Episode 46: Plato's Republic Book IX-2: The Verdict

Could a tyrant lurk within the recesses of your own mind? Prepare for a philosophical odyssey that explores the descent from democracy to tyranny of the soul. As your guides, Eddie and Aneesh navigate the intricate passages of Plato's Republic, where Socrates himself wrestles with the shadows of unnecessary pleasures and the dark, lawless drives that threaten to unseat reason. This episode dissects the generational metamorphosis from the oligarchic individual to the democratic and finally, the tyrannical person, revealing how societal and familial pressures sculpt our inner despots. Together, we unravel the emergence of tyranny within, pitting it against the virtue and reasoned control exemplified by the philosophical king.

Imagine living under the dominion of your basest desires, a life devoid of true contentment. That's the stark reality of the tyrannical soul, a theme we dissect as we traverse the murky relationship between forms of governance and individual character. We juxtapose the chaotic inner world of a tyrant with the ordered existence of the philosopher-king, diving into the Socratic response to justice and the intricate nature of dream states. By drawing parallels to the Buddhist concept of Maya, we invite you to question the illusion of control and the nature of happiness, stirring a philosophical banquet that satisfies the most curious of intellects.

Join us as we ponder the hierarchy of pleasures and the pursuit of happiness, challenging the notion that sensory delights offer the summit of human joy. Instead, we propose that the true peak lies in the realm of rational thought and learning. We pause at the precipice of a profound conclusion, setting the stage for a future episode that promises to unveil the life of the philosopher king in comparison to that of a tyrant. Embark on this insightful journey with us into the philosophy of governance, self-governance, and the essence of what it means to be truly human.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:19

We just get a riff.

Speaker 2: 0:22

Arbonize.

Speaker 1: 0:23

All right, we are recording. And so we are now in the midst of book 9, the second to last book, the Republic. So just to kind of recapitulate where we are in the discussion, so we're talking about the imperfect societies and what Socrates has done. He's talked about the nature of the state and the nature of the citizen with these imperfect societies. And so we've discussed the aristocracy, which is the ideal city-state, the just city, the perfectly just city, with the perfectly just ruler, the philosopher, king. Then we have the democracy, which is the honor-loving society, the oligarchy, the wealth-loving society. Then we have democracy, which is the freedom-loving society, and then, toward the end of book 8 and then bleeding into book 9, we now have a discussion of tyranny.

Speaker 1: 1:21

And the beginning of book 9, it's essentially a continuation of a discussion of the nature of tyranny which, by the end of book 8, had really remained to be fully discussed. And so, in their consideration of the tyrannical man, they discuss how he evolves from a democratic one, and then they ask the question as to whether this tyrannical man is wretched or happy. And then Socrates has a little segue at that point to say well, before we can say whether or not he's happy, we need to talk a little bit about the unnecessary pleasures that surround us, because they're not all equal in nature, and what he's getting at here is that there are some unnecessary pleasures that are essentially the dark sides of us, sort of the hedonistic sides of us, that come out, as he says, when he sleeps. So he says that that they're likely present in all of us, but they're held in check by laws and reason, and these are drives that are awakened within us while we sleep. So he uses the analogy of sleep quite often here and he describes this as sort of the beastly and savage element of ourselves. And you could think of these as the hedonistic drives that rise up and are released when, to put it in his words, when our shame and wisdom sleep. And these include biological drives like hunger, sex and violent tendencies, and he says that this is the part of us that quote omits no act of folly or shamelessness. So these are drives that do not shrink from foul or foolish behavior.

Speaker 1: 3:01

And then, in his exposition of these dark drives within everybody, he does have a another subset segue where he describes the sleep of the rational person, somebody who's healthy and modern in themselves, and as opposed to allowing the dark drives to awaken within them as they fall asleep. The rational person awakens the rational element at bedtime and he uses the analogy of allowing it to feast on fine arguments, especially on speculation. This will be important later when he talks about the contrast between the philosopher king and the tyrant. But he says that the rational individual who, as they approach sleep, they are able to have contemplative thoughts about argument, speculation, basically rational discourse, because they don't starve or feast their appetites, so to put it in his words, so that they slumber without disturbing his best part and I should mention best part is a phrase that's used a lot in book nine and the implication here is what they're talking about is the rational side of things, the best part.

Speaker 1: 4:12

So when he talks about the best part of the city, he's talking about the ruling elements. When he's talking about the best part of the individual, he's talking about the rational elements and so the rational person. By not allowing their appetites to either starve or to be indulged, they also allow their spirited part to be calm, and at that point the mind, as he puts it, is ready to grasp truth and have the least lawless dreams. So lawless is the other term he uses to describe these dark drives, but suffice to say the point he's trying to make is that there are terrible and savage, lawless dreams, and so you have to understand that.

Speaker 1: 4:46

Now, moving into how the tyrant evolves from the democratic man which, as we discussed, the democratic man is somebody who has an upbringing in an oligarchy, so they have teachers, parents or a father, to keep the analogy going, the father-son transition here in this discussion. So the question is how do we make the democratic man a father? And so they have teachers, parents or a father, to keep the analogy going, the father-son transition here in this discussion, who advocates for thrift and wealth seeking, which are reinforced over frivolity and extravagance. But what happens then is the son of the oligarch, excuse me then begins to associate with others who are full of appetites that are extravagant.

Speaker 2: 5:31

So the democrat you mean Well this would be the. The democratic tyranny right.

Speaker 1: 5:39

Well no, this is actually the son of the oligarch because, this is how the democrat evolves.

Speaker 2: 5:43

Oh sorry, you're starting even before that. Okay, sorry. Well, this is where he went.

Speaker 1: 5:47

And so then he associates with somebody that are full of appetites that are extravagant, lawless, they eventually indulge. However, this person, the son of the oligarch, who becomes a democrat, still has a better nature and settles between the two ways, between penny-pinching miserliness and spend-thrift extravagance. And then what happens? Now the democrat has a son.

Speaker 1: 6:09

Now the son of the democrat is the one who evolves into the tyrannical man, because what happens is he is also still being exposed to these bad associates which are trying to encourage him to indulge in lawlessness or in sort of the more baser drives, but the only thing that the democratic family can do is reinforce the middle waffling path.

