Vervecki circles, and many other circles, neo-Platonism, so-called, is becoming more popular. So just sort of gaining a better understanding that one intention is to sharpen my mind. Another intention is through the participation of this group. Right. But kind of this week has just kind of been like with limited time, a lot of it’s just sort of how to manage nihilism practically with respect to practical concerns. So I don’t know if that’s not a very clear answer, but that’s just kind of where my mind has been this week. So I’m seeking applications in that direction. Man, I got to follow that. Okay. So obviously, Danny’s got some big ideas in his head that I’d love to wrap my mind around more. Really, for me, I just gained a lot of insight into just looking at the contrast of today’s society and how we tend to discuss ideas, right, through the lens of polarization and what’s your foundation and who did you vote for, as opposed to how Socrates and Thrasymachus, I think is how his name is pronounced. But the conversations they’re having, you do see some emotion come out. It’s at one point, like Thrasymachus gets very animated. That’s really that’s cool to see that, you know, they’re not perfect either, you know, these great philosophers, but then you also see this ration, they return to this rational discussion of ideas bit by bit, piece by piece. And I just I look at that and I go, where’s that in our society today? Right. So as far as my intent, my intent is to look at and learn to reason more effectively myself. I want to get that from this reading. And the other thing that I gained a lot from is the perspective and the machinations of the logical mind of other people and what their conclusions are. So really enjoyed this part in particular, so far as hearing what people want from this and what they’ve experienced so far. Yes, OK. Yes, so how the reading affected me this week, not so much, except mainly only one or two conversations I had with friends. It affected me in a way that when I discussed with them, I was remind I was reminding of Socrates attitude in the discussion. And how he conversed his opinion. And it was just in the back of my mind how he deal with the how he how he deal with contradiction and how he tried to convince someone. So, yes, that’s how this first reading affected me this week. And for my intention, yes, for me, it’s good because it makes me I have, in a way, discipline to read the book. I think I like some discipline in my life, so it’s nice to be with a group having a discipline to read each chapter, each book each week. And then, yes, having different perspective, maybe I’m missing something in the book. And so having different thoughts may enrich my my vision of what Plato want to say. I think that’s a really good one because. He’s arguing with an individualist, which is what we all have kind of fallen into. And he just. And Barry, well, it just just destroys it kind of despite admitting that he could never win an argument with their semicus. Socrates does say that. He says, I could never beat you in an argument. I think I don’t think he’s being I don’t think he’s being ironic when he says that. I think he’s actually being I think he’s being honest because he’s pointing to something that’s above logic. And that’s what he’s trying to point towards or orientate towards. And arguments are they are a form of violence. Don’t take that in the like. Of this kind of way, like it’s a form of violence. It’s like I have the better argument. I have the more the more strength, you know, the strongest person wins type of thing. And what Socrates is doing with their semicus is he’s he’s playing with tell us and. For semicus seems to think that the tell us is always located within the individual, and he thinks he’s mistake. He’s he thinks that that virtue is. Is injustice because the ingest person. Is able to manipulate the entire world to terminate inside him. And Socrates is playing with that and showing him that the ingest person actually destroys the world. I think people must be in. People must be in working together in cooperation towards something higher or else the world will. The world will destroy itself and he asked a really good question because. There are some cases. Proposes that you know the person like the tyrant or whatever gets all the money or whatever gets all the slaves is the best person. And there’s Socrates asked him OK, what about a band of thieves? Do they have no justice? Are they are they able to cooperate with each other towards a common goal? It’s kind of a trick question. It’s like OK, so the band of thieves do exhibit some level of justice. And I remember the first time reading this, it actually all reading is when I really clicked with me. That are metaphysical things that we orientate ourselves to that bring us together. Allow us to function as not individuals. The more individualistic you act, the more destructive it is to everything, including yourself and. Just creation in general. No. Do you have a reflection on on on your intention as well? Reflection on my intention. From my intention from last week. Yeah. It’s OK. I. Yeah, just. Giving attention to the fact that individualism is is false and that to what to be just is to orientate to submit yourself to something that’s not within yourself. So just catching yourself being selfish, I guess. I just finished this yesterday, so. OK, yeah, I think. Do do we want to? We want to get back to to the point that we left. Off because I think I think we ended up. Going to change, right? We started going into the argument itself. Like Ethan said, the argument is is is coming from an individualistic perspective. Might makes right a little bit of niches over manch. Hidden in there. And I think I think the point that Ethan made about. And I think I think the point that Ethan made about. You cannot convince. True argument is is correct. Right, like I think I think it’s it’s. The disagreement is is not based upon argument. Disagreement is based upon action. Right, so it’s like OK, like I I value this right. I value this from my individualistic perspective. And. If I’m going to organize the world based upon on what I value, then certain things will pop out. So so the conflict isn’t really on the level of. Whether they follow the correct logic. It’s it’s the framing like like what what is what is the frame in in in which which you’re doing the analysis. I don’t know. Last week I talked about that that I think Plato discerns these these three levels right of operating one is from the God, which which is narcissistic. Solipsistic perspective and then. What well this is what I heard. I don’t I don’t know it, but like he can only lift it up one level right so. So. So he wants to to make a bridge right to at least afford the possibility of of transcending to to a different means of understanding. And I think that’s what he’s what he’s trying to do in in this first chapter. And. Yeah, so so if we if we want to connect it to current society. And. Like I think we want to we want to abstract that lesson right like like okay so. There there is there is an appeal that you can make to the other person right so because at a certain point he he takes a step back right and he says. I’m going to do a bunch of things that you’re not going to like right and I’m I’m going to ask for your consent in in doing them right and and then the basis upon which he gets the consent and maybe this is actually also a trick right but the basis upon which he gets the consent is by being your respect to the person right and so if if you’re if you’re in the camp of might makes right like like the respect or the honor or whatever right like that’s that’s what owner culture is in some sense right like it’s or there’s there’s one that’s not owner so much as reputation right so so if you have if you have a good reputation that’s like I think the discernment upon which which you. You decide how much respect to show the other person. And so so. Yeah, this this informed consent right is is the willingness to participate in Socrates’s game. Right and now now we’re in Socrates’s game and now Socrates can set the rules and because he can set the rules he can he can reorient with within the given frame and like I think I think we have to go over things to to highlight these things a little bit more in the specific but I think that’s that’s a good lens to use that anybody want to add something before we open the open the gates on the on the note of frames and types of characters I think one thing I notice is that Socrates addresses different types of people with different tactics and in different ways right and so obviously Thrasymachus is putting a lot of heat on Socrates saying like okay make a bet right what else he says a bunch of things you know he says you’re taking the frame of irony they’ll look at you Mr. Knitpicker right and because he’s kind of maybe a solipsistic character the outcome that happens is that he’s like he’s he’s he’s he’s put the shame and silenced right whereas when Socrates interacts with other people that’s not the outcome of the interaction so you know that that’s just an observation I don’t know what to do with that but you know different different different strokes are different folks so yeah I don’t know where to go with that but that was just something I observed I guess. Yeah I think the shame is maybe analogous to what are you sensitive for right like what is what is the means by which you are moved right because if I’m if if what if you try to shame me like that doesn’t work I’ll just say fuck you because I’m right right like and and and so I’m not sensitive to be moved by by by these tools like I’m I’m I’m sensitive to be moved by by a good argument but I’m not sensitive to be moved by emotional pressure or or status destruction or whatever so so yeah like that that’s there’s two sides to that right like one one of it is you can you can see what type of person the other is but you can you can also see how to approach the other person right like like what what are the things that you should appeal to in the person. About the framing when you hear Glaucon and Trasimac they they speak in one shot they don’t ask question and they don’t try to see where is the the frame or the if if if the other counterpart agree with some statement when Socrates speak he first he first asked question do you agree on this yes do you agree on this yes yes and then he catch off guard the counterpart that’s interesting way of doing Socrates is he tried to to see where the where the counterpart agree and then move on on the argument. Yeah the style is definitely different Trasimachus is his method of argument is to impose his his logic whereas Socrates is is not that at all it’s more of an invitation and kind of more of a I don’t know how else you put it but it’s not an imposition it’s he’s kind of trying to cultivate something I thought I like that he’s taking more of a cultivation of looking at it from that way. Trasimachus method of argument matches to his actual logic the way that justice injustice is virtuous and injustice is an imposition whoever imposes the best whoever exerts the most power is the is is the best person which is exactly where we’re at I mean Trasimachus is a postmodernist that’s what he is it’s reminding me of this tweet a mutual friend of ours posted a couple days ago perennial problems mean we can ask for grant money forever from the governments to solve patterns and struggle that reoccur are just promised followers a way through anyways people that are saying oh we need money we need money because of these problems and they’re trying to take from a system that exists despite those same perennial problems so like that that ethic of oh we’re justified in taking money every time we experience deprivation that is injustice that actually is injustice because