YouSaid · the spoken record

Angie Hobbs

lines on the record: 54
first: 2025-08-09
most recent: 2025-08-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And he's putting us centre stage. He's bringing us into the conversation. And to me, that is as important as any of the views that he gives us. It's about how to write, how to think, how to speak, how to engage, how to keep learning, how to keep questioning.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No hope for the human race. You're just going to be siloed off into hatred and suspicion and ignorance and ultimately fighting. And he would say keep talking to yourself. Keep challenging yourself. And for me, that's, and because we never quite know for sure what he thinks, because he never writes in his own voice, he only mentions himself three times in his whole massive corpus. He mentions himself twice in the apology when we know he was at Socrates' trial and in the phedo, which is about the last day of Socrates' life when he's put to death by hemlock. All we are told is that Plato was not in the prison cell and we just get the very moving phrase, Plato, I think, was ill. That's Plato writing about himself. I don't think he was ill at all. I think he could just couldn't face it seeing his beloved Socrates put to death. So he's off stage.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To say yes to you and nod to you. I mean, John Stuart Mill says if you never test or challenge your own beliefs by discussing them with people who can maybe question them, then your beliefs are going to ossify. They're going to become dogma. And I think that's absolutely true. And Plato does it on himself. To be fair to Plato, he's always questioning himself. He keeps moving on. So his theory of forms does not stay rigid. He questions it hugely in later dialogues. He possibly gets rid of it altogether. He questions, he's always questioning himself and moving on. And most of the great thinkers will do that. The message he's giving to us is keep talking to people, even if you really disagree with them. Otherwise, there is real...”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Almost fascism. I mean, there's everything, but I have learned so much from Plato, even though there is lots I disagree with. But I would have missed out on so much if I'd thought, oh, I don't like what he says about censorship of the arts. So I'm not going to engage with him at all. I don't, you know, I'm not usually in favor of censorship of the arts and there's quite a lot. And there's a lot of it in the republic. I'm interested in the reasons Plato gives us for why he thinks art can be damaging. And I agree with him that art can be damaging and dangerous. Where I disagree with him is about whether that should lead to censorship. I think normally it shouldn't. But it's important to test your own views and be challenged and not just to talk to people who agree with you.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What they're doing to the public in general. Keep talking to people even if you disagree with them. And this is one of the reasons I love Plato and I've spent a lot of my life thinking about him and writing about him, even though my own political views are, I mean, we don't know for sure what Plato's political views are, but they're not likely to have been very left-wing. I mean, I'm not very left-wing, but I'm center-left, and Plato's, he's a mixture. I mean, there's the elements of communism in the republic as well as authoritarian.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know you're never going to be best friends, but how can you have that discussion in ways which are still respectful, still courteous, where you're still trying to aim for the truth rather than victory? Really important. I mean, and Plato would always, he would definitely say he would hate what algorithms are doing to people. He would hate the silos. He would hate the no platforming and the confected culture wars and all of that. He would always say, keep talking, keep listening. Otherwise, you're going to be tricked and otherwise you've got no hope. You're definitely all going to slide into hatred and possible war. If you keep talking, you have at least a chance of softening somebody's view a bit. And even if you can't convince them, you can at least expose”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Politics and the law courts, you had to learn how to speak well and win arguments to get on in this society. But they're teaching people how to win and how to defeat your opponent. They're looking at victory. They're not really necessarily aiming at truth. And Plato shows us different kinds of sophisticated techniques which either aim to bully and bludgeon the opponent into submission or more deviously use all sorts of verbal skull duggery and fallacious arguments to trick the opponent. And so that's what Plato is trying to expose. So he gives us these healthy and unhealthy ways and he gives us the unhealthy ways of engaging in dialogue specifically to help us Very contested political or religious issues with people with whom you might profoundly disagree. But how can you do that in a way that is”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's not rhetoric in itself exactly. Now, in the dialogues, again, he uses the dialogues to model both healthy and unhealthy ways of engaging in dialogue. So we get good models. We get conversations between Socrates and other interlocutors, which are friendly, collaborative, honest. They are genuinely all working together to search for the truth. But we also, Plato quite deliberately gives us bad models. We said that the Republic wouldn't meet its own censorship criteria. That's because he gives us a bad character in it in Republic 1, in the Sophist Thrasymachus. Sophists were teachers of philosophy and rhetoric who got paid a lot of money. They traveled around the Greek world. They were paid by rich young men or the fathers of rich young men to help their sons get ahead in”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, I mean, wow, yeah, if we could chat about this, we'll do fantastic questions. Yes, so you say Plato's hostile to rhetoric. Now, well, up to a point. So he does distinguish philosophy from rhetoric in his dialogue called The Gorgias, but he only means sort of bad rhetoric, misused rhetoric. I mean, rhetoric just means using words to persuade. And Plato uses words to persuade all his life. He's a consummate artist. And his dialogues they've got, as you said, they've got scene setting, characterization, imagery, irony, all metaphors, all sorts. He uses, he's a great artist and he uses language to persuade. But what he's in favour of is philosophic rhetoric and what he's against is fraudulent rhetoric, which is used to distort, to deceive, to get people further from reality rather than closer to reality.