Speaker 1: 6:34

So, all they can do is reinforce essentially a weak position, and so all his associates have to do is feed the latter these lawless indulgences. And if there is an occasion where the son might actually resist the tendencies and fall back to their baseline teaching, that's when the bad associates implant the quote great winged drone, which what I think of is essentially the tyrant within the soul who represents the, an appetitive king, the exact opposite of a philosopher king. This is the part of the soul that subjugates the spirited and rational element for its own desires, and so this process of succumbing to the appetites, either via peer pressure or some normalization, is where shame and temperance are purged here. Then Socrates moves on to a description of the tyrannical man as somebody who is drunk, somebody who tries to rule others and even gods as well, so somebody who has completely lost their sense of not only appropriateness but temperance, certainly wisdom. And then they discuss how this tyrant lives, and they describe a very depraved life where the person struggles quote with a great swarm of pleasures inside him.

Speaker 1: 7:52

And so this is the life of feasts, revelries, luxuries, girlfriends, but importantly, there is a multiplication of the desires, so they're never fully satisfied, and that's another important point that will become important later when we're talking about whether or not the tyrant is happy. None of these desires are actually ever satisfied, and in fact what they do is they grow and multiply. And so to satisfy these growing and swelling desires multi form desires the tyrant squanders their money and time, and they get to the point where that's exhausted. They begin borrowing money and time, and then, when that gets exhausted, now they're crossing the threshold into criminal behavior. So this is where the tyrant will resort to stealing, and if that doesn't work they'll resort to force. And then, if this force may actually in the beginning be sort of pointed at strangers or people that the tyrant is not familiar with, but it can actually reach the point where they're starting to be used force against their own family members.

Speaker 1: 8:57

And so this is where Socrates gives a story of a tyrant willing to rob his own parents to satisfy his plans and desires for a new girlfriend. And so this is where he makes the ironic statement that we talked about last week, where he's like what such a blessing to have a tyrannical sign.

Speaker 1: 9:16

So Socrates with the one liners. But essentially the tyrant must acquire wealth or suffer pain, because now what they've done is essentially made itself slave to their desires. And what happens, the process, going back into the process is that the traditional opinions about what is fine or shameful are essentially overcome within the tyrant and they give way to new opinions which essentially protect what he calls erotic love. So there's a very it's a very close tie-in between the nature of the tyrannical soul and the nature of lust as essentially an overwhelming force that blunts somebody's rational sense and, in this case, subjugates it completely. Now he says what happens is and this is an important statement, and this is in, this is 547d, which kind of encapsulates it. Let's see, he says so like a great description of the tyrannical person is like so he says so. But so he's talking about this passion, this erotic force, and he says but under the tyranny of passion, what he used to become occasionally in his dreams, he has now become permanently while awake, and there is no terrible murder, no food and no act from which he will refrain. So this is the state of the tyrant, essentially he's, he's asleep, ie the rational element has been completely, is now completely somber, and what is now left awake in the soul are these hedonistic drives. So then that moves on to a discussion about.

Speaker 1: 11:04

You know what the nature of tyrants as a group in the city are like, and so Socrates mentions that if there are a few of them, many of them will, for example, just leave the city, especially if the city puts up resistance. They're going to go look for spoils of war elsewhere, they're going to go look for instability, and and then the ones that are actually well spoken good speakers become political, sick of fans, and and then, when they become new, numerous, what they do is they actually gather around a tyrant, somebody who sort of acts as their avatar, their leader, and essentially that tyrant does to the city what he did to his family, which is to chastise their parents. Their teachers chastise them for their teaching and their adherence to the old traditional ways, but what that's publicly, but in private life, what the tyrannical individual does is they seek flatterers. They're very manipulative. It's very close to, like I said, criminal or anti-social behavior. They're willing to fawn and flatter and provide platitudes, make gestures of friendships if it benefits them, but once they get what they want, socrates quickly points out that the person. Once he's gotten what they want, their person is a stranger again. So they're, there's somebody who they have no allegiance to. So the tyrant is somebody who's always a master to no one or a slave to somebody else. They're never in an ideal state.

Speaker 1: 12:34

So, to sum it up, the tyrant is the the worst type of man, because, using again the sleep analogy that it began with, they're essentially living in a waking nightmare at that point. And so then, here we kind of, are now beginning a sort of I think, what we crept into in the last episode which, which types of character and well, I'm sorry, which category of character is going to be happiest, right, the different degrees of happiness within the, the different types, and so they talk about ranking them right, and so we can pick it up from there. So, essentially, they talk about how they would rank the, the character types, in order that they were discussed, with the philosopher king being the one who has the life that is, the most lives, the most pleasantly, is the word that they use, although they also do invoke the word happiness. And then it's the democrat. Who's the next one down? The oligarch, the next one down, the democrat, and the tyrant is the least happy.

Speaker 2: 13:40

Yeah, so they get there not, you know, not just by saying that, okay, fine, so you know, this is the rank order. Like this is a exercise of logic. They have spent, spent, spent, many, many chapters now, or a long trail of conversation to get to this point. And this is what soccer he's had started off with. He had said that the man who is just, whether or not he's perceived to be just, would be happy, and a man who is unjust, whether or not he's perceived to be unjust, as a matter of fact, people perceive him to be just that person is unhappy. And and from this is a trisimachian argument that the unjust man would be perceived by everybody as just, will, will, will be able to effect, in effect have these contracts, both socially and privately. That is to his benefit. He'll be able to marry his children into big family, into rich families, he'll enjoy money, power, status and he would be happy, whereas the just man, who everybody perceives as unjust would be, would be, you know, be impoverished and will not have his way in the world and would be unhappy. That was a trisimachian argument. And, and socrates then, in order to kind of put that argument to the test, says let's figure out with you know these two, let's look at these two different men. But we cannot talk about the men in and of themselves. Let's talk about a republic and let's create a republic a philosophical republic and a tyrannical republic and see which is healthy. Image is not.