you’re just you’re destroying things you’re not building things you’re not maintaining things you’re destroying your parasitizing things and injustice can never build anything it can only destroy yeah I was gonna note add to what you said Manuel this is something that Schindler wrote he said the conclusion can be reached only with Trasimachus the conclusion can be reached only with Trasimachus is real participation because he withholds precisely this book one comes to an end without coming to a resolution so yeah even he he makes the same point that it can’t be won through argument he has to sit there and participate and experience this cultivation he’s not going to be convinced through a mere force or in position of logic I think that’s a tremendous piece of thinking and I like the relation to the modern world and just to piggyback on that to use maybe an unwelcome colloquialism there looking at Trasimachus the way he approaches Socrates is very much he said he says I know I know the way you argue I know what you’re going to do because earlier on in that in that argument he says well we know Socrates you know I’m going to ask him a question and he won’t even give me his answer he’s going to mend together the answers of others right and so when you’re talking about Trasimachus or talking about Socrates and the way he approaches things or correction you’re talking about Trasimachus and the way he approaches the argument is very much framed upon how his opponent so to speak argues and then we talk about how very much of our solutions to our real world problems today are oriented on the framework of how we how we operate in the real world right so just take the banking issues of recent right you’re talking about if indeed we’re going to engage in let’s go ahead and veer off concept here into a modern concept capital destruction through the bailouts of the banks right which is ultimately just creating money out of thin air again can you really create in that way even though you sustain the system do you indeed create in that way so I just wanted to speak to what that kind of illuminated in my mind based on what you’d said there it’s great great there’s no creation they’re just they’re just they’re just taking something up from here and plugging it over there they’re not creating anything they’re just they’re just moving things around and it’s just going to make it what is it in entropy is inevitable so yeah it’s yeah when Socrates Trasimachus gets upset at him with with oh you never make your own arguments you just you know kind of use other people’s and it goes back to the I know nothing right because it’s everybody else has knowledge and Socrates is fixated on an ideal of the good and he doesn’t want any of the he doesn’t he he orientates himself towards the the ideal and then he and then he’ll allow everything to kind of emerge properly in concordance with that ideal instead of building something up without looking up and then that like if you’re if you’re doing an emergence only type of thing you’re building and hoping that eventually that will get you to the correct disposition but he’s fixated on the dispute on the on the the ideal first and then lets everything else kind of construct its way up to it I think that’s why he holds to that I know nothing because it’s dangerous to say that I know you know he lets he lets the argument it emerge naturally or become cultivated again yeah that bothers Trasimachus I got I got this association with with the biblical knowing right so the biblical knowing is effectively to be intimate with right and so so when we’re talking about these these ineffable things right like the way that we know them is is by having a relationship to them right like by developing a type of intimacy right and this this goes back to to to the cultivation right like so so Socrates is is cultivating something within within the dialogue where where he’s providing means for a type of intimacy right and then if you look at his argument right like he’s he’s circumscribing things right so he’s not he’s not talking about the thing in and of itself necessarily but he’s he’s more talking about how to approach right like like what what what what is what is the relationship that I can have and what is the things that I know that aren’t I don’t for fake he talks about negative theology and I I don’t like talking about what a thing is not right but but talking about the boundaries right like okay like I can I can quote on of this area and it’s at least within that area like what how exactly it is there I don’t know but but it’s it’s there and and and I think also what what is going on is is there’s there’s a couple of of ways that that he’s he’s framing things right so so there’s there’s this good and better and there’s there’s good good and bad and and then there’s there’s just and unjust right so there’s there’s these um well I don’t necessarily want to say binaries but but these these contrasts that that he’s using to highlight um and and and so so it’s important to to realize uh how he’s doing that and the first bit and maybe we should start talking about that soon it is is in the context of finances right like so this finances was already introduced in in the beginning and now they’re again relating to the just through a financial framework as as if it’s it’s maybe the most relatable or the most present um when we read this book from our eyes from our perspective from our time time um well his his point is the strong is the strongest so it’s natural that he’s that he’s that he rule but I’m sure that in the past it was a more common thought more uh I think the the people from the past um attach more credibility to this thinking than currently right now currently right now I think it’s more the contrary the more when I when I look at politics when I look at the when I try to have argument with people it’s more uh the more victim you are the more the more you win and 12 to see is the contrary the strongest has uh because it’s a strong he must rule and I think it was a common thought in the past uh and so uh from our eyes from our perspective maybe we we misunderstand how we see has someone but he’s uh he he acts he he represents a common thought he’s well spoken and he uh he uh he’s emotional but that that’s okay that’s I think uh some people are emotional and they they they speak okay they can they can be emotional um so this is how I perceive the character of Prozimak and yes he reminds me of I don’t know the argument of niche but uh uh maybe in a quid versa he’s he’s it’s weird Trisimachus is the opposite of the people today but he’s also the same exact thing because instead of whoever’s the strongest is the best today it’s whoever’s the weakest is the best but they’re actually the same thing because it’s it’s the it’s uh it’s totally a having mode thing whoever has the most of this is the best so whoever has the most of the um of whoever has the most victimhood is the best whoever has Trisimachus whoever has the strongest is the best and I don’t know like they don’t want to cultivate anything where Socrates is it they’re they’re participating in the same thing but but the Trisimachus is is withholding any sort of real engagement he’s kind of stuck in he’s I think he’s a sophist right so so he’s kind of a a rhetoric teacher for young men young politicians um and you know that might be fine but that he only is getting stuck in who wins the argument and not about what Socrates might actually be trying to to point towards and so it’s I think yeah we’re pointing to the same non-generative pattern because it’s you know either you know you’re so strong you’re the best and that there’s no there’s no kind of reciprocation so there’s no there’s no um yeah there is that there in some sense there is no cultivation to me no I was talking um yesterday with somebody about culture and part of part of what culture is is a kind of a reciprocal thing of of it comes from it comes from the idea of um inhabiting a place but also kind of there’s this kind of sexual imagery there so there’s the kind of going too far forward of okay I’m winning to the to the kind of opposite the kind of so so making making so so making oneself appear to be so small that that there’s there’s no consequence that there is so inconsequential but either in either case there is no seeming generate generative kind of building up towards something um should we should we do the trick that Socrates should we um should we recite that what he did with with Thersimachus with so he says he’ll bring up a couple examples like a physician or a horse master say or a ship captain I like that one he says okay so the ship captain has a bunch of subordinates he has a bunch of sailors so is the is is the ship captain’s interest his self like is his telos with located in himself or is it located somewhere else is it located in uh navigating or or running the ship and Socrates is saying it’s more likely um it’s more likely that his telos is located with somewhere within his subordinates because if if it wasn’t he wouldn’t be a ship captain like his purpose is to the ship so he’s actually serving his subject this is one of the I mean he’s Socrates obviously isn’t going to end up here but he’s he’s kind of trying to pull that telos out of the individual it’s like the doctor is the doctor’s telos um is the medical professional’s telos um himself or is his is his telos the human body is he is that his subject is the subject of um you know the horse master is it himself or is it the horse it’s like okay these people are committed to things outside of themselves with with the ship captain it’s actually um I don’t know if he he actually gets there in book one it might we might have to it might we might get here later but it’s actually not the telos of the ship captain actually isn’t the individual it’s not it’s not the individuals of the of the of the crew it’s not the sailors it’s actually the telos is the the ship itself and everybody is everybody is in cooperation submitted to the telos of of the ship and they’re actually they cooperate together for um the way that I think of it is all of them cooperate towards something that’s higher um that which would be the form I guess you could say there’s a there’s a loving relationship between between the two they the top cooperates with the bottom and they all can consist of the whole whole which would be the form of the ship so anyways that’s the trick that he does it’s like okay so all these professionals they’re not committed to themselves because if they were committed to themselves they wouldn’t have a profession yeah and so the way I would frame it is the argument that’s being made is is in direct observation so when when I do something good that’s at a cost to me right like it’s a sacrifice and therefore it’s bad right like that’s the the linear relationship or whatever right like that’s a flat world and then you can say well but if if I do something good then things function right and and now you have you have a level of of complexity and a justification for for the next layer of complexity and I think I think that’s the level that gets lifted up right and then and then you can say well like if everything functions I benefit right like I benefit more than I would benefit without everything functioning right and and that’s like like another layer right so I think I think that’s that’s maybe analogous to to these to these to these ways of thinking right like where where where you say oh right like but actually there’s a flower and like when flower blossoms there’s something inside and then you have the fractal nature of that right where you can get people one step through it one step through it right oh mark hello and I think I think that’s why the financial angle is maybe also really interesting right because the financial angle is quantitative