Plato

Ken Taylor
Hello and welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

John Perry
…except your intelligence. I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. We’re coming to you from the studios of KALW Information Radio in San Francisco.

John Perry
Continuing conversations from Philosopher’s Corner at Stanford University, where we both teach.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, and today, instead of taking you down to Philosopher’s Corner, we’re going to take you over to ancient Greece. We’re going to maybe take you down to the depths of Plato’s Cave.

John Perry
Plato’s cave, what did he do there? You have a little still for his friends, or maybe smoke a little pot down there in his cave?

Ken Taylor
He wrote great works of philosophy, thought great philosophical thoughts. So we’re going to explore some of Plato’s philosophy today. John,

John Perry
All right. Now Ken, I’ve got some questions for you. Plato lived 2500 years ago, almost. He had really weird ideas. He thought that the world that we see and feel and touch and eat isn’t real, that numbers are more real than we are. He thought democracy was a crock. He thought philosophers should be kings. Now, I mean, why does anybody take such a person seriously?

Ken Taylor
Well, I mean, look, lots of people have taken Plato very, very seriously. Alfred North Whitehead said, and he’s there’s some truth to this. All of philosophy since that time is just a footnote to Plato. So, I mean, you know, John, you should hope that all philosophy after you should be a footnote to you. So, he was a big, deep, influential thinker.

John Perry
I would be happy to be a footnote to a footnote to Plato. The truth is that Plato wrote some stuff that’s remarkably resilient. Translated into English, we still use it in introductory courses. He, he wrote dialogs that talk about the nature of right and wrong. Is something right because God says it’s right, or does God say it’s right because it is right? That’s an age-old question. And Plato still has written one of the best things on it. His Republic’s is something that I read as a freshman, and I was so thrilled to be reading something that had lasted through the ages, but I think, but still, he had some pretty weird ideas.

Ken Taylor
He did have some ideas that are, let’s say, alien to us in some ways, right? But I mean, actually, say The Republic is one of the great books of all time, it’s one of the greatest pieces of philosophy ever written. It’s a beautiful, complex, deeply engaging book.

John Perry
Now, this is where his metaphor of the cave is. His idea is that most of us, most of the time, are like people in a cave who can only see shadows of what’s going on out in the real world. Philosophers and certain other people, like mathematicians, go out of the cave and look at things the way they really are. This was a metaphor for Plato. He didn’t think that what was outside of an ordinary cave was really real at all. He thought what was really real were numbers and what he called the forms. What were the forms?

Ken Taylor
Well, these things that exist out there in what people call Plato’s heaven, and you, you can, you can think them with your mind, you can grasp them with reason, but you can’t see them with the eye, and like you said, the things that you see with the eye, or touch with the hands, or smell, those aren’t really real, you know, those aren’t really, because they’re constantly changing, you know, they’re one, they appear one way at this moment, one way at that moment, but you know, beauty itself, he said, is unchanging, or or virtue itself is unchanging, and you can’t, you can’t see unchanging things with the eye or touch them with a hand.

John Perry
Plato’s idea was that if something is really real, you ought to be able to figure out what it’s like just by thinking. Yeah, and once you figure it out, it shouldn’t change. You can’t do that with an ordinary thing. I mean, if I don’t know what Ken’s like, I have to look, yeah, and you know, tomorrow he may not shave, and may look entirely different, but the number five, oh, it’s cool, because you know it’s the square root of 25 and it was yesterday, and it will be tomorrow, and I can just contemplate it, and just be happy as a clam.

Ken Taylor
But you think this is a weird idea, I gather.

John Perry
Yeah, I think it’s fascinating and influential, you know, in Saint Augustine we get the kind of identification of Plato’s heavenly ideas with the ideas of God, and that at least in one version of Christianity that’s been very important. No, I think it’s weird. I think I think I think you’re, I think you’re at least as real as the number five, and twice as attractive. And like it, you’re not a square.

Ken Taylor
Well, that’s a very hip duty, you know. No, you also think it’s weird that democracy is a crock and that philosopher should be king. I mean, I have a world in which philosophers are king, that sounds pretty good to me. I’d like a few, you know, servants, well, subjects.

John Perry
If the truth be known, I think there’s more to be said for the idea than it might appear at first. Just, if you know a bunch of philosophers like Ken and I, or the other people at our department, or our guest today, Chris Bobanich, you might say, what a bad idea to make philosophers kings, since they can barely run their own department, and usually their offices are just. Organizer, they miss all the deadlines, and they’re basically marginally competent. But I stillthink there’s a little bit more to be said for it than might meet the eye.

Ken Taylor
Well, you know, and our guest, Chris Bobonich, our colleague from Stanford. He’s an associate professor of philosophy. He’s written a really great book called “Plato’s Utopia Recast,” published by Oxford University Press, I think, in 2002 It’s a great book. Chris, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Chris Bobonich
Thank you. Nice to join you.

John Perry
So Chris, let’s actually, in your book, you make the point that Plato had different ideas about what was good and what was right and what the good state would be like at different times, but let’s just focus first on the Republic. Why was why was Plato such an enemy of democracy? Why did he think democracy was such a bad form of government?

Chris Bobonich
Well, he makes three plausible claims that seem to have that result. I mean, first, that knowledge is needed to make good decisions. If you need to make a medical decision, you need knowledge. If you need to make good financial decisions. You need knowledge, so knowledge is needed to make good decisions, like if you’re

John Perry
going to invade a country, you’d want to know, oh, say, whether they had weapons of mass destruction, that sort of thing.

Chris Bobonich
So you need that sounds

John Perry
plausible.

Chris Bobonich
So you need knowledge to make good political decisions. Okay. Second, he thought that it was possible to have such knowledge, and people actually could attain it, and he thought that, so the people who had such knowledge are the ones who should make such decisions, and these are the people he thinks are philosophers, and he thinks that relatively few people are going to have the required knowledge. So,

Ken Taylor
let me think, your three things were: knowledge is required for good decisions, it’s possible to have that knowledge, and there are certain class of people that have that, that do have that knowledge. In fact, is that, is that,

Chris Bobonich
that’s right. Yes,

John Perry
and those, I guess, are the philosophers.

