You've probably heard that facts don't care about your feelings.

But today I want to tell you that art doesn't care about your politics.

And maybe more importantly, I want to tell you that politics doesn't care about your art.

So we're reading Republic Book 3 today.

We've gotten to the third book in our gradual progression through this masterwork of

Western political philosophy, in some ways a kind of foundation stone of political philosophy.

In the West we read Book 1, which is kind of a prelude where it's established that justice

is an objective thing and not just the will of the stronger. And then we read Book 2, in which the

question is kind of raised more deeply and in earnest. What is justice? Is it actually good to be

just or is it just a fool's game? And then this barked us, this set us off on this big project

of imagining the perfect state. That is, if we think about what justice is in the city,

we'll be able to think about what justice is full stop in a soul and a human being and in general.

So Plato's interlocutors, that is Socrates is the main guy as often in the dialogues.

And he's talking with Glaucom and Adamantus, who are these two sons of a riston, which means that

they're Plato's brothers. These interlocutors are now embarked upon this project of imagining

the perfect policy, the calipolis, that is the good and beautiful city state. Remember that

city states are a kind of different thing than we have now in nations, right? They're not

countries. They're cities that are political units unto themselves. Athens is a city state.

Barta is a city state. And this calipolis, this imaginary place is a city where the people

govern and are governed according to you rules unique to that city state. The question is,

what are the just rules? And we got up to the point where we have the guardians who are the

people in charge, right? They are the philosopher kings, although that can be misleading because

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