Speaker 2: 15:18

And you did a very good job in summarizing the, the wretched state of a tyrannical, the constitution and the wretched state of a tyrannical person. And that is the like, the, the, the socrates, kind of tying a bow very nice bow on to his like argument. He packages argument really well. He put a bow on it and what he's trying to show is at the end of that, once you are done listening to what you just said about the tyrannical mind a tyrannical mind, that is, is there is no order inside of it, it is just led astray by passion and the. There is no ruler inside of it. The ruler is passion, passion itself being an appetite not belonging to the, the rational mind, but belonging to a sub mind, the mind of the. It's like what we call the lizard brain. And so your operative lizard brain is ruling the mind of a tyrannical person. So how can that mind? Of all the things that that mind accomplishes, you can only see a state of absolute depravity, of of. There is no happiness in there, there is no peace in there, there's nothing in there.

Speaker 2: 16:31

So once you listen to this argument, now that we have spoken about the philosophical nature, the democratic nature, the oligarchic nature, the democratic nature and now the tyrannical nature, if you follow along this argument and you nod yes, now he says okay. So now you've heard these constitutions, you've heard how each of those constitutions actually represent a, an individual. And and now let us judge each of these individuals, but not just judge them based on what we see on the outside, but a true judge, a judge who, who can, who is, who can witness how this individual behaves in public and in person, in private, in the go, inside the deepest recesses of his mind, know exactly what this person is thinking, feeling, doing in when he's, when there's no one around, and if you can be in that state, only then you get to judge right and it is it.

Speaker 1: 17:34

It's at this point where there is a another level, a very, very shrewd maneuver by Socrates that you know. At the very beginning he said in order to understand justice, we much blow up the individual, find it within the individual and then come out to this, the level of the state, and understand it. And that pays dividends here, because what he's trying to do now to answer the Thrasymachus challenge is explain, and since he has built the ideal city or the ideal individual, then when he now, he now has the framework he needs to describe the tyrannical individual in the tyrannical state, and so now he can answer the actual question that the Thrasyamacian challenge points to, which is, you can't really answer his question without understanding what's happening inside the individual, at the level of soul.

Speaker 1: 18:31

And so this is the Cha-ching moment, I think correct in terms of the analogy, because now he can say, yes, you can talk. You can talk about appearances, but that's all you're talking about. You're not talking about the state of the perfectly unjust man as being happy, and so the couple of themes that you mentioned and you touched upon. Extremely important is this dreamlike state and dream and slavery like those are the two things yeah, the dreamlike right the dreamlike state.

Speaker 2: 19:04

And when you say someone is asleep, right to say that one is asleep and one is when one is awake. You know, we take that literally to mean falling asleep and then waking up in the morning. So the Buddhists will talk about this. Like you know who goes to sleep and who wake, who is asleep and who wakes up. You know, if you say that I went to sleep last night, were you sleeping last night? If you were sleeping last night, how do you know? And then, so that's so, then that's what what that means to say is that what that goes to show, essentially, is that there are parts of you that you don't get to control. Would you call yourself? What are those parts? You see, there are bodily functions that are happening at night that you are not even aware of. Right? The? Who is that happening to? Was it happening to you or not? Would you? Would you lay claim that you know? If? If you sleepwalk, would you say that you were walking? You would not right. And and so it same thing is the snoring. Do you snore at night, sir? And I don't know if I do or not. Why feel like, yes, he does. Well, does he? If he doesn't know that he does it. Now. That's the one we're looking at.

Speaker 2: 20:14

The other thing is, when you're in a dream, say you, you go to sleep at night, say, yeah, you know, I know I'm asleep because I dreamt about something. Now ask yourself you're in a dream, but you're in that dream. The dream seems to as real to you as this does, right? So if enduring that dream, if that seems real to you, right then how do you know that this is also not a dream? You see, when you say I woke from a dream, another way to look at it is probably when you, when you close your eyes here and went into the dream world, you awoke in the dream world, and that person in the dream world is like inception would look at this and say, oh, that was the dream, this is reality. So what is reality? What is a dream?

Speaker 2: 20:58

A lot of what is going on in our minds, the mind, which you know, you and me cannot point with one finger and say this is where the mind exists inside of a brain, the mind in and of itself. There is no organized center for, and so the actions of the mind or the, the, the thoughts of the mind, or the machinations of the mind also don't have a center. And if and essentially, all of this is what Buddhists call samsara. Samsara is is the word, or Maya, maya is the, is the, the Vedic term for it, and what this means is kind of illusion. So everything you see right now or here, or or deal with in the in the world, when you're in your in your world, are basically impulses that hit upon an organic brand, on an organic matter, and you interpret it to be so.

Speaker 2: 21:57

Reality is, what is reality is the question is essentially, what is in fact true, what is always there and never goes away and doesn't come to be, but always is? Is not any of this? Our perception of light, our perception of touch is all just An organic matter trying to make its best assessment of what's going on in the world. And, as a matter of fact, we all know this really well, like we get fooled by our senses all the time. So we always be At best, even at best, we are living in a mirage, we're living in in a dreamlike state, in this Maya or samsara at best, and that is even saying yes to that statement requires Understanding of the difference between what is the truth and what is opinion, what has always been and what comes to be.

Speaker 2: 22:46

Understanding your own nature to be something that is temporary, and that all of this, this is not reality, requires you to understand that there is in fact a reality that exists, external to what you can perceive, but all-encompassing. That is the nature of the one, or the unity Right that requires a rational mind to elevate itself to a certain level. You see, because in order to be able to do that, to be able to elevate one's rational mind to a level where you can perceive reality or not perceive, but Understand that there's a reality that exists outside Of your perception and that your perception is just like a mere existence inside of this reality, that is the most elevated state that you can be in, and in order to get there, though, the only way you get there is if you Imagine at what level one has to operate to be there. If one is, is, is Is in a state of constant seeking of pleasure, or satisfaction of pleasure. That is your lizard brain, that is the non-rational aspect of it. If you're constantly at that level, there is no way that you can elevate yourself to the level of looking around you and saying that this is not real. The pleasure that I'm deriving, the pleasure that I'm seeking, is nothing. It doesn't mean anything. It's not real. It is just my perception of my brain's perception, and none it's all. My as a mech.

Speaker 2: 24:10

A tyrannical mind believes that pleasure and pain are Physical pleasure, physical pain, the, the real, the appetites of the body are the truth. That Is the truth, and it sees no other truth but that. How can this not be true? You know what is? What is beauty? It is something that looks pleasurable when I look at it. What's ugly? Something that doesn't look really pleasurable. What? What is what? You know? What is good is what makes me feel good, as opposed to what is the good.

