"Are we trapped in a Digital Cave?" DC Schindler Pod Transcript

Transcript of an awesome podcast conversation

Transcript

Mahon McCann (00:01.725)

DC Schindler, thank you very much for joining me again. This is actually our third podcast trilogy. I believe. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, the impetus for this conversation, which you're discussing is Plato's critique of images in the Republic. As I was teaching a course last semester on the undergraduates for on Plato's Republic and something that kept coming up was the critique of images and you know,

D.C. Schindler (00:06.434)

Well, Good number, yes.

Mahon McCann (00:27.485)

You're asking a lot of questions about like, is he critiquing images? Why is he so opposed to the poets, you know, even book 10 and you know, he's creating images, but he's, he's not happy with the images and, then how this relates to the internet and you know, our imagistic society is, you know, I thought a great topic to pick your brain on and see what you think. So maybe if you could introduce like the, his critique of images and you know what, your, your take on it to start off might be good.

D.C. Schindler (00:37.282)

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (00:47.448)

Sure, yeah.

D.C. Schindler (00:55.416)

Yeah, so, I mean, you he's notorious for the famous ancient quarrel with the poets and in this ideal city in the Republic, he kicks them out famously, so notoriously again. And people have often read this as a kind of a moralistic rejection of art and artists and poets and so forth. I think that, you know, they condemn Plato for that.

And then at the same time, they, with a certain snicker point to the fact that he himself is obviously a consummate artist and the Republic as a text is a great poem in a way. It's a work of art. It's an artistic creation and artifact. So he seems to be contradicting himself and so forth. And I think the issue is, it's far more complex and interesting than those sort of

dismissive critiques tend to be. It seems to me, first of all, that Plato wasn't in fact concerned about the role that poetry in particular had in his culture. In the beginning of the allegory of the cave, he actually presents it as an image of education. so it's interesting, what in the world does this have to do with education?

I think it's helpful to realize that in ancient Greece, as one classicist said, Homer was the educator of the Greeks, that poetry was one of the principal means by which the citizens were educated. They were taught about the world, the nature of reality and so forth, and also taught virtue.

And obviously a reason for that would be the fact that images can speak to us in ways that have an effect on us. They impact us. They form our imagination. They dispose us in certain ways. They don't just teach us information, but they teach us to love and hate different things. They move us. so Plato was aware of that.

D.C. Schindler (03:21.166)

And his concern wasn't so much with that fact as it is that that was done in a way that was unaware, was unconscious of the effect and without much discrimination, without much attention to, you know, in a more profound way what was being communicated. So it seems to me what he's doing in the republic is not so much rejecting

that practice as retrieving it within, you might say, know, a purified or a kind of a re-envisioned program that actually is attentive to the fundamental questions about the nature of truth, the nature of the good. And so it's sort of reoriented in a positive direction.

And that gives the imagery, the philosopher a certain freedom with respect to the images. mean, there would be a million things. could go on for 45 minutes without stopping.

Mahon McCann (04:27.483)

Yes.

Yeah, no, no, I think that's a really great and yeah, yeah, no, I don't want to just send you to see you at the you know, because it is so central to all of his thought as well in a but I really thought point of like he that he's almost trying to overcome Homer even though he loves Homer. He's trying to like almost put Socrates in the place of Achilles or Odysseus and have the philosopher King is the new hero and versus the older kind of warrior King ideal.

D.C. Schindler (04:46.712)

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (04:50.882)

Right. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Mahon McCann (04:58.769)

And obviously the philosopher King loves the truth loves the whole of the truth. And so, you know, there's a kind of redemption of images there. I mean, I, yeah, I don't know, does that is that land? Does that make sense?

D.C. Schindler (04:58.776)

That's right.

D.C. Schindler (05:07.146)

Right. Yeah, absolutely. That's in redemption of images is a nice, exactly a nice way to put it. he loved I mean, that's there's evidence that he had a deep attraction to Homer. In fact, he also the legend is that that he had thought of himself as a playwright, that that was sort of the path.

that and statesmanship were kind of a path that he was originally going to follow before he met Socrates. But I think it's really helpful to see, you know, it's not a rejection of, it's an assumption of poetry in service of the truth. And the philosopher king doesn't destroy the cave, he enters back into it, he goes back down into it.

into the realm of images. But the point is he wants to do it in a liberating mode. And so what is it that liberates us from images? It's not that we remove them necessarily, but that we enter into genuine contact with the reality of which they are images. And that allows us, you know, I mean, he says this about words, know, words, writing is meant to be, you know, a reminder.

for those who know, rather than a substitute. You can memorize words and not really understand something, but if you understand it, the words are actually bring it actively to mind in a really helpful way. And I think that's what images are meant to be for Plato is having glimpsed, having turned one's soul towards the good and the true. We can celebrate.

in a genuinely free and more playful spirit what is contained in the images because we're not trapped by them, you might say.

Mahon McCann (07:11.141)

Yes. And is there kind of a reaction to the sophists there as well in that they use images to manipulate people? I know you talked about in the book, appearances as being manipulative in a way that they're, you know, you can use these kind of affective images in order to drive people certain ways and shape their salience. And it's almost like the good, the good artist in a sense, like the philosopher King is, using those images to, have an affecting relationship towards the good.

D.C. Schindler (07:22.306)

Right. Right.

D.C. Schindler (07:40.942)

Yeah.

Mahon McCann (07:41.159)

But then other people can use it to an affect and relationship towards lower goods or towards their own benefit. Are themselves like,

D.C. Schindler (07:46.328)

or towards ultimately their own right self-interest. Yeah, you know, one of the things I find really helpful with the comparison, so the Sophists were teachers, but of course they, you know, they sold their courses as opposed to Socrates who taught for free. And interestingly, Socrates wouldn't describe himself as a teacher. He said, in the sense of someone who

puts knowledge into the soul. You think of it as transmitting information. Instead he uses the image of the maiotis in Greek, the midwife. And that's not somebody who gives you the truth, but who actually facilitates the relationship with the truth. The midwife does not impregnate the woman, but helps the woman give birth to the child.

and Socrates wants to help the soul give birth to insight that, rather than pro provided, but, but mediated, allow it to come forth. and, what's interesting there is what he's doing is he's, he's mediating an immediate relationship. You know, he, he, he becomes sort of an instrument by which you.

as the student achieve a direct insight into truth. And in the Republic there, it's interesting, he says, the teacher is not, teaching is not putting information into the soul, but turning it around to face the truth. And that relationship to the truth is one that's directly from the soul's own immediate relation.

