https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=W2rt9hTCzTU
Yeah, so I didn’t write down Mark’s intention, but Danny’s intention was to get into Plato’s mind and perspective last week. Mine was trying to get awareness of why things are introduced. And then I had my intention for the week, which I completely sucked at, which was to observe things by the sphere of influence. I think Ashley Eaton had some big progress on that level. But yeah, for me, I don’t know, I’ve had a bad week. I have engaged a lot with Plato, though. I’ve been seeing it pop up everywhere, like everywhere, everywhere. Like, oh yeah, Plato dealt with this. Oh yeah, like he resolved this. Like, why are you talking about this? Just everywhere I can see it, which is good news, because then it’s usable, right? Like it’s actually pragmatically implementable in the stance making, which is a good sign. Yeah, I’ve been feeling that this framing and what we’re going to go through today is like the framing of the framing, like basically the justification of the framing, is super valuable. Yeah, we shouldn’t have skipped ahead to the forms, because I think looking at why they got there is really important. Danny? Well, I think I’m kind of on that same thread that you’re on, which is looking at why they got to the forms. I listened to book seven at least twice, and then read it this morning, and then I backtracked into book six, and then went forward into book eight when they destroyed all the governments. I’m starting to get things a bit better, but the reason why I actually started this whole book club, so I forgive the little bit of length, but like it was when I hit book seven in the gym sauna that I, you know, and then I’m like, oh, this is the Eligar of the Cave thing that everybody talks about. I presented on this in college. I had a sense that like something was off. Like it wasn’t just about using dialectic to transcend levels of knowledge or something like that, because they just come to it off the back of imitation. And so anyway, to answer your question, to looking at why they get to the forms, I still don’t understand that. And that’s kind of still where my mind is, but I’ve been all over the place there. And like you, so intention is still the same place. I’m still exploring this, what I think this faith thing, or this glue, still trying to wrap my head around this whole cave thing. And it’s, I’ll leave it at that. It’s turning into a word salad, but I’ve been seeing Plato everywhere as well. And I’m glad to be at the chapter because it’s kind of nostalgic in terms of, you know, it just, I don’t know, things are coming together. And now I’m rambling. So I’ll hand off to Ethan or Mark or Bizzani. That you need to collapse the options phase. Not expand it. Yeah. Oh, Ethan, Ethan, what are we picking an intention or what we’re doing? Yeah, yeah. And reflecting on her next how the book influenced us. Oh, um, one thing I noticed, well, I see Plato everywhere all the time. But I remember what I was watching Pajos last Patreon only video, and he’s talking about angels and subtle bodies. And it’s just, it’s all, it’s just Plato. I mean, it’s not just Plato, but like, I mean, his concept of the subtle bodies and angelic bodies, angelic beings is maps almost to me, like directly on the forms. It was really interesting to see that. And seeing that in the world, you know, like you see, you see forms act on the body, the physical bodies of human beings. So very fascinating. intention would be set one for this next week or for the reason that’s for for the for the club. Okay. Like, what do you want to do? Like, what do you want to get out of participants? I want to under I guess I’d want to appreciate Plato more appreciate the divided line more. I’m very excited to see it. Let’s hear all the the truckloads of insights that you’ve had over the last day. And well, yeah, I guess that’s my intention to understand the last latter part of book six a little more. We’re out of it. Right. Yeah, so yeah, like Ethan, I’ve always played everywhere. So like, yeah, you know, without even, you know, attributing it to the Republic, most of the stuff is sort of like, really, you guys aren’t there. It’s always interesting. So yeah, it’s nice to get a sense for what people are missing. Or is he like, all these people claim they read this book? Are you sure I’m not like some of these people like, I’ve read the Republic three times. Like, did you miss all the important parts? Or like, what you didn’t talk about the most interesting stuff in the book. And I know why, you can see in their worldview why they might skip over that part or not really pay attention to it and sort of dismiss it. Right. And also experiencing translation differences. You guys are all talking about the divided line and like, that phrase is not in my translation. It’s awesome. So it’s good to get that sense about a line that’s cut into four unequal parts, like, oh, and with the same ratio, right. And that builds this funnel and, you know, things like that, little things that are subtle. And then to see what, oh, the divided line, it’s like, oh, I think you should talk about a funnel. I think that’s a better way to think about what they’re actually saying in the concept. And yeah, also seeing, so ancient Greece Declassified podcast, run by my buddy Jack, Dr. Lander Jack there. He talks about the onion nature of the book, where you get towards the center and then it folds back out again, basically. And, you know, the first half mirrors the last half, you know, and that’s part of the structure. So it’s interesting to get to that point and see that unfolding. And then also appreciating that you cannot separate the concept of forms from the cave. Like if you try to talk about the cave without the concept of the forms already being there, you’re missing so much stuff. It’s not even worth, like, forget, don’t even go there. You really got to get the forms first, because the allegory of the cave and the ways that the resolution of interaction are important. So my intent going forward is just to continue to recognize the things we’ll say that people who claim to have read this book have told me, and what’s actually missing out of that, rather than what they’ve emphasized. So Mark’s intention is to continue disagreeing with people. Pretty much. Yes. Calling them out. Do you think that, do you think it’s, it’s, it’s I think it’s outrageous to think that maybe we could get Lantern Jack to make a guest appearance to our book club at some point? That would not be outrageous. We should do it at the end if we. Yeah, I’d love to do that actually at the end. Because I think, I think I can make that happen. I know Jack, we’re, we’re, we’re acquainted. I got him, I got him at the Brevekian abuse. Maybe he can do something for us. That’d be great. Let’s hear from Bazzini. You get anything for us intent wise, sir? Yeah, for me, intent on this is I actually had some free time today, and I’m looking forward to getting some perspective on what Plato actually was talking about, right? Versus all the hot takes from like free heads, right? That think they know what it’s about and then dogmatically try and apply it in ways that don’t really seem in context for whatever the hell Plato was actually talking about way back when. So, yeah, got a chance to go through, yeah, the end of six and yeah, and part of the beginning of seven. That should be good enough because then you know what we’re talking about. It’s been a long time since I went, you know, like I read some Republic like back in like college and high school, I think. And so it’s been a little while and what a friend of mine would call it is like in the meantime, I’ve just been getting like pre-chewed meat, right? It’s how she puts it, right? You know, like someone else’s take about, you know, what the text actually said. Yeah. Yeah. Can I say something? Are you done, Vizzini? Yeah, sure, sure, man. I should have said this. I forgot. I’m really coming to appreciate why the Christians loved this so much and it’s actually really helpful for understanding Christianity better. Well, there’s that too. Well, I mean, the thing that if it’s helpful, you know, it was interesting you were talking about like forms as angelic beings and I guess maybe it’s my modernist, you know, materialist trappings, right, of the water that I swim in, right, most of the time, right? You know, I think it’s extremely helpful also for considering this just in terms of like virtue and some of the more abstract notions, right, was in a discussion with, if you guys know Neil Whitman and Howie, they’re a couple of reformed bros that are kind of associated with the little corner or whatever, right? But we were talking yesterday about how, especially from a Christian standpoint, right, we’ll look at an analogy and we were talking about like marriage and goodness and fatherhood and stuff like that and we’ll look at an analogy and then we will say, okay, well, all right, you know, and again, this is a very Christian concept so, you know, for what it’s worth, like, okay, the church and the relationship to Christ and God is like marriage, right? And so what we’ll do is we’ll look around, we’ll say, oh, okay, well, these are the marriages that I’ve seen before, right? So that’s my referent, right, for what, you know, my relationship with God is like, right? And or we look around and we say, okay, well, this is what, you know, the dads, you know, that I’ve seen before, right, or this is what I’m like as the dad, you know, that this is what it means to be a father, right? So I’m going to project that upwards, but it’s very fundamentally, it’s getting it backwards, right, from what I think, you know, Plato was getting at here, right? And that it’s kind of the other way around when it comes to those things. And I don’t know, to me, that’s always been what’s most important about the cave analogy is that what our impression of the thing is, right, isn’t really the thing, right? And we see, you know, in some sense, a very distorted, you know, a very distorted version of what the ought should be, right? Yeah, important to remember that the direction of causality, it comes from top down, bottom up, at least primary causality. But yeah, the forms, the identity of the forms is up here, and then it descends down into the material realm or the subtle material realm. But yeah, that’s exactly what he’s talking about at the end of six is, you know, looking around at the incarnations of things to help you understand the true essence of it that isn’t located in in things that you can physically see. Well, let’s get started from where I left off. So that was at the eyes up, eyes down. Where’s that at? I don’t know. Quite a bit back. Can you give us a number? No. That’s helpful. I have this. I have no number. This is the form of the book. Okay. Like, I can’t put it back into the specific anymore. It’s already formalized. But I think it’s like eyes up, eyes down. Yeah, I got it. 501B. 501? 501B. Way back there. See? So like, that’s why I have so much more contextualizing. So he’s looking eyes upward first at absolute beauty, justice, and temperance. And then he’s talking about mingling and tempering the elements of life into the image of man. And then we conceive according to the image. Right? So this, to contextualize this a little bit, he was talking about how do I talk about the good? Right? Because I can’t talk about it directly. So he’s basically saying in order to talk about the good, we need to personalize it into a human form, which would be the child of God, right? Or homework also formed the likeness of God. And that’s the way that we can understand the good, which is like, holy cow. Can you say that again? Can you repeat that, please? He says that we have to conceive the good in the image of a man, which is what the philosopher king would be, right? Like the philosopher king is the good manifest in man. And by conceiving of that, we can talk about the child of the good, which would give us an information of the parent. Like, they just, they didn’t say the father in the book, but like the parent. Oh, they did in mine. In mine, it says child and father. And they refuse to address the father because it’s too hard. So I’m like, this is a setup, right? Like, this is just like, if this is not Christianity, I don’t know. Yeah, I actually have a footnote here on that. It says throughout Socrates’ punning on the word tocos, which means either a child or the interest on capital. Oh, that, that, yeah, that makes sense. The child is your future, right? Like, yeah. There’s actually one line in here. It says, I don’t somehow deceive. Okay. So here then is this child an offspring of the good, but be careful that I don’t somehow deceive you unintentionally by giving you an illegitimate account of the child. I thought that was an interesting line. Illegitimate. So there’s like a, you know, illegitimate child, illegitimate account. Also, yeah, like, like, like he’s like, he did this move a couple of times, right? And I think actually, if you go back and read the accounts that he gives, they follow the realms in the Platonic realms, right? So now he’s in the highest realm. And he says, well, forgive me, but I’m going to make this transgression. And like, you got to correct me if you can. But it’s him doing the same pattern at a different layer. So he’s now exemplifying the highest level, right? Which is effectively above, right? The virtues by- Hey, did we discuss last week that once we get halfway through the book, the discussion turns more towards, more spiritual as opposed to less material? I mean, book eight, he uses examples of different types of governments. So I don’t think the imagery gets more ethereal and less physical, if that’s what you’re getting at. Seems like I remember one of you guys saying that, but never mind. Yeah, he’s moving up. There is some symmetry. But I, well, I don’t know, I think he’s first building, right? The image, right? In some sense. And then he’s, now he’s trying to say, well, if we’re going to color it in, right? Like if we’re going to try and implement the specifics, right? Like what are the necessary qualities? Like I think that’s the way that he’s doing it. Oh yeah. That’s an interesting analogy. In fact, there was a, was it in book six or a previous book where they actually talked about painting a statue? I don’t know if that ties into this or not, but yeah, I really like that analogy of filling in the image, all the details. So, and then the way by which a human gets this divine nature is to substitute features in themselves for divine features until they reach God, which like, if we go back to wisdom of hypatia, right? Like that’s basically the process of teosis, like purify and then replace with the platonic craziness or whatever Christian version. Platonic craziness? Oh yeah, in that book, that was, yeah. What they wanted to replace it with is better off not doing anything. And so the eventual state would be in agreement with God. And then the weak part about this is that this is the argument that should convince all the plebs of the philosopher’s goodness, that they cannot doubt the late nature of the philosopher. So the way I see it, like Plato has like