Speaker 2: 24:47

They can't even come out of that. They're constantly bathed in that, or not only that, and but the problem with that is that they don't even have the ability to rationalize how, if something is in fact the good, if you acquire it somehow, then you should be set. You don't, you shouldn't have to crave for anything else. You know even that simple argument they don't understand, and and tyrannical minds will constantly be in pursuit and they'll forever confused as to why they are never satisfied and Because of that they are always think they're getting more of the same thing Will. It will, in fact, lead to a better state, which is that is the nature of Samsara or Maya, or the dream it's never enough. You're never going to be enough. As a matter of fact, beyond a certain point, you're gonna be disgusted off. It's like the heroin addict the depravity, level of depravity someone's ready to go to just to get it.

Speaker 1: 25:38

I was reading through this. A lot of it sounds like the the progressive shedding of Social norms and somebody who's addicted right there, I hear this Gradually erodes away now that is, you know, we look at that.

Speaker 2: 25:53

We say oh my gosh, you know, poor guy, look at this person.

Speaker 1: 25:55

No, right, but that person's drives reside within you too, You're only one. You're only one misstep away. You're only one you know circumstance of fortune away from ending up in the exact same situation.

Speaker 2: 26:07

And, as a matter of fact, someone who's in a plane elevated above you looks at you. It's just like the same way that you look at the junkie.

Speaker 1: 26:12

Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly you see what I mean.

Speaker 2: 26:15

We are all junkies, yeah you know, that's probably not the right word to use where we are, all you know, substance abusers or whatever right, because we are all dependent. We're all dependent, we're addicted to these conventional things, we are addicted to comfort, we are addicted to wealth, we are addicted to looks and we are addicted to those things. And you know, and we will do the exact same things that a person who's addicted to heroin would do if those are taken away from him, or to seek them.

Speaker 1: 26:42

So this is a good segue into the next phase of the discussion, because, well, so I guess, before we move that Move to that point, so I did want to read this quote. We're Essentially to underscore what you said. This is where Socrates essentially declares that he's made the argument against the Simica's. And so he says shall we then hire a herald or shall I myself announce to the son of Airston has given as his verdict that the best and most just is the most happy, and that he is the one who is most kingly and rules like a king over himself, whereas the worst and most unjust is the most wretched.

Speaker 1: 27:19

And he again is the one who, because he is most tyrannical, is the greatest tyrant over himself and his city right so and so then, here now to get into the discussion, and I think this is a good way to good point of segue into that, because one of the main driving forces of addiction or the, and the depravity of living that results from it, is this seeking of pleasure, right? But Socrates Believes, and in fact he starts to enumerate, that there's actually other types of pleasures, right?

Speaker 2: 27:53

Well, not just seeking a pleasure of believing that, that the pleasure that you are seeking is the truth. Sure, that is the truth, that is the good, that is the beautiful right.

Speaker 1: 28:04

So, just like he talked about the, the darker, hedonistic drives and pleasures, he then starts to Expand on the idea that the philosopher king Is happiest, right. So if the tyrant is the most wretched and least happy, then there must be reasons for that the philosopher king is most Happy, right. And then for him to explain that he has to now enumerate that fact that there's different types of pleasures, right. That there is a pleasure at the level of the rational that supersedes the pleasure of the base drives.

Speaker 2: 28:44

I would say that you know, we would like to use the term happy. I've come more and more to understand that it is not so much that the philosopher is King is happy, it's the philosopher King is suffering the least.

Speaker 1: 29:01

I agree with that, but I'm just using the word that they use, no.

Speaker 2: 29:03

I'm just saying that, you know I, because when I was reading this I was also looking at the stuff.

Speaker 1: 29:08

I was talking about the use of happy and I was trying to question the translation a little bit. But I mean, we've talked about this, like happy is a word we don't invoke.

Speaker 2: 29:16

Correct, I think, happy with their life, not happy inside of their life.

Speaker 1: 29:20

Yeah, they live most pleasantly Correct, and that phrase is at least suffering.

Speaker 2: 29:26

This is to your, to your point. The, the, the tyrannical person, appears to be happy inside of their life. That is, they're doing things that eating good food and you know, and having all those luxuries could make you happy for a brief moment. But they're not happy with their life. They have no friends. You know they have. They've been unkind to everybody who loves them. They are afraid of their own safety and they are constantly pandering to people who they would otherwise not affiliate with, just because they're worried that they are going to harm them. So all of this leads to a sort of dissatisfaction with your life. They are suffering, but they may appear happy. The philosopher King may appear that he's suffering.

Speaker 1: 30:11

But it's not happy. Yeah, but it's in fact happy.

Speaker 2: 30:13

And so to your point. So go ahead.

Speaker 1: 30:15

So you're saying that he's, he's talking about yeah, yeah, I was gonna let you take.

Speaker 2: 30:22

So the, so the, coming to that part, there is something because they talk about even before they come to the pleasure part. They talk about the, that not just a tyrannical person, because there's a very key thing here. You know, play, though, is writing this book for people who he believes are going to go on to lead to run for office, and you know, this is not meant to be for those people who are just going to spend the rest of their life in poultry pursuits or just in, you know, manual labor. He's writing this for the elite, and so he. There's this statement. He says that the, the tyrant, the tyrant who is a tyrant in on in to him, unto himself, that tyrant is not the worst of them all. Oh yeah, there's somebody who's worse than the tyrant, who's a tyrant unto himself, and everybody's like whoa, wait a minute, who's this person who's worse than the tyrant? Says a tyrant who isn't, who's a tyrant unto himself and is a tyrant unto others, is a tyrant unto a population, is a political tyrant, somebody who actually becomes a tyrannical leader.

Speaker 2: 31:40

That is the worst. That's the worst.

Speaker 2: 31:41

Right and because they're a prisoner, right. And so then he comes to this point. So why is that the case? Because, first of all, yes, they are miserable inside because they don't have any. They're a slave to the passions they have. They have met it out in justice to their own family members. They have no friends that they can count on inside of their mind. It's completely disordered.