Mahon McCann (09:18.031)

Yes.

Mahon McCann (09:34.459)

Hmm.

Mahon McCann (09:40.155)

Yes, I think he uses that extended metaphor doesn't he as well of like coupling of a like an intercourse and of giving birth as knowledge essentially like carnal almost that metaphor of like to know in a biblical sense of like a carnal knowledge but that actually coming to reality involves this coupling to reality. It's not just like taking in you know, passive propositions or something like that. It's a very different proposal.

D.C. Schindler (09:40.374)

So the relationship to, yeah.

D.C. Schindler (09:57.304)

That's right.

D.C. Schindler (10:02.444)

Yeah, no, it's that's right. It's an intimacy and intercourse. And that's the word that he uses between the soul and being and and knowledge is produced, it's generated. So so the the midwife, you know, allows this relationship to happen, but isn't isn't the the governor of it or the, you know, the isn't the manipulator of it.

You know, it's interesting in that if you were to look at the details of the allegory of the cave, it seems to me the sophists would be the ones who are behind the wall who are fabricating the images and moving them that then project their shadows on the wall that the prisoners are forced to see. It's those people, he isn't saying much about them in the allegory.

but they are people there. And it seems to me those are the sophists and they're the ones who in a way produce the images that are taken to be. Yeah.

Mahon McCann (11:06.765)

Might help to pause on the cave for a second because it does. guess the proposal I'm making with the internet thing is like, have we built a kind of digital cave in, a sense that we have like, for me, I suppose the companies that are behind it a lot are the, the sophists and that they're manipulating what people are seeing there. And even just by the structure of the platform, like it incentivizes certain things and disincentivizes others. And then also you have the problem with just your creating representations anyway, which Plato would probably freak out about.

D.C. Schindler (11:21.582)

Yeah, self-risk.

Mahon McCann (11:36.817)

But you know, I wonder, yeah, are we in a kind of digital cave? And then I wonder, can we get to, know, is there a way to, you know, get that journey out of the cave in it? You know?

D.C. Schindler (11:45.048)

Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, that's, it's funny when I was a graduate student and studied the, the Republic with Eric Pearl, who's, I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he's, he's, he was a real mentor to me in graduate school. I recall him saying once, so, you know, this would, would have been whatever, 25 years ago, that

Mahon McCann (12:00.651)

yeah, I've read some of his work.

D.C. Schindler (12:12.942)

He never understood how anybody could teach the Republic before the invention of television. And he was talking about television. And I think the smartphone is an absolute, you know, this is one of the things you realize that what Plato was saying there is just getting truer and truer every year. And the point, you know, the point is, I mean, one had to make this kind of fantastical imaginative leap to understand what he was talking about, you know, say in the Middle Ages.

But, you know, it has become so real for us. you know, this theme that you mentioned, the internet, and I think the smartphone really in particular, people are regularly now and increasingly observing that people have less and less an unmediated experience of reality. mean,

almost everything that we connect with, intellectually, somehow is mediated through the screen, or I like to call it a portal because it's actually a two-way, it's a two-way door. And that, know, quite commonly, I in a way that's just frightening actually.

Mahon McCann (13:24.177)

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (13:36.898)

This is the case from two years old and up. I mean, even even earlier, I see some of the smallest children in the grocery store who are in the grocery cart with the screen on. And you just think about this observation and always have some experience of this. But I think it would be especially the case for young people. I grew up in a time before all this existed. So I mean, that's...

Mahon McCann (14:05.521)

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (14:06.414)

That's already something. But these days, it's all we have. People recognize that we start to measure our experiences and our realities by the standard of the screen. Our relationships are measured by movie relations or things that we experience and even our sense of our own.

Mahon McCann (14:22.065)

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (14:34.722)

body we can't interpret except in relation to the images we see on the screen and so forth. So increasingly these become the standard by which reality is measured. And that is, you know, in a nutshell, the heart of the problem for Plato.

Mahon McCann (14:44.667)

Yes.

Mahon McCann (14:51.099)

And it's such a reversal as well. like, even you're talking about like unmediated experience, like not on a smartphone or something, but we're still then in the world of objects, which Plato is like, that's like not the, that's not even, you know, that's not the actual one, but we're actually getting the opposite direction, like into a kind of simulacrum. it reminds obviously the matrix is kind of updated version of the cave, but also cause John Breveke talks about that two worlds mythology, this idea that

D.C. Schindler (14:59.116)

Yeah, yeah, right. No, no, that's right. That's right.

Yeah, yeah.

D.C. Schindler (15:14.872)

Baudrillard Simulant.

Mahon McCann (15:19.069)

I don't really think play dough has a two worlds mythology. think there's a reality and then, you but there is the more illusory world of the cave. The world of appearances is becoming the normal world for people now with the digital. Um, and I think a lot of the externalities we see for young people and the mental health crisis and a lot of this stuff is because they're living in a, you know, a simulation. Um, so yeah, don't know.

D.C. Schindler (15:32.279)

train.

D.C. Schindler (15:43.212)

No, it's interesting. you know, it's often described as a crisis of isolation and loneliness. And, you know, I mean, think of the irony. These things are all called social media. And it's precisely this that's creating this kind of crisis of isolation. And that is that, you know, Plato presents the people in the cave as even they hear their own voice reflected off the back screen.

Mahon McCann (15:50.546)

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (16:12.692)

and then they encounter the people sitting next to them only in terms of their own voices and images reflected off the screen. there's actually no direct kind of... Yeah, right. Right, they don't even know it's there in the image. But you know...

Mahon McCann (16:13.213)

Mmm.

Mahon McCann (16:24.765)

There's no like two way communication between them actually. Yeah. And I thought it was very interesting that even the game they play of the guessing of the shadows like it's very much like the kind of predictive natural science game in a sense of like efficient causes that you can measure and predict and that qualifies as knowledge whereas Plato's version of knowledge is very different.