a level of faith in the capacity of people to rationally pursue self-interest, which is like a little absurd, but like maybe because it’s so grounded in the Hellenistic ethic. And that’s why I wanted Adam here. I hope he still hops in. Adam? Because like maybe the Hellenistic framework is like that rationality is such highly praised or whatever that these appeals or whatever would actually work. And that they have so much control over their passions that they wouldn’t be swept away in the sense that people are not. That might actually be true. Well, but what did they apply rationality to? Because people after Aristotle somehow seem to equate rationality with the ability to notice intelligibility. And we were talking about this earlier, Emmanuel, right? Right in the book, right there in the book, in the last five or four pages of book six, it talks about the realm of visible objects, basically, that the realm of things matter, right? And the other realm is called intelligibility. In other words, in exact opposition to how we categorize these things, they say intelligibility, probably because it’s a set of thoughts, right, or a way of thinking, is ethereal and not material. In other words, the intelligibility of the object is very much Jordan Peterson is not in the object, right? It’s in the purpose or the telos of the object. And yeah, one day, Ethan, I got to do the a long form video of your cabin and chair example. A great example. Someday I’ll get that up on navigating patterns someday. It would be fun to do just a little right there, just to add this real quick, not to interrupt you, Emmanuel, but it was important here. Is that right spot? There’s a point here right at the end of six where they say that the good is beyond, they ask him if it’s a, well, maybe I’ll look a little bit more, but they say that the good, the good itself is beyond knowledge, something above knowledge, something that’s above knowable. You should also say not only to do the objects of knowledge, oh, they’re being known to the good, but their being is also due to it, although the good is not being but superior to it in rank and power. Yeah, that’s important to know that the good is not knowledge, and it’s also not knowable, fully knowable. Right. Yeah, so the way I was understanding this, basically that if you assume rationality, like the rationality is that which convicts you, right? It’s like, okay, like now I’m gonna have to walk down this path because there’s no other option. So I think that’s the line that’s behind that, right? Because if you say, well, like there’s this realm of intelligibility, right? And then the intelligibility imposes upon me a certain answer, right? Like in some sense, it’s not voluntary. And then they were talking about the enactment of laws. So laws were there for the purpose of being enacted, not enforced. And that, yeah, that was pretty interesting. It’s like, yeah, like, okay, like, but that’s dogma, right? Like, because dogma is also not enforced. Well, and I think again, you know, part of the problem that people have with laws is that people think that laws are for the purpose of preventing, right? Which is obviously absurd, like observably false. You break them before anything happens. So it’s not like things can’t happen because a law is stated or instantiated or whatever. So that’s kind of weird to think of it that way. It’s sort of like a backwards time thing. But also laws are exemplifications to point the way. You’re not never supposed to kill somebody, right? So, you know, that’s not the way it works. But it is to point you to, yeah, maybe your first move, second move and third move shouldn’t be, right, whatever it is. You can buy literally any law, right? And that exemplification, you act out an exemplification, right? You don’t enforce an exemplification. That makes no sense. So, yeah, to your point, I just wanted to bolster the point by differentiating exemplification in an important way, hopefully. Yeah, that was actually a point. That was a point that I was making about the book. Like, I think actually the form of the book, like the way that it’s organized, is exemplifying the forms. And if you see that, I think you get a true understanding of the forms. Because now you have the abstract relationship to the abstract. Like, yeah, there’s, there’s, you see the intelligibility in how intelligibility is organized. And like, that’s like the real test of whether you see it or not. Yeah, but, you know, to be fair, you know, Plato did an okay job, but I think the zines are a better job with the goats. Well, I know that you have a favor for goats, Merrick, but you gotta end up with the sheep sometimes. Goats are good. I love goats. Well, we were using words like irony to describe how, like, in chapter one and two, like, Socrates will use a technique or rhetorical technique or something that, like, you know, seemingly will disprove or demonstrate that what he’s saying is false. And then we were saying, that’s why this book is a rhetorical explanation and therefore it’s sci-fi, right? It’s like, yeah, it’s like, there is an element of you to explore being like, you have to be, you have to do things in order to explore being, you know, and we’re getting to the cave, you know, but like, almost like a lab setting, you know, we’re doing, we have a clean environment and we’re experimenting, you know, it’s, it’s a controlled environment, right? Yes. Oh, I like this. And then the clean environment self contaminates, right? Like, Right. That’s the whole point. To me, that’s the whole point of the, right. So people go, dialectic. And I’m like, you missed the Republic. You missed the Republic. It is explicitly over the top, ridiculous dialectic on purpose. And even in that clean room environment, in that well controlled thing, the dialectic fails. That’s the point. The point is, oh, look, dialectic, it must be good. The whole point of the Republic is that it actually doesn’t work. Even when you carry it out as rigorously as possible, you know, and well, Sakuti’s right. And Plato’s admitting he rewrote Sakuti’s to be more beautiful. Okay. So he’s trying to conform more to the true, the good and the beautiful in rewriting the story of Sakuti’s we’ll say, and it still doesn’t work. That’s why when people go, oh, dialectic, I go, wait, I don’t, what is wrong with you? Why do you think this is A, an answer, B, the right answer, and C, good? Because it’s none of those explicitly, at least in the Republic, maybe elsewhere. I don’t know. But, you know, it’s clearly not a thing that can be used the way people are trying to use it to solve the problems they’re trying to solve. Add to your point, Mark, and about like that thing, that little clip I sent you yesterday about these, you know, and stories and stuff, how there’ll be little snippets at the beginning of like, oh, there’s, you know, they’re clearly, you know, invoking a spiritual or religious thing. It happens here with the dialectic. It’s all throughout the book. I know it’s continuously reminding us the limits of the dialectic. Right here at the end of book six, I think at least once or twice, he says, what did I say? And Glaucon comically said by Apollo, what a, okay, I don’t want you to stop. So continue to explain its similarity to the sun if you’ve omitted anything. He says, I’m certainly omitting a lot. Well, don’t, well, don’t, not even the smallest thing. I think I’ll have to omit a fair bit, but as far as as far as is possible at the moment, I won’t omit anything voluntarily. You know, there’s clearly limits to this method of discourse that they’re doing. It’s all throughout, you know, I mean, the thing is, is we could, I can’t find them, but maybe I could mark them. You know, there’s a million things to mark in this. Actually, my next note was about this, right? Like, so they start entering this insanely large dialogue, right? And the first thing Socrates does is he’s like, knowledges that he was mistaken to try and take the short path, because taking the long route was necessary in order to make his point. So it’s like, like, he’s actually admitting that he was wrong. And he still hasn’t really achieved any wants. And right, like, Well, right here, Manuel, that, okay, by God, Socrates Glockon said, don’t desert us with the end almost in sight will be satisfied if you discuss the good as you discuss justice, moderation and the rest. That, my friend, I said, was satisfying me too, but I’m afraid that I won’t be up to it and that I’ll disgrace myself and look ridiculous by trying. So let’s abandon the quest for what the good, the good itself is for the time being, or even to arrive at my own view about it is too big a topic for the discussion we are now started on. Well, they also do similar things like, I’m sorry, I forgot what I was going to say. Oh my God, I’m so sorry. Never mind. I think I think, you know, I love your lab analogy. Clean analogies. Great. I think that, yeah, the core point is, wow, you want to expand this past justice? No, hey, we, yeah, like, I’m gonna have a hard enough time doing this. And you want the good, and I’m Socrates, I’m like, he’s the wisest man in Greece. There is a point in this book, book six, where he actually, when they’re talking about the nature of philosophers or wherever they come from, he’s like, this and this, and then of course, and then there’s people like me, which we can’t talk about, because that’s just complete divine intervention or something like that. Yeah, right. Which I thought was funny. It’s like, well, that’s a little, that’s a little, I didn’t know if it was like a little bolstering, but you know, but then again, you have to remember this isn’t Plato talking about himself. It’s him using Socrates as a, you know, a character. Or one, I think the better way to say it is that he’s creating an idyllic myth. Those myths are idyllic in some sense. Yeah, no, yeah, exactly. That’s exactly what’s happening. Yeah. He’s mythologizing. Right. Or prophesizing. It’s ironic, given his hatred of Homer. Right. But, you know, and I think it’s why he came back to Homer later in life, from what I understand. Right. So he’s doing this as a way of showing you the limits, not only of dialectic, not only of the allegory of the cave, not only of the forms, not only of your understanding, but the understanding of the wisest man who has ever lived in some sense. We can argue that all day long. It’s pointless. The point still stands. Like, what is this? The wisest man in Greece. And even he won’t touch the good. Maybe we have no chance. None. Right. And that’s the, but, but he thinks he can do justice. But even the wisest man tries to take the short path and fails. I like these are incredibly or should be incredibly humbling pieces of information. Like, if you’re telling me you read the Republic and you weren’t humbled about not only your knowledge, but also the idea of wisdom and your relationship to it, then I think you missed something. Like, actually lots of some things. There’s a lot of hints in here about that. Yeah. What I was going to say earlier about the limits of dialectic is they also say things, they also say things along the lines of like, oh, well, you’re just beating us at the word game, Salad. And so we’re just going to give up as well. That’s another problem with it. And then early in book seven or eight or late in book seven or eight, they use other rhetorical tools, like where he’ll answer rhetorical questions for other people explicitly. So he’ll say like he’ll advance an argument saying like X, yes, and Y. And then he’ll say like, OK, so I’ll put forward a question, shall I answer the question for you? Which is not objective and it’s biased. So if like if you’re trying to learn dialectic from the book, I’m not sure it’s the best example. You know, it’s not exactly. It’s not how academics speak. It’s not clear. Right. Like you said, it’s it’s there. They have to they you need it. You need enchantment. I think they need enchantment in order to do what they’re trying to do. But I think I think it’s important, right? Like if you take the flip side of the book, right, like it’s in some sense, it’s like, well, I’m I’m beyond you now. Right. Like you can’t participate on this level. So let me do it for you. And I think that’s correct. Right. But also but also I think Danny’s made a whopping good point here, right, which is dialectic is disenchantment explicitly. It’s reducing something down to a to a frame of binaries. Right. Political frames, a similar frame, at least in recent times. And that is literally disenchanting. And you you can look at the example of Socrates saying, well, I tried to take the short route and I screwed up. And that was a mistake on my part as saying I tried to disenchant the story and that doesn’t work. And like all of this stuff is sitting right there. And I people don’t talk about it. And I’m like, like, this is really important. The fact that dialectic is a disenchantment explicitly, I would say. And therefore, like that’s really important to understand. Add insult to injury. Here’s another one. If anything prevents us from doing it, it won’t be lack of willingness, but a lack of ability. At least you’ll see how how willing I am notice again how enthusiastically and recklessly I say that the manner in which a city is ought to take up philosophically. Yeah, there again. I never responded to when the first thing Manuel said, which is what Ethan was saying, would bring bringing up five one B. But that is, I think, a super key. The idea of later, I don’t remember if it’s book seven or eight, but I’m sorry, I’m ahead. But they do they explicitly say they said it many times in the Republic, like the whole reason we’re putting together the state is because we want we’re trying to actually explore the idea of an ideal man who can embody the essence of the state. Right. And that’s when I mean, again, I’m sorry, I’m not going to get ahead, which is to the cave about how I think there but it’s such it seems such a okay, I’m sorry, I can’t say anything else. Otherwise, I’ll ruin the cave. So I’ll leave it. I’m sorry, I’m trying. I’m trying to I’m sorry, I’m really bad about jumping so far ahead. But it’s just it’s so necessary. But the key that unlocked it. Okay, sorry, let me get to the essence of what I would did want to highlight is what Manuel said the good emanates onto you. And so basically, like, what’s the master of truth and reason? Right? So we’ll get to the sun, the source of light, universal causes, right? So basically, can you have can you have truth, reason, beauty, without it serving a master of being under the good, which is maybe what the sun is, which we’ll get we’ll get to. Yeah. Sorry, I just wanted to highlight the five one be observation about the whole being image image of manting. I think that’s super key. Give it mind. So yeah, I’ll say more more about the image, right? The one who willfully underwent transformation, the one who will end up purified transformation in service of the nation. Like that’s the framing in which that that is put. And then they’re gonna well, they’re gonna talk about what Danny was saying, right? Like, who is this person that can hold that? Right? And then they say the combinations of talents will make one