Chris Bobonich
Yes. And so that’s those, the ones who should make the decisions rather than do it by popular vote.

John Perry
There seems to be a kind of a missing element here. It seems like certain kinds of knowledge are required to make decisions, like whether there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or what the decision, what the intentions of the Iranians are, or the North Koreans, but what philosophers are good at are knowing about, you know, five is the square root of 25 and stuff like that. Is there a, is there a realm other than mathematics that, and things like that, philosophers know about that’s really relevant to governing,

Chris Bobonich
Plato thinks so. Since he thinks that justice is important in governing, it’s important to make just decisions. It’s important to do the right thing, have laws that are correct, and these are things that he thinks that we can know about, and we can have knowledge about what is just, what is right, what is wrong.

Ken Taylor
Well, how are you supposed to? Let’s talk about how you can know about these things on Plato’s view, because you would think, well, how do you know about those things? Well, I would guess first, first pass, you study people and their behavior, you know, kind of empirical psychology, economic stuff like that, it’s kind of empirical observation of people, and you just live, you have experience. So, on the one hand, empirical observation of people, and then just living and having experience, but what privilege is the philosopher in acquiring such knowledge? I mean, doesn’t seem to me that I know anything about how people behave than you know anybody else, and I don’t have any more experience than anybody else. So, why should I, as a philosopher, be privileged in this way?

Chris Bobonich
Well, what he thinks philosophers can do, and have done, is think about various accounts of justice, various theories of what justice are, consider criticisms of them, consider objections, reformulate in light of those objections, and eventually move further and further in developing a more adequate theory, so ultimately thinks this requires knowing a form, but the initial process is quite plausible, and it seems quite a good way to come to have knowledge.

John Perry
So, basically, if we were in Plato’s Republic, our leader would be a pretty introspective person, or at least a pretty thoughtful person, and he would have what we might say is a good. it would have what George Bush would call the George Bush, the first would call the vision thing, and the vision would be based on analysis and thought about what makes something good, what makes something right. So he wouldn’t count on, he or she wouldn’t count on focus groups to know what to say about abortion or invading this country or that country, or whether we should have preemptive strikes, he would have kind of figured it all out, maybe talking to other philosophers, but but the question is, what would he do about it? I mean, how in Plato’s Republic would a thinker who become an effective leader?

Chris Bobonich
Well, Eddie thinks is the central problem in establishing a good state or a just state, he says there’ll never be a cessation of yields. Things will never be good until philosophers rule as kings, or kings philosophize. He thinks that it’s almost impossible for this to come to pass, but that once it came to pass, if it were to come to pass, the city would be quite stable. It would be a just. Society, and it would be one that the people living in it could realize was good.

Ken Taylor
Let’s, let’s set this up a little bit for our listeners, because the Republic is about it’s about all kinds of things, but one of the things that the interlocutors in the Republic actually, Plato doesn’t actually appear in the Republic, Socrates and various interlocutors with Socrates appear in the Republic, right, Chris,

Chris Bobonich
that’s correct,

Ken Taylor
but Socrates and his interlocutor set out to decide to design kind of from bottom up the ideal city, and they do that kind of for a strange reason, right, they want to figure out what the what the in just individual soul is like, what an ideal soul is like in an individual, and they say, well, you can’t see it in the small, you need to do enlarge it. So they’re trying to think up an ideal city, so that’s why we’re talking about different cities designs in the Republic. Do I have that right? More or less.

Chris Bobonich
And he thinks that it’s one in the same property, and that makes a city just, makes a person just, makes whatever is just just. And what is this

John Perry
property?

Chris Bobonich
It’s the property of justice,

Ken Taylor
but he’s supposed to illuminate that for us. He’ll give

Chris Bobonich
you an.. he’ll give you an analysis of it, but it’s that property that makes the thing just, and we can say something more about what that is.

Ken Taylor
You want to say something about what that is? You want to do that right now.

Chris Bobonich
Well, in the soul, he thinks that justice is the proper balance of the three basic parts or elements of the soul. I guess

John Perry
that’s the ego, the id, and the super ego.

Chris Bobonich
It has some resemblance to them, but one is reason, that which thinks about what’s best to do. The second is the spirited part of the soul, connected with self-respect, anger, and the third is the appetitive part concerned with desires for food, sex, and drink.

John Perry
Well, it does sound like Freud might have been influenced by Plato.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, yeah, but now, what does it have to do with the city? So, there are these three parts of the soul, each with their different function, and he goes on that link to argue ultimately, you know, the three parts of the soul working in harmony, that’s justice or something like that. What does that have to do with the city, and how does that get us to democracy?

Chris Bobonich
You think so. The three same parts in the city, there is the ruling class, and these are the philosophers, these are the people who make the decisions. The second class of the class of auxiliaries, like the spirited part in the soul, these are the ones who defend the city, and they’re basically a class of soldiers, and the third lowest class are the class of producers, those who engage in the arts and crafts necessary to maintain the city. In the problem in democracy is that people of all three classes get to make decisions, every person is given an equal voice in determining what the city should do, so these

John Perry
are the famous gold, silver, and bronze people.

Chris Bobonich
That’s right. Okay,

Ken Taylor
but, but, so there’s a class of people that are like their ruling faculty is reason, right? That’s the philosopher. There we are, we are supposedly governed by reason, and then the soldier class, the auxiliaries, their ruling faculty is this high-spirited part, and then the hoi polloi, the workers, they’re governed by passion or appetite, I guess they’re governed by appetite, and I guess is the point that I mean, you have to keep the appetites in check in a person, reason should keep the appetite in check with the aid of this middle part, and in a city the philosophers should keep the workers and the producers in check with the aid of the soldiers, because you can’t let the appetites govern. I mean, you can’t, you can’t just.. that’s

Chris Bobonich
exactly right. And he also thinks it’s not good for them to govern, and it’s not good for them themselves to govern themselves. He would only damage them, and so rule by the philosophers is in their own interest.

John Perry
Chris was Plato’s view here really based totally on sitting around and thinking, or did I mean, did he have some bad experiences with democracy?