D.C. Schindler (16:34.956)

Yeah. Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (16:41.794)

interesting.

Right, right, right.

Yeah, no, that's an excellent point. That's a really good point. Yeah, for Plato, it's like depth of insight. And in this, there's no depth. It's all surfaces. So it's just predictability. you're right. That's interesting, kind of a positivism, an empirical positivism.

Mahon McCann (17:11.185)

And maybe it's the result of empirical positivism in a sense of that's what truth is in that paradigm. I have kind of thought that at times it's like if reduce, if sense experience is just passive access to reality, then that is the truth. mean, what we talked about last time, the correspondence theory, just like, you know, truth is just the cat is on the mat. You say the cat is on the mat. That's truth. Whereas the whole platonic version of truth is totally, you know, that's, that would be being in the cave, which is,

D.C. Schindler (17:15.906)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (17:24.908)

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (17:30.498)

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (17:39.662)

That's right. That's right. Yeah. And that's that's the we can't we can't even imagine what it would mean to go further because we're stuck with this. Just you've got a representation and either corresponds to a state of affairs or it doesn't. Yeah. Rather than this depth of insight that that occurs only when you ask the question, what is something, you know, that that that sort of change. But I'd like to you brought something up and I don't want to lose it because it's a really intriguing.

Mahon McCann (17:40.537)

lowest level of reality.

D.C. Schindler (18:08.152)

point that I've wondered about too, and might bring out a certain dimension beyond Plato's allegory that Plato wouldn't be content, obviously, with going out into the natural world, but wants to see even the natural world as an image. And our cave has become so powerful.

and comprehensive for us even to get out into the world of nature is just a massive achievement itself. it seems to me that what's interesting, and I guess we can look at Plato's allegory here, that would correspond to somebody who's turned around and has come to see that the projections on the cave wall are actually emanating from these.

figurines that are being manipulated here. But you notice if you think about it, once you've made that turn, you already see the light at the end of the tunnel, you know, and the sunlight already in the distance. the principle, you could still say something like entering into the natural world and sort of recognizing its priority over the image world is a kind of

would lead inevitably, if you were faithful to it, to an insight into the source of truth.

Mahon McCann (19:41.467)

yes and there's something there with that like this is a bit of a maybe a crazy suggestion but that the attention manipulation that happens in the digital world if you get so manipulated by that if you can go beyond this. a sense you would see how your previous reality was a kind of construction of these things you would get an inside in a sense to how your attention can be warped which might help you to into it that there's actually things beyond your own current or.

D.C. Schindler (19:53.507)

Mm-hmm.

D.C. Schindler (19:58.188)

Yeah. Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (20:05.709)

Yeah.

Mahon McCann (20:10.269)

perceptual world.

D.C. Schindler (20:10.54)

Yeah, well, I mean, in fact, more than just might help you. I think it's implied already in that, I mean, because you wouldn't be able to see what what it would what manipulation would mean unless you have already sort of present some sense of a reality that you're deviating from. So because if there's if there's nothing but manipulation, then then manipulation is no different. mean, there's no.

Mahon McCann (20:25.17)

Yes.

D.C. Schindler (20:37.102)

There's no standard by which to measure it. It's not really manipulation then.

Mahon McCann (20:41.809)

That's so interesting that's such a problem in the social media literature a lot of the time cuz like the crime i think that they're committing is like setting up almost like a culture, like a culture that fosters a crazy that fosters like people and behaving in self destructive ways like a foolish culture in a sense we have to have a notion of a wise culture to evaluate that said so like like if they're setting up just as hollywood movie kind of nonsense thing for children it's like.

D.C. Schindler (20:49.356)

Mm-hmm.

D.C. Schindler (20:53.4)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (21:02.946)

Yeah, that's right.

Mahon McCann (21:09.125)

Yeah, it's like they can do that, but you have to have an idea of a functioning culture in order to evaluate that already.

D.C. Schindler (21:12.248)

Yeah. Yeah. No, you're right. And this leads to so many interesting questions. There's people that want to critique that culture, the manipulative culture of images and so forth. You can't really do that unless you're standing on solid ground somehow. So as you say, there's got to be this idea of, for instance, this is something that

was brought home to me regarding the Me Too movement, you know, and this idea that, you know, obviously the, you know, shining a light on this, you know, widespread practice of harassment and exploitation and so forth. All that is true, but it's interesting. The problem is that people take consent to be the solution to the problem that, you know,

If it's a matter of consent, somehow, but the more people thought about, the more they realized, well, wait a minute, you might be giving your consent, but the person is a figure of power. so even your consent has been manipulated and so forth. And it becomes clear that there's no way to finally distinguish between manipulation and freedom unless you refer to something objectively true.

So, and you know, and that's something that gets, that's missed often from these things, but it seems to me that that's a fundamentally platonic insight that, you know, unless truth is there, there's no such thing as freedom. There's no such thing as, there's no liberation from manipulation unless you're talking about truth and not just consent or, you know, whatever sort of willingness.

Mahon McCann (22:39.066)

Ugh.

Mahon McCann (23:05.499)

Yeah, and that truth, I mean, is like, it doesn't really exist, I think, in this kind of secular landscape, like they don't have an account, like scientific materialism can't provide that, like, it doesn't, you know, and so we're kind of locked in then into this manipulative space. I think that's why social media has gotten away with what they're doing in a sense, because there isn't like there isn't enough people on the outside of it to actually be like, yeah, this is, you know, incredibly manipulative, because we've lost that reality.

D.C. Schindler (23:15.63)

Right. No.

D.C. Schindler (23:34.71)

No, you're absolutely right. It's amazing then at the end, know, it's sort of, don't want them to manipulate. We want to be the ones manipulating, you know, it's just, it's a sort of a, it's not a question of whether there's manipulation. It's just a, you know, dispute over who gets to do the manipulating, but none of that is real freedom. And you're right. I mean, there's no, there's no way out of this without some moment of genuine transcendence where

you know, where the light of the good enters. And this is something that was the birth of that book, Plato's Critique of Impure Reason. And I've been coming back to recently with some work I've been doing on the nature of authority, that there's something about the bearing witness that you need to have an individual, some concrete human being.

who bears witness to a higher order that actually lets the light in. And I don't know of any real way out other than...