Speaker 2: 32:05

Not only that you take this person now, who is now, has has to find a way to lead a populace. It's like asking a sick man to run a triathlon. You're sick inside and now you're supposed to, you know to, to extend, extend yourself physically. How's it going to be? It's not going to be possible, it's only going to be, it's going to be a worse of a challenge. And not only that when you're fighting against yourself, it's very different. As opposed to, you are meeting out injustice, actually meeting out injustice to the people who are around you.

Speaker 2: 32:36

Because now, suddenly, you take this leader, this tyrannical leader who is surrounded by this population that he's meeting out injustice, to staking from them, to satisfy his own impulses and drives. And now, if you were to just take this person and transplant him out of the city, which is surrounded by other tyrannical cities just like this, where it is allowed for somebody to accrue money and show power. You know that, in and of itself, tyrants will give other tyrants company and will allow for this To to to exist in order to justify their own existence. Where you take this tyrant out and you transplant him to a place in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by his people but no other tyrants around him, you know, what do you think is going to happen this time?

Speaker 2: 33:18

Very immediately, this time is going to be fearful. His own life, because he's immediately outnumbered, several thousands to one, immediately fearful. So now, what will that water this tyrant? Have to do? The same people that the tyrant was shoving with it under the the heel of his boot. He now has to flatter them and pander to them. And so you can imagine a tyrant's life is constantly a life of fear, and he fears the people whom he detests the most.

Speaker 1: 33:44

Right, and it's because and this something that Socrates hints at here is that tyrants create other tyrants.

Speaker 2: 33:53

Yes, there is.

Speaker 1: 33:54

There is. There is a line, and actually I'm not really remembering where it is, but he talks about how, in one translation, the tyrant makes others like himself, and then the sentence ends with the word unfortunate. But I've read other translations where it says the tyrant makes the other like himself in this depraved state.

Speaker 1: 34:13

So the tyrant is essentially creating other tyrants, and that's progress. And that's precisely what happens in the situation where you take the tyrant and in Socrates is thought experiment, where you extract the tyrannical city and implant it on a completely deserted island, for example, where all of the institutional methods of oppression the tyrant has used to keep the populace in check Once that's gone.

Speaker 1: 34:40

Now he, this tyrant, is in a fight for their life because now they have to resort back to the tyrants, manipulations and their drives to seek sponsors and slaves advice versa in order for their own, for them to survive, and they've all come to terrible ends, man.

Speaker 2: 35:02

If you look at tyrants in even in modern history, what's happened to them? What's happened to their families?

Speaker 1: 35:09

It's just that it's hard to think of an example of history where a tyrant did not. They always die Terribly.

Speaker 2: 35:17

It's not just dying a peaceful death, the old age or something like that and Mussolini, Ceausescu. Idi Amin. All these guys Forget it. There's not a history lesson. My point is that this stuff has been going on forever. This is just humans being humans. Another thing, though, that to think about is we always say this this is human nature. It is human nature to be a tyrant.

Speaker 2: 35:47

In fact, it's not the caricature that he draws upon this ultimate being of this great winged drone sitting on this person's head. It's constantly being stung to a frenzy with passions. I mean that caricature is very, very few.

Speaker 1: 36:06

Yeah, I think when they say it's human nature and I don't know, depending on the context, but when I hear that phrase I don't think that they mean that that's the entirety of human nature. But it's a sobering point that Socrates himself makes. This is within all of us and that's why it's important to check it. And the way you check that is with educational, philosophical discourse.

Speaker 2: 36:30

But another way. The optimistic end of this is the philosopher king is also in every one of us, and that's where this conversation starts from. Look the order of the Republic. Is it possible? Everybody says the tyrannical person, anybody can see it. Yeah, you can become the tyrannical person tomorrow, but actually being the tyrannical person is as hard as in fact it's harder to be the tyrannical person than to be the philosopher king. Because think about it this way Anybody who reads that line about how one could be have no friends right, willfully, truly have no friends because they do not believe anybody to be the equal, have no mentors because they truly believe they're superior than everybody else.

Speaker 2: 37:14

Have be so engrossed in desires that they're willing to sell their own kids for money or, you know, or steal from their own parents. You know that kind of a depraved human being to be, that to willfully choose to be that right is extremely hard for people to do. To have all of that is not having one or the other Life. Circumstance could lead you at some point to do one bad thing, but to willfully do all of those bad things just because you feel that you want the next high, you only see that in very few people and unfortunately you find this in in terrible states of addiction. You actually notice this, where people are willing to do these terrible things for the next high. And these people it's almost like they're a slave to that addiction. It's not like a choice that they are choosing to do it. You see what I mean. They're led to do it.

Speaker 1: 38:14

I was going to say that it's not even. They're not even rationalizing, they are not like.

Speaker 2: 38:18

They're completely that wing drone is sitting right on top of the head and stinging them. They're not thinking they are masked, they're slaves to the to this. So would you say that that is a human being? As a matter of fact, most people argue that when they see people in that state, they say this person is not even a human being. There's no human, there's no humanity left in this person.

Speaker 1: 38:36

And in this, because they lost, they've lost their moral element they have, they have lost their philosophy of the rational mind, right, the rational part of it is gone.

Speaker 2: 38:43

So then, in the same breath, how can one say that that is human nature? That is not human nature, it's not the entire.

Speaker 1: 38:50

Thing.

Speaker 2: 38:51

No, what I'm saying is that is. A lot of people would argue that that is not human. See a human.

Speaker 1: 39:00

I see what you're saying. It goes both ways right. You see what I mean.

Speaker 2: 39:02

Humans are capable of that right Under the right circumstances, or around wrong circumstances In the wrong circumstances, you can lose so much of humanity that even a fellow human being won't call you a human being. You look like a human being but you, but inside they know that this person is hollowed out. There's no human being left in there, right, so that, as a matter of fact, is actually not somebody that you would call a human, but in our imagine, if you actually meet somebody who's a philosopher, came they will exude all the qualities. That is that that you would say this person is a human being, not only a human being. This person's in the elevated human being. They might not be the same human being that you would, you aspire to be, because you see the sacrifice needed, right, most of us are walking around with with democratic you know constitutions inside of us, democratic republics inside of us.