Chris Bobonich
Well, he certainly had bad experiences with democracy, and his teacher, Socrates, the person who led him to a philosophic life, whom he venerated deeply, and was put to death by the Athenian democracy. He also saw some of his own relatives seize power in Athens form a tyranny that he recognized was just a terrible, terrible government. So he saw both democracy and non-democratic ways of governing in Athens itself, so

Ken Taylor
you might think then that it was a little bit sour grapes since his relatives were overthrown by by the democratic thing, but what we’ll take that up a little bit, you’re in a little bit, you’re listening to philosophy talk, our guest is Stanford Professor Chris Bubonic, an expert on Plato, and we’re talking about the philosophy of Plato, and whether his thinking is still has merit today,

John Perry
and you know, we’re thinking about Plato, we’re talking about Plato, we’re doing philosophy talk only by the grace of this wonderful radio station, K A L W, San Francisco’s oldest FM station, the second oldest public radio station in. The whole world broadcast from coast to coast, that is, from San Francisco Bay to the ocean, and we need your help to keep this wonderful radio station on the air.

Ken Taylor
And here to talk about how you can become a part of the KLW family is General Manager Nicole Sawaya.

Speaker 1
Thank you, Ken, and thank you, John. Good afternoon, listeners. This is our Philosophy Time. What other radio station has brought to you such terrific engagement, such great conversation, and a way for you to jump in to the Socratic seminar that goes on every Tuesday here at KLW at high noon? The number to call to support Philosophy on the Air: one 805 2599 59917 Philosopher kings, or kings who would philosophize. Oh, wouldn’t it be nice to have a philosopher king in place? But in lieu of that, we have our own philosopher kings here. We have brought Ken Taylor and John Perry on the air here at KALW. Lots of people think it was a crazy thing to do, but we knew there’s an audience out there hungry, hungry for this, for elevated conversation, for conversation that they can become a part of as well. 1-800-525-9917 We have some very special thank you gifts, a truly a once in a lifetime opportunity. We have pulled together a Sunday salon with our philosophers, Ken Taylor and John Perry. The theme for the Sunday salon is going to be the language of politics. Also, a guest there will be Jeffrey Nunberg, the entire philosophy crew here, philosophy talk crew, Amy Standin, Ian Scholes, the whole crew will be present as well. This will be a two hour Sunday salon in what’s guaranteed to be a lovely home somewhere around Noe Valley. It will take place on October 24 and we are inviting you to participate, and the way that you can participate, and yes, indeed, you will be part of that conversation. Of the language of politics is, if you pledge for one person to participate, it would be $250 For two people to participate, it would be $400 There will be drinks, there will be appetizers, there will be food, convivial atmosphere, and definitely a real Sunday salon, and the topic, the language of politics with Ken Taylor, John Perry, Jeffrey Nunberg, Amy Stanton, the whole crew, very limited, we can only take so many people, we can’t take loads and loads of people to attend one 805 25991 59917 800-525-9917 If you’d really like to see what these guys look like, if you’d like to sit with some philosophers and, and get in at their level, and really have a frank discussion, and and really engage intellectually on such a great topic, the language of politics. And let’s not forget that Jeffrey Nunberg is a regular contributor to Fresh Air, and he is the author of Gone Nuclear. Nuclear, I think I’m mispronouncing that because it’s about mispronouncing nuclear. Be that as it may be, we’d love to get a whole crew. I got quite a few emails and responses when we first birthed Philosophy Talk on K A L W. Love to hear from some of those people that have let me know how much they appreciate the show. 1-800-525-9917 800-525-9917 $250 price of admission to the Sunday Salon with our philosophers, who will be discussing the language of politics with you in a very intimate setting, quite beautiful, with great things to eat and drink, or $400 for two people to attend, a couple, or perhaps you’d like to give it away as a gift, 1-800-525-9917 You can pledge at any level. We have thank you gifts that the volunteers can talk about, but we can only offer this Sunday salon right now, 800-525-9917 Ken and John, back to you. Should we talk about the weather? Should we talk about

Speaker 2
the government?

John Perry
Let’s talk about government. That was our EM with pop song 89 This is Philosophy Talk. I’m John Perry,

Ken Taylor
and I’m Ken Taylor. Today we’re discussing Plato with our colleague and friend, Professor Chris Bubonic of Stanford University. Uh, we, before the pledge break, we were talking about Plato’s argument that, you know, democracy is not the best form of government, because the hoi polloi are ruled by their passions, you can’t let them by their appetites, you can’t let the appetites rule, so. A, but you should let reason rule, and that’s the philosophers.

John Perry
Chris Plato’s vision in the Republic has been criticized a lot over the years, but he himself was one of his own earliest critics, as I understand in his later dialog, The Laws. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about what Plato himself found wanting in the Republic when he looked back at it later in life?

Chris Bobonich
Actually, let me get to that in a minute. One thing that I do want to say is this, and you stressed how alien some of Plato’s ideas are to us, and that is indeed true. But with regard to the criticism of democracy, it’s remarkable how much of Plato’s criticism we accept, how much we’ve accepted and accept just unconsciously. Well, that’s true. I think that’s

Ken Taylor
true. Let’s, let’s talk about what. Elaborate, Chris. I think we have a point.

Chris Bobonich
For instance, the ancient Athenians would think that our form of government is wildly undemocratic, nothing like a democracy at all. I mean, in Athens, and in ancient Greek democracy, it well, the word democracy means rule of the people, and in ancient Athens, the people ruled directly, and at least the free male adults, all decisions were all important decisions were made in an assembly where any free male adult citizen could attend, speak, and then at the end of the day they just took a vote and the majority prevailed.