Mahon McCann (24:42.503)

And it's kind of what Plato is doing in the Republic in a sense, like, because that's why the Republic just seemed so relevant to me with the social media stuff, because he's setting up a society in a sense, a city in speech and this kind of stuff that that you know, fails and then he has to be like, well, what's going on with us? Why does this fail? And you know, what is the reality behind that that is, you know, kind of validate what we do, because in some sense, any social structure you set up, if it's not aimed at the truth is is manipulative, it is

D.C. Schindler (24:59.502)

Mm-hmm.

Mahon McCann (25:11.045)

Any culture you set up as manipulative, any educate, like you can't teach people anything unless it's unless it's going towards the truth. Otherwise it's manipulation. So Plato seemed to discover that as he was almost doing it to find the good behind it.

D.C. Schindler (25:23.182)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I think the witness of Socrates is what sort of liberated him because, you know, what is it that Socrates does? Socrates, you know, in a way he says the, in order to actually do justice to what's highest, you have to relativize everything to it. And that means even your own life.

and your own aspirations and interests and so forth all are relativized to this thing. a life that bears witness to that might be said then to manifest absoluteness precisely in a relative way. mean, so you get the paradox there. You have a single individual that brings

into the horizon somehow, something that's greater than any single individual.

Mahon McCann (26:23.645)

And that's because i'm saying the play dough kind of sets up soccer t's almost as an image of the good like he's like a symbol that points towards the good in his life in that sense.

D.C. Schindler (26:28.94)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, think that that's and again, precisely because, you know, he says nothing that he does is any value to him unless it's somehow related to the good. I mean, you see that in the Apology, then you can see it, you know, the evidence of this in the Symposium in a really powerful way, but it appears in a lot of his dialogues.

You know, and that's something like in our contemporary world when we have, you know, the idea that the highest things are personal matters and therefore, you know, sort of subject simply to private opinion. You know, in a way you can never get the light of the good in the cave.

That's like sealing the horizon in a kind of an absolute way. It's really remarkable how that all works.

Mahon McCann (27:29.949)

and how much we're in that at the moment I think is really the big problem there seems to be almost like a developmental thing as well I don't know if this makes sense of like the journey of the cave that it's a journey from egocentrism to bono centrism from the movement out of this just self orientation where it's like I'm man is the measure of all things to the good is the measure of all things like that there's a super individual measure that you

D.C. Schindler (27:32.942)

That's right.

D.C. Schindler (27:41.216)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

D.C. Schindler (27:51.064)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mahon McCann (27:56.231)

Bear witness to so you believe in it i don't know like you have to almost have this. Like how do you get a whole society or civilization to to believe in that or do you like i don't know how how that even happened in the past like.

D.C. Schindler (28:04.994)

Yeah, yeah.

D.C. Schindler (28:09.292)

Yeah, well, it seems to me that this is why, you know, the sense of what an authority was in traditional cultures was in a way someone who symbolically represents in his person something that transcends the, you know, historical reality of the particular community. And, know, on behalf of the community, I think that that's

That's a role that one has. I like I want to just highlight what you said. Ego centrism to bono centrism. Typically, we would say ego centrism towards altruism, selfishness or altruism. And that's that's a problematic dualism that I think is a very, common one. It's very different if you say not.

that you want to become other centered rather than self centered, but good centered because that actually affirms both the self and the other in the proper way. And that's a genuine transcendence. I think that the way you phrase that is really crucial.

Mahon McCann (29:13.519)

Yes.

and it seems like that's what Socrates is trying to get them to do in the Republic in a sense like polymarcus and trisimachus and kephalus and their kind of definitions that they give of justice and in book one are very much initially just like yeah egocentric definitions like kephalus wants to get away with his previous sins polymarcus likes war and business and trisimachus is just like yeah I just want to be you know run the show pretty much power so like they're locked into that frame and Socrates isn't just

D.C. Schindler (29:43.352)

Power.

Mahon McCann (29:49.117)

Trying to show them that they're wrong or something like that. He's trying to lead them to this higher understanding that seems to orient everything else. Like if you could just have that experience, the other things will fall in line.

D.C. Schindler (29:59.51)

Yeah, yeah, fall in line is exactly the point. It's not like you leave them behind. You know, you can think of them as representing the three parts of the soul, you know, the desiring part, the the thematic spirited part, and then the the head, kephalus being in a way the the reasoning part. But it's not like you have to choose any one of these parts. You actually

the soul itself is not the reference point, but the good is the reference point. And then when you see that, all the parts of the soul receive their due properly, which is why I think it's really important at the end, you know, when Plato is comparing the philosopher king with the tyrant, you know, as these two sort of opposites, which if you recall, I mean, it's kind of interesting. He had set up the

the whole republic is a kind of a contest. And he was challenged, know, show me that the person, the just man who is treated by everyone as unjust and tortured and imprisoned and even abandoned by God in a way is the best. And that's really what he does. I mean, and Socrates becomes the person, the sort of exemplar of this.

But anyway, at the end, it's really interesting rather than saying you get rid of all of your sensual desires. He actually says that the just man experiences pleasure. always get the number a bit off. it 728? I think it's 728 or is it 729? think it's 728. And he actually has a precise calculation. I mean, which seems just hysterically funny and ridiculous.

Mahon McCann (31:38.045)

yeah i remember 720 times is it or something

something like that yeah, 720p

Yeah.

Mahon McCann (31:53.718)

It's yeah it's like the root of three times two to three years ago.

D.C. Schindler (31:54.606)

But the thing is, there's actually, he's trying to show that there's a logic to it. And so, I mean, the just man actually enjoys sensual pleasures more than the one whose life is devoted to sensual pleasures. I mean, that's really a remarkable thing. So all of these, all of the parts find their fulfillment in the proper order. And, you know, everything that happens within the horizon is...

Mahon McCann (32:01.49)

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (32:23.679)

receives justice is properly affirmed in its place and so forth.

