hello so now I'm going to talk a bit about the simile of the Sun in Plato I'm not going to talk too much about what comes before it um discussion over pleasure and knowledge and things like that I'm just going to talk mostly about the simile itself before I go into the simile I will say that um you know you have it nicely laid out for you um well the immersive view isn't allowing me anyways you have it nicely laid out for you here on the page um in terms of how the simile is laid out but it uh it wasn't always like this and the context clue for you to know that the simile is coming up is discussion right above where Socrates says that he can't he can't speak directly about the good in itself but he'll talk about something like the child of the good and then he says that all he can do is pay interest on debt and the debt is his inability to say directly um what the good itself is and here we have the problems of natural language um coming up and we also have Socrates continually performing sort of distinction between these two Realms the sensible realm and super sensible realm he's going to talk now about the sensible realm in order to tell us something about the super sensible realm namely um how is it that we know as philosophers um being trained in the platonic Academy as it were how we come to discern form and um I guess one other important thing to say before we get into the similes itself is at least two times I think before the simile starts Socrates says that the good is the end of all endeavor and what he means by that is sort of end here means goal um what he means by that is that um what the good is itself what the form of the good is is the highest thing that we can strive for um according to Plato or according to Socrates um the the form of the good is higher than knowledge and truth and all these things and we'll get into why so the simile is laid out for you here at the bottom of page 436 and it begins with uh a little bit of discussion about beauty in itself there are all these beautiful things um there are all these things which we say good are good um but then there's Beauty itself or beauty in itself and good in itself the sort of one unifying single form which is unique in each case and what we call what anything really is and so when you see these formulations in Plato in itself Beauty in itself that refers to is the form of beauty so what good in itself refers to is the form of the good um so I just wanted to point that out the uh the simile itself starts on the next page um Socrates uses the census as I said he's going to use a discussion of something he's going to discuss something that takes place solely in the sensible World in order to try and give us an idea of what's going on in the super sensible world and I'm totally aware of how absurd these immersive views are I'll probably eventually change it before and I'm having a little fun and I realize it looks like I have a wig on what can I do what can I do so anyways the simile starts in Socrates [Music] um not without uh not without this being something noteworthy or or worth pointing out chooses site um and he says we have two things we have sight and and scene thing um in terms of the sense of the faculty of seeing and let me see if this works yeah so you can sort of see I have a pen in front of me right and Socrates asks um is it enough that this pen oops this scene thing and my sight is it enough for these two things or do we need a third thing and the third thing which we do need is light um and this is where the sun as the name of the analogy comes in so without light we can't see light is what gives us sight this is uh our latest at least what allows us to see it's not synonymous Within website it's not our eyes um so it's something um which relates very closely to our eyes our eyes are adapted to light light is adapt to our eyes however you want to look at it I mean I think our eyes are adapted to light is the obvious answer so on the next page on page 439 we get then the sense of sight and visibility of objects are yoked by a yoke a long way more precious than any other many of you um who are not cattle farmers will not know what the word yoke means it's not a very common usage yoke means to bring together if you've ever seen an image of an ox to oxen with this wooden thing that holds them together that's a yoke um so the the scene thing the scene thing and sight as a faculty are brought together are yoked together by light um and that's that's the main part of the first part of the analogy there's just one more important line here it starts at the end of 4 39 it says the eyes power or the eye is power of sight is a sight of infusion dispensed to it by the sun yes then moreover though the sun itself is not sight it is the cause of sight and is seen by the sight it causes this last um clause in this sentence is very important is seen by the site that it causes this is the last part of the analogy in terms of the sensible side of things so not only does light allow us to see things but light or the sun which is the source of light here um the Sun not only allows us to see things it's not only the cause of sight in Plato's words but it also allows us to recognize that it is the cause of sight so thanks to the Sun not only can we see but we know that without the Sun that if the sun were to go out we and there was no light no no source of light that we could no longer see so we have these two positions the uh scene thing sight yoked together by the sun brought together by the Sun the process of sight happens thanks to light and the Sun and then we have this final step whereby thanks to the sun we know um that it's the Sun that allows us to see so then at the bottom of this page onto the next page it's uh that would be 440 to 441 [Music] um you sort of start to get this um this analogy drawn into the Super sensible world but what I want to do is see if I can get this to work bring this whiteboard up um and now I think my immersive view is gone I don't know if you can still see me or not because of the recording um so you have on the one side of the screen you have sight scene things yoked together by the good on the other side you have what these things stand for so cite as a faculty stands in for intellect as the faculty through which we perceive the super sensible world and seeing things stand in for form so form is what the intellect perceives the truth of seeing things what lies behind them so not the many beautiful things not the many um trees but Beauty itself the tree itself so on and so forth and the good which Yokes the intellect then form together because remember it's very important to remember here that form and the intellect are initially separate for Plato remember the forms are not something that exists in the mind they are not created by us but through the intellect we can access them and actually what the good is here is reason it's it's the The Faculty of reason that brings intellect and form together and the form of the good is this entire process so just like the sun allows us to know that it's the Sun that provides its Delight with which we see once we catch sight of reason as it were once we know what reason is once we can recognize reason um we then can use reason to distinguish between whether or not um we're in the super sensible or sensible World in terms of what we are thinking about um reason allows us to distinguish between these two Realms as it were um a reason lets us know that it's through reason that we find truth that we find forms and so without reason uh we wouldn't have these things but once we recognize reasons we have the ability to to discern between knowledge and ignorance um and so the form of the good is the entire process whereby we know reason and use reason to know former truth and I would suggest that you go back through these last uh four or five pages of the analogy after listening to this and follow follow the analogy as it develops try and learn what's being asked of you when you're asked to read something like this because uh it's important in a class like this and it's difficult not having you in the classroom all the time to convey The Importance of Being able to read what's not said directly sometimes being able to read the indirect the implicit the unsaid things that are being said without being said directly basically this is an important skill not just for your introduction to philosophy class but for you know being able to read situations being able to read the news being able to read what's going on on all your different social media accounts um reading is a being a good reader being a critical reader is not a precise skill but it's a skill you can be taught and also have to feel out for yourself it can be demonstrated to you but you have to find ways to grasp it um so my suggestion is to go back through now after I've said these things and see if you can't see why it is that I've elaborated the simile of the Sun in this way good luck