restless without principle, right? Like that that’s one of the half of the personality, but also there’s, he will be steadfast, and not be easy to move. Right? So there’s this, these two things, and they’re conflicting natures. They’re also gonna be the downfall of the philosopher. Okay. Right. And then he’s gonna need the highest of all knowledge, which which is probably wisdom. Yeah, yeah. And then he’s, he’s setting up this framework. So there’s the three parts of the soul, which is like the mind, the heart and the gut, or like the intellect, the spirit and the passions, right? That’s the three parts of the soul. And then there’s four natures of the soul, justice, temperance, courage and wisdom. Then Socrates provided a fair measure of truth, but Socrates deemed it insufficient, because the measure that he provided cannot be fair. Right? So he’s, he’s making a point about, I’m, I’m drawing something from the form. But because I’ve drawn from the form, it’s, it’s already corrupted because it’s instantiated, right? It can’t, it can’t hold the true nature. And then he goes to Indolence, being the worst sin of a guardian, right? Because the guardian is supposed to attend, correct, being aware, right? Like it’s, it’s related to the, to the virtue of courage, right? And so Indolence would be the opposite of courage. It’s the inaction. Well, well, courage is what allows you to act. If you say it’s a failure to draw a line in the sand. We’ll get to the line. Just wait. We’re gonna define it up, okay? So I, I, I, I, not to jump to the plate, but I was thinking about the cave and how, you know, the hot take on the cave is like the idea. Look, okay, look, I’m just saying, I went back to 470, because they were talking about the, the attributes and the prerequisites of a philosopher. If you go back to 475, they talk about curiosity. Because when thinking about the cave, I’m like, well, if, if all it is, is about the guardian needs to master dialectic in order to transcend the levels of the divided line, the levels of understanding, it can’t just be like, like they address curiosity as being the thing. So I thought about that. Like, is it just, is it just intellectual curiosity? That’s what it means to come in and out of the cave. But they talk about that at 475 and they talk about, again, it’s the corrupting influence itself again of, of curiosity itself. So it can’t, it can’t just be curiosity alone. So like that seems to be a problem. What do you think curiosity is, Dan? That’s the question. What do you think curiosity is? Well, you know, one thing that I liked, well, what Manuel said, that intelligibility imposes itself upon you. And I thought that was an interesting observation, like from the text. And again, it’s, and I’ve been thinking this whole week about how meaning is, is like, like Peterson says, it’s a, it’s a, it’s an instinct or like a reflex. So it’s, it’s something, something, something more fundamental that is, I don’t know how to put language on it. Why do you think curiosity is? Yeah, like, like why are you even in that problem in the first place? What, what’s the problem? Well, the thing that moves you up and down the cave, like why are you trying to solve that? Well, I, it’s, I just want to know its meaning. It has to do with the way, being, you know, again, I don’t want to jump forward. The meaning of cave takes 10 seconds. The whole thing is easy. Like, you guys overcomplicate this. Well, again, back to the question. What is it that you think curiosity is? Or, or let’s, let’s, you can, you can try this. You can try to think of it in terms of an affordance. What, what is it descriptively in that section? Cause I just quickly scanned it again and went, oh yeah, I know what he’s talking about here in 475, right? What is it that curiosity conveys in the text? What does it convey? Well, they, they, they’re getting an imitation and that’s what, that’s what brought me to it. What does curiosity convey? Love? Nope. An interest, a calling, reciprocal opening. And it’s an affordance to do something that you’re not doing now. It’s a potential interaction with a potential, right? So you’re curious, right? Because into your point, like you have a deep intuitive understanding of this, but you, you know, it looks like you’re not quite making the connection. If something is imposed from above and you’re not open to it, it’s not going to have the right impact. Right? And so you need to be open to it. You need the curiosity. That’s one aspect of opening. It’s not the only one, but it’s one aspect. There’s lots of aspects to this concept of, of reciprocal opening or the ability to be opened, probably a better way to think about it. Curiosity is the one that they’re using in this case, or they’re using in your text. But that’s the ability and willingness to go outside the box, right? To think outside the box, to experience something that you haven’t experienced before. Because the people in the cave, the ones that are shackled, aren’t shackled. They’re choosing not to remove the shackles they could remove. They may be choosing that through the ignorance of not understanding that the shackles can be removed. That’s fair because there’s unknown unknowns. That’s still a thing, right? But it’s the curiosity that gives you the aspiration and therefore the motivation to find out, well, what is, is this reality or is it, or is it a shadow or, you know, in that case, is this reality? What is the nature of reality? That would be the curiosity there. And then later you find out, oh, these aren’t reality. These are shadows. But oh, there’s more to explore, right? And then the willingness to explore is more curiosity. And curiosity is a beginning and an end. But yeah, curiosity doesn’t solve a problem. Because if you get really curious about, say, well, how hot is the fire? And you stick your hand in it, you could burn yourself. And like, that’s not good. Curiosity is not solving a problem, right? Because it’s just the concept of being open to possibilities that you do not now and maybe can never understand. And it’s the second part that people get confused about because when you’re stuck in the dialectic, it’s like, oh, either I understand this or I don’t. It’s like, no, either you understand this or you don’t understand this or no one can ever understand this or maybe only you can never understand. There’s lots of possibilities there. That’s enchantment. That’s why the dialectic is disenchantment because it really only gives you two options. And we don’t live in a world anywhere that I can tell where we only have two options, which is not to say you can’t say, oh, your options are commit suicide or struggle onward in life. You can frame things that way and that can be useful. But that’s not the world we live in, right? We live in a world that has many more options than two. Or I think actually if you want to look at how Plato used dialectic, maybe the idea of a letter, right? Having two poles that hold it up and then he’s drawing lines between the letters that you can step upon. I think that’s the way that he uses dialectic, right? But then that is subjected to a telos, right? And the telos is one in, it’s included within his knowing, right? Because if it would be outside of his knowing, it would be irresponsible. But if it’s inside of his knowing, then he can use it as a tool to be didactic. That’s related to the physicist problem of only looking for your keys under the lamp post at night where there’s light. There’s no point in looking for your keys in the places you can’t see. So I think that’s a deep relationship. It’s like, no, you’re not going to explore something random and unknown, dialectic, because it’s not the right tool. When you’re doing the dialectic, you already have a telos. In other words, you put the ladder up against something and you know roughly how high the ladder is and how high that’s going to get you. So yeah, that’s a good way to think about it. Right, and then the ladder is like the structure or the container in which you can participate, right? So that allows you to have a mode of interaction which is generative because you do the level thing. Exactly. And I think if we go back to the curiosity, right, so what’s being framed there? Well, what’s being framed is what is the nature, right, that the philosopher needs to have? And the curiosity is essential, right, because if you’re not curious, you’re not going to interface, right, and you’re not going to grow. So there’s all of these things that are essential, but they’re also a detriment, right? So like we said, right, like if you go look for your keys outside of the light, you just end up somewhere else, like that’s not helpful, right? So like there’s this constraint and then there’s this, and I think we talked about it before, how society isn’t capable of providing that constraint right now, right, but now there’s this this ideal environment that’s still having problems with providing the constraints because they’re inherently contradictory, right? And so, okay, so I figured out what the worst sin is. The worst sin is doing that which defies one’s nature. How’d you figure that out? Well, that’s the inference that I made from how they were using sin in that context. And like, it makes sense, right? Like if the nature is that which allows you to be who you are, right? Like it’s your grounding, it’s the grounding of your personhood. If you defy that, right, like if you transgress against that which defines you, then obviously that’s the worst thing that you can do because you just destroy yourself, right? Okay. Doesn’t that require some type of Rossoian like bullshit, like Goldilocks notion of what the human nature is? No, no, it’s not human nature, it’s personal nature. Okay, like this would be, in Christian terms, that would be calling, probably. Okay, all right. If you transgress against your calling, you can’t participate in the Holy Spirit. Yeah, well, right, right. Well, I mean, so there’s a sense of ought in there, not necessarily just is, right? It’s all ought. That’s what everybody needs to know. The purpose of philosophy is to get rid of the ought. But you can because that’s where everything starts. Yeah, no, no, no, no. Well, and I just wanted to, yeah, I was pretty sure there was some context I was missing, but it just, the way that sounds, I mean, it sounds very similar to like the type of postmodern person who would say, well, you just need to be your authentic self and that’s the highest good, right? It’s exactly the same. Look, everybody plasts Aristotle is intellectually bankrupt. How’s that? They’re just intellectually bankrupt. They’re not philosophers. They’re intellectually bankrupt sophists. That’s all they are. Every single last one of them, which is not to say they didn’t have some useful contributions, but at the end of the day, Socrates put this to bed. Aristotle added some framing and put some other things to bed and everybody doesn’t like that, right? Even Heidegger knew that he didn’t get past Plato. He said so. Well, if Heidegger didn’t get past Plato and it looks like Nietzsche didn’t either, then why are we listening to these people? Why? Why? And that’s the problem. You cannot take this platonic conception and put it in a modern context. That’s anachronistic because you’ve been polluted by Rousseau, who at best is a second grade intellect, at best, and that’s being extremely generous. These people, just saying nature. What the hell are you saying? And at least Plato understands there’s a personal nature and then there’s the nature outside. He actually differentiates these things. Rousseau doesn’t do that. Rousseau doesn’t have the mental capacity to do something that sophisticated. Sorry, but he doesn’t. The way that Plato deals with nature, right? Or yeah, like your personal nature or what was the word I used? I think I used it differently. Anyway, your personal nature is in context to the city. Like it’s related to what you’re going to do in the city and it is also like decided at your birth by some magical process that it never goes into because it’s going to be participatory, right? And then it can be wrong and then you get kicked out of the guardian. The way to think about it is you’re born with a set of constraints. The city imposes a set of constraints and somewhere in the middle you have to kind of fit it, which is an awful lot like Jordan B. Peterson saying, identity is negotiated. Yeah, no kidding. It’s not up to you. You can try it and it might even work when you try it, but most of the time it’s not going to work. And you can’t have a single identity. You can’t have a single relationship in the world. That’s the intimacy crisis. Why would you want to do that? You want to have families. You want to have friends. You want to have best friends. You want to have annoying friends like Manuel, right? You want to have all these different types of relationships, qualities of relationships. I had to do it, Manuel. I had to. It was right there. I couldn’t not. Well, thank you for that because I’m pretty sure I’ve heard people talk of, you know, raise the issue of quote unquote nature and authenticity and that kind of crap when it comes to play to be, yeah, and out of context to your point. Yeah, but it’s important to realize that like what is nature, right? And like Plato goes into this, right? Like what is, how do you ground yourself? Do you ground yourself in your passions? Do you ground yourself in status or money, right? Or do you ground yourself in the good effect? So like the way that you’re going to conceive of your nature is going to be different in either of these frames, right? And only one of these natures is true because the other ones aren’t true. And the whole book is trying to explain why these other ones aren’t true. Like that’s literally where they started. So like, although they’re not talking about it anymore. But that’s the three forms of the soul, right? Like it’s the mind, the heart, and the gut. So you can follow the mind, which would be informed by the intelligences out there. You could follow your heart, which would be informed by the things that seem good, right? Like the things that you can see that are good. And you can follow your gut, which is just like, eat what you want. And that’s the three loves as well, right? Like it’s Agape, Sturgay, or whatever. Thrilia and Eros. That’s funny. Yeah, well, yeah, just, you know, a sidebar, but yeah, the idea of like the mind, the heart and the gut. Like that’s, yeah, that’s a very Hebrew concept as well, right? The bells being the seat of the spirit, right? Yeah, yeah. Everywhere. It’s not like literally all the traditions, actually. Everyone’s like, we’ve got to combine these two. They’re the same. You don’t need to combine them. They’re the same. They don’t need combination. Also, like when I’m going to read Paul in the Bible, right? Like I’m just gonna bet that it’s gonna be full of this stuff because like writing in Greek, in Greece, like, like what? Two Greeks, two Greeks, by the way. Right. So like, and all the Greeks, they’re wrestling with Plato, right? Like, because it’s all a footnote to Plato. So it’s like, yeah. Okay. And then, okay. So yeah, the nature is that which grounds the person, right? So there’s