Mahon McCann (32:29.925)

Yeah, we talked about that before in a sense that it's almost like the philosophical version of grace you'd said that you need this superseding order to align the various parts to kind of stop their inner conflict in a, but they can't do it for each other. You know, it's not like one can be like, this one, this one, it has to be something outside of the system. And it's really, when I was teaching it again, like Plato's, cause I think he's trying to get this objective morality. He's trying to get to, you know, a universal morality.

D.C. Schindler (32:35.852)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mahon McCann (32:59.737)

And he really almost gives a biological account. think you could prove this in terms of neurobiology was an argument I was making for the behavior of dopamine, like it, because it's finite, but it's renewable. So if you use it in a way that's just like using it up all the time, like a hedonist would, you're going to be more miserable than a person who uses it modestly, because like, that's the way it went. Like Plato is almost spelling that out as it goes on. But yeah, it seems like it's like the opposite of addiction is this connection to reality.

D.C. Schindler (33:18.616)

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Right.

Mahon McCann (33:29.295)

some sense and Christianity I suppose it's idolatry.

D.C. Schindler (33:32.002)

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, the key is the transcendence. And that notion is really crucial. It's got to be a principle that precisely is outside in the kind of radical sense. But the truly radical sense means it's always inside at the same time. If it's only outside, then it becomes relative to what's inside. And that's actually not transcendent. Something that, again, this sounds so

Mahon McCann (33:36.541)

Mmm.

D.C. Schindler (33:58.678)

weird and paradoxical, but it really is rigorously logical that something can only be truly transcendent if it's also imminent. This was a theme that Eric Pearl, for me, was so helpful in making clear that transcendence implies imminence. But the point is that it has to be something that is radically other.

Mahon McCann (34:16.881)

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (34:29.07)

Or else, you know, or else you end up just relativizing things in relation to each other and then it becomes a kind of polemic polemics really

Mahon McCann (34:38.693)

Yes, which I mean, in our society, it's like the norm, basically, I mean, it seems to be impossible to find coherence on anything. And Alistair McIntyre makes that argument and after virtue that it's like, if you start from different assumptions, and obviously, you don't have a first assumption, like the good, it's actually impossible for you to reason or rationale to the same conclusions because you're starting from from different premises.

D.C. Schindler (34:59.362)

Okay.

Yeah, no, that's exactly right. Yeah.

Mahon McCann (35:05.911)

And, but yeah, I so to go back to the cave analogy, mean, in getting out of the cave, I'd kind of thought about that with the tripartite psyche that he's almost describing the stages of the cave that there's an organized, I've like turning away from the images is like overcoming the monster that finds pleasurable desires immediately. There's a necessary of courage to kind of go into the uncertain and the unknown and start to travel out of the cave. And then when you start to get knowledge of the forms, you're getting wisdom like

Plato's virtue ethics is almost tracking this transformation, which is aimed at obviously the good. But yeah, there's almost steps on the way through the cave.

D.C. Schindler (35:36.546)

That's interesting. Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (35:46.284)

Yeah, no, that's nice. I don't, I don't, that's, I don't, I hadn't thought of that before, but that actually works nicely. And it's interesting. The final, the final step would then be prudence or, you know, for an Asis, which does seem to be the virtue that he relates to this knowledge of the good as such, which is very different from our normal way of thinking of what prudence is. but that would then represent something of this.

this sort of moment of transcendence. the point that you said about grace is, or the analogy with grace is really important because it's not like one achieves insight by perfecting oneself.

Mahon McCann (36:15.101)

Mm-hmm.

Mahon McCann (36:36.337)

Yeah, it's not like a maximizing like

D.C. Schindler (36:38.348)

Yeah, training one's own virtues or one's own skills and kind of getting there. There really has to be something that's genuinely other to which one is responding.

Mahon McCann (36:42.097)

Yeah.

Mahon McCann (36:48.765)

Yeah. And even the verses in the sense are kind of like that. Do you think they're things that you follow? Like that they're forms? They're not something you necessarily possess, but there's something ideal about them.

D.C. Schindler (37:01.516)

What was the first word that you said that? No, but before that you said even the something I missed it even the.

Mahon McCann (37:04.272)

they're not something you possess or that you're trying like maximize like, even the, I'm not sure, but I guess what I was trying to say was that the, yeah, we don't necessarily possess the virtues in a sense that you would possess maybe like physical strength or something. You pursue them. Like they're almost like that grace. Like they're not something we own.

D.C. Schindler (37:20.8)

Okay. right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's right. And, you know, here, here is something too, I think is, is helpful to see because a lot of this, you you think of the good is shining its light and so forth. It sounds like a very mystical experience that few people would have, but this brings us back to,

the point that you had made about earlier about the real world. And I think it does connect also to this point about virtues. And that is, you know, I mean, in a certain sense, this isn't some grand mystical thing, but it has to do with what's made available to us at every moment of every day. I mean, there's a sense in which, you know, there's reality that's looking you in the face and this reality is manifesting something from beyond it's.

and you're encountering it. really is something other than yourself that you're encountering and it's presenting something to you that is more than just you. And you can relate to that in different ways. You can think of it as something that you simply then relate to yourself. I, know, this is going to satisfy my project or my interest or my immediate desire, or you, you relate to it as something that is coming to you from beyond yourself.

and respond to it and see it as presenting a kind of goodness there that is more than you are. you you can, and you know, in a very simple way, that just the simple, the immediate things, realities, natural realities, this is why a screen doesn't really do that.

Mahon McCann (39:08.685)

Yeah, I was thinking of the forest that you were talking about earlier, like that, that that experience of getting away from it, you know, is is now 10 times more likely to encounter that goodness than if you saw it every day.

D.C. Schindler (39:11.275)

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (39:19.18)

Yeah, that's right. mean, I, you know, Wendell, Wendell Berry, I don't know if you're familiar with him, an American sort of farmer, essayist, poet, novelist, very, very interesting man. He has this poem and I, it's something about the beauty or the peace of wild things, something like that. And it's a poem where he talks about this being in a state of

Mahon McCann (39:28.507)

I've heard his name before.