Speaker 2: 39:52

Some of us can be lucky enough to be oligarchic constitutions. Some of us could be lucky enough to have democratic constitutions. Those are very, very few. Just, you could probably call your fingertips how many you know philosophical rulers or aristocratic constitutions, humans with aristocratic constitutions walking on this planet. You will not even be able to see them maybe, but my point is that each of these states looks at that other states and says. I would like to be this person.

Speaker 2: 40:17

The person that we can aspire to be for the most part is an oligarchic person, somebody who, who, who has money and is able to temple their lifestyle so that they're not lavish about it and they only able to spend on things that are that, that are necessary, not be flashy, right, but not participate necessarily in public office or doing they're not seeking honor, right. And then some of those people, some people can choose to be democratic, saying that you know what? We have enough money. Money is not so much of an interest. I can use my money for bigger days or gain honor so that I have a legacy to leave behind, right. So you can see those.

Speaker 2: 40:52

These are all human caricatures. These are human people. They're human, no, human people. They're human, right, and most of us, most of humanity, is in that space either democratic constitutions, oligarchy constitutions, and then some of them are democratic constitutions, right, but if, but if we? But if you look at the tyrannical constitution, truly tyrannical constitution, that's actually subhumans, actually not human, but the philosophical mind is a superhuman, the Gruber bench, right. That is as human or the most human as you can get, the most rational of all the things. You see what I mean.

Speaker 1: 41:32

Yeah, I see what you're saying so this.

Speaker 2: 41:37

The reason why I'm going in that direction, essentially, is that, coming now, next coming to then, asking somebody okay, now tell me who will be the happiest, right that that the tyrannical person is who Thresa Marcus said is the good.

Speaker 2: 41:54

As a matter of fact, he said that being wise is bad If wisdom is not conventional wisdom, conventional wisdom is what is good. So then now, after you hear this argument, would you say, if you were to picture this person in front of you, this subhuman person in front of you not subhuman in any other sense, that they have lost their humanity would you say that this person is the happiest. It's like saying the person who's addled with drug addiction so much so that they are at that they're completely bottomed out, right, that person is the happiest person. It's like saying that. So then obviously, anybody who's heard this argument so far from now will say how would you rank these people from the time from, from a happiness standpoint? And I would change it to saying who is suffering the least? They would say the philosopher, king, or the aristocrat suffers the least, the democrat suffers the least, the democrat, the next, then the oligarch, then the democrat, and the person suffering the most is the tyrannical person. Constitution.

Speaker 1: 42:57

Is it yeah?

Speaker 2: 42:59

The reason I say suffering the least, essentially, is because the next point we talked about and we'll come to that and I'll elaborate further as to why I say suffering the least and not use happiness necessarily. But even if you make it simplify it, who's the happiest? The philosopher king? Who's the least? Who's the most wretched, most fearful, the most pained.

Speaker 1: 43:22

The one in the least optimal state is definitely the tyrannical.

Speaker 2: 43:25

I think, suffering.

Speaker 1: 43:26

I think that's a good surrogate word. But you know, the philosopher king is not a verse of suffering either. They just know why they're suffering.

Speaker 2: 43:34

But you see that they can choose only right.

Speaker 1: 43:37

So they're aware there's a, there's like a purpose at the other end of their suffering, which is why you see what I mean right, but it gives you see, when you only a philosopher king only philosopher king would think that way.

Speaker 2: 43:50

Correct.

Speaker 1: 43:50

They're still suffering. It's just that they really and that's why you see that gets at the point of sacrifices is making. Is that? That's why this is higher level of appreciative? That's correct. Sensations of pleasure at the rational level. To say that I'm not just wise. Somebody who's a philosopher, king, would, for the right circumstances, for the right purpose, would endure all sorts of suffering and still, in the big sense that we mean the word happy. They would be happy. That's correct, right, yeah that's correct.

Speaker 2: 44:20

So then they say okay, so we are dividing. So now that is the word, that's the word the son of Airston has said. He himself has announced that the philosopher king or the aristocrat constitution is going to be the happiest. But let's not just, he says, let's not just stop there, right, let's look and see inside of these, these, the souls of these humans, right, and really make another argument.

Speaker 2: 44:55

This is the second phase of my argument. I've already shown how the philosopher king would be the happiest. But let's go inside of their souls, right, he says okay, we have, we have looked at the souls of human beings and we know that the souls are divided into these three elements Right, there is a, there is a appetitive element, there is a honored, seeking or spirited element, and the third is the philosophical element. Right, each of these elements have a corresponding pleasure that they are seeking, right. This goes to show that, no matter how rational you get, there is still a pleasure to be sought. Yes, and that's why I say that even the philosopher king, the happiness is not the right word, because you, this pleasure that is being sought for the, for the, for the, the, the, the philosopher king is wisdom and and knowledge knowing what is good, knowing what is true and knowing what is beautiful. And knowledge is beyond the realm of human comprehension, right, so you're always in pursuit of it.

Speaker 1: 46:01

Right, and that's why I'm always more comfortable with the phrase of channeling appetites as opposed to, you know, ignoring them or suppressing them. Correct, because the that part, as you pointed out, you can never truly escape. It's a matter of channeling it, right.

Speaker 2: 46:16

You're in pursuit. So to your point. What you're saying is there is a, there's a pleasure that is being sought, but the pleasure is of a higher order, right? So that is the pleasure of the, of the three classes in the soul the, the rational element, the spirited element and the operative element.

Speaker 1: 46:30

Right, and it's not so much that the, so all three, that's. The point here is that and it shouldn't be misinterpreted when you read the the trial about the tripartite soul. It's not like the rational element should be 99% of everything.

Speaker 2: 46:45

No, everything is not for the appetitive element is crucial.

Speaker 1: 46:49

It's necessary along with the spirited and along with the rational.