knowledge past that transcends the virtues, the highest truth, the first deserves the highest accuracy, right? So that’s a reverential statement. So they’re now starting a frame of obligation. Like, like, like what, what does this require of me to be in relationship to it? Right? So the, that’s also like, I guess, instantiating a hierarchy in relation to the individual or to the person to fix that habit. Good is the highest form because it grants use to all else, right? So like, again, using the utilitarian frame, but like, things can only be of use towards a purpose. And I think that’s, I guess, the way that they use, what use that is participating in a telos. And the telos is inherited from the good. The good is the highest below that’s virtue and below that is soul. Right? So you could, you could say that if we do the crazy framing, right? Like you have the source, then the virtue is the interface between the source and you. And then the source is the part of you that, that is in that participation. That’s the way that I was looking at. And then I have the meta observation that we’re arguing around the frame a lot. Just, just interrupt me when you want to talk about something. Um, and then he’s, then he starts talking about knowledge as such. And he says, we know so little, I think this is about the good, right? We know so little about the good. And without that knowledge, all else is in vain. Right? So he’s doing a Ecclesiastes. Um, and he’s including even the attainment of knowledge. So he’s, he’s basically, well, he’s doing your epistemology there, right? Like you have to have the good. Knowledge is not worth anything. Or knowledge, whatever appears to be knowledge is not knowledge. It, it’s not embedded in the telos of the good or something, right? Something like that. Well, it’s a shadow of knowledge because like, Right. That’s what the shadows are. Right. Right. Because it’s just the shadow of it. And, and, and it is embedding it in that goodness. That’s when Peterson says it’s embedded in the narrative. Science is embedded in narrative. Yep. That’s same, same statement. So here’s my meta note again. I can see how you get to create the demiurge from here. It’s like, oh, right. Like the only access to knowledge is through the good and the good is behind all of this stuff, right? Like this. Yeah. So, so yeah. So this is ways of conceiving the good. You can do conceive of the good through pleasure, or you can conceive of the good through your knowledge of the good, right? But the people who pursue knowledge, they cannot explain the knowledge. They have to say that the knowledge has, is inherently good, right? Because they can’t justify where the knowledge is coming from. And yeah, I found that to have like a circular argument, right? So that’s, that’s the, the Gnostic aspect. They’re just presuming the good in the knowledge. Um, and then if you follow pleasure, bad and good are the same. So that’s the two arguments that, that I wanted to tell to Ethan, right? So if you pursue knowledge and you cannot explain where the knowledge is coming from, how can it be good? Right? Like, like you’re, you’re having a presumption of the good. And if you follow pleasure, and pleasure can be good or bad, like you can’t even have discernment of the good, because the thing that is orienting you does not allow you to distinguish between good and bad. The beautiful and just are likewise goods without knowledge of the good, you cannot have true knowledge of other things. So that, right, so now we’re binding in truth, right? So truth is that which connects what’s on earth to the good. You know, I don’t know if it’s in there, but I didn’t really get the sense of a concept of computational explosion. We did, we did mention the limitations of dialectic, which I think is interesting because like we have more of an atomic, if you, if you have an atomic view of like computational explosion, like you can analyze anything to it’s a, you know, down to the quark, right? But that’s not really, most people don’t really have that problem probably, right? But what is interesting is they, huh? Why would it be in? Well, exactly, I’m observing that it’s absent, right? I’m just saying it’s absent. It’s absent because it’s a recent, exactly, exactly. And I’m, but what I am saying is what kind of takes its place is the limitation of the dialectic process, because they do just sort of a bit out of like frustration and the argument, they kind of are halted, right? I don’t, I don’t anything takes its place. I think that it’s exemplifying the problem, right? Which is if you’re not aimed at something specific that you understand, then danger. That’s the argument. Combinatory explosion is just the realization that if you try to free science or philosophy from the bounds of religion, you get combinatorial explosion. Yeah, that’s, that’s what you get, right? And now you can’t discern the good because you have a flood. Yeah, weird, weird. I wish somebody had written that down a couple thousand years ago in a book. Maybe we could all read it. I think it’s right there. But, but, but like, what do you mean it’s not, yeah, like, why do you mean it’s not there? Like, because it, because I think, I think he’s right. They’re taking the opposite approach. There’s, there’s, there’s starting from the presumption that you have to move towards a final cause, Aristotelian language, right? And so they’re never running into the problem of combinatorial explosion. It’s never happening, right? Because you’d have to be a little on the slow side and make that mistake that you then have to fix. And this is like, I talk about this constantly. A lot of the modern problems are just, you created that and you didn’t need to. They’re not actual problems that exist outside of your interaction. Had you not interacted in the bad way, you wouldn’t have the problem to solve. And then your life would be simpler and easier and, you know, everything would be better. But to be fair, right, like both of these frameworks, right, whether you put the good and pleasure or in knowledge and up in futility, right, which means that you just end up chasing a tail. And that is combinatorial explosive, like necessarily, because it like it doesn’t tell you what the tail is. I would say it’s reciprocally narrowing because it’s a chasing tail. Well, yeah, but it’s reciprocally narrowing. But if you zoom out over time, like, it would be random. I mean, you can say I’m captured in the spirit, right, but like, I don’t think the sophists are necessarily captured in the spirit in the sense of that they’re unaware of what they’re doing, right, but they are captured in the constraints of where they place the good. Well, I think they are captured by the spirit, I think both ways, right. They’re captured by the spirit in the emergence is good. So what they’re doing is they’re seeing the pattern and going, do you want to break out of the pattern? And then they break out of the pattern, they go, aha. And now they lose intelligibility. And they need to get back into the pattern. And then they see they get back into a pattern. And then they go, aha. And then they go, oh, we keep wearing a pattern, we need to get out of that. And they look for emergence again. And they go, aha, right. And it is the cyclical thing. And yeah, it is effectively random. And you wouldn’t notice that unless you zoomed out. Like, fair enough, you’re not going to notice the random nature of that cyclical emergence is good garbage until you and unless you zoom out far enough. But there is a way in which that is still highly constrained. Yeah. Maybe that’s good. I didn’t resolve that for you, Danny. Well, yeah, I was just making an observation that, you know, they just have different lenses, no computational explosion here. They never complain about too much data. Right. There’s all kinds of things that there’s all kinds of reasons that information may not be resolvable, like corruption, you’re not curious, bad memory, too much data is not one of them. Right. Right. Because they start from tell us. Right. They’re always final cause first, which is final causes first and intent and last and act. Well, they do have two complex and therefore God. Right. Every time they get too complex button, right, which is the equivalent. So that’s the reason. Sorry. Or God or whatever. Yeah. And that’s the reason why the guardians need geometry to be trained in geometry is because if you’re not trained in geometry, then maybe you’re not going to be good enough to get to the next step or they make some argument like that. Well, yeah, I want to understand that is that just blew my mind and I’m like, I don’t I don’t know about this stuff. But yeah. I found that spot here about I’ll just read it about pleasure or knowledge. The more you you certainly know that the majority believe that pleasure is good, while the more sophisticated believe that it is knowledge. Just one dig at the above today. You know, it’s either or lived experience or pleasure or knowledge. You know, you know that those who believe this can’t tell us what sort of knowledge it is, however, but in the end are forced to say that it is knowledge of the good. So they’re separating and keep adamant as keeps pushing back on Socrates. Ethan, you almost keep the piece. Is it just me you’re reporting for? You’re talking about different types of knowledge and then you robot it out. You said there’s a differentiation between. We didn’t get anything after that. Oh, this is a 505 B where they just start, you know, they’re talking about the good and they’re saying that the majority of people believe that the good originates in pleasure and the more sophisticated believe the sophists, the experts or the smarties of the society believe that it originates in knowledge. And so adamant as keeps asking him, what do you have to say about this? And Socrates keeps kind of refusing to address that question. In fact, even later on, you surely don’t think that a thing like that could be pleasure. And then Socrates responds, hush, let’s examine its image in more detail as follows. So yes, he’s clearly drawing or implicating that this is something beyond pleasure, obviously, but even beyond knowledge. I read this earlier. It’s actually what gives knowledge. It’s actually what gives knowledge it’s being. Yeah, he’s refuting epistemology is the highest friend. I agree. Ken confirmed. That’s what I do all the time. I say stop worrying about epistemology. It’s sophist garbage. Epistemology is sophist. Don’t even mention epistemology. Not even interesting or important or required. Just total garbage. It’s just so crazy how indicative this is to modern day society. It’s like how many people are knowledge is good. Like everybody, literally everyone. It’s either knowledge is good or pleasure. Like those are the that is the two ethics. Knowledge is good and pleasure is good. Like that’s everywhere. Like go, go, go. That’s everything. Like that. That is the ethic of our age. Crazy. Hedonism or Gnosticism? I can’t confirm. Yes, you’re either a hedonist or a gnostic. Yeah, and that fits again. Right. Like and then there’s mammon, right? With money. Yeah, that’s more in the material, I guess. But yeah, a materialist. That’s the truth. There we go. That’s true. That’s exactly what it is. If your ethic is is bound in pleasure or knowledge, that is materialism because those are second effects. Those are down the line. That’s right. Knowledge is making thought material. That’s what it is. And so they, oh, I don’t know. Thoughts are, I mean, knowledge is material. Where is it? It’s like, no, you’re being material. Concrete. Are we at the cut line yet? Are we at the cut line? No, we’re not even close. Like, no, like it’s concretizing, right? Like that’s that’s the idolization of these. Anyway. Maybe that’s a better word. When we say materialism, we’re looking at created things. Yeah, I don’t like the word creation at all. Yeah, so Socrates claims not to know the good and an attempt of a description of it is even more futile than the description of anything else. I would not speak of the child of the good. If you describe the child, you imply the parents. And when there’s many of something, he’s doing some more definitions here. When there’s many of something, it applies a unifying principle. And the idea is the essence of the thing, right? So when you essentialize, that’s the idea. And the idea is the form. So that resolves that, at least for me. Danny, we talked about forms. Are you keeping up? Yep. Good. Good. The many is seen, but not known. And ideas are known, but not seen. And then he’s going to talk about all of the senses of which sight is the most complex sense. So the sight is dependent upon light. And light is what connects the sight to visibility. Like, so the sight is the capacity, and the visibility is what is being perceived. And the light is connecting your capacity to what is being perceived. So it’s like the medium by which it is entering you. And then… Did you say that objects are seen, but not known? You said something was seen, but not known, but ideas are known, but not seen. Not objects, the many. The many. This is the one and the many thing that everybody is talking about. And I don’t like that framing at all. Yeah. That everybody completely misunderstands and casts something that Plato clearly didn’t intend. But we’ll get there. Yeah. Like the way that for Faking Friendshood is not the way that I read it. The Lord of Light is the sun. The eye that observes the sun is most like the sun. The power of the eye is affluent, which is inherited from the sun. The sun is the author of sight that is recognized by sight. I like that word author. I wonder what they use in mine. Wait, that language is actually in your text? What I said? Yeah, like that’s me just almost writing down literally what was written there. Sometimes I cut it a little bit short, but I get the essence of it. Yeah. Yeah, I want to see Ethan’s point. What’s in this text too? But this is why I said it’s so important. Like you need this framing before you go into all this other stuff. Well, you can’t. If you don’t understand his description of the sun, which is there’s a Lord, we’ll just call it light. And it’s created everything. It’s right there. It’s not hidden. You can argue the King James said it better or not. But also, look, it’s right there. It’s right there. I don’t even know all this hearing. Yeah. What’s that, Mark? They talk about hearing too. All this hearing just speak. They’re really playing with the senses and playing them off one another. And basically that’s the statement that light is the greatest of the senses or sight, which is the result of light. They’re entangled. If you want to use modern or recent scientific framing, they’re entangled. Offspring. So the relationship the sun is to sight. Let’s say then that… Good is the author of the mind, like the sun is of sight. So now we’re putting an authority on the mind. And the mind is the sense organ of intelligibility. But the good itself is in the intelligible realm in relation to understanding and intelligible things. The sun is in the visible realm in relation to sight and visible things. And then he goes and starts complexifying. So he says the source