D.C. Schindler (39:49.228)

distress and burdened by anxieties and, you know, in some moments he'll go out to a pond or, you an extra stream and just lie down and listen. And there's something about that that immediately creates a sense of, profound sense of calm. And if you think about what's going on there, I mean, he's allowing himself to encounter

something really genuinely given, know, something that's absolutely not just a function of human interests. And there's something profoundly liberating about that. And that's a symbol, I think, of this journey that Plato describes in the allegory. And it would be similar to, you know, thinking of virtues not so much as skills that I possess.

but as ideal excellences that I pursue have that same sort of character of moving beyond one's own kind of restricted horizon into something greater. And that's really the crucial thing.

Mahon McCann (41:03.473)

that's that seems to be the thing that are restricted horizon has become kind of upgraded in a sense of that it it can you know track what you're doing and personalize things to you and try and hook you in more and more into these feedback loops that ultimately you know feel terrible but yeah we're covering a sense of that transcendence and there was something I want to ask you about that was coming up again which is the forms themselves I mean like because I think.

D.C. Schindler (41:09.614)

Yeah, yeah.

D.C. Schindler (41:16.28)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (41:27.818)

Okay, yeah.

Mahon McCann (41:31.483)

We've lost that obviously in the kind of empiricist worldview, which limits our access probably to, know, how do you, how do we argue that the forms are really real, you know, that to people that don't, know, so many people hear that and they're just like floating objects in outer space or something like, you know, they just can't grasp it.

D.C. Schindler (41:40.78)

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (41:50.38)

Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, that's That's the thing I am.

I sometimes when I give a sort of crash course in Platonism in my teaching, I'll use a series of examples, the standard ones about chairs, everyone sitting in chairs and they're all different, even if they look some relative sense the same, if these are mass produced chairs that the students are sitting in.

There are going to be some physical differences, you can also imagine, know, armchairs and thrones and so forth. recognize. So, but we call, the point is we call them all chairs. We use a single word. We don't say that they're chair-like or these are chair-ish sorts of things. We say chairs and we have one single word and we mean that same thing each time we say it. And what's interesting is that, I mean, what's going on there is we're actually

meaning there's an identically one thing that is meant each time we recognize it. So what is that? And Plato would say, well, it's chair, it's chair-ness. And the fact that we can point to these different objects and use the same word means that it isn't simply in any one of them, but is something that is presented in each of these instances, but it's not.

It transcends them.

D.C. Schindler (43:25.09)

You know, and there you see, you then can start to elaborate what that would mean. And would be something, you another example I'll do is I'll draw some circles on the board and I'll just ask the students what are these? And they say circles, right? And then I say, okay, well, wait a minute, are they? You know, and of course, you know, you can't draw a perfect circle. So they're all, and I said, but none of you hesitated for.

a second, what is it you were looking at when you saw these as circles? There's something, circle nest, there was some ideal reality that you saw in a way in and through these things on the board. And then the question is, where is it? And they wanna say, well, it's in our minds. And then you say, okay, wait, in your mind? Or in your mind or in your mind? Wait a minute, or is it in all our minds at once?

Mahon McCann (44:06.46)

Yeah.

Mahon McCann (44:12.675)

nominalism.

D.C. Schindler (44:18.646)

And if it's in all our minds at once, means that it has to transcend our minds.

Mahon McCann (44:24.071)

Yeah, because I think that's a different reality. Like, that's that's different.

D.C. Schindler (44:25.516)

And then, yeah, and then you just say, okay, this is what Plato's talking about. then you say, right, the caricature then is, you know, these are floating up in outer space. But then, of course, you just say, wait a minute, are they in outer space? No, they are nowhere. And they are at no time because that's precisely why, you know, that's, they're not physical things. Even

even floating in outer spaces, it's a physical metaphor. So somehow these have absolutely nothing to do with time and space. They're completely outside. And when you start to see that, actually, I mean, it's odd. In one way that becomes more and more mystical sounding, but it becomes also more and more compelling as an observation of something we constantly experience all the time, in fact.

Mahon McCann (45:21.031)

Yeah, that we're constantly dealing with things outside of time and space and.

D.C. Schindler (45:25.324)

Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's very natural. Anytime you tell somebody that, you know, sit in a chair, you're communing with the forums.

Mahon McCann (45:37.061)

Yeah, and do you make a distinction between four because I thought it was like the example play dough uses in the Republic. Well, one of them, I suppose, particularly with the critique of images is a bed. And so like, the bed maker has the ideal form of the bed makes the bed out of it. But then a person who paints a bed, creates a copy of a copy. And that's the lowest level of reality. And that would be the bottom one, but the form of it that the bed maker is using is the realest.

D.C. Schindler (45:45.816)

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (45:59.096)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mahon McCann (46:06.585)

of them in a sense that it's it's the cause of, of their actual are the physical bed. And does that so that's a yeah.

D.C. Schindler (46:07.49)

Yeah, that's right. That's right.

D.C. Schindler (46:13.016)

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I know I think that that's helpful. what's the relationship then between the forms and their physical images and then their artistic images? It's interesting. He hasn't used this language in the Republic, but in the Phaedo, he uses the language of communion and presence. It's very interesting. Koinonia and Parosia, communion and presence, and says that somehow...

Beauty is present in...

beautiful things. And that's why we say each of these things is beautiful because it's evoking something that is the same in all of them, but it's expressed differently in all of them. And then, you know, the question is, does this mean that Plato is...

Mahon McCann (46:59.324)

Yes.

D.C. Schindler (47:05.134)

a dualist in the sense that he has contempt for images and so forth. There the answer is no. It's not that the images, and this relates to the question that we were talking about the very beginning. It's not that he gets rid of images. Images are good in their proper place. I give an example to the students that imagine the

Mahon McCann (47:29.063)

Hmm.

D.C. Schindler (47:35.15)

the woman who's, you know, the man that she loves is off at sea, know, and she has a photograph of him and every night she kisses the photograph, you know. Is there anything wrong with that? And you would say no. And, you know, is that, is she sort of obsessed with this piece of paper? You say no, she's in a way, she's kissing him in and through the photograph. He's

this photograph is making him present to her. And then the problem would arise if he sort of returns and she, you know, holds the picture next to him and says, okay, I think I like this piece of paper better. It's much easier to deal with. That's where you run into problems. And then what happens there is this, it is no longer an image of him. It becomes a substitute.