Speaker 2: 46:51

We have discussed this in the, in the, in the philosophical soul. Right, you need the operative element. It has to, it has, it is. It is governed by the philosophical, the rational element through the spirited element. You need all three, but each of those have their own pleasure the pleasure of the, the. The rational element is wisdom or learning, learning the, the, the pleasure that the spirited element is going for is honor, and what the operative element is going for is where is multifarious? It could be the appetite is the largest of these pleasures. You could not even put them in a single word. It could be its pleasure seeking for many different things, from food to sex, to money, to all of these other things. But you can. You can put them all in one big box of appetites, the largest. And even inside of the soul, the of a human being, the thoughts that that align with appetites are the largest. The thoughts that align with the spirited elements are smaller and the rational element is the smallest. In case of a tyrannical mind, the multifarious, multitudinous, many appetites are on top. It's an inverted pyramid. In. In case of a philosopher king, the rational element is on top. It is pyramid, the right way.

Speaker 2: 48:11

But anyways, so he says okay, so you have these three pleasures now, three pleasures for each of these parts of the soul. Now let's look and see what would be, in a certain constitution, a certain type of person, right? What would be their corresponding pleasure and what would end between these three, how would a person who is predicated to a certain type of pleasure perform as opposed to someone who's predicated to a different type of pleasure? What he's trying to create, essentially, is figuring out inside of the soul which pleasure is the best and the pursuit of which pleasure actually leads to a higher state. Okay, which brings us to the third.

Speaker 2: 48:52

The most important argument is going to come up after this. So this is the second phase of this argument, and here he talks about the the prophet seeking person or the pleasure seeking person. This person's pleasure is all of these appetites comes in in this person's. Is this person's pursuit right? Now he says if you take somebody, okay, who, who knows pleasure, pleasure that comes from sitting on a comfortable couch eating a certain type of food, right? Or you know of sex or whatever, these pleasures that you have, right?

Speaker 2: 49:30

Do you think if there are two types of? There are two people here, there's one who is three types of people here. There's one who's a pleasure seeking person, who believes that the only pleasures that exist are the pleasures of the body. There's an honor loving person who believes that the owner only a pleasure that's worth pursuing is honor, and there's the only one that exists. And and the one who is the wisdom seeking or the learning seeking person, right, Do you believe that the person who's pursuing learning their pursuit is is understanding the nature of everything? Do you think this person doesn't understand the nature of pleasure? The answer is no. As a matter of fact, if you had to ask between those two people the person who's a pleasure loving person and a person who's a learning or a wisdom seeking person what are the differences in the pleasures? You know which pleasures are better than other pleasures. The person who's who's out there for knowledge, learning, understand the nature of things, would be in a better position to answer that question. So, automatically, learning is higher than just participating in the pleasures.

Speaker 2: 50:36

What about an honor? An honor seeking person, the person who says that acquiring honor is the nature of happiness, as opposed to someone who is looking at the nature of all things? You, if you were to ask these two people about honor. Who would have a better answer as to what is in fact honor? Where does honor stand? The nature of all things the way they are? What is honor from the dishonorable? What is honor from the honorable? Who will be in a better person, in a better position to understand that? The person who understands the nature of all things, not the person who is the honor seeking person.

Speaker 1: 51:11

So, in this hierarchy of pleasures, the pleasure of learning supersedes the pleasure of honor, which supersedes the pleasure of pleasures, and it's because, at the highest level, you have an awareness, and that awareness allows you multifarious ways of appreciation. So there's a flip that happens At the base level you have multifarious appetites and only one way to appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 51:44

But when you're at the highest level, you have one way to satisfy the appetite, but the methods of appreciation, the approaches, the ability to appreciate it, that's the part that's multifarious. So you had this array of appreciative abilities that you've developed through intellectual development and philosophical discourse, which allows you to extract pleasure from way more than somebody who's had the very limited experience of the biological pleasures, and that is a switch.

Speaker 2: 52:17

That's a switch. Another way to look at it also is that in order to achieve a state where you are pursuing learning only for learning's sake, you have to ascend to these levels. You have been through pleasure. You understand the nature of pleasure, understand its temporary nature, its coming to be and it's not being reality. You cross from that into honor and you understand the nature of honor and how honor from dishonorable is not honor, and that honor is in and of itself is also a pursuit that is never ending. You supersede that to go into this realm of learning, which is okay. If these are not the answers to happiness, what is? You come to crisis in each of these levels and you supersede it by breaking through another ceiling, but for each of those levels they have not broken through the ceiling. They don't even know there's a level above. You see what I mean. They don't even know that there is a higher order of thinking, a state of more happiness.

Speaker 2: 53:11

The honor loving person will choose pain voluntarily, choose pain over pleasure if it brings them more honor. If you see somebody who doesn't understand that they be like, what is this person doing? This is the most ridiculous thing I've seen. Why is this person enduring so much pain. But for the honor loving person there's no other way. Honor cultures are based on that fact. And then the same honor loving person sees the philosopher, king, or the learned person who is able to, who shuns honor for the pursuit of the truth, and say I can't imagine what this person is doing. And for the, for the, for the learned, there is no other way to be. He sees honor as a trivial pursuit. You see, so that is the verdict on life and pleasures. They say so, off the three pleasures, then the most pleasant would be the part of the soul with which we learn, and the one of us in whom it rules has the most pleasant life. The most pleasant life is of that person who shuns pleasures, who shuns honor for the sake of learning or the truth, which is the opposite of what convention would say. You see, so then they're like well, that is the second argument to this fact that pleasure seeking is better than honor seeking. And even if nobody else knows that you're seeking, you know, sorry, seeking wisdom is higher than honor seeking, and seeking honors higher than pleasure. And even if no one knows that you're seeking wisdom, you would still have a more pleasant life, right, and he says this. Now, the final argument in this is what's called the argument he says.

Speaker 2: 55:00

Now comes the third, which is dedicated in Olympic fashion to our savior, the Olympian Zeus. This is a 583B. So the Olympian Zeus apparently, according to this, was like the highest of the highest forms of God, like the combination of the. What was it combining this? Both the Olympian Zeus to Zeus. You create this, what's it? You create a more, you emphasize the importance of the final proof, according to the translator, by conjuring Olympian Zeus. And this is the main argument, the argument of what I call the argument of the middle state. So the point here, which is, you know, which is, which is a very cool point and I have had conversations about this and I came to this understanding about a couple of years ago- Right, this is the idea that your awareness of a state has relative.

Speaker 2: 56:00

Yes, to your experience. That's correct, and what I found was that that we think of happiness as a positive state. As a matter of fact, it's like light and dark. Darkness is the absence of light. Even if there's any amount of light in there, it's no longer darkness, and so suffering is the is the same way Actually it is kind of, though.