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Language and the bad use of language. And so Plato says, you know, don't wait till it's got too far. You can't do anything about the monster you've created. So he has masses to say to us now politically, absolutely masses. And you don't have to believe in all the stuff in his ideally just state. I don't. You don't have to believe in his metaphysical theory of forms. I don't. to realize that there is still masses, masses that we can learn from Plato now. And we really, really do need him now, which in one sense I'm pleased about because it's sort of great to have a book called Why Plato Matters Now When It's True. But in the bigger scheme of things, I almost wish it wasn't so true because we're in a real mess. We are in a real mess and we really do need some philosophy right now and we really do need some help from Plato. Here, right now.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We really need to learn that from Plato. And then people start protesting and they kind of say, this isn't why we voted you in. And the demagogue turns on his own supporters too, finally. And Plato says very explicitly, the man becomes a wolf and the full-blooded tyrant is born. So we really, really need to learn from that. And Plato says it starts with the corruption of moral language and the calling shamelessness is called courage and licentiousness is called freedom and so on and vice versa. So Plato says the way to protect yourself against being manipulated by these demagogues is through education, it's through critical awareness, it's through paying attention to the words you use and the other people are using because the bad actions stem initially from bad actions.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Shows us brilliantly how the demagogue does this by getting voted into power by democratic means. But then waving the banner of And his followers think he can do no wrong, and the demagogue brings, corrupts the rule of law by bringing baseless charges against his opponents and corrupting the legal system to get his opponents exiled or killed or whatever. He keeps provoking wars because he needs to keep his people fearful and in need of a strong leader. He needs to keep them poor. And this is another thing we should really learn from Plato. Demagogues get into power, says Plato, because they attract the poor majority and say, look, you've been had, I'm your champion, I'm on your side, I'll make everything better for you. But the demagogue only is in power through the support of the poor. So he needs to keep the poor people poor. And he keeps fleecing them. He's utterly corrupt. He keeps fleecing them for money.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, exactly, they're not rich. And also, for Plato, the philosopher ruler is literally opposed in his list of good and bad states to the tyrant. So though Plato wasn't, he wasn't a fan of direct democracy. He had no experience of representative democracy. But he does think democracy is a heck of a lot better than tyranny. And he gives us the most coruscating analysis I've ever seen in Republic books eight and nine of how a democracy can be subverted into tyranny by a cynical and opportunistic demagogue, misusing language, subverting moral terms, misusing rhetoric. To flatter, to blandish, but also to instill fear and suspicion, to just manipulate the people, i.e. democracies rule by the people, demagoguery is a leading of the people, and Plato just”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Want to be authoritarians, and though his philosopher rulers are authoritarian, they're certainly not like current despots. I mean”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Terrorism does still have potency and currency. We're always going to need heroes because there are always going to be some problems in the world. There are two things I think he'll say now. He would say he hates the way heroism has sort of degenerated into celebrity. He would say, look, come on, most celebrities haven't actually done or said or created anything worth celebrating. So he would say don't debase the currency. Heroism, you know, the hero has true potency and currency. We're always going to need a genuine hero. Don't debase that currency by kind of letting it morph into just sort of celebrity. So he would certainly say that. But the other thing he would say is, God, people are worshipping the wrong heroes. That's for sure. And he would look at all the demagogues around the world and all the authoritarians.