of the light determines the cleanliness of vision. Yes. He talks about night versus day. Right. And well, in the cave, it’s going to be important. Right. It’s the fire versus the sun. Right. But that’s the statement that there are A, multiple points of light and B, they’re different qualities and C, that matters, which is also the statement that perspective matters or maybe framing is another way to say it, right. Actually matters. It’s important, which is the complete opposition to the postmodern ethos. It’s just, yeah, the postmoderns were wrong and Plato was not. Sorry. It is what it is. It’s interesting with fire. We’ll get into it next week. It’s almost like there’s a real quick, it’s almost like with fire, there’s potential in there for fallen light, right, because fire ultimately is consuming something. No, no, it’s even worse. You start with the fallen light. You have to. Well, here’s the thing is fire can be used for good or bad, but this fuel for the fire ultimately was brought into being by the sun. Right. It’s fallen. Yeah. I don’t know if you want to do that. No, I think that’s right. Well, you’re ruining it. Because yeah, well, yeah, well, because it’s inherited and no longer sourced, right. So, but whatever. So in the Christian scripture, there’s a lot of, or there’s a good amount of talk about like the eye and, you know, the eye is the lamp for the body or something along those lines, right. But one of the interesting comments, Ethan, and I can’t, I couldn’t tell you exactly where it’s at, but I think it’s part of Luke and it might be there in Matthew too, but where Jesus says, you know, the, you know, if your eye is good, you will be full of light. Right. But then he, then he says this really puzzling thing, right. He says, be careful. And less, less the light in you be darkness. Right. And so my not darkness, the darkness, the light inside of you will emit darkness. That’s well, yeah, yeah. But yeah, the, the, the new age, you know, nasty key folks among us, like are very like horrified that Jesus would say something like that. Right. Because to them, there’s only one light and it’s always good. Right. Emergence is good. That’s the flattening of the world. That’s the over reduction. Right. That’s the compression. Oh, there’s only one light and therefore goodness. And that’s just chasing the passions like that, because that’s not the surname between good and bad. Literally. Right. But that’s the best my three year old mind can do because they’re just three years old and they don’t have the mental capacity to differentiate more than one light. Because if they had to do that, they’d get overwhelmed. Like the flood is here. Right. And that’s the problem. They want to own all the knowledge. So they create a tiny world. The, at the risk of drifting, it’s just people can’t, people just do not understand the concept of a fallen world. They do not understand that you can, what you said that that in that scripture in Luke or wherever, that it can be corrupted. You know, you, your, your seeing mechanism can be, can be hijacked and corrupted. No, Rousseau said we’re perfect in nature. Therefore. Well, yeah, if we do the nature, go. Nature. You still replace man with God, you know, it’s like. No, no, no, no, he didn’t. Like he’s, he’s literally doing a nature religion. Like that’s all nature. Well, with, with one definition of universal definition of nature, where nature and goodness are the same, it’s, it’s, it’s such a compression and it’s such an obvious compression that it’s like, why did you listen to this guy? He sounds like your standard run of the mill three year old, literally, actually three years old, three year olds come up with formulations like this all the time. They’re cute, amusing, and they’re wonderful. And we hope they grow out of the soul is like the eye resting upon that on which truth and being shine. So that’s what, what an object is, Mark. Is what? That’s, that’s, that’s the way that Plato defines an object. It’s like resting upon that on which truth and being shine. So an object is that which is shown by truth and being. So the framing matters, right? You have to have a sense of, of the good in order to find a true object. That makes sense. If turned towards twilight, there is no lasting nature, therefore no intelligence. Stability across time allows for development of an intimate knowing of the soul. Comment. Can you, can you repeat those last two? I’m sorry. This is great. You said it’s something there’s no intelligence, something about nature. The soul, right? Like, so the soul is like the eye, right? So the soul is the capacity to wrestle with the intellect. Got that one. Yep. Resting upon that on which truth and being shine. All good there. It was the nature one. I didn’t quite hear. If turned towards twilight, this is not a proper source of light. There is no lasting nature. So you can’t discern that which points to the eternal and therefore there’s no intelligent. Intelligibility is that which lasts through time. Right. And he also says that if you do not participate in the correct way, you’re never going to get intelligent. He says that in the text? But that’s the implication of that. Like if you say, like if you look in the twilight, right, which is not in relation to the good, you’re not going to see it. Like it’s not going to be there. Okay. I was just curious if you said if you don’t participate properly, that’s a little different than if it’s twilight. No, like how’s the way that you see something, that’s how you participate with it. Like literally. And it’s Peterson’s point. You don’t see a tree stump. You see a sitting thing. So when I talk about affordance, and you try to fit affordance in an existing framework, instead of using the meaning of the word that which affords, you cannot understand what I’m saying. Because you’re not relating to that, right, like to the ammunition. You’re relating to a implementation of it. Right? And like you’re never going to see it. Like this is the problem that I had with Teo. Like talking about generative. And like I had 15, like he said, now I have 15 ways of describing generative. And like, yeah, but they’re all the same. And he’s like having 15 ways. And I have one way. We’re looking at the same words, right? And for me, it’s like one thing. Like he can’t see it. Like he just can’t see it. And that’s, he’s never going to see it. Unless he changes the way that he participates so that he can see it. And did the text had a connotation about responsibility to the individual? Because they were pretty, what’s the word, pessimistic about like, you know, philosophers. Like, oh, you know what, it’s a tough thing. All kinds of things can make you go straight. Is it the person’s? They don’t seem to have a very strong view of personal responsibility. You know, it seems to be more like, oh, well, if you’re called, then if you’re called to be a philosopher king and you have the prerequisites for it, then maybe you’ll- That’s agency and self-determination. They have a gym view of individualism. Yeah, they do. Because individualism is evil. Yep. That can confirm. Basically they say, right, like you have your nature and you have the state, which is Rousseau and what’s the other one, but the blank slate and the novel savage, right? Like that’s the two, like it’s the same thing. Like it’s the same dichotomy, but like they’re both false because they’re not only there, right? And then totally like there’s miracles, right? It’s like- Right. But the framing is there’s constraints from below, right? Emerged as a being with constraints and there’s constraints from above, in this case from the state, right? And your identities are determined by those constraints plus your free will, however much that is. It’s not 100%, obviously there are constraints, but within those constraints you have some ability, right? But you can’t be an individual, you can’t self-define, you can’t self-identify, right? You can’t do that because individual humans do not exist. Humans only exist in the mode of persons and you’re not a person except in relation to other persons. Sorry, it sucks. Okay. Maybe a rabbit thought that we just put to the side, but what of the thought of identity in the context of those different containers, right? You know, like so, you know, as part of, you know, yeah, my identity as a Christian being, you know, something related to, you know, being part of a church and no American being part of the same. Like what are you talking about? Well, you know, those things are not your identity as you’re Christian. Like then you’re- Well, no, no, hang on, just hang on for a second. Sorry, let me finish the thought and then you guys can tell me it’s wrong. But, you know, those constraints, you know, Mark, you were talking about how constraints from like, say the state, right, are part of like, are related to identity in some sense, right? Was I misunderstanding that? Pearson says identity is a negotiation. That’s correct. Well, right, right, right. Yeah, okay. But the thought was, could we also consider identity as the level at which we participate in those containers, right? Or those spheres? No, no, no, you perceive identity that way. Like, sure, you can say a person is a better Christian than person B, you could do that, right? And you can have reasons for doing that. But that doesn’t mean that either of them can be any different. So what good is that? And that’s the individualism. The individualism is something that you, by yourself, can change that. And no. Well, I guess what I was getting at is there’s this part of the current, you know, thinking of identity and self-identification and self-definition is the idea that I can define myself as part of a community without actually being part of the community and participating in it. Right, which is obviously a… Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, actually, I wanted to talk to Teo about this today because you can make proclamations about persons all you want. Like, you’re my slave. Right, or anything else. If you cooperate with me, you are my slave. Right, or I can say you’re a bad Christian. Like, I can proclaim all kinds. This is where people get mixed up because we’re into John Breveke’s point of propositional tyranny, even though I don’t like framing. It’s correct. The propositional tyranny is believing what people say. It’s like, why would you believe what people say? People say all kinds of things all the time, and usually they don’t even know what they’re saying because you ask them, what do you mean by that? And they don’t know. So why are we paying attention to this? And that’s Peterson’s point. I don’t believe what you say. I believe what you act out. Yeah, that’s how you determine someone’s belief. You don’t determine it by them saying, I’m a man or I’m a woman. It’s like, are you though? Like, really? Like, I do say, this person says they’re a Christian, and therefore they must be. I don’t believe that about people. I don’t need that. I can just watch them. It takes longer, but I don’t mind taking the time to be right. If you really believe you’re of the other side, why do you need my validation? Right, why would you have to say it? Yeah, there’s a quote in my favorite The Best Side Advice, which is all about break seven. I don’t remember if it’s season three or four, but which episode it is. But he basically says, why should I have to tell anybody I care? It should be obvious, right? It should. You shouldn’t ever have to tell anybody that you care. I used that last night in my livestream. You don’t need to tell people that, right? Caring is an action. They don’t need to hear it. They just need to experience it. And then when you experience it, no one needs to say it anymore. Right, and if you do need to say it, something’s wrong. Like, yeah, hello, I’m caring. Like, you’re not receiving my care. And it could go either way. It could be that you don’t see the caring that they’re giving. That’s, you know, the seven five love languages. I forget how many love languages book where somebody’s doing something for you and you’re not recognizing that that’s their expression of value. And your expression of value or your understanding of value might be different. Yeah, so sometimes you do have to make it explicit in propositions, but that’s not that. But that’s also problematic, right? Because like, is it really like, aren’t they doing it for themselves? If you’re receiving it, right? Like you get into a really strange place. Maybe, maybe not. Yeah, there’s no answers there. That’s the there’s also the issue of like, I was thinking of something like care, right? As an adjective, right? Instead of a verb, right? And, you know, I just saying the same thing, Mark, I think that you were saying in a different way. But, but to I, I want to act nice, right? Or I want to act in a caring way. Right? There’s there’s something that maybe is innately disingenuous, but maybe not. Right. But but but at least there’s the potential that there’s a disconnection there between I’m trying to appear in a certain way versus versus doing the things that I should do if I am in fact caring about this person, right? Yeah, air can never be an adjective. If you use it as an adjective, you’re broken. Like, literally, like that’s part of the point of my channel is that, you know, sometimes you guys are using things as verbs that can’t be or nouns that can’t be or adjectives that cannot be. You know, that you will not communicate any data or information by doing that ever. And the fact that you’re doing it means you’re virtue signaling. Yeah, I went over for example, the virtues, right? Like the virtues do not make sense in any solid form, because they’re the thing that the relationship is built upon. They’re the other anchor, right? In the ethereal realm that that helps the relationship to exist. The relationship and the manifestation might not be the same thing. But they might be there at least really firstly related. So if you say that you have a virtue or whatever, like wrong, like, like, like, are you saying like, like, I have my dial up connection to the internet? Like, like, like, that’s not a thing that you have, right? Like, that’s the thing that you participate in, right? That you can apply to other things. Like, like, it cannot be the thing in and of itself, like the dial up thing, like, like, it has to transfer something, like, it cannot be something in and of itself. Not static. It’s not a noun. It’s not an object. Right. Um, yeah. Well, I’m not sure how much it relates, but because I swear there is something that I heard and maybe it was in the book six that sounded familiar to this, but or maybe not. Um, but, um, we mistake, like, the understanding of a thing for the possession of a thing a lot of times too, right? Which to your point, and when it comes to a virtue, like, you know, we can’t possess anyway, right? Um, but yeah, it’s just all bad framing. And then the bad framing allows us to think that we can do things that we can’t do. Well, and it also allows us to think that we can be virtuous just by sitting around and thinking about shit and not actually interacting with the world. You can’t, there’s a lot of virtue. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just, just a little sidebar. Do you guys know a single cell? He was on BOM for a while. Yeah. And he’s on Jacob’s server a lot. And I, it’s, yeah, I, a lot of discussion with them, this week, uh, you know, like trying to encourage him to get the hell out of his head and go outside and fricking interact with the world, right? Instead of just sitting around and, and, and, you know, and philosophizing about age and young and all the rest of the shit, because it’s not good. Right. Right. Right. There’s a, there’s a warning there. Sorry. It’s just very salient for me at the moment. So yeah. I’m dying to say this line that Mark is going to love because his head is going to explode. Uh, the good is the source of science and of truth as far that that is a subject of knowledge. When constrained by knowledge. Yes. This is where the transcendentials get to be right because the transcendentials are independent constraints and it’s in the independent constraints that reality can be manifest. So that means that science and truth are images of the good. With respect to knowledge only. Not, not, you can see an image of truth with respect to knowledge, but you can’t, you can’t put goodness at the top. Can’t put truth at the top and you can’t put, but that’s the, that’s the sin that everyone’s doing now is like knowledge is the highest value. You’re just picking one, one value and putting it at the top. You can pick one transcendental and say, Oh, what we need. Right. I do take that as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, goodness is at the top, at least in discernment. No, I like, yeah, like that, like this is literally the statement that like he’s making, like, no, he’s saying he’s constraining it with respect to knowledge. And in that case, that is correct. It, as far as knowledge is concerned, you can see a certain shadow of truth and a certain shadow of goodness. And then, and then you can create science, right? Like the, the marriage of true, the true, the good and knowledge is science. Fair enough. I’m zero disagreement, but also there’s a bunch of constraints there, right? Science doesn’t contain even a shadow of beauty. That’s an interesting thing to note. And that’s why John De Beaux gets the, you know, gets the impression, for example, that what we need is more beauty. And I’m like, well, no, you can’t just add beauty to that equation and have it work out. Well, it’s not an equation. So you still, there’s still three transcendentals when you try to reduce it or make them a hierarchy, you’re going to have a whole kind of problems. Now, if you constrain them within knowledge, sure, absolutely works fine. The good has a higher place of honor. It surpasses them in beauty and in quality. Right? So that’s the source argument. The sun. Where is this? That’s 509B, the latter part of 509B, the last paragraph. So, so well, I think we should just continue because adding complexity. So he’s now saying the sun is responsible for generation, nourishment and growth, but isn’t them? The good is the author of being and essence. Two powers, the intellectual, not heaven, which is the source and then the visible, which is images. And those are split up in shadows and reflection. This is where the divided line gets introduced. Right. Yeah. So interestingly, my 509B, anything like we said, another, another translation for but yeah, we’re at the cut line divided in my book. Yeah. So cut a line in unequal parts. And then they divided by clearness versus one of clearness. Seen versus intellect. Intellectual versus the visible. Yeah. No, no, I’m saying it’s in my text, those words are used in both places. Different degrees of truth manifest on each level. Now you have the copy leading to the original. That’s analogous to opinion leading to knowledge. Yes. And then the opinion is like looking in the twilight effectively, right? That ties back to book five. So we’re talking about the sphere of the intellectual and then it goes into principles that lead to ideas, which is above the line, right? Which is where they have autosys leads up in clarity. And then on the other side, you have a figure that leads to an image, which where the hypothesis leads down because it’s reducing in clarity. And so this is where I responded to you, Ethan, about the fallen angels because I think this is describing the fallen angel versus the rising angel. And then they start a starting hypothesis in math. They relate to the they relate to the ideals behind. The reasoning is not around the visible forms, but the forms resemble ideals. When looking at the forms, they make a symbolic connection to the ideals behind the forms. That’s what the mathematician does. And then he starts talking about how do we get to have this awareness? Maybe we should stop there a little bit. Well, I want to I want to find out in 511A, they use is that in everyone’s text, the word hypothesis? Yes. Interesting. Okay. I have a footnote on hypothesis though. Let me see if I can find it. Yeah. Second translation also uses. Because I got to wonder what the case we have so much confusion around that word in say recent times. It’s hard to know what he means there. Well, I think hypothesis is the optionality for jumping level. Yeah, you’re not in a state of being when you’re when you’re talking about hypotheses, you’re here in your head. Right. So that’s I think that’s kind of what the cave is about. It’s about modal difference. Yeah, that’s why I was curious about that. Why? Well, they’re connecting it to math, right? Like, and so in math, you have a hypothesis, and then you can write the proof, right? So you, you perceive an intelligibility that you want to pursue, right? And then you can build a structure that supports it or you or you don’t. Yeah. Okay, so they say the search has to make use of hypotonic that do not ascend to a first principle and shadows in the world have reflections of greater shadows. Those greater shadows have a greater distinction, distinctness, and therefore a greater value. So I think this is what the symbolism is about, like the poetic identity that is non logical, right? So you have the logical identity, the manyness, right? Because the manyness would identify them in the same thing. But then there’s there’s a way in which there’s a correspondence between the many and that’s the greater, well, it’s greater reflections. And then reason attains knowledge by dialectic lifting up to a principle, true understanding from opinion to reason. I’m just kind of reading here and Schindler and he says that the divided line analogy is misunderstood a lot. Yeah, kind of explaining it. He’s trying to take it away from the Plato tries to explain it twice here. As follows in one subsection, the soul using as images the things that were imitated before is forced to investigate from hypotheses proceeding not to a first principle, but to a conclusion in other subsection. However, it makes its way to a first principle that is not a hypothesis proceeding from a hypothesis, but without the images used in the previous subsection using from themselves and making its investigation through them. Then of course, Glaucon’s like, Yeah, I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me. So, so Socrates says, let’s try again. And he starts explaining it in the light of a mathematician. And I think what Schindler is doing is he’s trying to he’s trying to a lot of people get fixated on fixated on the mathematical framing. And Schindler is trying to take us back away from that because that’s not his intent. Like using a he’s using a one further degree of separation from the analogy of the divided line. So you have to I struggled with this too. Like I read both of these paragraphs, I read the second one, you know, the mathematical framing and then tried to go back to the first one with the hypotheses and conclusions and just this is why I think it’s a rope, right? So like there’s one here, right? Like there’s a layer here with a layer of right. So like the layer above is the principles effectively, right. And then this is what was the layer again. This is where you get understanding of things, right. So the understanding, if you understand the things that can lead you up to a principle, right. So that there’s a loop there, which, like, like, all the understanding feeds into principles, because that’s the sameness with an understanding or something, right. And on the other hand, right, like if you if you have an image of some or like, they were using reflection, right. So that’s an image, right. It’s not a shadow, but the image, like the image can only lead downwards to the shadow, because if you have enough hypothesis of the image, you’re engaging with the specificity of it, right. That’s eyes down versus eyes up. That’s right. And for me, the best way to think about this is the following. Take the segments, there’s four unequal segments, right. The smallest and the largest. Put the largest to smallest at the top, problem solved. And then understand the same thing you would talk about with resolution on your monitor, right, or resolution of a picture or an image. That’s what they’re talking about. Each of those levels from the divided line laid out horizontally is a different level of resolution. That’s why it’s a shadow, because a shadow is a low resolution. Right, but it’s also a high information. Like, so that’s the problem, right. Like, because in the shadow, it’s because it’s the shadow of the principle, right, in some sense, but it’s a shadow because it’s in with a lot of other details, right. So it’s hidden among the complexity. Yeah, I wouldn’t call that lots of information. I’d call it lots of noise. That’s what I would differentiate it to. Well, but there’s other principles that participate in that too, right. So that’s- Right, but there are noise from the perspective of any single principle, all the other data. Well, that’s fair, yes. Right. Right. That’s why resolution matters. So this took me an hour. See if you can check this. It took me an hour to come over this morning. I’ve got- I wrote up two statements, and this is really a culmination. I went through them book five to eight, and really to figure this out. The sun is a visible object that makes objects visible to the eye through the power of sight by providing light. Okay, now I’m gonna say the good is an intelligible object that makes objects intelligible to the soul through the power of understanding by providing truth. You want me to read them again? No. That’s- No. No? The sun is not providing truth at all. It doesn’t provide truth, so it’s not the source. So that- So one- The thing that I- So what I noticed is that they use language like- which I need to- maybe it’s in book eight or something, but they use language like understanding. When they talk about the good and intelligibility and so around, they use words like understanding, right. So I just noticed, and then I tried mapping out the language and then looking at differences. So basically, I’ve been thinking all week about what’s it like- it took me different light sources. What’s it mean to see, right? Anyway, that’s what I came up with this morning. Don’t start it. The statement in book six is a statement explicitly about creation. It’s not about sight. Sight is a side effect of creation. Once there are created things, and there’s a light source, now you can see. But the whole sun thing linked to the Lord explicitly is about creation. That’s what it’s about. That’s why in that other book that we’re not doing a book club on, it says, let there be light. Weird. Weird parallel. Yeah, then there’s all those conspiracy theories that people are trying to link these two things back. Well, Plato went on vacation to Egypt and then was locked in prison and then Fred Moses. Right. That’s the only possible explanation for these similarities. I believe that he spoke to the Jews. I have no problem with that. I’m sure everybody at that level knew all the- Yeah, but it’s irrelevant because it’s not interesting. So how we got to where we got isn’t relevant. We’re still here and we’re not going to go back and change it. It’s not important. I don’t understand his obsession with exactly where it started and where it turned. No, you don’t. You don’t. You need to live your life. You really can. I’ve done it. Works great. It started. Okay, here’s the thing. The sun shines over the Middle East just like it shines over Greece. So it rises in itself. Either it’s true or it’s not true. Exactly. So you need to include this, Danny. The sun is responsible for generation, nourishment, and growth. So it’s not only responsible for the discernment or the intelligibility. It’s also responsible for the capacity of things relating to each other. Generation. It’s responsible for genera- It’s generative. The force of generativeness in this framing is the sun. So you can look at it this way. But it’s not it in any of these things. It’s the source, but it’s not the thing. That’s important to realize. It’s an enchanted world. Something that helped me understand this is if you think of a wheel and an axis. So a wheel is turning around an axis. If you look at a wheel that’s turning, I was talking to Manuel about this. The closer you get to the middle, the closer you get to the axis, the theoretical axis, the less of the less physical wheel there is and the less it’s turning till it theoretically gets to zero. So the axis of the wheel, which gives the wheel its purpose of turning, doesn’t exist on the wheel. It doesn’t exist on the material wheel. But it’s what gives the wheel its essence. It’s where the wheel comes from. Because without an axis, an axis point, it would not be a wheel. But I don’t know why you’re complexifying it. You can just use a flashlight. Its beam spreads, so the further it spreads, the less intensity of light there is. There’s less of the light the further that you are away. And the light itself isn’t lit. It’s that which is doing the lighting of the rest. The light itself isn’t lit. It’s off an object. You don’t see the light. I like the wheel better, sorry. That’s even true in the analogy of decay. Because if you look at the sun, you can’t see the sun. You see the sun is obscuring itself. But you can see the projection. And the projection goes like this, like a flashlight beam, which is back to the divided line, as you guys are calling it. Even though it doesn’t say divided in my book. I think I have this framing of the four levels. The higher you go up, the clearer your vision is of what is moving, the principle of what’s organizing the thing that you’re looking at. Right? But yeah, so if you go down, there’s more confluence with other factors. It’s conflated. And the conflation is of such nature that you can’t use the conflation to look outside of itself. And the only way to do that is through understanding. Yeah, but Manuel, now Danny can’t be efficient. Why did you do this to him? Well, I just wanted to be clear. Well, I tried to make it clear because it is complex. And you can’t reduce it. Yeah, it’s complex. It sucks. So Danny, do we have that fixed? Yeah, I’m good with the line thing. I’m so in the cave, though. That’s the reason. The divided line image can be very simple. Like you said, with a flashlight, far you are away from