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Michial Farmer, Coyle Neal, and Victoria Reynolds Farmer talk about book eight of Plato’s Republic.

Show Notes

• Our translations of the Republic: Benjamin Jowett (1888); John Llewelyn Davies and David James Vaughan (1920); Francis Macdonald Cornford (1942); and C.D.C. Reeve (2004).
• Plato gives us the first “OK, Boomer.”
• Walker Percy says that the real religion of the antebellum south was Stoicism, not Christianity.
• Stephen Watt explains Plato’s personal connection to oligarchy:

During the war and its aftermath, Athens experienced a number of revolutions and counterrevolutions in which democracy (government by the majority), the characteristic form of Athenian government, alternated with oligarchy (government by a minority), the form of government characteristic of Sparta. Plato’s family was heavily involved in the oligarchical regime of the Thirty which took power in 404, and it may well have been disgust at the ferocity of their rule which dissuaded Plato from pursuing a political career and led him into a private life devoted to the study of philosophy. (From his Introduction to Republic, trans. Davies and Vaughan, Wordsworth Classics, 1997.)

• Anthony Kennedy, in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey (1992): “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
• The democratic man reminds Victoria of Hyperbole and a Half and Michial of “Self-Reliance.” And of Rabbit Redux.
• Thomas Aquinas recommends good self-care.
• Andrew Sullivan warned us to read Plato before Trump was elected.
• Our theme music was provided by Blue Dot Sessions.

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