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Genuine heroism and how having genuine heroes can inspire us and motivate us to be our best selves, having the wrong kind of heroes, obviously helps, enables us to be our worst selves. And he talks about the dangers of excessive hero worship when you just rely on somebody else to come in and fix things by waving a magic wand rather than you cultivating your own inner intellectual and moral resources to fix your own lives. And he talks about the psychological dangers on the hero, him or herself as well. So it's a really thoughtful, thoughtful, profound discussion of the potential benefits and dangers of having heroes of being a hero and how we need to harness the good effects and try and avoid the bad effects. But he always says, you know, that”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this is another reason he has this big vision about a society. He realizes he can't change our heroes and what kind of people and values that we heroize until he changes the whole culture of the society. So that's going on now. Okay, so that's the general picture. So he is really, really interesting. I mean, not just in the Republic, in many of his dialogues. And I wrote a book called Plato and the Hero about Plato's relationship with Homer in particular, but not just Toner and the importance of role models and the importance of”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To get honour and success and respect in your society? Well, it's by emulating, by copying, those people your society currently hero worships or puts up as heroes. So it's quite a conservative sort of tendency. And Plato kind of says, well, we've got a real problem here because people in my society are still kind of hero worshipping characters from Homer's Iliad like Achilles who played, I think, is a disaster of a hero, bloodthirsty and cruel and irrational and irreligious and all the rest of it. And Plato wants to set up new heroes like Socrates and say you don't have to be on a battlefield to be a hero. You can be a thinker. Anybody who fights for true truth and justice and is willing to risk and give up their life for that. They are the heroes. But Plato realized...”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh my goodness, absolutely. He would be completely appalled. Okay, so first of all, let's start, yes. Again, as there's no philosopher who really writes so profoundly over such a long period about love and friendship, I don't know any other philosopher who writes so much about heroism and associated notions of what is really honor, what's glory, what's success. And he partly does that because of his psychological analysis in his middle period dialogues. He divides the human psyche into three faculties. There's a reasoning faculty and an, which desires truth and reality. There's an appetitive faculty which desires physical pleasures and the money and other means to acquire them. But there's also this third faculty, what he calls the Thumo Edis, and the spirited faculty, which desires success, honor, respect. And what's the best way?”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, I'm not going to say that politicians should not be allowed to earn any money or own houses. But goodness, we've got too much money in politics and it is so corrupting politics all around the world. So definitely something to think about. And I for one really would like to see a limit on the amount that any organization or individual can donate to a political party.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They are not allowed to own any property or any money. They are not allowed even to touch golds or silver. So plower and wealth are completely divorced in Plato's Republic. And I think, you know, okay, it's very extreme. I mean, the gardens, they might be allowed to earn a sponge or a comb. But otherwise, absolutely nothing. And they have to treat the producer class have no power in a political sense, but they do have some power because if the guardians don't treat them well, they will not be, the guardians won't be fed or housed because it's the producers who feed and clothe and house their rulers. So it's in the ruler's interest to treat the people they rule well. Otherwise, they're going to starve. So it's certainly something at the moment to think about, isn't it? How can we, you know.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Plato's vision for what an ideal community should look like. I don't myself, but my goodness, I admire Plato for saying, come on, come on, let's at least try to create a community in which people get on with each other and have friendly relations. And let's look at the economic things behind, you know, which might make that possible. He has in his ideally just state, he, for instance, says that The only class that's allowed to own material goods, the producer class he still says they can't be too rich or too poor. There need to be limits on how much wealth any individual can have. But also, and here's a challenge for us to think about, I mean, it's too extreme, but it's interesting, the ruling class, the guardians who are divided into the philosopher rulers and their military and executive auxiliaries.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, and again, that's Eros, erotic love, but in terms of Filia, friendship and family love, Plato again, I mean, some people might laugh at this and say, this is just ridiculously utopian, but Plato says the aim of politicians in any state should be to create filia, friendly social relations amongst the citizens in that state. Now, you might think, oh, that's just ludicrous, you know, you can't have politicians aiming at the good life and aiming at friendship. That's hopeless. But really, really? I mean, I get so saddened by the number of politicians who seek to win power deliberately by creating division and suspicion and fear and hostility because they think it will serve them politically and economically. My goodness, you may not want all of”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Onto philosophic and artistic and religious ends. loved Plato and read quite a bit of him, particularly the Republic and the symposium and the Phedrus. And Freud says that he gets his theory of Liberto largely from Plato's theory of eros, erotic love. And Freud says he gets his theory of sublimation largely from Plato's theory of re-channeling. In fact, Freud is a bit wrong about that. There are quite significant differences. But the basic point is there, Freud really responded to Plato saying, look, we've got this. Really strong energy within us How do we best channel that and use it for our good and the greater good? And when it goes wrong and when it becomes harmful to ourselves and others, why has it gone wrong?”