right like it has it has a direct measurable and understandable way way to relate to it and and thereby it also has a means of of immediate judgment and then the question is whether justice should follow that judgment or whether there’s there’s there’s a higher standard that should be appealed yeah exactly you it will never be if you’re just only looking at the quantitative level it can never be just you can only be just by looking up yes I think after he he developed on this and he have a concept of justice is good for itself and then as also as a utility because the utility is how how we live in a society and if society is just and people inside it are just then we benefit beneficiate from everything but as itself also it’s beneficial because it’s linked to your soul I think that’s the the argument yeah he takes Socrates takes it down to the the person the individual probably shouldn’t use that word he says okay so he says this works at all levels like so if a society is in just they’ll actually they’ll actually end up fragmenting this works on the individual like there’s if you look turn inwards if what about the in just parts and the just parts of the soul I mean what what’s going to happen to the like are the are the in just parts going to outlive the just parts or are they going to fragment off so yeah he says so obviously the person has to maintain some sort of justice or else they will fail to exist I think he goes on there to he says surely the gods are are just they’re not in just because we know that they exist we worship them we give them offerings and they they bless us whatever surely they’re just there’s it’s coming to like justice look it’s starting to look something like tied to order and the fact that something exists the fact that we have a culture like that is in all indications of justice and injustice actually pulls away from that and destroys it so he’s he’s turning he’s flipping it around to where justice is actually virtue and injustice not virtue that’s very good reading go ahead sorry oh i’ll just real quickly um recording i don’t obviously i don’t speak greek but i was reading here that um shindler was pointing out that the justice at least i think in this book book one other using it can be translated as virtue i think i think that was the word or no morality like i i i’m going to go into that like in the commentary that that i had like because i i got a lot of i wanted to talk about the commentary more than the book but i’ll wait with that so say that again manuel there’s a commentary you know i will i will read from the commentary later because i think it’s important to talk about it and they go into the words that they’re using because i think these translations use bad words well that’s difficult i mean what like you can get the yawit translation that was i think that’s the first english translation was like mid 19th century then you can get like the the culture changed like the english english language is culture right and the culture of the 19th century has changed to where what it is now you know so it’s like what are these words that they’re using it’s really difficult so it really helps if you could if you could have have some understanding of the greek but whatever and that is definitely a dilemma we can get into it you want to go there yeah i think that was really interesting in terms of when you talk about the whole conversation is about just and unjust virtuous and not virtuous and it’s just very then you talk about the relationship between the collective and the individual in terms of the ship’s captain and the the folks who are actually doing there and and it gets it starts to get a little abstract for me in terms of okay so if you look at if if entropy is injustice and to build or to transfer energy is justice it just makes me think of that relationship a lot of people look at because you’re a captain of industry and because you built something big and because you are are massively wealthy that you now automatically you’ve taken from people and turning that on its ear very much is actually the concept of service right you’re talking about the level of service that’s rendered the number of people who have been rendered service by say amazon founder right like look how much service he’s rendered in terms of the books that he’s provided to people alone just the bookstore starting off right so that’s just a very interesting concept for me and it just makes me think deeply about people’s perceptions of justice versus injustice on that whole concept of just because you have doesn’t mean that you’re in just just because you built doesn’t mean that you’re unjust in modern society very much has a strong undercurrent of going hey uh he you know eat the whole eat the rich concept or he who has a lot uh should have it taken from him because it couldn’t have been earned right but the reality is and i think you pointed out well is that many people who have a lot have actually served a lot yeah um but i think there’s a point where thersinica says is that the the only people the only reason people are just because he’s you know he says injustice is virtue he says the only reason that just people are just is because they’re worried about being victims of the unjust people and yeah he gave three three motivations right he gave the motivation of financial gain the honor and and fear uh which is uh yeah i i don’t know if i’m on board with that but it’s interesting so i’ve got that that that sort of ignores the more important point right like the the people who say because you have something you must have taken it from somewhere right they’re not accounting for the creation of value right so their worldview is closed they think you things are there objectively they’re just there and therefore if you created the iphone and not me then you stole my ability to take the iphone from me but that that’s not true like i couldn’t have created the iphone right and so they’re just missing that whole component and and because they’re missing the component of the work ironically that goes into the creation of the object they they think that object exists independent of the person and that’s the only way it makes sense you know it’s a closed world right you it was already there therefore if you have it you took it from somewhere but that’s not the way the world is you create value and if you create value from entropy for example which certainly happens then yeah there’s a bunch of service that goes into that there’s a bunch of advantage that goes into that there’s a bunch of effort that without which you don’t have those things and so you can’t replace jeff bezos uh whatever you may think of it with with any other person i think it’s not it’s not to say that no other person couldn’t have done some of the things but no other person could have been jeff bezos like it’s just same with steve jobs like the same with any of these people and and that’s the problem is they’re not accounting for the full set of things and that’s what happens when you invert things like justice by saying social justice justice doesn’t have a modifier you can’t modify the concept of justice by putting a word in front of it justice is a virtue so it’s higher up above everything right it’s it’s and i do like the ship captain thing right means of expression that’s what it is yeah yeah well but it’s but it’s higher up above everything and the ship captain works because it points higher because that’s what’s actually going on right there is something higher and that person is serving that higher thing whether you be jeff bezos or steve jobs or whomever they’re actually serving something higher they’re benefiting in their service we all benefit in our service we also all suffer when we’re lazy so you know you don’t get around that equation just because you’re not successful you’re still you’re still having consequences from your actions so if you have positive consequences in general there must be something positive about your actions there are some exceptions to that but that’s what people miss when they try to modify the concept of justice so they can fit it you know within something like society but society doesn’t work without justice and justice justice doesn’t exist without society it doesn’t make any sense you could slam those two words together and come to an understanding of the world you’re going to destroy your ability to understand instead they have the the thrasymachus is definition of justice justice is just having mode we have less so we need to have we need to get up there to where we’re equal over it’s i think actually if you ask anyone it’s like well you we need to we need to be above you because you’ve been above us for so long they have that having mode notion of justice and you’re right it’s not that’s that’s what socrates is arguing here is justice is not that justice is a virtue you can’t it’s not a it’s not deter it’s not it doesn’t point to the person that has the most um that’s the thing that you you say this a lot mark you say well they don’t they don’t understand creation or they don’t believe in creation these people that they they they’re they’re immediately skeptical of anyone that has anything because they can’t you just said that because they can’t see value because they’re living in they think that they’re living in a dead world where everything that out there that exists already exists everything that exists are is already there they don’t understand that things are so for example genesis one like the creation myth they don’t understand they think that they think that that happened once they think that that happened in the past at one point in time they don’t understand that that’s continually happening all the time every day it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s the origin of the world in the sense that it’s how not linearly not like at a certain point in time a long time ago it’s happening all the time that’s how things that’s how value is created you know that that’s how things come into our world it seems it’s like they they don’t understand it because it’s like pulling some uh x-note nilio they don’t see they see well there’s all of a sudden all of this value but we can’t see where it came from so we’re immediately skeptical of you because they can’t they can’t accept the fact that something can be created something can be created out of nothing well if we’re going to use that language i’m i’m going to make a defense a little bit because because i i just had an insight right so i think i think what happened is and actually playdo goes into this later in the book where he says there’s three generations of people right and the last generation is the democratic generation which is actually the generation that we’re in now but but what what is it what is the quality of the democratic situation what like they they get born into a system right but like what when a system exists what do you want to do well you want to fine tune it right so you’re saying well we’re putting energy here and maybe if we put more energy here then it’s better right and and so you’re you’re you’re navigating on a layer of abstraction that that is that is in in the optimization it’s not in the generation right like it’s it’s taking for granted how things come into being and and is is is pointing the energy of what comes into being into an expression which is literally what politics is right like like the politics is is is the guidance of the expression of what is coming into being right and and then that that that if if you’re not grounded into how things come into being right if you don’t have your feet in the ground then you you start pointing the expression in in a way that it can no longer be sustained by by what’s beneath and and that’s that’s what we’re we’re getting stuck in right and and all these people they