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Philosophize This!

Episode #004 ... Plato

Philosophize This!

Stephen West

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Education

4.817.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2013

⏱️ 45 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this week's episode, we learn about Plato's "Symposium", which you might think of as philosophy's version of fan fiction. We also learn about Plato's "Theory of Forms" and ask ourselves what makes a tree, well, a tree. This leads to discussion of Plato's famous "Allegory of the Cave" and calls into question whether or not everything we see is merely a shadow of its true self. Finally, we learn about Plato's views on society and government and why he thought democracy was one of the worst forms of government, second only to tyranny. Support the show on Patreon! www.philosophizethis.org for additional content. Thank you for wanting to know more today than you did yesterday. :) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

For more information about this or any episode of the podcast, check out the website at

0:04.8

philosophizethis.org.

0:06.4

We have additional content, further reading, transcripts of every show, all three, of course.

0:12.2

But if you value the shows and educational resource and you want to help keep it going,

0:15.8

you can find out more about how to do that at patreon.com slash philosophize this.

0:20.4

Or alternatively, if you're buying something from Amazon this week anyway, consider

0:24.0

clicking through our banner.

0:25.0

It's at the bottom center of the landing page of philosophizethis.org.

0:29.7

One percentage goes back to the show, it may just be a click for you, but every little

0:32.9

bit adds up.

0:34.3

Thank you for wanting to know more today than you did yesterday, and I hope you love

0:37.6

the show.

0:38.6

Hello, everyone.

0:39.6

It's me, Stephen West.

0:41.4

This is philosophize this and I got to tell you this episode was really close to being

0:46.8

a two-part episode because when you're dealing with philosophers that are as influential as

0:52.0

Plato was and have a body of work as extensive as Plato's is, it starts to become very difficult

0:58.1

to make one single 45-minute conglomeration of all of it.

1:03.5

On that same note, a guy named Alfred North Whitehead famously said that all of Western

1:08.5

philosophy, subsequently after Plato, consists of a set of footnotes to Plato and his work.

1:14.8

Footnotes, that's it.

1:16.2

By the end of this episode, you're going to understand why he said that.

...

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