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or do we fall in love with unique individuals? Can erotic energy, which starts as physical attraction, but can it be re-channeled away onto different objects more abstract objects? And finally, in Plato's terminology, he gives this both beautiful but also disturbing ladder of love where we ascend away from this realm towards the form of beauty. Again, I mean, we're not going to agree with all of that, but it really, again, you're talking about it enlarging our vision. And Plato's saying this, we've got this really force, this erotic force in us. Are we harnessing it in the best way? Are we using it in the best way for our lives and for our communities? Could we be doing more with it? Could we be redirecting at least some of that energy?”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are set in this drinking party about Eros, about erotic love. But on different ways. Far as we know in the West at any rate, the first kind of, it's not university exactly, but it's a research community, it's a teaching community. And they all kind of live together and work together. So enormously important. He gets us to ask, well, what really is friendship? Are people attracted to each other because they're unlike, because they're like, what's the best kind of friendship? It seems to be it's when good people are attracted to each other because of their goodness rather than the fact they're alike. What is erotic love? Is it just about physical desire? Does it, you know, why do we fall in love with the people that we do? Is it unique? Or do we just fall in love with people because they exhibit a certain characteristics so we could easily replace them with other people who exhibit those characteristics?”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People will have a lot of problems of Plato. I have some problems with Plato. My own political views are certainly not the views put into the mouth of Socrates in the Republic. But one area where I think Plato is just inexhaustibly rich. And really, I don't know any other philosopher who thinks so deeply about the different kinds of what friendship is, what the different kinds of erotic and other forms of love are, what are healthy and unhealthy ways of having friends and having lovers and how that can fit into both those kinds of relationships can fit into your individual life, but also the life of the community. I think he is unsurpassed in this. If people watching or listening have not read any Plato at all, I would say start with the symposium. An amazing diet.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Make it philosophically important to care about those what seem to be very small things, in particular human relationships and the way we connect with each other. You mentioned earlier that, you know, sort of it is not disconnected or separate to the larger vision to talk about our relationships with one another, the different kinds of love and friendship. So how can sort of, and right now obviously, there's a lot of way we are relating to each other, again, the technology elements in this, how many relationships now mediated via things like social media, and to some extent this can sometimes feel like it's slipping further and further from our control and that we're increasingly questioning, well, what is it to have loving relationships, to have friendships? What does that mean in this increasingly fast-paced and quite harsh world? Can Plato talk to those sorts of problems for us? Oh, I think so. I mean, you know,”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the cave. And Plato again and again, and I think this is really important, he makes links between reason and freedom. And he says, unless you kind of unleash the potential of your reason and let it guide you in life, then you are not going to be truly free. You're not going to be able to make genuine choices because you don't know what the options are. And the options are actually much bigger than the ones you currently see in front of you, the shadows on the wall. I mean, that's really interesting. But coming back to some of the things you were saying earlier, I mean, so we've gone, we've seen the rationale for the big theory. Why you would want to think big and give yourself a large framework from which you can start trying to kind of find the basis for making decision making and inquiry. But Plato does always make it legitimate.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're going to be doomed to keep endlessly going around in the cycle, and we don't know which way to go forward. And I think this has really resonated at the moment. I've been thinking a lot about AI and which of course, you know, the allegory of the cave makes us think really hard about virtual reality and AI. And one of the things I've been thinking about is, well, it's got all this potential, it's obviously got a lot of dangers as well. How do we know what values we want to instill in our AI systems and what information we want to give them until we know what role we want AI systems to play in a larger vision of a communal life? So we have to think big or we're completely stuck. And, okay, it's difficult. It's challenging. We're going to make mistakes along the way. But if we don't, we're going to be the shackled prisoners.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the far is throwing the shadows onto the wall in front of us. And we think those shadows are reality. In fact, they're only shadows of puppets. They're not even shadows of real things. And we need to be released from our shackles and led protesting at the tunnel out of the cave into the sunlit world where true reality lives. Okay, so the point here is that we're prisoners at the moment. We're trapped in the present and we don't even know it. And until these doors are opened in our minds and somebody, as Socrates, a modern Socrates says, look, things don't have to be like they are at the moment. You can live outside your current postcode, your moral and values, your vision can be outside your current postcode. Until that happens, then...”