get they they get educated in a way of reasoning that they’re effectively not mature enough for to participate in i think that that’s what what the issue is like they just get lifted up too high too fast yeah it’s definitely maturity issue right you can’t see above where you’re at that’s what having mode is you can’t see out of your three year old self to realize your clothes get washed by your mother right and then and the food get you know doesn’t just get cooked right the food comes from somewhere a very long chain right and and these things don’t just appear created right and therefore uh you know you’re not part of that chain of what does all this take right that’s when we lose lose track of where does meat come from the supermarket well kind of right and that’s the flattening of the world where you just see what’s in front of you you don’t realize what’s behind all of those things like a supermarket is a place that exists because people need to gather to get food locally like it’s and and that food doesn’t come locally usually some of it might but most of it goes through all these processes and organizations even it’s just bagging you know bagging the food to put it on the shelf right uh but but meat gets all caught up and there’s all these things involved in that and when you flatten the world down to supermarket you you’ve lost all of the things that are going on that re-enchant the world that show you oh no this is a complicated uh process this isn’t just meet my three-year-old self going i am hungry and getting a candy bar or whatever right because that that’s how we start and we all start that way and as we grow our understanding is supposed to expand and part of that hasn’t happened that’s when you get this flattening of justice and then it and then it gets into and you know it can happen to adults too right and and you can lose understanding you can know one day and then forget right you focus in on something silly like technology or tiktok and then you forget all the stuff that happens in the world that enables you to exist and and the implications of that the virtues that go into that the values that must be carried out in order to do that right i mean there’s somebody somewhere right now working in a field right so that you’re able to eat and they know that and you don’t it’s like whoa right and and look it’s going to take them all year like so for example uh farmers typically get paid once or twice a year they make all their money in one or two days that’s it they don’t get a paycheck every week or every month that’s not the way it happens for them and then they have to manage their money differently for we have no appreciation of this normally you have to have experience with that otherwise you you get into that problem of well justice must just be some you know you have i don’t balance therefore unjust when it can’t possibly be that simple yeah i wanted to share can i you mind if i i wanted to share a tool that’s been really useful throughout most of my life this is from when i was a teenager so it was called like when you’re in an apologetic frame or an ironic frame like sock tease where you don’t make any assertions like literally the first thing he says when throsimachus says uh justice is in the interest of the stronger he says what throsimachus is the meaning of this we some already is aware of these things but these are called the colombo tactics two questions that i’ve been or you can win any argument without knowing a thing about the topic by asking these two questions and that and and this is useful for us as if you’re stuck in middle out thinking or if you’re propositionally trapped or if you’re in flat land we as we as we acknowledge the disagreement is over axioms so if we can back people up these these two questions are really good at backing people up one is what do you mean by that the second question is how did you come to that conclusion so like if somebody comes on your door knock knock knock excuse me sir do you have a moment to discuss whatever right and you know nothing of the subject you can just ask those two questions over and over again and that oftentimes will back people up towards their axioms whereby you can get to kind of have more productive conversation and then hopefully you can maybe jump out of that propositional entrapment or something like that but those those tools have been very useful for much of my life i see we some smiling there because i we we did much of this in houston so uh you recite those questions again what do you mean by that and how did you come to that conclusion hey paul paul this is the perfect timing i swear i haven’t i haven’t asked these questions in years paul is another co-worker of mine from he happened to join up he gives me a hard time because in sarcastically he asked me that every time i have something in a group chat he says what did you mean by that how did you come to that conclusion he uses that ironically and i swear anyway he just happened to come in at the right time i wasn’t just to be clear i often think back about these questions and they’re super good questions as he was saying they’re just shifting the burden of proof from the other person what a logical sledgehammer that is well i think just to just to take it back to where where you get into that sort of as you were describing it manuel the kind of the kind of you’re brought up into a kind of it was a frame that you basically don’t have maturity to actually engage with properly and to give a little bit of the historical context here and but it’s proper it’s proper that that that this happens in this conversation because this conversation is happening around the time of the peloponnesian war so athens is a very let’s say very very mature civilization right and they they they have they have colonies all across the the kind of aegean and they’ve recently come into war with sparta and to put it in a generational context because it’s like well become a generation where that you get people who are who are who are running around engaging with stuff that they don’t have maturity to engage with about 80 years prior to this you have thermopylae you have you have men like leonidas and not just not just the spartans but thebans and all of that who willingly stood against you know a hundred thousand you know a million persians at the at the head of greased you know 300 men sacrificing their lives to buy time for athens for instance right for athens to be evacuated so that people could could could retreat so that they wouldn’t you know you you wouldn’t have this kind of loss of life and so it’s it’s it’s interesting to put it into context where they’re kind of we’re wondering about justice now at this time period whereas the men of that time period let’s say of that and the probably two or two generations back and would have had would have probably would have had a much more mature engagement with that sort of thing so that they could just that they were they were they would embody that without without much kind of propositional playing with it because they kind of had to the situation the situation was such that it kind of made it more immediate i think we we actually say the same thing when so in conclusion so quite say we need to act with justice as a virtue and we need a state ruled by just men and currently we say we want justice we want the state just state we are saying the same thing but i think the definition are different maybe because so quite click justice to the virtue and to the soul and right now we are not making this link at all and it’s a different perspective on justice that make that’s big of a change i think and and if we go go back to definition if we take the argument of hazimak hazimak say the the state must be ruled by the strong of course it must be ruled by the strong because they are strong by definition they must be strong so it’s kind of irrefutable argument but in a way so quite say a new irrefutable argument say the state must be ruled by the just because they are just and so they will act according accordingly human are layered and they are not they are not always perfectly just it’s difficult to make such absolute arguments so i think what i found liking is in this argument is the irrefutability of in a way it’s just based on definition and it’s not practical in a way so the modern conception that you pointed out though is you know the idea that you can encapsulate justice or you can have it or it’s a property that’s that having mode thing as opposed to being mode right you you can’t have justice you can be just you can’t have justice it’s not a thing justice is an implementation in the world of a virtue right and so that interact that’s the fundamental thought shift i know john for veyky talks about this a lot that having mode versus the being mode and i would argue there’s a third mode but when we approach things as objects as stuff that we have let’s say control over that are smaller than us like justice i can’t have justice because justice is so much bigger than i am justice is bigger than all of us like justice is way big it’s not when we try to make it smaller we try to flatten it try to take things above us and bring them down that’s been written to all kinds of problems because we’re trying to define things in terms of ourselves instead of defining ourselves in terms of those things that are bigger than us and that’s the the being mode stuff like am i being just in my actions am i being just when is justice being done to me when right that’s the the it’s not a subtle language shift it’s a huge shift we just think of it as subtle probably because we’re not paying attention but it’s a it’s a huge difference like where’s the object where’s the center of the discussion because if it’s if it’s me having justice or or getting some justice that that’s that’s wrong that’s centered around me justice is so much bigger than i am you can’t really do that and i mean we all slip up but it’s good to get back into this and that’s what i was talking about earlier with the with the attitude about you know it is justice something that can be manipulated like can i have social justice can i have you know modifier justice no you can’t modify justice virtues are those things that you cannot modify at all because they are bigger than you you you can’t modify them right maybe society changes how justice is in that society right but the society doesn’t exist without the justice and the justice makes no sense without the society because they’re both bigger than individuals in them right they have to be they have to be containers for for for something else i think i think it’s important to realize that one of the trends that we’ve had is we want to have reliable treatment of people right so so we consider it unjust if if someone falls through the mazes of the net right so so we want to capture that person and and we want to have something that that person can rely upon right and then the means that we do that is we create rules right so so we we remove things from the individual judgment right or the individual discernment to a rule-based system right and and in some sense that’s necessary and important right because like we we don’t want to live in a in a corrupt society where people just randomly do what what they think is right but if you if you go too far in that right like you you remove the agency of of the individual implementing right and and now they’re they’re going to be they’re going to be robots right and now all that you can do is you have to have a system that can account for everything right like that’s the only way that you can resolve that problem but obviously we can’t make systems that can account for everything so so we start making errors on the other side right like so so instead of having errors because incompetence or or corrupt people we start making