John Perry
Well, Chris, you’re certainly right. Our democracy, as we call it, is fails to be a democracy, it seems to me, in two dimensions. First, it’s a representative democracy, we, the decisions are made by representatives, and secondly, there’s all kinds of devices that keep it from being a democracy. The electoral college means that each Californian’s vote counts for 1/3 of each South Dakotan’s vote. So, if you get me started, you might be sorry. It looks to me like it’s just an oligarchy where the people get a little bit of choice into which group of Yale graduates gets to run the country each four years? Well, there is

Ken Taylor
that. There’s that, but I mean our founding fathers, I mean, they go back to the founding fathers, were highly educated people, I mean they were deeply classical, classically educated, and they were aware of Plato’s, of Plato’s critique of democracy, and I think they consciously built in some of the structure of our government to prevent the passions of the masses from taking hold of the government was the Senate,

John Perry
Senate supposed to be the philosophers, I mean, holy mackerel, it was supposed to be

Chris Bobonich
more reflective, but let’s just go back to what you said, John, you were complaining about the different ways in which the vote of a citizen in California and a citizen of South Dakota, count. There’s an interesting assumption there, which is that voting, electing public officials by vote, is a democratic procedure that wasn’t what the ancient Athenians thought. That would have been a very suspicious procedure to an ancient Athenian democrat. How did they do? Public officials in general were selected by lot and selected by lottery. The assumption was that any free male adult citizen was capable of being a public official, capable of carrying out the job. I would make a

John Perry
similar assumption: almost any person chosen by lot would do a better job than the succession of idiots, morons, and cheats that end up ahead of our government. You’re in a very

Ken Taylor
curmudgeonly mood. I invite our callers to join this conversation. You can do so by calling 415-841-4134 that’s 415-841-4134 or you can send us an email at Comet at Philosophy talk.org and we’ll try to get your, your email question into the conversation. Chris, you were about to say,

Chris Bobonich
is that really true? John, would you like to select the nine members of the Supreme Court, for instance, and simply buy a lottery among all adult citizens?

John Perry
Well, of course, the Athenians didn’t do it among all adult citizens.

Ken Taylor
Free.

John Perry
I wouldn’t mind doing it among all, all people. I wouldn’t mind if some somebody like the American Bar Association, which gives advice to the president, right, gave us all the eligible people that they think now you’re a good job, yeah,

Chris Bobonich
yes, but now you’re sensations by democracy, but now you’re restricting democracy. Well, I

John Perry
admit democracy, be restricted, but I guess my point would be that we’ve got restrictions that seem like a good idea to some guys 250 years ago, and maybe they were a good idea then, but now in a day of computers and information, and so forth, couldn’t we come up with some better ways to restrict democracy to give us better results, but, but I’m really not interested in what I have to say here. What did Plato say? How did I mean, are you going to tell us about the laws at all, or have you, you, you wrote the book on it, and you kind of don’t? Want to talk about it anymore. I’m

Chris Bobonich
happy to talk about the laws as well. In the laws, Plato moves much more to involve the citizen in government. He says he uses as an analogy treatment by free and slave doctor. Slave doctors are those who treat slaves. They just give an order, rush off to another patient, don’t bother explaining what they’re doing, and it’s like medical treatment today. Free doctors, on the other hand, they first talk to the patient who’s a free man or free woman and persuade the patient, explain what’s wrong with him or her, and then gives a prescription after explaining Plato thinks that’s what laws should do. A large part of the function of government is to educate the citizenry and to bring them up to the highest level that they can attain.

Ken Taylor
Chris, we have some callers on the line, you can join, you can be a caller too by calling us at 415-841-4134 that’s 415-841-4134 or send us an email at www dot philosophy talk.org Stewart in San Francisco, welcome to Philosophy Talk. Stewart,

John Perry
good afternoon. My question is whether there’s ever been a representative democracy where the representatives were chosen by lottery.

Ken Taylor
Well, I think we heard the answer to that. Chris, is that right? That in ancient Athens, it was.. that’s how they were.. well, not that the office holders were chosen by lottery, isn’t that what you said, Chris? But not the law,

John Perry
but not the people that voted on the laws, right? I mean,

Chris Bobonich
that’s correct, and the decisions major decisions were taken by majority vote in the assembly, which was open to any female adult citizen. So that’s

Ken Taylor
basically the executive, I take it, is that right?

Chris Bobonich
Executive, legislative, and the Athenians didn’t have a sharp division in the way that we did between the executive and the legislative, the public officials were almost all appointed by law, or they thought they should be appointed so

Ken Taylor
long. So, Stuart, you got your answer. Is that was a good question,

John Perry
Stuart? The idea of representative democracy, the way we think of it, with a sharp distinction between legislative and executive, I guess, didn’t exist, but, but it sounds like to me, like the, the basic idea was, a was that Congress, the enactor of laws, was everybody, I mean, every, every free white male.

Ken Taylor
Thanks, thanks. Uh, Stuart, uh, Fanny in the East Bay. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Fanny.

Speaker 2
Hi there. Um, it seems to me one thing that we need to bring into the discussion is the difference between democracy and the liberal society. Very often we assume they’re the same, and they’re very different. It’s certainly possible to have a democracy that does not support the values that most of us tend to support, whether it’s minority rights or civil liberties or anything else. On the other hand, it’s possible to have a monarchy that actually protects many of those, so sometimes democracy and liberal society can be in conflict, if not even in constant tension, and I think we need to acknowledge the difference and discuss what does one want to do if one has to choose, because I think it’s a very difficult choice,

Chris Bobonich
Fanny. That’s an excellent point. That’s an excellent point, and excellent observation. And in the modern world, democracy has lost much of its content. It just has come to be a word that we apply to any sort of government we like, and it’s just a vague word of commendation, and there is this tension between democracy and liberalism, as you say,

Ken Taylor
but Chris, there’s this important point I think of liberalism in a broader, more philosophical sense, not whether you support minority rights or gay rights, but liberalism in a sort of modern sense, starting with the Enlightenment kind of thing, and where, and Plato is very anti-liberal in the following sense, the liberal modernity believes that a form of government, the coercive powers of government, have to be justified to the person over whom they’re exercised. That’s the popular sovereignty idea. The government rests ultimately on our informed consent, right? So, that means it has to be justified to us, it’s coercive powers. For Plato, the people over whom these power exercise, they don’t participate in reason, or they’re not fully in reason, so it doesn’t even have to be justified to them. So, I mean, that’s the thing I meant when I said his ideas are deeply alien to us, because there’s no, I mean, he says it’s for their good, but for their good as perceived by the philosopher kings, and if they contest the philosopher’s king’s conception of their good. I mean, they have no standing. Am I right about that?