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can't actually teach anybody anything. You can't put knowledge and stuff in somebody else's head. All you can do is turn them in the direction of the light, which I find really beautiful and moving phrase. You're just sort of opening doors for people in their minds and saying, look, things don't have to be like they are now. We're not trapped. We don't have to be trapped in the present. So you mentioned the famous allegory of the cave, and I think this is a good moment to just remind listeners and viewers of that. So the idea is that we're all prisoners in a cave, but we don't know it. We're bound at the neck and at the feet. We're facing a wall behind us is a fire and a curtain wall and mysterious puppeteers. We don't know who they are, are moving puppets along above the curtain wall.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Something I explore quite a bit in the book is there any the challenges if you can't realize this utopia I mean some people will regard it as a dystopia but if you can't realize this supposedly ideally just state is there any point even in trying and There are characters in the republic and one you know Socrates the characters Socrates is discussing particularly with two of Plato's own brothers, Glaucon and Adamantus. They're two of the other main characters and they keep challenging him particularly Adamantus who keeps say well this can't happen what's the point? So he asks exactly those kind of questions and Socrates keeps saying well if you don't know the direction of travel how will you know the next step to take? We need the bigger picture otherwise we don't know in which direction to move there's a very beautiful line where Socrates says you”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of kind of the utopia Plato gives through Socrates' mouth. Not all elements are going to be to modern taste. In fact, some aspects going to be distinctly challenging or even distasteful to us. But what was really interesting was the point you make about the function of utopian thinking in Plato, how Plato uses utopia to think through problems. I was particularly struck by the question of gender relations. Do you think maybe coming back to the kind of slightly dismal moral ambitions that we currently harbor? What a bit of this kind of Platonic utopian thinking maybe help us to start tackling some of the problems that we've got now? Are we lacking, you know, what is it that I suppose, what is it that big vision does for Plato that maybe we're lacking in our current approach to philosophy? Yes, thank you. Yes. I mean, it's...”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They want for themselves and their community. I thought what you discussed in the chapter on utopia is really interesting because, again, you're very open. Not all elements in Plato's utopia will be or Plato.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They don't understand the good, which let me put that again, they don't understand really what the courage is for and what values they're fighting for. And because they don't understand the ultimate good that they're fighting for, that means in some circumstances they won't be as courageous as they might be. And actually they would be more courageous if they did have this underlying knowledge of what the ultimate values are. So again, it's a big moral vision and he doesn't deny that some people are sort of stronger on the courage side and stronger on the wisdom side and so on. But he does say the ultimately good human being is somebody in who these moral and intellectual excellences are interconnected. And why? Because they understand what it's all about. They understand what kind of life”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Moral virtues. So, knowledge of the human good on a battlefield will result in courageous behavior. Knowledge of the human good if you're a legislator or if you're distributing goods and so on, that will result in justice. So I think once you start thinking about it, and Plato kind of challenges us, he says, well, can you really be a good human if you've got one virtue but not the others? And it's a question he comes back to again and again throughout his life and in his later life, in his last book, The Laws, he does say, well, there are some people who are courageous. And in every other respect, they're awful human beings. But even then, he says, well, they're only courageous up to a point. And in some instances, their courage will fail them.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Living a virtuous life. Now, we're scared of this word virtue. It sounds very victorian and kind of rather prigish and rather off-putting. But we're really just talking about intellectual and moral excellences here. And so, and Plato's saying, this inner state of psychic harmony, it is your flourishing, it is your excellence. Now, why does he think the excellences are interconnected? And this is a point where he does seem to follow his mentor Socrates. He doesn't always. He diverges in lots of ways as he matures, but he does follow him in this. And that the historic Socrates said, well, what is human virtue? It is knowledge. It's knowledge of the human good. And that knowledge of the human good, which of course is an intellectual thing, but in different contexts, it will translate and be materialized as different.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“be and he follows his mentor Socrates and saying I want to live a flourishing life be a flourishing person what does that mean it means fulfilling my various intellectual emotional etc faculties and that means”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Book that we know as the Republic, the dialogue that we know is the republic. I mean, that's a Latin name given to it by Cicero. It was known as Politea in ancient Greece. But that book would be banned in the ideally just state that it describes because it doesn't meet the censorship criteria. It has bad characters and things. It literally doesn't meet its own artistic censorship criteria. Now Plato, who's got a great sense of humor and is the ultimate ironist, he can't be unaware of that irony. So we're always being asked to question, to explore, to reflect. He is a provocateur in so many ways. Now, the second challenge you pose about, gosh, you know, are all these excellences really connected in this way? So Plato starts with his basic ethical questions, how should I live? What sort of person should I?”