Mahon McCann (48:33.857)

Is that a kind of idle? Maybe I mean, because we do that we do that in our heads as well. Like sometimes you might have like an image of a person you're like, I love this image of them, but then their reality is kind of a pain in the ass. And you're like, why is this, you know, but that, you know, if you fall in love with the image of the person, you don't really love the person that the whole of them.

D.C. Schindler (48:35.404)

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (48:42.146)

Yeah, that's

D.C. Schindler (48:50.338)

Yeah, that's right. And in a way you could say we're constantly beset by this temptation to settle down into our own perceptions of things and our imaginations of things and the way we want them to be rather than the way that they are. So this is something, I in a way that the example I gave is a super simplistic one, but in every interaction you might say there's a...

there's an image that we either focus on or see through to the reality. Jean-Luc Marion is interesting here. He makes a distinction between the idol and the icon. And it's really kind of a nice way of putting this point. The physical reality can be that in and through which we perceive what transcends it, or it can be where our gaze stops.

Mahon McCann (49:28.795)

Yes.

D.C. Schindler (49:48.886)

and then reflects always back on ourselves. And that's that's idolatrous and problematic.

Mahon McCann (49:56.507)

you this could be like the good internet and the bad internet like the good internet could be an icon that like potentially like a conversation like this if we're dramatizing you the scent out of the cave or, you know, we're trying to, yeah.

D.C. Schindler (50:00.034)

What?

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (50:08.482)

Yeah, and we're in a way we're trying to point to some reality. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Jonathan Peugeot, I'm not sure. I don't know if you are familiar with him, but he's he's he's really good about this point in saying, you know, for the people that because he has a lot of people that are inspired by him and watches programs and he's always reminding them this isn't enough. This is if this doesn't get you to go to church, you know, he says, then then

Mahon McCann (50:17.693)

Yeah, yeah, no, I'm a huge fan of Jonathan, yeah.

D.C. Schindler (50:37.568)

then it's failing. there's that's kind of the what Plato is doing with the Republic in a way. He's saying, look, this book is not enough. If this doesn't get you to be, you know, pursue the good in reality, burn it, throw it away. It's an obstacle, you know, that that's yeah. And, know, it's interesting. I think it's. You know, what is the proper way to keep the Internet in its in its place? I bet.

is going to be an ongoing challenge. And we are at the beginning of the great epidemic. And this is going to be something that's going to take generations of reflection. we're in for, this is a kind of a cultural challenge I think the world has rarely seen.

Mahon McCann (51:30.461)

And I think Plato's Republic has a lot to offer on it as well because to teach us on specifically this problem because we've kind of invented a world and now there's competition of businesses have hijacked it but then there's people going the government should run it and you're like well there's other problems with the government running it and it's like well who do you try and get a philosopher king that becomes the arbiter of the internet and people on an AI one that's going to facilitate it so like you know.

D.C. Schindler (51:33.73)

to teach us. Yeah.

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (51:45.474)

Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

D.C. Schindler (51:53.132)

Yeah. gosh, yeah. Well, I think the thing is, you know, there's no, to my mind, no obvious answer to the challenge yet. But at least one helpful thing is, you know, consider the difference between, you know, this is the platonic judgment about writing.

Mahon McCann (52:06.033)

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (52:19.546)

He doesn't reject writing, he says it's a play thing that's best appreciated as a reminder for those who know. And you think about the internet, think about the relationships you have that, let's say, with your family or friends that you communicate with through the internet.

through social media there that it's very different from maybe relationships that have been entirely mediated from start to finish. know, when the internet is sort of secondary and derivative of a relationship that has a reality that precedes it, there's a sense in which it's always going to have a kind of an anchor that allows it to be kept in its place.

And when there is no real anchor like that, that's where real dangers start to emerge, I think.

Mahon McCann (53:18.461)

Yeah. And I think COVID definitely did that in a sense of that the digital overlapped the physical. That was really when I got interested in it, to be honest, was because I started to see, I was seeing one reality through social media of the friends and people I know. And then the other one that I knew was actually going on. And I was like, this is like a fun house mirror of absurd. Like, this is crazy. Like this is like, if I was to take on face value, what people are posting and saying,

D.C. Schindler (53:21.1)

gosh, yeah.

D.C. Schindler (53:27.064)

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (53:38.294)

Yeah.

Mahon McCann (53:45.423)

I think everybody had lost their minds. Like they'd all gone, like, but then I was talking to people and you'd meet, meet with people and it was perfectly normal. And you're like, there's some disconnection between these things here.

D.C. Schindler (53:47.49)

Yeah, that's right.

D.C. Schindler (53:53.1)

Yeah, no, isn't it amazing, know, just like the Wendell Berry experience, know, just a good solid encounter with the real and so many of these anxieties and these confusions and these complexities, they just melt away like, you know, like magic. It's really something, good, you you and I...

before, I think it was before you started recording and we're chatting about like Iris Murdock who she evokes the experience of, know, hearing a songbird in the beauty, you know, catching a glimpse of something real and beautiful, how that can just immediately free you and relieve your conscience and kind of open you up. I, you know, that's.

To me, that itself is a sign of the priority of reality, that we're meant for what's real and that just a glimpse of it can be so immediately refreshing. That's a good word for it. You feel like you're fresh. Yeah.

Mahon McCann (55:02.779)

And that some people don't don't get that. I mean, it's such an interesting like, why would you be so because like, I totally agree with you. I think that that's the fundamental reality is the good, the true and the beautiful. And yet there's so much cynicism, so much nihilism, so much like, essentially, a kind of belief that reality even like is an evil kind of thing or like that. has to be this horrible, difficult, like whatever is the worst thing is the most real in a sense. You're like, you know, it's such a strange.

I don't know, trap or something that you can become so disconnected from for years, you know.

D.C. Schindler (55:37.176)

Well, think that's the thing. think if this becomes kind of the screen in a way becomes habitual, it does, suddenly you're able to entertain the strangest ideas. all of existence might just be a video game that were, I mean, those kinds of things are just, how in the world could you even think of that as a possibility unless you were so,

Mahon McCann (55:58.951)

simulation.