John Perry
Yeah, but at least the philosopher kings were in their own country. It wasn’t, wasn’t the philosopher wasn’t the kings of some other country. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. We’re talking about Plato with Chris Babanich. You can join the conversation at 415-841-4134 I. Chris, I interrupted you. Please continue.

Chris Bobonich
Oh, I think that’s right, Ken, but consider in liberal democracies today, how far are decisions justified to the public, justified to the people? Quite rarely, I think.

Ken Taylor
Well, that’s true, but our political theory, except most democratic political theory, that even if in fact their policies aren’t justified to the people over whom they’re exercised, sort of morally speaking, they’re old. The government is not legitimate unless it can justify the exercise of its coercive power to the people over whom it exercises it. I

John Perry
mean, if I could take off my curmudgeonly hat for a minute, I mean, actually, in America, as insipid as most of the political commercials are, and as stupid as most of the political commentators are, still a great amount of time is spent trying to convince the American people that the government’s policies are good or bad, I mean, I’m inclined to think, you know, compared to other forms of government, this is pretty good. Do you really think, Chris, that we’re as far from the mark as all of that?

Chris Bobonich
I think we’re quite far from democracy in the ancient sense, and that is an important way in which we’ve accepted Plato’s basic point, and that certain kinds of expertise, certain kinds of knowledge are necessary for making good decisions, and what we care about most, we care more about in these cases getting a good decision than we do about the process.

Ken Taylor
Chris, in a way, I think you’re certainly right, but there’s this meta, there’s this metaphor in the Republic about these people contending for control of the ship and trying to convince the ship, the owner of the ship, to let them steer. Can can you help me with that, which I think is a perfect metaphor for political discourse in our society now. Ah,

Chris Bobonich
yes, this is the famous metaphor of the ship of state, there is a ship owner. He’s honest, not very clever, good-hearted, not very effective. The people on the ship try to captivate him, try to persuade him to do one thing or another, try to bend him to their will, and to get the ship to go in one direction or the other. This is what Plato thinks it’s like persuading the people in a city to go in one direction rather than the other.

John Perry
Well, that’s that’s that actually doesn’t sound so alien. It sounds pretty timely. We’re talking the talking Plato with Chris Pavanich of Stanford University. This is Philosophy Talk.

Ken Taylor
What, what would Plato have given? What would Plato have given to have a forum like ours for the exchange of ideas and the spread of knowledge? That’s what KLA, KLW gives to all of us, right here and now. And we need your help to keep quality programming like Philosophy Talk on the air here,

John Perry
and here to tell you more is K A L W’s very own general manager, the beautiful, the persuasive, the incredibly productive, the authoritative Nicole Soya, right

Ken Taylor
here in the studio.

Speaker 1
Drum roll, please, gentlemen, please. I like that idea, Ken. I wonder what Plato would have been like during the age of broadcast media. Oh, yeah, you know, electronic Plato, Plato untethered electronically cyber. Well, you

Ken Taylor
know the answer to that, Nicole John. We are so lucky because

Speaker 1
we have the embodiment of Plato right here at K A L W, coming to you, well, I might, I

John Perry
might rate the bodily appetites a little higher on my scale of value than Plato did, but I think Plato would have liked K Al W amongst the various radio alternatives, because it has a lot of serious content, it’s not just all music and fluff,

Ken Taylor
yeah, you know, yeah, Plato actually wanted to ban the lyric poets, at least a lot of their work from the from his ideal republic, because he thought they were just corrupting, so he

John Perry
might not have liked Roman Mars great show on Sunday afternoon, but I think he would have, I think he would have given, I think he would have given till it hurts to KBLW, called

Speaker 1
1-800-525-9917 and become a member and a supporter, he just wouldn’t have been a passive listener. No, you know what? He probably

Ken Taylor
would have done, he would have probably given $250 or maybe 400 with his significant other, so that he could come and he could talk with me and John and Jeff Nunberg. And Sunday, October 24 that special gift, you know, philosophy talk salon was that one

John Perry
805 9977 to John. It is

Speaker 1
1-800-525-9917 Like Plato, I’m

John Perry
rather myopic. For those

Speaker 1
of you listening, in case you can’t tell, we are in a pledge drive, and we have a very special thank you gift during philosophy talk, because Ken and John are philosopher kings, I. Our very own Philosopher Kings here at the humble mighty K Al W will be pulling together a Sunday salon, and the.. and why did you come up with the subject? The subject matter, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, is the language of politics. Well, because

Ken Taylor
it’s october 24 that’s just a week before election day. Yes, and Jeff Nunberg is going to be our guest for this special Sunday salon, and he’s an expert on, you know, people’s the foibles of language and how people corrupt language and bend language, and politicians, you know, they do such violence to language in service of their aims.

Speaker 1
Actually, for the engaged listener who calls 1-800-525-9917 perhaps wants to bring their significant other, or their partner or their husband or their wife at the tune of $400 and they pledge for $400 and they attend the language of politics they could bring to the table or to the meeting that we’ll have words of politicians, and we’ll help deconstruct that for them, right, bring

John Perry
your favorite, favorite stupid or bright thing that a politician has said, and will deconstruct it or reconstruct it or criticize it, or listen to Jeff analyze it.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, like a war on terror, you know, that’s a really strange thing. They have a war on terrorism, you know.

John Perry
Nicole, while we’ve got here, let me ask you this: we’ve got, I know, lots of listeners over the internet, as far afield, we’ve gotten email from Germany and China and Japan, and not to mention far-off places like Alabama, North Carolina, New York. Now, those people owe the existence of philosophy. Talk to Kal W. Is it permissible under the rules of public radio for them to give a donation to Kal W?