Speaker 2: 56:28

In comes to happiness and suffering, I found in humans it's the other way around. I don't care how happy you are, there's any amount of suffering. The human mind really clings onto that suffering. You're no longer happy, like, let me put it this way Say you have the looks and you have the money and you have the spouse and the house and all that, but you're sitting on a nail Like you are not going to be happy. You see what I mean? That's tiny amount of suffering is going to overshadow everything.

Speaker 2: 56:55

And so the removal of suffering though if you were sitting on a nail right, you have all of these are coup de bain of life, and you're sitting on this nail right and all you did was to stand up and move the suffering goes away, right? You don't go from a state of pain to a state of pleasure, you actually go from a state of pain to state of no pain. You immediately go ah right, it feels pleasurable, that middle state seat feels pleasurable. But you say you wait an hour or two hours. It's no longer pleasurable to be in that state. Now you're seeking the next thing. Then, just a few minutes ago, you would have given anything to get up from that chair, right, it felt like unbearable pain. And now, an hour later, that thing is thought, has gone from your mind. The reason is because that state of the middle state, the state where you neither have any pain, neither you have any pleasure, is not considered by humans to be a positive state. It is considered by many to be a negative state. Even for me, when there's nothing wrong happening and but there's nothing great happening either, I'm like there's nothing going on. What the heck? That's on we, that's on we. It's terrible. Like all what has to do is change the way they think about that state. Right? Because here now in this argument about the middle state is a little bit different here.

Speaker 2: 58:30

But I came to that understanding. I said the absence of pain. If you can trick your mind to believe the absence of pain to be pleasure, the absence of suffering to be happiness. You can be happy. All your fools get into suffering. But if you really want a positive emotion to be happiness, you're stuck, you're sunk, not going to find it because there's no positive pleasure that's going to stay with you forever. So that is a trick. It's very hard to do. I've not been able to achieve it myself. I don't know if there's anybody out there who's been able to achieve it, you know. But that's why I feel like the state of humans is suffering. Even if you get rid of all suffering, you have to trick yourself in believing that's happiness.

Speaker 2: 59:07

But he uses that argument differently here. He says that so there are, there are levels of pleasure, right? You take somebody who is sitting on this, on this chair that has a nail in it, and you ask this person suffering, there's no question. You ask this person to stand up. They're standing now and they no longer have a nail that's broken into them. They go from a sense of pain to a sense of pleasure. But this person who's standing has never experienced what it feels like to sit in the most comfortable chair there is. You can just imagine that, of all the forms, the perfect chair, the perfect chair, and there's somebody who's sitting in that perfect chair.

Speaker 2: 59:55

Absolutely comfortable. They feel like they're floating. You ask that person to stand up. They come from a state of intense pleasure to a state where they are standing and they are going to witness that in their mind as going from pleasure to pain. Now imagine this person who stood up from the nail is standing. The person who got up from the most comfortable chair is standing. They're both standing. They're both in the same, in the middle ground.

Speaker 2: 1:00:19

But one person believes that middle ground to be the ultimate state of pleasure and the other person looks at that middle ground to understand that to be pain. You see, the person who got up from the nail has no idea that there exists this most comfortable chair. In their reality, that chair doesn't exist. They've never seen it. You can try to describe that chair to them, but they'll never get it For them. They are in pleasure right now because they're no longer feeling the pain. You see, right, but the person who sat in the most comfortable chair understands that there's actually a worse state than this as well, where you could be sitting on a nail and you could look at that middle state and say you know what it's better than me sitting on a nail. You see what I mean, right.

Speaker 1: 1:01:05

And that's the awareness that having the highest level of pleasure from the awareness through philosophical discourse, the rational mind provides.

Speaker 2: 1:01:14

That's right.

Speaker 1: 1:01:15

So it gives you the third tier perspective of the middle state, and it's somebody who has that perspective that Socrates says would not be persuaded that pure pleasure is relief from pain or that pure pain is relief from pleasure.

Speaker 2: 1:01:29

That is right. Right, that is right. And so that perspective you only get when you elevate your level of thinking, when you get out of this world that we live in, where we believe that doing pleasurable things is happiness and not doing pleasurable things or doing painful things is unhappiness. You can remove yourself from that and once you do that, gone is suffering, because you realize both ways that either getting it or not getting it are not related to suffering.

Speaker 1: 1:02:01

It has to do with perspective right. I mean, it's the perspective that you gain with philosophical Right.

Speaker 2: 1:02:06

Now also. This was a simple argument about the most comfortable chair. The problem with the philosophical mind is that we are talking about. The most comfortable chair in that case is knowledge, and the reason why the philosophical mind is not going to be in a pleasurable state per se is because it cannot sit in. That most comfortable chair Doesn't exist for the human mind to sit inside of knowledge. You see what I mean. They're not going to be sit. They know that the most comfortable chair exists, but they've never sat in it.

Speaker 1: 1:02:36

Right, but they strive because it's part of the intelligible realm.

Speaker 2: 1:02:40

So they know the best that they're going to get is standing around, but that's a whole lot better than sitting on a nail. You see what I mean.

Speaker 1: 1:02:49

Right, and that's why they try to understand the nature of the good. And this goes all back to the Aligarra, the cave, and what they'll eventually start talking about on book 10, which is the idea of the forms right.

Speaker 2: 1:03:00

That's right.

Speaker 1: 1:03:01

It's all about understanding the essence of comfortable sophaness, which is what the philosophical mind would preoccupy itself with.

Speaker 2: 1:03:15

What do you want to do? Do you want to pause here or do you want to go ahead, because there's some really good stuff, man, there's good stuff I think we should pause here. We should pause here because I think you have some really.

Speaker 1: 1:03:26

We can relish in some mathematics and harmonics in the next episode, because here there's a really fun discussion about where they actually attempt to quantify how much pleasant the life of the philosopher king is than the life of the tyrant.

Speaker 2: 1:03:45

I think you've done a beautiful job to make us experience that, so I won't leave that for next time.

Speaker 1: 1:03:50

Yeah, we'll look forward to that, and then after that we're in the final book, man. Final book, oh my gosh Awesome, all right, thank you.