In their second episode featuring the works of modern Platonist Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), James Myers and Michael Fitzpatrick brought Plato into the 21st century through Whitehead’s perspectives as a mathematician and philosopher. The discussion relates Whitehead’s perspectives to many of Plato’s dialogues, including The Sophist, The Timaeus, The Republic, The Parmenides, and The Philebus.

Writing his landmark work Process and Reality during the years when quantum mechanics and general relativity were discovered, Whitehead’s philosophy of organism treats the universe as a web of interconnected processes and changes. Whitehead applied the logic of Plato’s writing from 2,400 years ago to identify crucial connections in the web and, by following their paths, he related concepts in general relativity and quantum mechanics to the universe as an organism. From Whitehead’s perspective, there was clear logic for an eternal co-dependency of the infinite universe and the finite connections within its web.

The mathematician had much to say about the nature of time, which was a prominent in the episode’s discussion. To Whitehead, time was not linear but circular, and likewise Plato’s character Timaeus described the universe as spherical. Timaeus also stated that the changes we see everywhere around us are in a “moving image of eternity, moving according to number, of eternity remaining in unity.” The appeal of Timaeus’ perspective to a mathematician becomes even more obvious in the character’s next statement: “This number, of course, is what we now call 'time'.”

Can science and philosophy be reunited? If ever there was a time for such unity, the time is now, and Whitehead paved the way to connecting ancient principles with the discoveries of Albert Einstein and Nils Bohr that have transformed the modern world.

In this episode, James Myers and Michael Fitzpatrick continue to discuss modern Platonists with an introduction to Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), a mathematician who ended up as a professor of philosophy at Harvard University even though he didn’t hold a degree in philosophy. Whitehead hadn’t formally trained as a philosopher but came to be highly regarded for his mathematically-informed process philosophy that relates the oneness of all things to the continual becoming of many things. Whitehead viewed the universe as an organism of unending interconnections, and mathematics as describing the transformations of the particular connections that shape the physical world. The transformations Whitehead called “process,” and his book Process and Reality is discussed in this introductory episode where we begin to look at the current relevance of Whitehead’s thinking and how it connects to the thinking that Plato introduced to the world 2,400 years ago.

Plato’s Pod host James Myers brings the logic of the characters in ten of Plato’s dialogues to bear on the question of “what is intelligence?” and concludes that “artificial intelligence” is impossible. Plato’s message, that intelligence is developed only in a soul on the basis of the soul’s understanding of motion, is especially empowering for the potential of intelligent humans when big tech companies are racing to generate and profit from algorithmic intelligence that exceeds any human capacity. But the path to intelligence is very different from “machine learning,” because algorithms have no experience of motion and no access to the timeless characteristics of motion. Plato’s characters say that a soul is that which possesses self-generating motion, so that the universe itself has a soul, human souls are part of the universal soul, and understanding the causes and effects of motion – all of which springs from the self-generating motion of the universe – is key to intelligence. Changing our mindsets toward intelligence, and deleting the word “intelligence” in relation to algorithms, could put humanity on a path to a very bright future with our creative intelligence and the technology we are fully capable of developing to serve human intelligence.

Our choice and use of words has a profound effect on the operation of justice, and a particular legal dispute now before the United States Supreme Court hangs on the meaning of three words. In this episode, Plato’s Pod host James Myers explores what eight of Plato’s works have to say about the meaning of words, and the ways that words shape constitutions, justice, and governments in our time as they did in Plato’s time, 24 centuries earlier. Socrates was executed because his jury judged him guilty of two words – impiety and corruption – which we now interpret very differently, and it’s an ancient example of how justice and injustice can still hinge on word meanings. The justices of the Supreme Court will soon render a decision on the meaning and usage of three words that have evolved from 1789 to 1977, and from 1977 to 2025. If we wrote our laws with a lengthy preamble setting out the lawmakers’ meaning and intent, as the Athenian in Plato’s Laws suggests, then justice might not be as difficult to establish at later times as it now is.

“Think the event” is central to the philosophy of Alain Badiou, a modern Platonist who has been writing and lecturing in philosophy for over five decades. Badiou said, “Philosophy is the seizure of thought of what breaks with the sleep of thought,” because real truth is found by looking for the exceptions and finding the important connections in time that we have overlooked. Badiou’s insight is that you can’t see until your eyes have been opened by an “event,” and to his thinking events happen like shockwaves that shake the scales from your eyes and allow you to see something you missed before because you were so invested in one way of looking at the world.

In discussing selections from Badiou’s writing and lectures from several decades ago, James Myers and Michael Fitzpatrick found many connections between the the polarized politics of today and the philosopher’s work and views on political organization and practices of his time. As opposition is increasingly entrenched, Badiou said the key is to base political actions on a truth such as justice that all factions could reasonably support, making the political challengers commensurable to truth rather than existing only to oppose each others’ ideas.

The three great tasks of philosophy, Badiou says, are “to deal with choice, with distance, and with the exception.” The event is the exception, and philosophy leads us to understand the connections of cause and effect in the exceptions that shape our lives. Thinking the event helps us to distinguish the real from the shadowy projections on the wall of Plato’s allegory of the cave, and by opening our eyes to what really happened we regain our agency for change to make something different happen.