Speaker 1
Absolutely. do that, and thank you so much for bringing that up. Well, they can go to www dot k a l w dot o r g, and there’s a little red button on the home page that says donate now. They click that button, it takes them to a screen that is only one page, basically with very little intrusive information that we need, they fill that out, they hit send, bingo, and it will be attributed to philosophy talk, but really it goes into our overall general operating fund, because that’s how we keep things going. So, here’s an appeal to all you online listeners: you can give to you, can either call 1-800-525-9917 800-525-9917 or pledge online now. If you want to come out to San Francisco, which I highly recommend, october 24 because October is our good weather, and you can pledge at the $250 level for one or the $400 level for two. Then you would be our guest at the Sunday Salon, The Language of Politics with John Perry, Ken Taylor, we’ll give

John Perry
a special prize at the salon to the guests from the furthest distance. Yeah, we’ll give a copy

Ken Taylor
of John’s next book, but I gotta tell you, at this is going to be in a lovely setting. Good friends has volunteered her beautiful house in Noe Valley. There’ll be parking, we’ll have valet parking. There’ll be food and drink. The whole philosophy talk team will be there. You get to meet Ian Schulls in person, the great Amy Standin, and also our special guest, Jeff Nunberg. It’ll be great. Oh, it’s gonna

Speaker 1
be wonderful. Truly looking forward to it. Give us a call. We have limited amount available: 1-800-525-9917 We still have Kalw related. Thank you. Give, so if you can’t pledge at that level, we understand whatever level you can pledge at, do call 800-525-9917 That’s 1-800-525-9917 And a special appeal to you online listeners, you can pledge online as well, or you can call the 800 number. I believe it works worldwide. Give us a call, let us know you’re out there. Let us know how much you appreciate Philosophy Talk on K A L W 800-525-9917 You

Woody Guthrie
This land is your land, and this land is my land, from the California to the New York Island, from the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters. This land was made for you and me,

John Perry
Woody Guthrie. With this land is your land, this land is my land. I’m John Perry. This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything

Ken Taylor
except your intelligence, of course. I’m Ken Taylor. Our topic is Plato, and especially his views about democracy. Our guest is Professor Chris Bubonic from Stanford University. We want to hear from you, our listeners. Give us a call at 41584141344158414134 We all are proud of our democracy. Do we really. Have one is democracy really the best form of government? Tell us what you think. Chris, jump right in. Chris,

Chris Bobonich
Ken is absolutely right in saying that Plato would have wanted you to give until it hurt. Why do I think that? Well, in the Republic, among the ruling class, he thought there should be absolute community of property, absolute communism. There’s no private property at all among the rulers, nor are there any private families. There are no marriages among the rulers, and children are raised in common. So, and he calls this a community of property, women and children.

Ken Taylor
Oh, I like the community. No, never mind. I won’t go there. But tell me again, Chris, is it by the time that the laws came around, you know, we’re talking about his later views, had had Plato given up the idea that the rulers don’t owe any justification to the rule, I mean, you said he let the citizens participate more, right, but but is he still a kind of anti-modern, anti-liberal guy, in the sense of, you know, their license to rule is based on their informed consent in some deep way.

Chris Bobonich
He never thinks that their license to rule is based on the consent of the governed. Their license to rule is based on their doing the right thing and benefiting the governed. So, the consent of the governed isn’t required to make it just. He does think, though, that it’s a better system, a better state in which people are educated and come to understand why the laws are the way that they are, why they should be the way that they are, but he never thinks licensed rule depends on anyone’s consent.

John Perry
This is philosophy talk. We’re talking with Chris Babanich about Plato. Chris, I’ve got an email query here that raises some interesting questions. Says, when I first heard about Plato’s idea of philosopher king, I thought that was something Jesus used in his role as Messiah, to me it makes sense that Jesus was influenced by Plato. Is that too wacky of a connection? I mean, I think I know the answer to the direct question that I don’t think Jesus was influenced by Plato, because I don’t think Jesus read Greek, but but let’s take the three big influential people in Christianity, Jesus, Saint Paul, and Saint Augustine, isn’t there at least one of the three, and maybe two of the three, considerable influence from Plato.

Chris Bobonich
Certainly, for Augustine, Augustine was deeply influenced by Plato, deeply influenced by Platonism, but he had a much more pessimistic view of human life and of politics than Plato did,

John Perry
and let’s look at it the other way around. Is there any religious conception in the background of Plato’s thinking, as there is with Augustine and Aquinas and the later philosophical Christians?

Chris Bobonich
There’s not very much in the Republic, and the Republic begins with the question of whether it’s whether you’re better off being just, and is the just person going to be better off, and Plato is asked to consider this in a very harsh form, and consider a just person, and who’s tortured on a rack, who has evil reputation among all other people and the gods, and is he better off or worse off than an unjust person who enjoys the favor of all other people and the favor of the gods? Let me guess what Plato says. Well, but this is a powerful,

Ken Taylor
yeah, but this is really powerful. I mean, this is, we haven’t talked about this, but it’s not just about the state, but how you live your individual life, right? And this is one of the most powerful things in the Republic, this setup of, you know, we say justice is great, good for the person who practices, but Socrates is challenged to prove that, right, and this is this business about, you know, that Chris just said, about consider the just person who has a reputation for evil, who, who’s all good, nobody knows about his good deeds. He suffers at the, he suffers the rack, even dies, and I guess goes to Hades, possibly. Right, is that right, Chris?

John Perry
Let me just say this philosophy talk, and if you’re just waiting to call, the number is 415-841-4134 We’re talking with Chris Babanich about Plato,

Ken Taylor
and I mean it’s obvious that if you could have it seems obvious that if you could have injustice, if you could steal, rape, pillage, murder, but have a reputation for justice, you get all the good things that the unjust guy gets and all the good things that the just guy gets, because he gets them because of his reputation. So, why would anybody be just? I mean, that’s the question, right? That’s

Chris Bobonich
exactly the question of the republic, and that’s the challenge Plato faces there,

John Perry
and he thinks he answers it. He gives us a good reason why it would be better to be just person despised than an unjust person respected. Is that right?