errors because the systems can relate to to to the situation on the ground right and now now the question is well what do you privilege do you privilege the consistency right like you privilege the consistent reaction or are you privileging results and and are you trusting that the individuals that that are participating in in providing the solution are going to provide the best result possible so can’t hear them no we’re just we’re talking about we’re trying to understand what you were saying man well that’s all we were talking about we were we were processing questions yeah I was question well I thought wasn’t I I didn’t quite you said there was a rule set of or you were mapping on like a set of rules onto and what yeah I didn’t I didn’t well that’s laws right we tried to codify everything in law right so so what’s happening is okay we’re making this this legal system right and then two three years later it’s like there’s this big thing in the news it’s like oh my god the legal system isn’t working right and then now they do the patch right they say oh these people are are not accounted for in the system so we need to make an extra rule to account for them right you keep making extra rules for the people that are not accounted for because there’s always people that are not going to be accounted for right and at a certain point you’re making rules against the rules that you made before right because you’re correcting the the second order facts of the rules that you made and now you’re just in a battle with yourself right like you’re you’re no longer trying to optimize something in reality you’re trying to optimize the system in order to maintain the system that’s the corruption right that’s the parasitic nature that happens over the time over time by instantiating something right the minute you bring something into being and say it can be anything right it can be the cell phone it’s like well what’s wrong with the cell phone do you want to list because there’s all kinds of things wrong with the hardware the cell phone it’s like okay well now we need to fix it but what about going back to the one that worked you know and and then it’s like well but that doesn’t work either because the world has moved on and so it’s this perpetual cycle of renewal right because you you eventually corrupt because you’re holding on to the system too long but the system isn’t the virtue the virtue is in the platonic realm right it’s in the realm of form so the virtue can’t be there’s no perfect triangle here like we don’t have perfect triangles and and so that’s what Manuel is pointing to the minute you instantiate it the clock is ticking on the corruption and you don’t know what that clock looks like you know how fast it runs but eventually the so-called justice system the system of laws becomes corrupt and then you catch in the second order effects all of a sudden and now you’ve moved away from justice and you’ve moved into fixing the implementation of justice and that’s when things start to to crumble right because they’re parasitic on themselves that’s when things are dangerous yeah so you have the ideal right the first principle then you’re going to have a dispersion of the effects of the ideal that’s the triangle right going to go down to send like this and if you look down you look to the side and you look at the effects and then you start identifying against those effects you’re just second order third order you have to keep you have to keep your sight towards the ideal not towards the extremities of the effects of the ideal or else you then you’ll become unjust those end up destroying things you have to stay because the problem is we we want a completely controlled world we don’t understand the concept that there’s going to be a dispersion there’s going to be there’s going to be there’s always going to be margins always will always be there you said something about this yesterday too in your your exceptions that proved the rules talk i remember but yeah there you can’t you can’t identify you always have to identify in the ideal the first principle you have to remember the first principle identifying the first principle not the second the second effects or the second order effects because those will always be there what did this reminded me of something that jesus said he said the poor will always be with you and he’s making that point he said you have to stay focused on on the ideal the poor will always be there yeah and what you want to do is you want to have a different means to account for the people that fall out right you you don’t want to account for it within the system you want to have like a bucket on the side and say well okay we’ll just catch you and then we do something differently instead of having it all in in the same thing and also like there’s sacrifice like like there’s just people that have to do things and like that sucks right like because if they don’t get done they don’t get done and things don’t work like this there’s no way around that it’s the importance of um and and this is the importance of sabbath right if you read pageo’s book seven the remainder and the the the not tilling the corners of the fields there’s always going to be an extremity and you cannot contain that extremity you can’t you can’t account for it in the system you can’t write an algorithm for that so you have to acknowledge that that’s you have to you have to you have to accept that that will always be there and you have to like that’s where things like charities and and stuff like that kind of they take it theoretically they take in the corners you know and they deal with them on a case-by-case basis because you can’t come up with a law that will control for everything because it’s completely it’s the chaos on the edges that has that can’t fit into the structure anyways so what’s this may this might be kind of introducing a common theme that maybe i just haven’t looked into much but the the platonist might reduce like the idea of the true pilot it does matter why they’re on why they’re on the then right because because there’s that’s the t loss of the of the ship you know so but there’s also the art of navigation and so like so the art of what the platonist would say is that there’s some like everything reduces into some mathematical pattern which is represented in like music right and they would they would roll things back and say like oh well music that seems way too reductive right and so there’s there’s some kind of aspect of excellence or art that seems to be like transferable but only why do you why do you say that handy why do you think they would platonists don’t reduce anything they’re actually expanding the world the idea of forms is a revolution in terms of previous thought like previous thought couldn’t integrate the difference between the instantiation and the the ideal and and play dough gives you a way to do that by introducing forms and and he also explains the decay of we’ll call it the the non-etherial world right he says this is why this is like this like again it’s the triangle that we cannot have a perfect triangle that is not available to us which is not to say there aren’t there isn’t a perfect triangle there is it’s just in the platonic realm it’s in the realm of forms so he doesn’t reduce he actually expands everything you have to look at it historically like before this that concept while it may have been teased at was not was not really there and you know remember too and the more i look into this the work the worse the story it gets all of these people were were worshiping some some god or other maybe seven or ten or five or two what who knows right they they all were that was already a thing like everything in philosophy comes out of that what we would now call religious tradition they didn’t have that term they didn’t think that way about it right that’s 1530 is when we started to use that word incorrectly so basically they already had a way to worship they already had a way to look at virtues like they they had all the practices that that we would identify or map onto a modern religion in terms of they had tradition right they had some way when they were in trouble of trying to work out something outside of themselves they had mediation right they’d go to the gods for mediation in some cases but when Plato comes along he takes that oversimplified system as well wait there’s the forms there’s some mystical way of forms we you know you were born into them or you were born knowing them or something and right which is the trick he plays right and and then he proceeds from there and so he’s not reducing anything he’s actually kind of expanding the world that everybody else is in from from before his time and i think that’s really important to realize it from the from their perspective it’s not a reduction okay so yeah it’s an yeah it’s an expansion like you could you could you could zoom out more and say pre-axial like we’re on the step versus you know axial age where we have all these new so basically now and what the problem that i see in terms of the solution to nihilism that we’re seeing now is going back to like the the Nietzschean principle ideas of of uh of a stimulating vitality passion uh getting out of your head like basically so the the the thing about the actual age is basically like abstraction right so like if we introduce the idea of like navigation as an art like i don’t know anything about the forms so intuitively we have the sense that like like you say you stay your axiom is being as good it’s not life is good because a flesh blob and a petri dish is we have an intuitive sense that there’s hierarchies of life right and they’ve like you know schopenhauer and each they get into this stuff right about that how there’s higher and lower orders of life and and you know but i mean it seems like that that intuitively seems like most people would kind of like nod their head you know when they hear like you know but i don’t know i don’t um it it seems like it seems like um what was i bringing all this up from starting point was um what’s the question so how okay yeah how do you how do you not how do you not okay whether you’re irreducibly uh what’s the opposite of expansion reducing how do you not how do you how do you prevent that same i that same process from expanding it like where are the where are the boundaries on on platonism you see what i’m trying to get at so um what do you mean the boundaries on platonism are you i think you need to to reframe it right so because it’s it’s like ethan said it’s a triangle right so there’s an amination which which is a point and you can call that a reduction right but but it’s not it’s it is a thing that can unfold itself into every expression right so so so the complexity is there as a seed like it’s not there as as an actuality and and i think that’s the step that you have to make what is like okay there’s a way to relate to things where they haven’t found their expressions yet but relating to to the thing pre-expression allows you navigation right like better navigation because now you can you can relate to to the essence right and and and and find find universal relationships of all the expressions that that follow below the amination like like so you you don’t you don’t have to analyze every specific instance anymore because you can relate to the class of instances instead right so that’s what i was getting at is that how do you respond to the to the purse because i get this argument all the time and it’s very common in the modern world is that there’s a math like because i see mathematical patterns in bethoven that’s a more pure like whatever it’s more good or it’s more whatever but so what you just what i heard from you just say is that you have in order to make it say something like that you have to recognize some form of emanation otherwise how do you how do you