something, lower resolution picture, doesn’t need to be that complicated. But it is complicated if you want to draw the lines. You want to actually use it if it becomes complex. But I think it’s in the use, though. That’s the point is that the use is complex. Simple ideas, simple models, but actually putting these models to use creates a complexity. And that’s where the magic is. Right. And the complexity is so messed up that you effectively can’t do it. Because that’s what he’s saying. You can’t really do it. And yet it happens. Because how is the way that you get out into the light? You get dragged out by someone else. Like it’s not a thing that you can do upon your own reflection. Interesting note. If we begin with the various forms as our first principle, we do not understand. So there’s the various forms, right? And then there’s two things going on here. I mean, see, first off starts off with the theory of forms here on 506B. We see that there are many beautiful things and many good things. And so on for each kind. And in this way, we distinguish them in words. And what is it in the main thing? We speak of beauty itself and good itself. And so in the case of all things that we then set down as many, we turn about and set down in accord with a single form of each, believing that there is but one and call it the being of each. And we say that many beautiful things and the rest are visible, but not intelligible. While the forms are intelligible, but not visible. And then he takes it a degree higher and says, so there’s like the good. And good is like the form. So you have beauty and then beautiful things. And then you have things like beauty and then good. And the good gives its, and beauty proceeds from good. There’s those varying levels. It’s like sun to sight, sight to object. Right. Yeah, you should start using ideas. Like I think forms problematic. Well, because it’s that which the mind, the intelligibility that the mind relates to, right? Which is an idea. Like when you use the form, you materialize. And like that’s literally what the materialists do, right? Like they go to the to the mad thing and they do the emergence from the object. And like Plato is literally saying like, that’s not a valid move. And they still do it. Right. Well, and because the object has form, fair enough, but that’s not the same form that he’s talking about with Ida. And I think the idols doesn’t have a form, like literally, it’s non-forming, it’s informal. This pretty much sums up what he’s saying here at the end. If everything exists by virtue of some cause and the good is the cause of causality, and all things are due to the good. You might be familiar with the other type of language called King of Kings. Yeah, but no, like this, okay, this is where I’ve actually got this bullshit from. Okay, like, yes, if you’re if you’re the philosopher king, yes, but we’re not the philosopher king. Yes. Which is not impossible, but also not generative. The point of the philosopher king, I don’t know why, no idea why people missed it. No idea. I didn’t even read the book and got this very clear message. Point of the philosopher king, the flaw of the idea, which is perfect in its form, to some extent, we can argue about the gods all day long throughout this book. But as perfect as you can make it still doesn’t work because the philosopher king won’t be able to pick a successor. It fails. The whole thing fails. That’s the it’s a lesson in failure. That’s how you learn you learn through failure. You don’t learn by having a guidebook. If you success, you might end up in 1984 or something if you if you used it that way. Oh, wait, maybe we did. The guidebook to success of life. Oh, my. Listen, that what I meant by King of Kings, that’s biblical language. So it’s literally the source of everything. It’s what it’s the cause of causality. But it’s not because we sin. Like, I don’t understand. What do you mean? No, no, I think the King of Kings is the is the like, it’s the creator. He doesn’t sin. Not that I know of anyway. Like, like, I like I don’t I really dislike that framing is like, oh, there’s there’s this framing in which everything flows from the one source that makes everything happen correctly is like things aren’t happening correctly. So like, that’s right. The divided line says things spread out. There’s also the there’s also the analogy of nighttime, right? And things are more opaque. Okay, but that means that the source isn’t visible. That’s fine. But then they’re still not happening according to the source. Like, yeah, I don’t disagree. I don’t I don’t think King of Kings says that is one thing that is somewhat I’m not going to say a holy absent here in Plato, or at least the republic anyhow. But is is seems largely absent as the concept of a fallen world. What? No. He starts with that. Yeah, he’s like, like, it’s all about the fallen world. I don’t understand how you’re missing that. He starts with forbidden knowledge and children are these bratty little, you know, incorrigible beasts that need to be trained because they suck. Yeah. And like, we’re never going to make the philosopher king because it’s so unlikely that we need five miracles to happen at the same time. Like, well, it works. In this part doesn’t perpetuate. In other words, the philosopher king, even if it emerges somehow and is forced into emergence, is not generative. It doesn’t last you get one. And you can argue that happened. Right, Marcus Aurelius. Okay. Granted. But what we’re talking about here in this book with light, it’s I guess we’re just speaking purely, ideally, like we’ve gotten we’re not talking we’re not taking into account the fallen world anymore. We’ve gotten rid of all of that. No, the divided line. Remember that. The divided line puts it right back in. I don’t understand how we can ignore the fallen world. Like, I don’t even know what that means. A divided line is it’s not a line. It’s cut into four unequal segments. There’s your sin. Like, oh, okay. It’s no longer a lie. I don’t think the divided line. I don’t think it’s I don’t think sin is taken into account. This divided line analogy. What do you mean? Shadows aren’t perfect implementations by definition. Yeah, like, if I look at the good, I don’t see the good. It’s not part of the divided line analogy. No, it is. Yes. Like, it’s the bottom line is shadows. The second line is images. And the third line is ideas. And then the fourth line is the good. Or whatever that’s there. I don’t know what’s there. The light. The good light. The light good. Whatever. Creation. The Lord. It’s all of that. Anyway, like, even if we have this model, right, and like, we can look at the good, like, we can’t know the good like Socrates said. So like, that’s already not an option again. Like, like, I don’t understand how sin isn’t there. He literally states that it’s impossible, even for the philosopher king. So this morning, for what it’s worth, I was thinking through this stuff. Maybe it’d be useful if I wrote out I was thinking about the cave. I’ve been all over the place. I’ve wrote out like a million unit test type of things is how I think. But let me just read out some of these. I was just wrote some of these out because I was thinking about them. But I’m sorry, if you go so, you know, imagination to belief to thought to understanding, I was just looking at different Greek words, you know, and writing it out a couple different ways. Imaginary to physical senses to world of ideas back to helping. That’s more of a cave one flow. Imaginary to common sense belief to thinking to dialectic. I have intelligence slash knowledge question mark there. That was so okay, the way the way I start this is the wrong interpretation of the cave is probably just that the guardians have to master dialectic in order to come in and out. So I wrote that out. And I think why is that wrong? Right. So that’s kind of how I start. Like this is, I think, how people fixated on this in and out. Like, sexual metaphor. No, no, I’m saying it’s enlightening. He says it’s the first sentence of book six. Literally, people miss this look. And now I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened. So anyway, I’ve been thinking. Yeah, that’s in relation to the sun, right? Not to the cave. Well, right. So but so yeah, so in relation to the sun, we were talking about different types of knowledge and all these kinds of kinds of things. We looked at all these Greek words last week. So anyway, I just wrote out a bunch of these from conjecture to belief to understanding to the exercise of reason. I’m just trying I was just trying to start a conjecture. You can’t start it. Well, I was just I’m just playing with language like they’re talking about opinion and imagination. The problem is, right, like you’re making these rows, right. And these rows, they are in a dimension. There’s dimensions in which we are informed by the emanation, right, which is one perspective. And then there’s a perspective in which we look up from below through the lines. Right. And when you start generate, like talking about, okay, like, what is the process by which climb that ladder effectively, we’re doing something different. Right. Like, that’s not the same. So it’s important to realize what the relationship is that you’re having towards these lines, because and then you also need to know why you want to make that list, like, like, what’s the functionality of knowing this progression, even if it’s true. Look, Danny, and I’m not I promise I’m not being flip. I would rather you do math than those that that is so bad for your brain. I can’t even I can’t I can’t what is what are you talking about? The the formulations you came up with now do math instead. What’s so I don’t understand what it’ll be less damaging to your existence. Your teeth are raw, it’ll be fine. But that that line of starting from conjecture and things that that’s that’s gonna kill you. That’s gonna kill you mentally and destroy you. Yeah, because I can’t even like like the problem the problem that I’m having when when I hear these things, right, it’s like, okay, like, why would you make that? Well, because you want to use it, right? Like, that’s what I hear. Right. So that’s that’s the way that I understand this. Oh, I want I want to make this list so that I can do some. I was like, yeah, you shouldn’t do that. And like, I’m gonna have to agree with Mark, like, if if you like, it’s an emanation, okay, like, you need to relate to it from the emanations perspective. If you try to relate to it from the emergence perspective. Well, okay, that’s that’s the thing, right? Like, that’s what Plato says, you can’t you can’t see it from the shadows, right? Like, so if whenever you do an emergent perspective, you’re never gonna see it. Like, that’s what he says. Okay, now I translated it into something you tell. Yeah, and you’re never going to see what the emergence actually does, you may see one part of it, but you’re not going to see all the other parts, right? So, you know, people are surprised that, you know, reducing marriage to a contract results in the gender binary problem. And, you know, you can object, you’re wrong. It did happen. We know why it happened. You can trace the whole history of it. When you reduce marriage to a contract, right, and you try to universalize that contract, which is why you would reduce it to a contract. Suddenly, you get this gender binary where there’s 256,000 genders all the time. Those things are related. They’re 100% related. They are we’re going to emerge equality through law, through contract law, and instantiated in the political system in the government, right? And then that’s going to try to leak into economics. And now Bud Light lost $4 billion, or whatever the hell it is, right? Like these things are inevitable. You took a step down a bad path. Don’t do that. All right, that’s why those constraints are there. Like people aren’t telling you not to go there because they’re hiding the forbidden Gnostic knowledge. It’s going to free you from the bad God. People are saying don’t do that because you’ll destroy the world. And actually they’re right. 2000 years of making that mistake and people make that mistake and encoding it into various conditions. We are over. We should wrap up. But I want to finish up with like do you see the objection for the list? What? No. What do you? I don’t know. The objection for the list is what’s the list? What is the list? What are you talking about? The list that you’re creating. What? I have like dozens of I have so many notes. I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I’m objecting to all of them. What do you mean? I’m just looking for patterns. That’s all in the language. The things that you made where you said. Oh, you said one of them was wrong. Yeah, yeah, that’s fine. If I’m going to. Well, okay. If you want to go through a whole bunch of things that are wrong, we could keep going. I’ve got 20 of these things. No, no, I’m making. I’m not trying to make a case for anything. This is how you think. I’m making a principled argument that the way that you’re approaching trying to understand it is a bad way to approach it, and therefore the lists are bad. Yes, correct. And I’m making an argument based upon what Plato said in the chapter, right, that if you’re looking at the shadow, which is what I accused you of doing when making the list, you’re looking at the shadow, right, or an image, right, you cannot use that hypothesis to go to the principle. That’s not an option. Yeah, I agree with you. Okay, so I learned that from the list, though. I’m saying that you’re wrong because what you do can’t work. That’s what I’m saying. According to Plato. Work for what? I don’t know. There’s no. Anything at all ever. It cannot function in the world. It’s not the way people think. It will not lead you to any intelligibility. It will not lead you to belief. It will not lead you to understanding. It will not help you, but it will destroy you for sure. For sure. Guaranteed. That’s why I said do math instead because you’re clearly getting something from it, but Plato says you’re not going to get anything in this chapter, which is just ironic at this point. So, okay. So the way to do it, right, is, and I think this is what he was talking about with the mathematicians, right? So the mathematicians believe in a principle, right, and then they assume the principle, and then from the principle flows intelligibility, right, which they can see through the forms that they put on paper, right? And that provides a coherence, right, or a proof, which proves that the intelligibility has a coherence, and that feeds back into the principle, right, because now the principle has validity. And this is literally when I make my example, I feel like I’m building a castle on clouds, and I don’t know how to judge the castle, but I feel that it has structural integrity, and that’s the justification for my castle. That’s literally the same thing. But it’s a castle on clouds. You’re going to have to build on the clouds because if you don’t build on the clouds, you’ll never get above the ground. And that’s why he’s making a line, and like he even said, right, like it’s the realm of ideas or intelligibility not heaven, right? Like he was saying