Chris Bobonich
He does indeed, and he thinks that the most important thing is the good condition of your soul, or we could say today, and the good condition. Your mind injustice, he thinks, is a form of mental ill health. It’s a form of mental disease, and this is crippling and incapacitating, makes you unable really to enjoy any other good thing. Justice is above all a state of psychic health.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, this is

John Perry
another point on which Plato’s been enormously influential. You can still find books written, people debating probably physical battles taking place over the question of how. Why should we be moral? Is it because in some sense we’re better off if we’re moral? Is it, or is it the kind of thing no reason can be given for? I mean,

Ken Taylor
I don’t actually think Plato settled this. I mean, this is one of the great problems of philosophy. Plato articulated the problem as more powerfully than anybody had done before him, certainly, and no less powerfully than anybody has done after him. But I mean, so this is a great enduring problem that philosophers have kept returning to. I don’t think you could say that Plato settled it. Do you think Plato settled it, Chris?

Chris Bobonich
No, I don’t think that at all. It’s a question that we still face today, and question every one of us at some time faces in her life. Should I do what’s right, even at a high cost? Will it be better for me if I do that, or am I genuinely sacrificing something in order to do the right thing,

John Perry
so in Christianity and Christian ethics you typically have have an answer to this, which is well, God knows the difference between the just person that no one recognizes and the unjust person that everyone respects, and the things will be evened out in heaven or hell, so, so the religious philosopher has, you might say, a tool of argument that Plato couldn’t avail himself of. He, he, as you said, he paid some attention to the gods, but they’re not in there to straighten everything out in the long run. As a matter of fact, like most Greeks, he probably thought they just caused a lot of trouble. Didn’t want

Ken Taylor
to join our conversation by giving us a call at 415-841-4134 That’s 415-841-4134 You can send us an email question online by sending us comments at Philosophy talk.org We’d like to, we’d like to hear from you, Chris. Were you going to take up John’s remark about the religious philosopher having an oath that the Platonist doesn’t have?

Chris Bobonich
Well, Plato actually did think that God was good and arranged things for the benefit of the just person in the long run, but he thinks we don’t need that consideration to show that you’re better off being just, you can just leave God totally aside in deciding whether or not we should be just,

Ken Taylor
so you don’t think that Plato solved this problem of whether we should be just intrinsically for its own sake. Why not? What’s wrong with Plato’s argument? It

Chris Bobonich
depends on various psychological assumptions. He gives us this tripartite division of the soul, I think that’s quite contestable. He thinks that knowledge is possible, whether that is right is a question philosophers have debated ever since. So, there’s some deep and fundamental questions that are still unresolved, so we don’t yet, I think, have an answer to the question.

John Perry
Plato had a practical side, too. It’s my understanding that, that he now.. I thought he’d given the answer, but he also thought that if everybody thought that was the answer, and it was part of their education from the get-go, and they all had these philosophers that they respected in charge, that said that you’d be better off being on the rack and being right than, you know, having a good time at the spa and being wrong, that would be the basis of an important basis of the state, seemed to me he was right on about that,

Chris Bobonich
and he certainly thought that, and he thought that anything that denied that, any sort of literature or speech that denied that should be banned, so he was in censorship

Ken Taylor
too.

Chris Bobonich
He was in very much in favor of censorship.

John Perry
This guy, great censorship.

Ken Taylor
Why is this guy a great philosopher? He’s into censorship, he’s into, he’s anti-democratic. He thinks that the masses of people don’t participate fully in reason. Why is this guy a great philosopher? Well, because he,

John Perry
because he gave reasoned argument, and he was good at coming up with interesting questions. What more do you need? And there’s that,

Chris Bobonich
but don’t you think something should be censored? I’m a child pornography.

Ken Taylor
Well, yeah, I do think something should be censored. You’re trying to do the Socratic method on me here. I’m going to make a small concession, and you’re going to crumble my edifice. We’ve got an email

John Perry
question from Alan that’s relevant to this. He says, please expand on the concept of the tyranny of masses, for if there is any failure of democracy to be corrected, this would be it. For instance, it is not acceptable that a racist majority be allowed to promulgate racist laws. Well, if we change racist laws to racist works, we’ve got the issue of censorship.

Ken Taylor
Expand, Chris.

Chris Bobonich
That’s exactly right. And what about. Racist works undermining works, can they be censored? Mein Kampf is banned in Germany, I believe. Is that appropriate? Yeah, mine

John Perry
cannot be published in Germany, so you can’t get a new copy of it. You can buy used copies of it, but let me, but let

Ken Taylor
me put back on my liberal modernity hat against Plato. Again, the problem with Plato, from liberal modernity, is he doesn’t recognize that the good, as it were, is always contestable, but it’s always up for grabs. He thinks there’s some privileged class of people, some privileged method of inquiry, and they can decisively settle what the good is, but that’s that’s the anti-modern idea. The modern idea, or a one strain in liberal modernity, you know, with Hobbes and Locke, and all is that we contest the good, and the reason that the government has to has to get its legitimacy from us is partly precisely because of the contestability of any claim to this is the way we ought to live, right, and Plato doesn’t seem to give enough room to that. What do you think about that, Chris?

Chris Bobonich
It’s true that he thinks that we can come to some decisions about what is a better and worse way to live, but I wonder if we don’t share that assumption as well. Don’t liberals, for instance, assume that freedom of speech, other things are in the most cases good, that these are not just not just brute preferences, mere tastes, and that there’s some reason for thinking that living in this way is right or appropriate or good. Well,

Ken Taylor
you know, those are very good questions. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to say goodbye without answering them, but you know we always leave something hanging. Thanks so much for leave something

John Perry
for next time. Yeah, my pleasure.

Chris Bobonich
I enjoyed it a great deal. Our

John Perry
guest today has been Chris Bobanich of Stanford University, author of Plato’s Utopia Recast, published by Oxford University Press. It’s been a great having pleasure having Chris with us.

Ken Taylor
So, John, what did you learn today about the great philosopher Plato?

John Perry
Well, I learned, of course, that Plato is well worth reading and thinking about even all these years later, and that Chris Bobonich is, as always, a charming and erudite person to talk to, and that you’re full of questions and vim and vigor. My own view, for what it’s worth, is that we should, we should, we should note that we don’t have anything like a pure democracy. We should think about the fact that modern technology knowledge of the psychology, computers, all the tools, and all the knowledge we’ve had over the 200 years since the electoral college and other other parts of our system were formed are things that we could think about about having an improved semi democracy. Nobody’s thinking about this, but I think we should, I don’t think we’ve got the last word in a complex system that has the virtues of democracy without the perils.