have you have to recognize some form of emanation as well as um what was the second thing um i lost the second part of what you said but basically basically what i was asking along the lines of in terms of what i’m trying to understand platenism and a lot of the modern arguments i get are these like you know like a lot of the modern arguments i get are these like mathy pattern things right and i don’t know how to respond to that like oh well there’s these mathematical patterns like the mathy patterns things is is a flattening right like it’s it’s a materialist interpretation of platenism well like they’re wrong that’s how you say you’re wrong like like like how do you respond to me jake nature was wrong okay can we move on now right how do you respond literally any modern philosopher yeah they’re just wrong throw them out go back to play dough problem solved i guarantee you this is true it’s true you don’t need any of that other stuff you can you can reject bad frames and people get up you can’t do that no i can i did i will i’ll continue like it’s not that hard like you you don’t have to take everybody into account just because somebody says they’re smart or 20 000 people listen to them once or you know you can just throw out their stuff like it’s not and it is a reduction right when you say a pure form of something because math right so okay well bethoven can be or mozart’s a better example right mozart can be reduced to these mathematical patterns and and their fights like okay well why don’t you express the math using whatever methods because there’s more than one way to express math why don’t you express that math and tell me if it’s as beautiful as bethoven right because it’s not and or mozart it’s not well now what so you’ve over reduced that’s how you know right you know because the true the good and the beautiful is not there well the truth the good the beautiful is not there why am i doing this that that that’s the boundary the the math the mat we’ll see later that the mathematics are is just one point on the line and that comes from the first principle it’s just one point bock has actually he said there’s a quote from bock he says he attributed his art to two things god and science mathematics and god primarily god something ineffable the first principle and then mathematics which are um or science science or the the understand that’s what he meant is like music theory and stuff that helped him understand and implement this higher first principle yeah i want i want to go back to to where we started right and we started with uh with this idea that socrates was cultivating a relationship right like so so some things we can all what was it know oh yeah like it’s the biblical knowing right like there’s this intimacy right and the intimacy comes from establishing a relationship right and like what what is that relationship well like it’s the ability to grasp right like it’s the ability to get grip on something right and and math is a really powerful tool to get a specific type of grip right like usually math is in relation to manipulation right so it’s like i i i reduce the complexity of something to a certain set of variables right and then i can manipulate the variables and then i can get some expression out of out of the thing that i’m trying to manipulate right which is effectively the the project of science right so so it’s it’s really powerful a powerful way to grasp something right but but it’s a specific type of grasping and i guess i guess i want to introduce the commentary that that was on on the text because because they’re talking about this right so so the way that they were defining goodness right like i think this is just the common greek understanding of goodness is is excellence or virtue of a workman that lies in its efficiency right so so so so the workman right like is is a person who has a talus right so so it’s it’s he’s relating to a purpose a emanation right and then the efficiency is is the capacity to give expression to to that emanation right and if if i am capable of making good shoes so that people can use shoes then i’m a virtuous shoemaker right now that is a really really really materialistic expression of which right like i think it’s highly problematic right because now we need to say what is a good shoe right and you get into this argument well a good shoe is again the thing that fulfills shoeiness right but like what what is shoeiness because like not everybody like some people want beautiful shoes to walk on the catwalk some people want like sturdy shoes so that they don’t cut off their toes when they work in the field and some people like like solid shoes that they can do long walks right so so this shoeiness is like there’s there’s always this ineffability that that’s there and it’s like you can never you can never collapse right like this there’s always this this mystery in in the definition and and so i i don’t like it right because because efficiency implies a a tangible understanding right no you can you can also have a different quality right which is fulfillment right so so i can have a shoe that fulfills its role as a shoe right and so now i am sufficient right like and now we we don’t have to go in into into qualitative or quantitative arguments no it’s like there there is there is a requirement that is being met and and and my capacity to meet the requirement allows me to have a proper fulfillment of the identity um so yeah i’ll stop there i got more but i’ll stop there yeah that sort of points to the fact that the identity exists in the uh what would you call it the the weaving together of the emergence and the emanation right and and that’s why playdo re-enchants the world or enchants the world in this case right is because he adds in that emanation and adds it back into thinking and says yeah these quote definitions are all about say the dead matter but actually they’re in service to this other thing that can’t be defined i mean this is this is really the problem right and this is this is where socrates is is a use right and everywhere else maybe he’s not right yeah you you are operating on a definition oops that might be an error when you’re trying to talk about a virtue because virtues can’t be defined in the way that a chair can be defined right and and and and that’s what we don’t recognize we don’t recognize the class of things that are virtues and values that do not have definition what we can define is part of their implementation but only a part and only the implementation not the the form nature of it like again we i can talk about a perfect triangle that exists as an abstraction in the realm of forms there’s no question about that it has to because i have to be trying to instantiate something when i draw a triangle you know what i can’t have a perfect triangle like still true yeah yeah yeah i’m i have mixed feelings about this you can have a different kind of fulfillment and well if you don’t if you don’t have definition on on your argument then then the argument is pointless in a way because you you can make any kind of statement and it would be true oh no no that’s not that’s not true that’s not true you can see it what socrates is doing it right like he’s he’s asking for consent of his interlocutor right and yes yes but i think socrates defined enough so that our arguments aren’t the only way to interface with the world right they might be the the the best way to communicate to the most types of people but and that’s limited in and of itself but the the the fact of justice can happen in an action without an argument without a definition without a discussion without a word right we we in modern times we overemphasize the language and the ability to communicate using language without realizing this came up last night in my live stream right without realizing most of our communication is non-verbal and so actually most of it right and so the idea that arguments are primary and therefore definitions are important is wrong it’s just not correct and and again as manuel pointed out although there’s also other examples we can have a discussion about something i don’t really don’t really want to argue right we’d have a discussion about something without definitions and that might be okay if we share enough in common about the the the context of what we’re talking about and the reason why that works is because the context constrains things such that the definitions aren’t as important aren’t as needed to be emphasized and the thing that socrates does do is that he destroys definitions that’s his whole trick i’m going to destroy your axiomatic definition of something some concept some set of words some argument you’ve made i’m going to take it i’m going to smash it with a hammer and make you start over again right and that’s basically what danny was pointing to earlier with the two questions that’s what you’re doing you’re saying okay here’s where you’re starting or here’s where you’re standing in the moment i’m going to smash that or force you to justify it and if you can’t justify it then we’re in a whole new league and so the the argument doesn’t rely on the definitions the definitions can forward the argument and if they’re agreed upon but you can get agreement to discuss something that you don’t understand actually i think that’s one of the more useful pieces of john verveckis work as he says yeah if you’re going to do this is dia logos practice you should talk about virtues and values why because you can’t have a debate about virtues and values and you guys well of course we can debate it no not really because in a debate there’s a winner you can’t win defining a virtue it’s not possible because any definition you come up with is incomplete so you can’t win that it’s not an argument it can’t be one it can’t be a debate because there can’t be a winner and so that’s more generative than say you know it it is this phone a good phone or not like we could have a winning a winner in that argument you can argue whether or not there’s a way to make a winning argument right but you can try with a virtue you kind of go into it with this oh wait a minute this is bigger than me we can’t debate a virtue we can’t get into a fight about a virtue we can only enhance each other’s understanding because whatever somebody brings to the table is very likely not perfectly likely but very likely to be relevant to the virtue in a way that i wasn’t thinking about in the moment a good example of that is actually the socratic dialogue um euthyphro because he’s all it’s talking about socrates is asking a dude who’s suing his own father what does piety mean piety being kind of yeah what does it mean the whole thing is it may get me a definition on it and it’s like there was none that was satisfactory but it wasn’t that it wasn’t that socrates was trying to you know haha you can’t you know yeah i won the argument it was more like well i want to figure out what this is because you know it’s it’s it’s it’s important and and there are points in that and there are points this as well but it’s it’s like it’s the engagement it’s it’s the participation in it which is which is actually the kind of primary one of one of the primary kind of way ways of doing it or or or ways of going forward it’s not the it’s not the um it’s not the mere propositional aspect it you know the the i mean in this they reference stuff back in the conversation but that’s you know we’re reading that now and we think oh that that that right it’s on the piece of paper it’s pay as it’s a proposition but that was a conversation like we’re having now right so we’re so it’s more to kind of frame it almost in the sense that we’re having it now so think about you know what were we talking about 30 minutes ago you know it’s like well oh you know do you remember something you know manuel talking about the three generations right that’s