that it’s not heaven. Like it’s separate from heaven. The powers, yeah, the intellectual power. Like, although I’m not sure whether I agree with that, whatever. And I think the clearness is super important, right? Because the clearness is like a measure of simplicity, right? And like the value of a principle is its simplicity. And if you relate, you can do operations upon things that are simple, and make predictions about the shadows that will manifest in the world without knowing anything about the shadows, just by knowing whether they participate in these principles or not. And that’s the way that you can get rid of the combinatorial explosion, because because the method of reasoning allows you to make judgments about the unknowns in the world. So I don’t think there’s any disagreement or confusion at the high level, and I’m not really concerned with the mechanics to zoom into it too much more, personally. I mean, I, you know, so I mean, I don’t know if, I mean, I was exploring natures. What do you mean? What are you talking about? Well, like, if you say I’ve been trying to make this list for a week. Yeah, I said last week, I said I wasn’t interested in mechanics. I’m describing what the text is saying, and just writing out the Greek words. Some of them are prescriptions. Some of them are procedures, but most of them are just descriptions of what the text is trying to say. We brought up first principles last week, and so we made arguments with like about natures and things. Where are you seeing that in the text? It’s not there. What? Where is it? Your little word sequences aren’t in the text, dude. 511A, first principle. It’s in there one, two, three, four, five times. Well, we brought this up last week. I joked at the beginning. Well, I didn’t say this out loud. Last week when we started, I said we should call this beyond hypothesis, as in beyond good and evil. So basically, how do you break out of this hypothesis trap that we’re stuck in, or propositional tyranny? I mean, we were there last week, and I wasn’t really… No, but he said you had hypothesis that can lift you up and tear you down. He didn’t convict the idea of hypothesis. He said that there’s a way to implement hypothesis on a level. And I made the observation that as he was talking about individual hypotheses, and then he goes and talks about sets of hypotheses, he gets into that at 511, and how the rhetorical… That has nothing to do with propositional tyranny. I don’t know how you connected those two. Well, yeah, he’s just advancing. He’s just developing the argument that he’s making, that’s all. And he’s just advancing it to another level. What argument do you think he’s making? And why did you link it to propositional tyranny? He’s demonstrating the limitations of dialectic. The whole book is. He’s not doing that here. He’s using dialectic throughout the whole book, at least to date. He’s never breaking out of the dialectic. He’s getting at the difference between the mind’s eye, which is used to provide… to get at understanding, versus just sight, which is what is used to get at just a hypothesis. No! That’s what he’s doing. No, sight is an analogy, and has nothing to do with rest. It’s a flat-out poetic relationship. It’s an artistic form. It’s not… Like the shadows are not in the realm of sight, they’re in the realm of mind. The only propositional tyranny in this book is called sophistry. It’s the sophists who are tyrannized by propositions, who are trapped by them, because they can’t do first principle, because they aren’t outside of the material. They’re all materialists. And so the… Well, again, we’re kind of getting into the cave now, right? But basically, I start with… You say a common interpretation of the cave is something like education moving the soul through the stages on the divided line, right? So I roll out the stages on the divided line, and then they ultimately bring you to the form of the good. It’s the sun. It’s not that complicated. It’s pretty simple. At a high level, that is. I’m not really concerned with getting into the details, but I did explore them quite a bit. Actually, I read up today, up until… Well, some educators say that they can do that, and I’m pretty sure that they’re going to shoot it down real hard. Like, that’s not a thing that you can do. Yeah, it’s completely wrong. Okay, but that is not a valid interpretation. I said the common popular interpretation of the cave is that it’s on enlightenment, education, and so how do you apply that? I’m thinking to myself, okay, how do you apply that? What do I do? Do I just need to be more curious? Need to be more ambitious? Is that the lesson of the allegory of the cave? Because I don’t think that’s what he was getting at, right? You do not apply the allegory of the cave. All right, you don’t apply it. Okay, sure. You cannot apply the allegory of the cave. Okay, right. That’s not what it’s for. Right, but that’s the message. If you listen to the allegory of the cave or the divided line, because they’re pretty similar, and you walk away with, okay, well, here I need… Not similar, but they’re an evolution of a line of thought. And if you walk… Go ahead. Let me just say a couple things, right? Pain and distress, pain and irritation, dazzled, blind to reality, those are all allegory of the cave thing. Right. If you want to have a lesson about the allegory, that’s the lesson that you need to take. But it’s really important to realize something about the format and function of the book. It is not a linear line of thought at all. It is the refutation that that even works, because they build up an image and then they blow it up. It starts in book one. It says, you can’t understand justice from the perspective of a single individual, even if you add other single individuals in the frame. Right? You cannot at all ever… This is book one. The line of argumentation is, well, you can understand justice. I would feel just or unjust, blah, blah, blah, but that person would feel just or unjust, blah, blah, blah. And so, he goes, yeah, it doesn’t work, guys. We need to scale up to the city. And so, he gives the city, and then they… That doesn’t work. Okay, fair enough. We need to add more stuff to the city. So, they burn it to the ground, and then they start over with the city. That’s what they’re doing. They’re burning everything to the ground and starting over. This is not a linear progression. It builds on top of it. Which is not to say there aren’t elements that are building. There are elements that are building. The nature of the book is not building a linear projection across a set of arguments. That’s not happening. And if that’s what you’re seeing, then that’s a deep confusion. Well, it’s not a linear relationship, but I mean, obviously, it’s very obvious that the sun and the line and the cave are all related to one another. And there’s a relationship between those three things. So, clearly, you know, it’s not linear. No, no, no, no, no, no, hold on. No, no, no, no. No, there’s not a relationship. Like, they’re, they’re, they’re things that point up to the same thing. Yeah, they’re related and they both point up. But they’re not related. Okay, we can agree to that. They both point up. Right, but… Right. And that’s, then that’s why we’re here, fundamentally. Right. It’s the vertical causality, right? So, so… So, they, they don’t… You cannot collapse them into a single identity. That’s why they’re three traits. Like, it’s like the Trinity. It’s like, it’s like, you cannot collapse them. Like, it, if you try and do the collapse of the Trinity, you just end up with unintelligible crap and misguidedness. Like, that’s, that’s the other problem. Like, like, there’s like… You lose contrast, you lose sight. Now, you can’t see, right? That’s why reducing and compressing and flattening is bad. It’s all the same operation. It’s bad. Don’t do that. Trying to distill the essence of any piece of this text is an error. It’s an error of the first order. It is the worst kind of mistake you could possibly make. It, it… Nothing in this can be reduced past the point of its existence. Otherwise, you ruin it. Completely. The whole thing. One little sentence, compressed. Done. Whole book. Useless. Entire text, pointless. Doesn’t work. That’s what I was talking about. Like, he’s trying to make a shape with the text, right? So, there’s, there’s an abstraction from the form that the argument is taking, right? Like, the argument has a form. And there’s intelligibility in the form of the argument, which I think is the point of the book, right? Because the intelligibility in the form of the argument is that which allows you to relate to the… In the same… Like, that’s the image of the son of the son. Well, that’s an interesting observation to think of arguments having forms. I mean, perhaps it should be more obvious, but that’s not obvious to us moderns. Not obvious to me. I don’t think about, I don’t think about the form of argument first. Or, yeah, forget the word form. That’s postmodern. It’s the frame. It’s the frame or the framing or the constraint or the box which is starting, right? And it’s explicit in the text, right? Socrates tries to take a shortcut and give you the short form argument. And then he fails. And he goes, oops, sorry, my bad, right? He passes up and says, I failed. I couldn’t do the short form. Now we’re going to have to go back and do the long form. And that is a destruction of the original argument. It has to be reconstructed with more detail, not less. When you try to take the things in the text, that is explicit in this part we just went over, right? When you try to take parts of the text and take a shortcut with them or compress them or reduce them or flatten them, that’s all the same thing, you fail. That’s what Socrates is saying. It’s right there in book six. Don’t do that. That’s why I found it so important to go back to this analogy of the sun, right? Because that’s where it all starts, right? And it’s like he says light is essential, right? Like light is the means by which sight is activated and seeing is made possible. Right? So he basically says you can do anything but without the thing that allows the thing to be, it cannot exist. And that means that there’s a substance, like, is that the right word? Like, yeah, it consists of something that which affords you the ability to see. And so, the intelligibility affords you to intelligence. Like, it doesn’t make any sense without the intelligibility being there. The eye, yep. No, no, the intelligibility is not the eye. The soul is the eye. Right. The ability is the light. The eye is to the good. Is to the soul, as yes. No, I think we’re on the same page. Honestly, I haven’t heard anything. I disagree with any of either of you two about. I don’t understand what your issue is with me writing out some of these lines. You’re not supposed to understand what I say. You’re supposed to understand why I say what I say. Like, I’m saying things with a purpose. I’m not saying things because, like, I already said the thing. Like, I don’t have to repeat the thing I already said. Like, that doesn’t make any sense. Watch our live stream on agreement, Dan. That will help you understand where we’re coming from. Manuel, close this out before we end up in an interlude. Yes, before we explode. Oh, too late. Yeah, again, saddened attention from me. Yeah, maybe related to these two realms and how you’re relating to them. And reflect on the things that you struggled with. Okay, I think I have something in general there. So, imitation is trying to establish a relationship to what motivates the other. Not in essence. Like, I’m just not very pragmatic. Awesome. Right? And then if I have the same participation, I can see what they’re seeing. And that’s how you create true understanding. And I think that’s the key that’s missing. Like, that’s the intimacy problem or whatever. It’s like, I can see what they’re seeing without taking their participation. And so, if you, this is to you, Danny, right? Like, if you want to understand what I’m trying to communicate, you need to understand my participation. Like, what is the role that I or the identity that I assume towards you that contextualizes my words that it gives different meaning to my words? Because I said the same words twice and I meant different things. No, I like both of the ideas. Imitation, establishing a relationship by seeing what motivates the other person or something like that. No, and that’s true. You know, your words have the context of who you are. I get the sense anyway, I’m still working on this. Never mind it. You can just say it. Well, no, I’m just, I mean, I, oh, I was trying to destroy or perhaps deconstruct, for lack of a better word, the cave. I have the sense that it’s about being, and that doesn’t seem to be the common interpretation of the cave. I know I’m a little blehav. I know we’re not at the cave. I don’t know what you mean by being that would relate to decay. Let me search my notes. There’s way too many notes. Okay. So have you paid attention to the way that I summarize the book, the style that I’m using and the decisions that I make within my summary? I mean, to varying degrees. I mean, what are you getting at? Well, I’m participating in a form, right, or an idea of, or a being in relationship to the text. So you can say, well, that’s maybe a good way to relate to the text or not, right? But if you want to get my understanding, you’re going to have to participate in that being. Or you’re going to have to say, well, my being is bigger so that I can subsume your being in my being. But that’s probably not going to happen. Because this is the argument that I have with that. I’m saying, oh, I’m struggling with this. And then he goes to translate that in his experience. And I’m like, yeah, but your limited relationship to this is not even close to the complexity that I’m experiencing. So whatever analogy that you’re going to draw up within your own experience is going to fall short and it’s going to be an insult, literally. Because instead of trusting me on what I say and that it’s true, like for example, that the way that I am impacted by this is this, right? You can just adopt that as a statement of fact, or you can try and understand me and fail and misframe my experience. Because that’s the only consequence, right? You can only frame my experience correctly if you’re bigger than me, right? And that’s possible if you’re relating to a four-year-old. But with me, that’s no longer possible. Well, I don’t really have anything generative, I don’t think, right now. But I like what you had, Manu. And thanks for leading today, by the way. Thanks for ripping all those notes. Yeah, I really like this, Pug’s sake stuff. Bazzani, Mark, Ethan, if you guys got any reflections? I do not. I just hope people take away from the complexity and the idea that it’s getting harder, not easier. That is deliberate and explicit. Yeah, just it’s good to be able to get to listen in. Sorry, I had some stuff going on, so I wasn’t completely engaged the whole time, but it was definitely good to be here. So thanks. I’m glad you’re here. Thanks for being here, Ethan. I think Ethan’s out, so well, shall we close it out? Yes. All right. All right, we’ll see you guys. Bye.