00:00:00
PROFESSOR: So today's lecture
is about the question of the
00:00:06
challenge that Glaucon
posed in the story
00:00:09
of the ring of Gyges.
00:00:11
The question is: what sort of
motivations do we have for
00:00:17
acting morally, and what
expectations should we have
00:00:21
with respect to those around us
about whether they act in
00:00:25
that way, for reasons intrinsic
to moral motivation,
00:00:30
or simply because they wish to
appear a particular way?
00:00:35
So what I want to start by
doing, is tell you a little
00:00:39
bit about the extraordinary
person whose dialogue, The
00:00:45
Republic, we read excerpts
from today.
00:00:49
It's hard to overestimate the
influence of Plato on the
00:00:56
Western intellectual
tradition.
00:00:59
There is no educated person in
the Western world in the last
00:01:06
2500 years who wasn't influenced
in some way or
00:01:12
another by the thought and by
the framework of understanding
00:01:18
that Plato provided for us
some 2500 years ago.
00:01:24
Plato was an extremely
interesting figure.
00:01:28
He was born into an aristocratic
family in Athens.
00:01:34
Some think that he was descended
from one of the
00:01:37
Athenian kings, but regardless,
it's clear that
00:01:40
the family of which he was a
part were among the leaders of
00:01:45
Athenian political society.
00:01:47
Several of his uncles had been
part of a coup in the
00:01:50
government that took place
several years before Plato
00:01:54
came to maturity.
00:01:56
And the expectation of people
like Plato was that they would
00:02:01
go into civics or government.
00:02:05
Public leadership.
00:02:07
It was as if he were a Kennedy
or a Bush or a Clinton.
00:02:12
He came from a family with a
long history of political
00:02:17
And the assumption was that he
would become politically
00:02:20
engaged, himself.
00:02:23
But interestingly, for reasons
about there are great
00:02:27
speculations, Plato came under
the influence of a man about
00:02:34
thirty years his elder named
Socrates, who, in the
00:02:40
portraits that we have
of him, looked
00:02:42
remarkably like Plato himself.
00:02:48
Socrates was a gadfly.
00:02:52
He wandered around Athens and
asked people to reflect on
00:02:59
their commitments.
00:03:00
Asked people to think about what
the nature of fundamental
00:03:05
things like justice, and
truth, and reality, and
00:03:11
friendship, and love,
and honesty were.
00:03:15
He asked people to reflect on
common opinion, and to ask
00:03:22
themselves what, of the things
that they believed, were
00:03:26
well-grounded, and what, of the
things that they believed,
00:03:30
were simply matters of
received opinion.
00:03:35
And in part because of his
provocation, Socrates was
показать еще
русский▼
English
