Plato argued that the inevitable next step in political evolution after democracy is tyranny. Many political thinkers throughout history agreed with him. Were they right?

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A full transcript of this episode with references can be found on our website at greecepodcast.com

Was Marcus Aurelius really the enlightened ruler that history books and modern movies portray him as? And is his brand of Stoic philosophy applicable to the modern world?

With us to discuss these and other questions is Donald Robertson, a psychotherapist and the author of How to Think Like and Emperor and Verissimus.

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An update on the AGD Tour happening in Greece from August 16-24

For an outline of the itinerary click here.

Thirty three scholars, philosophers, and archaeologists answer the question: If you could time travel to the ancient world, who would you want to meet?

Scholars featured + the timestamps when they appear:

2:10 Edith Hall

3:36 Eric Cline

4:30 Andromache Karanika

5:45 Josiah Ober

6:48 Rush Rehm

7:30 Ian Morris

8:02 Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

9:20 Patrick Hunt

9:46 Raffaella Cribiore

11:04 Mark Adams

12:20 Peter Adamson

13:47 Richard Martin

15:08 M. M. McCabe

16:37 Zina Giannopoulou

18:45 Greg Nagy

19:43 Caroline Winterer

20:04 Melissa Lane

22:28 Alicia Stallings

22:57 Rhiannon Evans

24:04 Barbara Graziosi

24:54 Walter Scheidel

25:12 Matt Simonton

26:30 Emily Greenwood

27:57 Olga Levaniouk

30:00 Steele Brand

32:55 Rachel Barney

33:36 Angie Hobbs

35:31 Adrian Goldsworthy

36:30 Mary Bachvarova

37:42 Jonathan Lear

39:40 Mary Townsend

40:31 Gabriel Richardson Lear

42:14 Ben Morison

Philosophers today often dismiss Plato's Theory of Forms as an outdated and failed attempt by a pre-modern thinker to explain knowledge. However, cognitive scientist John Vervaeke offers a radically different take on Plato's theory and how it ties in with recent debates about the nature of intelligence.

John Vervaeke is a professor at the University of Toronto and the creator of the popular YouTube series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.

An announcement about the upcoming Ancient Greece Declassified tour in Greece this summer.

The cave analogy, which takes up the majority of book 7 of the Republic, is one of the most famous passages in all of western philosophy.

In this episode, we are joined by Ben Morison, professor of philosophy at Princeton, to dive deep into the allegory and unpack its various levels of meaning.

Plato is at once the most loved and possibly the most hated philosopher of all time. This episode explores five reasons why he drives some people mad.

Contents of the episode, with timestamps:

Reason 1: Who should rule? [7:30]

Reason 2: What political system is best? [12:20]

The Ship of State [15:10]

Reason 3: What is truth? [20:20]

Reason 4: What is knowledge? [30:35]

The Divided Line [40:25]

Reason 5: What is good?

Where does the notion of 'moral duty' come from? In this conversation with Simon E. Drew we dive deep into the history of the concept and discuss my recent book The Invention of Duty.

This episode was originally published on The Walled Garden podcast and is here republished as a crosscast.

Book 6 of the Republic is the work's core section where Plato lays out his metaphysics. Appealing to his signature Theory of Forms, Plato offers a transcendent vision of the Good as the ultimate source of human knowledge.

Joining us to help us unpack this theory is Gabriel Richardson Lear, professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago and author of the book Happy Lives and the Highest Good: An Essay on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.

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Or make a one-time donation: paypal.me/greecepodcast