Ken Taylor
I think you’re right about that. I certainly think we could improve our semi democracy. I certainly think that’s right. But back to Plato, I guess I’m just a deeply an Enlightenment guy, which in the Enlightenment is very anti-Platonic in the following way, the in the Enlightenment, it’s every human being has the full potential to participate in rationality, and all that, it’s not, it’s not, it’s not isolated to the, to the select few, and if rationality is kind of universal in all human beings, and if, and if everybody kind of has the capacity to perceive their own good and choose their own good. Then you can’t have this platonic thing where there’s a privileged class, where there’s a special set of experts who say, here is the good for us. Well,

John Perry
there’s a, there’s a premise missing there. It may be that everybody’s capable of being a part of the decision-making class, but not everybody might choose to pursue the training and education that leads to that philosopher kings may start out as sons of the bronze and copper class, but end up like us, Ken, in a good system. Of course, we would be in charge of everything, and you’d all be required to give to K A L W, San Francisco’s wonderful radio station. We’ve got Nicole Sawaia here to help us enlarge on that theme,

Speaker 1
and you know, Ken and John, that everybody can give to K A L W, everybody equally – the gold people, the silver people, the bronze people, iron people, the

John Perry
lead people.

Speaker 1
If they can get access to a telephone, they can call one 805 25991 259917 We’re not going to tell you at what level to pledge. You know your budget best, you know what’s affordable for you. So, pledge at whatever level. We would really like to see appreciation for Philosophy Talk on K A L W.

John Perry
Let me emphasize, folks, Philosophy Talk exists because of K A L W. If they hadn’t been willing to take the step, take the take, take, take the risk of putting us on the air, we would not be on the air,

Speaker 1
and we were ridiculed when we did say, oh yes, we’re going to do this, no, no, only because within the industry, oh, people don’t want to talk about such highfalutin matters like follow. Philosophy, let’s dumb it down. Come on, we want to have you know, dumb down stuff. No, no, no. We knew all of us collectively who pulled together and created philosophy talk. We knew there’s a great hunger out there for this kind of conversation. You

Ken Taylor
listeners, you have to reward that kind of courage and innovation, because it’s true. I mean, we took this thing around to various, and they said, you want to do what you want to talk about philosophy on the radio, and Nicole Sawaya and KLW said, ‘Hey, you want to talk about philosophy on the radio? You got to reward that kind. So, what’s that vision? 1-800-525-9917

Speaker 1
And if you’d like to reward yourself, ladies and gentlemen, to a very special opportunity, we have pulled together a philosophical Sunday salon, which will be held october 24 somewhere in Noe Valley, in other words, in San Francisco. We’ll let

Ken Taylor
you know when you pledge. We won’t give it out. Good drilling gatecraft, fabulous

Speaker 1
philosophy. We will have John there, and Ken, and Jeff Nunberg and Amy Standin and Ian Scholz, the whole Philosophy Talk crew. If you can pledge at the $250 level, that’s good for the price of one admission. If you can pledge at the $400 level, bring somebody with you, get engaged. Let’s have a terrific Sunday salon about the language of politics. The number to call: one 805 25 99917. Yeah, John,

Ken Taylor
really, John, and I really want to see what our listeners look like. We know what we look, I know what you look like, but I don’t know what the listeners look like. And

John Perry
we had such a great program with Jeff Nunberg, talking about language, and you hear him a lot on all kinds of public radio station fresh air, delightful guy to talk about, so knowledgeable. I’d call him a maven, except he doesn’t like the idea of there being language mavens, so but he’s a really knowledgeable linguist who I can’t wait to hear what he says to say about political language.

Speaker 1
As are the two of you, 1-800-525-9917 Take this opportunity. It will be as Ken said earlier, it’s right before election, so you can take all those sound bites you’ve heard as they try and win your vote from you and get them deconstructed at the language of politics. If nothing else, I’m sure we’ll have some good laughs. 1-800-525-9917 We’ll have

Ken Taylor
good food and good drink. It’ll be a nice intimate setting, a beautiful setting, a beautiful view of the city, and all. It’ll be a really great afternoon,

Speaker 1
but you can pledge at any level. The important thing is to make the connection. The important thing is that all of you within the sound of our voices will stand up for philosophy on public radio, will say no, we don’t have to speak to wait down there we can talk about all these are relevant issues to our daily lives. 1-800-525-9917

John Perry
Now, you all, you guys out there in internet land, in Sweden and Norway and Germany and England, North Carolina, South Carolina, listening to us on the internet. Now, maybe some of you don’t know how public radio in America works. We don’t get government money. It’s not like the BBC, KA LW is 99 and nine tenths percent supported by its listeners, or 80% at any rate. Sounds like 99 and so, so, so, your, your money coming in over the internet or through that 800 number that Nicole’s going to repeat in a second can be a big help,

Speaker 1
and while our philosophers, John and Ken, may work at Stanford, Stanford doesn’t work here, and we get no beneficiaries from Stanford. We love our collaboration, we love our partnership. Give us a call, Supports Philosophy on Public Radio, 1-800-525-9917 5259917 Reward

Ken Taylor
the little station that could, as it were. This is a great station. I love this station. I love collaborating with the folks here at K Al W. It wouldn’t be possible without their innovation and vision, and you know, I mean, we’re going to take this thing around the nation eventually. But we got our start here at K A L, absolutely, and reward that kind of vision. 1-800-525-9917

John Perry
Absolutely, give till it hurts, or at least give till it starts to itch a little.

Ken Taylor
And we’d love to see you Sunday, october 24 Oh

Speaker 1
yeah, it’ll be a great Sunday salon again. The language of politics: 250 Price of admission for one, $400 for a couple, 1-800-525-9917 A

John Perry
good time will be had by all, and I think Ken is going to bring his guitar and sing several songs. Oh my god, that’s a

Ken Taylor
threat, not a promise.

Speaker 1
1-800-525-9917 There’s a limited amount of seats on the couch, I believe, or in the circle. So, do call now: 251 $400 to terrific support for K A L W. Put it on a credit card: 1-800-525-9917

John Perry
Thank you for thinking.