Hello there,

It’s been a while (I’m sorry) but the Plato’s Republic lectures are back!

Before the end of the year we will be getting through the last books 7-10, and if you want to catch up on the lectures so far here is the link:

In this lecture on book 7 we will discuss the following:

* The Digression of books 5-6, including the images of the sun, divided line and the Cave.

* The cave as an image of education — reorienting the soul from shadows and appearances toward reality.

* Tracking the prisoner’s painful ascent from images to objects to intelligible forms and ultimately to the Good as the source of intelligibility.

* The return to the cave, where the enlightened person is mocked and potentially killed, linking this to Socrates’ fate.

* Drawing on John Vervaeke, Karl Jaspers’ Axial Age, and concepts like salience, enkrateia, and sophrosyne, framing the ascent as moral and attentional training.

* Finally, we compare the Cave Allegory to Social Media and The Matrix, comparing the modern and ancient perspectives on transcendance.

00:00 Lecture 700:22 Recap and Digression05:41 Inside the Cave10:51 Climbing to Sunlight12:47 Divided Line Revisited18:31 Source of Intelligibility21:26 Return and Resistance23:50 Axial Age and Two Worlds27:11 How to leave the Cave 33:00 Social Media as the Cave33:46 The Matrix Retells the Cave39:15 Plato vs Matrix on Happiness

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