We followed our discussion of Plato’s famous Letter VII by looking at his lesser-known Letters VI and VIII. Together, they form a powerful trilogy in which “Love your neighbour” emerges as an overarching theme, and a principle that Plato says applies above all to kings, whose rule must be tempered by a love for their subjects. Plato’s concept of kingship is very different from the history of misrule by kings who exercise absolute and arbitrary power for their own benefit. The lessons that Plato provides in the three letters, from his own experience in politics 2,400 years ago, are especially important to our modern world, as tyrants and authoritarians impose injustice on their slavish followers and destroy the social harmony of their subjects. In Letter VI, Plato calls on members of The Academy to form a bond of friendship with a king who respects reason, and in Letter VIII he exhorts would-be tyrants to “shun and flee from what senseless and insatiate men call happiness; let them try to change into the form of kings and subject themselves to kingly laws, thus acquiring the highest honors from their willing subjects and from the laws.” A good king is the servant of the laws and justice, not one who enslaves his people with false images that, like the prisoner in the cave of Plato’s Republic, are mistaken for reality. More than two millennia after Plato wrote, we live in a world awash in false images that are broadcast to our screens with the speed and power of technology and cloaked as “opinion,” but what if we were to relinquish what we think of as a right to opinion? In our discussion, a proposal is advanced that we need to forgo claiming a right to opinion so that we can exercise reason, because reason and not opinion is the road the path to true freedom. We argue that this would be a step in the right direction on the divided line of knowledge that Plato described in The Republic, to us toward knowledge and then, with social harmony, to wisdom which is the greatest good.

The second half of our discussion on Plato’s Seventh Letter begins with a reading of Plato’s famous statement that he never published any statement of his opinions. That’s both the beauty and, for some, the frustration of Plato to his readers. The reason, as Michael Fitzpatrick states in our dialogue, is that Plato didn’t want to give us the answer key: “The only way your soul benefits is if these thoughts are born afresh in your soul, and you see the truth for yourself.” Plato weaves into his Seventh Letter much of the philosophy that he presented in his many dialogues, in particular that of the Republic, and one of the central questions of the Seventh Letter is “Can virtue be taught?” It’s a question that Plato also asked in the Meno, and we can see an answer from the Seventh Letter’s extraordinary account of his experience with the tyrannical rule of Syracuse by the tyrant Dionysius. Written to the supporters of the tyrant’s victim, Dion, and recounting his practical imprisonment by Dionysius on his third visit to the city, Plato admits that his attempts to teach virtue to Dionysius had failed. Is Plato saying virtue can never be taught? We don’t know his opinion on the matter, and that’s why he leaves the question hanging for us to consider.

In our first discussion on Plato's letters, we look at his best-known Seventh Letter. In the letter, Plato relates his experience with Dionysius, the tyrannical ruler of Syracuse, and the philosophically minded Dion was was persecuted by Dionysius. Plato's extraordinary recounting of his time teaching both Dionysius and Dion demonstrates his success with the latter, and failure with the former. There are many intriguing parallels between the situation in Syracuse 2,400 years ago, when Plato wrote, and the political and social environment in which we find ourselves today. Plato's account highlights the ills that befall a society whose rulers don't practise philosophy, and we see such rulers now, in the 21st century. The philosophical principles and observations about human nature that Plato expressed over two millennia ago remain relevant today, and in our next episode on the Seventh Letter we'll explore the age-old question "Can virtue be taught?"

What relevance do the principles and ideas of Plato's dialogues have for the modern, technologically-powered world of 8 billion people? In a wide-ranging discussion, James Myers and Michael Fitzpatrick address current social and political issues around the globe, relating them to the themes presented in a number of Plato's dialogues that include The Republic, The Laws, the Statesman, and the Meno, Questions of leadership, education, wealth, and social cohesion are raised, with some interesting suggestions for a path forward to the common good that was an abiding concern of Plato.

Those interested in Michael's writing on Plato and related subjects can visit "Plato for the Masses" at https://platoforthemasses.substack.com/.

Our final meeting on Plato’s longest dialogue, The Laws, concluded with readings from Book XII, where the Athenian expounds on the operation of a special Nocturnal Council that will act as the head and intellect for Crete’s new colony, Magnesia. On August 4, 2024, members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups considered many of the key themes of The Laws, in discussing how the Nocturnal Council would guard the virtue of the colony, its leaders, and its citizens. The unique aim of Magnesia’s constitution to be a virtuous and peaceful community, unlike constitutional goals many modern readers would be familiar with, requires a unity of principles, harmony, and laws based on reason, which will be the task of the Nocturnal Council to ensure. This led to a recollection of our first two meetings on The Laws, where we began with Book X and its justification that Reason itself is in the very centre of the universe, and is something far older than the physical matter that surrounds our immaterial souls. In concluding the dialogue, are we left with reason to think that Magnesia will be successful? The answer may depend on the meaning of virtue: is virtue, as the Athenian earlier stated, “the general concord of reason and emotion” and, as Socrates stated in the Meno, the account of the reasons why? Perhaps with today’s increasing global discord, some solutions might be found in Plato’s final dialogue, The Laws.