that’s kind of more what it’s like rather than a kind of series of bullet points that we that we’re all kind of looking back to and seeing whether they’re they’re congruent or not yeah of course yeah just of course you can debate and without setting a definition but you you will not get the truth i think socrates is trying to get to the truth not only fulfillment if you are fulfilled and debating and it’s fulfill you then that’s good you progress in some way but you are not getting to the truth getting to the truth you need it to look at the reality or concept the attribute the attribute the relationship there is some kind of some way of logical mechanism to understand to understand the truth if you are not if you are not exploring and investigating things you will not get the truth if you are not defining precisely a thing and the relationship i’m not sure you will get something maybe you will get something else but not the truth can you define the quality of the truth that you need in order to accept something as true well there is different perception of of truth but if you take the scientific methods i mean you will you will have a certain confidence of it by because you’re doing yeah so that that’s just that’s fulfillment because that’s that’s at this point i’m satisfied like that’s and i see you see what see your point um fulfillment but you also have a probability of truthness okay you can sign differently but but a probability is actually not a truth like it’s it’s literally not a truth and also like like science can’t deal with most of the world so you can’t apply the scientific method or science or anything we even call science to most of the world and people don’t they don’t take that into account and then they expect science to do the heavy lifting and science has nothing to say about justice like set up a scientific justice experiment i’ll wait here like good luck with that so so you’re not going to resolve any of these issues using that methodology i’m not saying using this methodology but um if you if you are not setting definition and if you are only on symbolism and i don’t know not not giving something factual concrete in in a way logical application of what you are saying then it is pointless no i would argue that’s just materialist it’s totally unnecessary to be materialistic about it and to reduce it to material uh well so so material is when it’s linked to reality you can have thought about concepts and logical thought about concept it’s not materialistic but but if if i cut up a piece of meat right and i say this is your portion and this is my portion is that just so i think look i think i think it sounds like we some are saying it has to be ground out in it has to be ground out in fitness but fitness is not the same kind of hardness like if you’re sailing on a ship um yeah of course you need to know there’s a fitness to how you sail right but um it’s fundamentally like they talk about this like hunger or it’s it’s these desires that are the fundamental drivers of ultimately value right so i mean yeah there’s some i mean there’s got to be some kind of relationship between fitness and passion and desires right i mean it sounds it sounds like that’s what you’re getting at we some is that somewhat close yes uh what do you mean by this well when you when you say it sounds it sounds like you’re defining what i’m hearing you define is the concept of fitness that’s what right and when you say there has to be a logical mechanism to arrive at the truth right i mean but we can’t we can’t prove it out scientifically yes that’s limited right but we have this concept i’m not saying well scientifically it’s a it’s a it’s a world that it’s a case that we put but uh uh i mean we say logic true logic like if you’re not getting a thing through logic then you then you will not necessarily getting to the truth i mean if you are making an argument to another person the other person have to meet you in a way and the only way to meet you it’s uh it’s true logic i think no logic doesn’t work like that’s the problem don’t know hold on hold on logic reason and rationality can justify anything actually i’ve done it many many times it’s a it’s a trick that you can use right it’s it’s literally the trick that people use is they can give you a logical argument for something and you take you mistake that for the truth i i can justify anything logically it’s not hard the the problem is that logic reason and rationality all rely very heavily on your starting points on your axioms and that’s why you’re starting axioms are important that’s why socrates goes after your starting axioms because he knows full well logically you can lead anybody anywhere you you can actually lead people to kill other people logically it’s not that hard people do it all the time right logic what’s the reason for capital punishment oh well this guy killed seven people and if we don’t kill him he’ll kill seven more it’s logical to kill that guy okay is that true it might be it might not be the the logic or you could say well logically he’s got his whole life ahead of him and he could have a revelation right or he could change or he could be rehabilitated with effort right and then and and because being is good that effort is worthwhile no matter what it costs society right that’s also a logical argument for not killing him those are both logical arguments there’s nothing wrong with either argument right they’re starting they’re starting from different uh core principles axioms right and they have different goals because if being is good then your goals change too because your your starting point constrains your ending points and that’s what constrains logic and reason rationality and that’s why it matters and that’s why logic can’t tell you anything about the truth ever because logic alone is completely insufficient to the task it takes us back to the the questions what’s your your axioms or what’s your starting point i mean you’re exactly right it can be used to there’s there’s simicus’s starting point is something like the comfort of the individual or his starting point is the individual and that’s the what socrates is trying to do in book one is trying to show that not only is that wrong it can’t it can’t be right it’s it’s utterly false it has to be located he’s not saying where he’s just saying it has to be located outside of the individual somewhere that’s what that’s what book one is opening the door to um and ironically i’m going to mark you weren’t here for this but the schindler says this he says the conclusion can be reached only with their simicus only with their simicus’s real participation it can’t be done through logic because he withholds precisely this his participation book one comes to an end without coming to a resolution then ironically after socrates kind of provides a an argument or logic that through simicus kind of submits to he’s like okay whatever you say socrates i’ll just agree with whatever you say and socrates builds up this logical argument and the reader’s reading is like oh yeah that makes total sense and then but due to the lack of participation from this throsimicus all socrates has is a structure of logic and then we get to the end of book one and he does exactly this what he does to other people he’s like well that was fun and then just throws it off the table and then and it’s almost like he’s like let’s start over but it’s not let’s start over it’s let’s start fresh and that’s what this whole the whole republic is is it’s pulling you through this participation where that’s actually what the participation is is we’re building just you know we’re doing this like up down up down up down we’re trying to he’s trying to to get you to look up you know look at this ideal and when he when he speak with the character so he say that the the action that you set is leading to to to something bad who have had something false then he tried to set up a better action better action and through this action he go he he creates something through a logical argument i don’t think he he he he he rebooked the the the concept the the world concept of the others and then he creates his own world concept that’s how i perceive it right okay but but the problem is right you’re talking about worldviews effectively right it’s like like how do you construct the way that you see the world and and the problem is you cannot convince someone out of their worldview right because now you you need to appeal to something inside their worldview to get them outside and that’s a paradox but he the the platon worldview is more inclusive it takes account of more things is more more why is that better like like i i i want to have my wives the other one will be like golden throne like i don’t care about more inclusive why what i think he tried to to to because he he he’s not only reworking he’s only it’s also he also creates something also uh yeah yeah but you can create anything like the point is that that what is created needs to be accepted right and like i pointed i pointed at this earlier right like the the way that socrates gets that acceptance is by asking the other person to consent right and and the way that he is asking for the other person to consent is by doing an emotional appeal right like that’s not a rational argument he’s making an emotional appeal he’s appealing to something that they value in in order to gain a grounding with within their understanding that he can make a logical argument upon but like he first has to have the the place to stand yes so he’s making yes so he’s making a logical argument and he’s trying to be inclusive and i’m no he’s first creating a place to stand and like like that has to happen first like you can’t have the logical argument without the thing to build the argument upon exactly exactly so he’s setting his worldview and uh to his worldview i think he he’s well when he when he no no he’s not he’s not doing that like that’s not what’s happening he’s setting a place within the other person’s worldview and then he’s building upon that into his well not even his worldview into something bigger than the worldview of the other person yeah that’s what he’s doing i mean socrates says earlier that uh you’ll you’ll you’ll you’ll okay he says you’ll you’ll beat me in an argument thyrsimachus i mean there is i think socrates actually can be thyrsimachus in an argument but i think the point that he’s trying to make there when he says that is that arguments are not the way like that’s not how you’re going to prove truth and um be socrates actually ends up he plays thyrsimachus’s game he says okay all right let’s argue and he argues and he actually out argues him playing he’s trying to convince him via argument that that you she’s trying to point him up to this higher ideal by his own means and i think that’s why he destroys it at the end because that’s actually not how it works well that’s the socratic trick is i’ll play your game by your rules and i’ll beat you because it’s an unwinnable game the argument game is un it’s un you can prove this actually mathematically this is the irony right like nobody bothered to map this to math did that you prove it mathematically arguments are a pointless endeavor if that’s what you’re relying upon and that’s why participation is important because participation involves your ability to break out of logic reason rationality and find a connection with the person where you can participate with them correctly right otherwise it’s just a battle and that devolves into war and like we were talking about this last night in the live stream right that’s why when you take away something from society like the ability to duel right with swords in particular with sword which i thought was an interesting interesting tweak on the argument the fact that you can duel means you have fewer duels when you take away