D.C. Schindler (56:06.654)

alienated from yourself already that you can't really see the difference. that's the thing. We are going to, the whole COVID crisis, there were people that were entering, young people entering into their most important developmental stages right at that moment where they were no longer allowed to look at the face of human beings.

And we're going to be discovering in a decade or so how devastating all that was. Yeah, it's tragic.

Mahon McCann (56:41.339)

Hmm.

Mahon McCann (56:45.391)

Yeah, there's a, yeah, and it really is. And it's such a hard thing, I suppose, because I'm doing like internet ethics or whatever you call it, but like, it really just pales in the face of, you know, this civilization level transformation, and then also the lack of kind of institutions behind it that would have been normal, like, so it kind of connects to the meaning crisis and to people leaving behind, you know, structures of family and structures of religion and structures of any normal kind of things that,

D.C. Schindler (56:53.422)

Mm-hmm.

D.C. Schindler (57:13.461)

Unity, yeah.

Mahon McCann (57:15.121)

community and get hoovered up very easily by this persuasive machine.

D.C. Schindler (57:20.674)

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. And it's pretty compelling, you know, how does, you know...

as my wife will often say, you you think about the quiet attraction of a natural landscape. I how can that compete with the demand for your attention that the screen with its noise and bright lights and kind of, you know, just movement.

You know, it just seems like it just gets overwhelmed reality can get so easily overwhelmed. Yeah

Mahon McCann (58:04.389)

Yeah. And I think the good news is in the long run that it probably doesn't work. You know what mean? Like it is, it is a kind of drugification of reality and people will probably have to get sober at some point and stop, you know, inhaling information like a stimulant.

D.C. Schindler (58:11.298)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, I mean, we haven't really touched on this, but, you know, I don't want to open up a whole new subject at the end here. But I get so worried about chat, GPT and artificial intelligence. you know, my kids, have two kids in high school now and one of them. And, you know, we have

Mahon McCann (58:33.521)

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (58:43.852)

They say, you know, far too extreme restrictions on their screen use. But, you know, we're we keep telling them that they'll they'll thank us for it in the in long run. But, you know, but but we're not we're not absolutists. You know, they they do they they don't have smartphones. I actually don't. We my family, we don't have smartphones. Yeah, no, I mean, it's it's.

Mahon McCann (59:06.393)

It's a genius move to be honest based on all my research anyway.

D.C. Schindler (59:11.95)

It comes with certain disadvantages, obviously, but we're sticking to it as far as we can. But anyway, you know, the temptation to use chat GPT to write up, you you have to write a report on some artist, you know, it's almost overwhelming. And my son said, well, what about just having a draft and then I can put it in my own words. And, you know, I just say, look, you have.

no idea how easily that would become habitual in a way that would deprive you. You would never really learn how to think something through and write about it. It's like having a machine lift weights for you. What would be the point? mean, yeah, sure. have, yeah. I mean, what would be the point? It would be a total waste of time. You need to do it.

Mahon McCann (59:55.995)

Yeah, to go to the gym and the machine gets buff. Yeah.

Mahon McCann (01:00:05.435)

I know and it's such a like we I've been involved in a bunch of projects in the university in with generative AI and academic integrity and we're loads because the university hasn't released any like protocol or like say you can't do it or you know there's this real hands off approach and then there's some people are like we need to just get them using it and integrate it and you know it's going to be conscious and super intelligent and we'll all be using it you're like

D.C. Schindler (01:00:17.422)

Yeah.

Mahon McCann (01:00:29.213)

Are we in a like technopoli where it's just like whatever comes along just has to become integrated into things? It's like, this is antithetical to education. you can't, you know, it does the job for you.

D.C. Schindler (01:00:31.2)

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (01:00:39.662)

Yeah, and you wonder, can't we ask, is this good for us? And are we free to say no if it isn't? And those kinds of things just don't seem to be on the horizon. But that in itself is just such a powerful piece of evidence for the problem.

Mahon McCann (01:01:02.331)

Which is the underlying problem I think we've been talking about, which is this lack of a foothold in a solid, you know, actual state of ground where you can make those judgments of good and bad and right and wrong and you know, actually kind of deal with them. Otherwise, we're just, you know, fine, we're being manipulated by one technology or another technology like, how can you call it?

D.C. Schindler (01:01:12.162)

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (01:01:16.6)

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (01:01:22.466)

Yeah. Yeah. And unless you have that foothold, you're never going to be in fact free ever.

you

Mahon McCann (01:01:31.997)

Don't be too much of a downer ending, but I suppose the positive side is that it is accessible and it is there. And yeah, I've been profoundly transformed by my study of Plato, think in that, in that sense, and as I was talking about, obviously I'm getting baptized and now going to mass and exploring, you know, Catholicism and that has been such a source of beauty and joy and connecting to people. like, you know, hopefully that's emblematic of

D.C. Schindler (01:01:33.164)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mahon McCann (01:02:01.019)

something other young people will start to look for because, you know, it's just the digital world becomes so toxic. Like, maybe we can't live in it.

D.C. Schindler (01:02:06.956)

Yeah, and that's that's a foothold and that that is something that is not measured by what's going on, you know, in the immediate, you know, Twitter landscape, as they say, even though Twitter, guess, doesn't exist anymore. You know, it's it's it's really is a it's a it's a foothold in what transcends all of this. And that's that's what we all really want, actually.

Mahon McCann (01:02:36.251)

Yeah, that's what is it our hearts are restless till they rest and you Augustin and our hearts are restless on the internet anyway, hopefully it could be an icon maybe but at best that gives something to aim for I think even for people like me who are creating things online and putting stuff up like we should be aiming for icon not idle is is a pretty good mantra. And yeah, so thank you so much, David. I really appreciate it.

D.C. Schindler (01:02:39.053)

Mm-hmm.

D.C. Schindler (01:02:46.339)

Yeah.

D.C. Schindler (01:02:54.476)

Yeah, that's nice.

D.C. Schindler (01:02:59.832)

Sure, yeah, man, I appreciate it too. And it's nice to see you again and look forward to the next one. But in the meantime, all the best to you.