Ep. 87: Platonic Resolutions
Young Heretics
Spencer Klavan
4.9 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 11 January 2022
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As the new year rolls in, most of us think about how to be better—but what does that even mean? Luckily, our journey through Plato's Republic has taken us to the perfect book for thinking about excellence of all kinds. In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan discusses the cardinal virtues and how to cultivate them.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Happy New Year! Welcome to New Year's resolutions with your old pal, Uncle Plato. |
| 0:09.1 | This is your last chance for real. It really is. The last time that you can get discounted |
| 0:14.5 | Young Heretics merchants, 20% off until January 15th. And we really are shutting it off. |
| 0:20.4 | Everything in the store is discountedyoungheretics.com, forward slash shop, and use the promo code |
| 0:26.8 | Shears. And you can get everything. Hats, shirts, stickers, all that stuff. It's excellent high |
| 0:32.3 | quality gear. I've been seeing people tweeting pictures of themselves in it. You guys look great. |
| 0:37.2 | You got to get it while the deal lasts. So it's YoungHeretics.com, forward slash shop, |
| 0:41.4 | before January 15th to get 20% off everything when you use the promo code Shears. |
| 0:47.2 | Today I am talking about Republic Book 4. We've been on a journey through the Republic |
| 0:54.3 | together on this show every so often. I do an episode on a particular book. I'm |
| 0:58.4 | we're up to book 4. And providentially it just so happens that book 4 is a great book to read. |
| 1:04.5 | If you are thinking about making New Year's resolutions, I'm being a little like goofy about this, |
| 1:10.3 | but not entirely. I mean, this is a foundational book for personal ethics and for public morality as |
| 1:18.8 | well. And of course for justice, which is the subject of the entire book. Right, the whole book is |
| 1:22.9 | about justice in the city and justice in the soul. And this is kind of a crucial book because it is |
| 1:27.9 | where we make the transition from talking about what justice is at a macro level that is in the city, |
| 1:34.4 | in the palace. And then down into the micro level, you know, talking about what it is means to be |
| 1:41.6 | just as a person. And so the kind of rudiments of the field of ethics, the philosophical study of |
| 1:49.6 | ethics, what is good, what is bad, how should humans act are here. They're not only here, but |
| 1:54.4 | that this is a very important text for thinking about how to be good at being human, which as I often |
| 2:00.3 | like to remind you guys is what virtue is, right? The Greek word RITAY just means excellence. You can |
| 2:05.8 | have excellence in a million different ways and horses and tools can also have excellences, right? |
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