dueling as a way you get more fights you get more death because you don’t have a mechanism to signal because what happens when you have the mechanism of signaling duels you don’t want to do that right see and you can think about it in a very simple video game way i use this analogy last night let’s suppose let’s suppose i’m going to get into a duel with danny which would never happen right and danny goes danny’s got a power level of eight and i have a power level of four maybe i’m being generous to myself here but right danny knows he’s going to win the problem with the duel the problem with the duel is danny may go i you know you can you can defend your you can defend your point if you’d like right and i make it a point of honor and i say i challenge you to a duel he has two choices the choice number one is to say boy he’s pretty serious about his argument um you know because that’s the signal like i’m willing to die i’m willing to go down from four power points to zero to prove to you that i’m serious right and so he can just say well i don’t want to lose potentially four or six hit points here so i’m i’ll just i’ll just you know give up and say all right i’ll keep your honor intact or we can fight it out but without that option there’s no signaling and and that’s part of what socrates is trying to do is trying to signal to you here’s your method of of of understanding the world and i’m going to show you in the moment that your conclusions are wrong using your own method and then i’m going to crush it just to show you the pointlessness of the effort that you’re engaged in right and it’s a signal right to point up again right as ethan keeps saying it’s pointing up in the same way the duel is a signal there’s a material cost to continuing to impugn my honor and therefore right if you want to do that i will i will bet that balance and most most people didn’t duel like you could challenge people to duels most people wouldn’t do it why because it’s still a cost winning is not free winning is still costly and so you have to decide is winning this important enough right something i would to to add to that the um so the difference here like post-moderns will do this is what the post-modernists will do is they will they’ll do the same trick that socrates does the difference is is they don’t smash it and throw it off the tables they they keep it there so post-moderns they they play this trick on the moderns because the moderns are committed to this objective logic worshiping logic reason and rationality the post-moderns come along and they use logic reason and rationality to convince to seduce these moderns into doing their own will the post-moderns they not they may they’re submitted to their they’re submitted to their individual telos and they use this concept of of logic and reason to bring the the the the moderns along with them where socrates differs from that is he he plays their trick and then shows them that they’re what they’re committed to their axioms of objective logic and reason don’t work i’m not superly convinced but i do agree that he he played aikido away with the argument of the counterparts he he just find the the issue in it and he demonstrated masterfully afterwards he creates something he he starts with an example and then he says do you agree with this example do you agree with this so he includes counterpart into the his worldview then then he creates his worldview that include him so he he must be he must be convinced by it he must be must agree with it but i think he goes through some kind of logical argument to demonstrate this not sure that he he go outside of it but but but like he does a bunch of things that i i have problems with in because like i i i can i can look at at socrates argument so one of the things that he does is he makes an analogy right so so he starts talking about uh i don’t know what it was exactly and then he says well justice is just like that and i’m like well no he starts talking about the professions right and then he’s he’s basically at some point he’s he’s talking about money being abstracted right so so there’s an artistry of of money right where you’re giving people that just pay right and then he’s he’s making another abstraction to well justice is just as the artistry of of money and i’m like i don’t i i don’t think those are logical moves at all like those are invalid moves according to logic in in my book like i don’t think you’re allowed to do that at all like that’s that’s uh that’s claiming truth by analogy like you can’t do that yes yes yes yes yes yes i see what i see your point and it’s true that he do this a lot metaphor and analogy and he i think he jumps faster than than him but yes no but no but i like it like you say i think the intent of it is logical the intent of it is logical but uh yes necessarily not everything is logical well i think i think it’s definitely intentional so i agree with you there but but but i don’t i don’t i don’t think it’s logical um and and and now i lost the word that you used but but you used you used a word that that implied that that you it it is it is a persuasion right like it’s it’s it’s it’s a leap right like it’s it’s or you use the word jump that’s that’s what i i think right and and jumping means that there’s a gap right like jump jump means that you’re losing contact and landing at at a different ground and and that’s swapping frames right like so that’s transcending a a perspective or maybe a worldview in into another one like i’m not saying that circuit is wrong because like like even if he’s wrong he’s not wrong enough to care about um but i don’t think that’s valid like i don’t i don’t think you’re allowed to do that like like you’re not allowed to do that according to logic you’re you’re allowed to do that through consent and he’s asking for consent and like i think it’s valid if you do it with consent does he do more persuasion or more convincing in your in your opinion well okay so so the way that i see what he does is he’s like a guide right so he’s taking you on a journey right and he says well this is this is the best land ever and then you’re like yeah but like i i’ve been to uh like uh well disney world and then like like nothing is better than disney world it’s like yeah yeah yeah but like this is the best land ever just come and work with me right and then he and this goes back to the participation like during the walk he he lets you interact right he develops the intimacy with the land right and like is there an objective better land no right like why is disney world good because because it’s high contrast right like there’s there’s a way a natural way of participation that allows you to have a depth of experience that that is really accessible right but right like when you go with the farmer and the farmer tells about like oh this is how i plant the seed and here you can see how they grow and then i like it like like when when the vineyard is like five years old then i start getting the grapes and then i i make wine and here it tastes the wine right and so now the wine is enchanted right like there’s there’s this whole story behind it that gives meaning right and now you get this intimacy again right you get this intimacy with the wine with the land right and that intimacy is a different quality of connection than disneyland right and so that’s what socrates is doing right like he’s he’s using the quality or or the connectedness that you’re having with the land to say this is better so you should you should you should move like you should you should no longer go to disneyland this is the actual land agree with this yes and that’s not logic like that’s just not logic i don’t agree with this okay i said okay okay i want to we’re kind of at approaching two hours so we think it’s a good question they kind of get into this idea of i hate to use the term perception versus reality in chapter two but they kind of get in on this theme also in chapter two of when they say like well if you teach your kids to be just then you know what’s it what’s it what’s it mean for if it’s about keeping up appearances is it better to keep up appearances and appear to be just right that’s what i mean by perception versus reality like i’m it’s better to be really be unjust behind closed doors but keep up but appear to be just and they kind of get into this similar theme in the next chapter that that’s coming um go ahead now i want to finish the couple words so so goodness is defined as the capacity to do work which which is like an affordance right like but but that that’s amoral right like the capacity to do work has no moral valence it’s just a a potential right and so and that’s arete that’s the Greek word that they’re using and then Sophia which which had a meaning right before uh philo Sophia right like so so so and Sophia means the skill to do art right which is which is like the affordance to be a shoemaker for example right so so that that’s that’s the knowledge that’s the intimacy right so the Sophia is is is pointing at an intimate connection with with your craft right um and and and and it’s it’s it’s the capacity to to navigate in the being shoemaker right like there’s there’s there’s so and that this goes into the the model that i am mark made because i think we are effectively using something similar um oh yeah and efficiency is good at living and that’s virtue right and uh you know i’ll skip over this and then the thing that i like is justice leads to harmony right so so so so the justice isn’t uh isn’t necessarily right relationship but it’s it is integrated relationship so this this goes into what we were talking about before right like so so when when things are in harmony right along this goes back to to the cutting the piece of meat right like uh how i cut the piece of meat is depending whether it is causing conflict between you and me right so as long as as we’re in acceptance right and and the best way to do that is that i pick pick what i perceive as the bigger piece and always give the bigger piece to you right that that’s the best way to do that but but as long as you’re like well i’m i’m getting my fair share then that’s just right so so there’s and this is this is back to the fulfillment right like like yeah maybe you only need 10 percent of the mama to feed your family and like you don’t care whether you get you get 80 percent or 10 percent because you can only use the 10 percent um and so so the justice lays there as well somewhere right um yeah uh then this this last thing is uh there’s three things uh that he was explaining that the unjust is uh superior to the unjust in character in virtue and intelligence that’s that’s one of the clauses that he’s he’s uh dealing with and and refuting and then in just is a source of strength right like so he’s refuting that statement and injustice brings happiness right so that’s the three arguments that are being put forward and and that are being refuted so that’s what i had hey so we got a hard stop here um he’s got a hard stop so will’s gotta go but glad you came thanks for coming over yeah so guys definitely been like grabbing onto a moving freight train that’s awesome um and they say you know you’re in the right room when uh you’re not the smartest guy so that’s i’m definitely in the right room so i appreciate all of the uh great things have been spoken here today and look forward to uh to next week for sure cool thanks okay so yeah so then we we can conclude uh with our reflection um on and so try and present to yourself the things that were salient um during the conversation like what triggered you what motivated you right and then try to connect that like what does that mean in my life like how does that connect to my current reality so close your eyes and you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you yeah i think we can do book two next week then you