Understanding Plato, is to understand academia. Academia is in a great crisis these days. All the things, that some see as a part of Woke, and most see as a part of political correctness, that is diminishing the ability to think freely at campus, COMES from academics, who obviously do not like the idea of letting other people talk about what they want to talk about.
This is a bit like telling a jew not to like Israel or a muslim to be unjust. It is a fault in that league.
Let me explain.
Plato was a quiet rebel. He had seen atrocities in his life, and decided to make a system, that would serve as a deterrent against tyranny. A deterrent against oppression and corruption.
Being the person he was, he didn’t do it by scolding anyone, he did be trying to build the most beautiful, coherent, idealistic system that man has ever seen.
He was all into beauty, good and truth, and many other virtues. He is THE philosopher to turn to, if you want to be an idealist.
He had seen it all in his own life time. His teacher, whom he REALLY loved, Socrates, was killed by the callousness of a class of tyrants. His other teacher Anaxagoras, was put to jail. He was surrounded by teachers who had been put into jail. The system he was living under, that of Democracy, was riddled with disgusting moral corruption.
So his attempt at solving the problems he saw in his life, was to, at one hand, point to Sparta for an alternative, which I personally thing is a problem, and then build this beautiful, marvel of a system, that we still see as the basic stone of all of academia.
Academia MEANS people who adhere to the crowd that was in the grove of Academus, a grove where Plato students hung out, as we still, in an abstract way do.
Plato was a QUEIT rebel. The tenants he gave us; the cave allegory as the main tenant is about GOING AGAINST the moral corruption of the society. His genius was, that he invented an institution, that, if it works, works against the corruption of Democracy, thereby being the very thing that keeps Democracy sound and well functioning.
It wasn’t Sparta that was the remedy for Democracy’s inherent danger of corruption, it is academia as such.
In this sense, if academia LEADS the corruption in a Democracy, something went just wrong somewhere. It is doing the complete opposite of what it is supposed to do. I mean, it just doesn’t make sense.
We still have bastions of true rebels within academia, as Chicago university, and Oxford.
But there is an inherent problem, in academia as such, and as a true platonist, I just know the ideas of this ancient person, and have lived with his ideas in most of my career, or whatever you can call it; his message is clear. We are supposed to search for the light, through dialogue, to hinder the moral corruption of society.
G-d bless the will to see things openly, and be honest and true. G-d bless the wisdom of Plato.