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's writing in dialogues he's never speaking in his own voice. The most authoritarian vision that people might be aware of is the ideally just state that the character of Socrates proposes in the Republic. And that is true. It is authoritarian. It is indeed totalitarian. How much does Plato, the offstage, sign up to it? We don't know. What we do know, and this always amuses me, is that the...”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what I really like is that you encourage me to look beyond a lot of the stereotypes which people might receive about Plato being quite in some ways quite authoritarian, quite strict with his utopian visions and all that sort of thing. We'll come to utopia in a moment, I hope. But one thing I sort of have always thought about Plato is that integrating tendency that he has, that he wants to join everything together in integrate systems and he wants to see links between all the different sorts of virtues you can have. And I must admit that the provocateur in me says, well, can you do that? I mean, are there not just some values which are both equally good but are just not going to come together in any unified vision of flourishing? Okay, so let's break that down. The really good points now. Let's break it down into two parts. So the challenge that Plato is very strict, very severe, very authoritarian. So again, let's remember.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the characters in his dialogues, they have a lot of fun. There are a lot of jokes. They're drinking wine at symposia and so on. It's absolutely not all grim. It's not all about, oh, you've got to be perfect all the time. It's have an ambitious vision, but then be practical about how you take the steps towards that and give yourself some time off, you know, because you are not going to be able to fulfil all your faculties. If you're exhausted, you need to sleep. You need to have fun. You need to have friendship and love in your life. And as I'm sure we'll be discussing friendship and various forms of lover are hugely important to Plato. I like that. I like that idea that self-care is part of Plato's kind of philosophical thinking. One of the things I really loved about this book, because I must admit, I went in as a little bit of a Plato.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Got all these sort of disparate values that we contest over and we don't really know what to care about. So we obviously stop, we switch off, we detach. And Plato's asking an awful lot of us, isn't he? He's asking that we really sort of, philosophy is not just a means to an end in Plato. It really is a whole way of living and living with other people. That's a really good point. I mean, and I think Plato will be very alive to this challenge about, you know, if you care so much about everything all the time you end up absolutely exhausted. But I think he would say, look, we need to make a difference between the goal, the vision have an ambitious vision, but then also be really practical about what precise particular steps that we can take towards it. So we're not asking too much of ourselves at any moment, that we have some time off, we have some fun.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Utilize my faculties to improve the situation just a little bit, whether for me or for my community. So I find it a really practical ethics. It's one that can appeal to everybody and it's one that we can all subscribe to even in those periods of our life when feeling happy is not really possible, maybe not even appropriate. That's fantastic. I mean, that's really opened up a really nice broad landscape for us. I suppose it's not just that it's a kind of practical ethics in the sense that it really does care about, you know, kind of, it does ask us to care. In some ways, that's the really challenging part of it. So much of our ethical discourse now is kind of very detached. It's very sort of a matter of calculations. Other sort of, I'm thinking of...”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To me, that speaks to the lived human experience much more vividly. Just one final point before we move on. This word flourishing, which we're going to be, I'm sure, discussing a lot, it's you, Daimonia, in the ancient Greek. It's not the same as happiness. It's certainly not the same as pleasure. And it's not the same as happiness. It's not just about feeling happy. It's about fulfilling your potential, actualizing all your intellectual and imaginative and emotional and physical faculties. So it's a more objective concept. And what's so interesting to me is that we can always aim to flourish even on those days when we, happiness is not really an option and certainly pleasure isn't an option. We can always think, well, how can I best?”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He would say, That doesn't really speak to many people. What people care about are these basic questions. How should I live? And of course, that question gets you to think about the shape, the structure, the narrative of your life. And that is another reason Plato writes in the dialogue form, because if you're thinking about the narrative of your life, Going to be interested in how other people live. What do other characters, whether historical or fictional or mythical? How do they live? How do their lives turn out? What kind of good and bad models are available to us? So for me, this agent-centered What we might call an ethics, and I would even say politics of flourishing and virtue. We'll get onto that word politics.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ethical discourse and say, well, it's all very act centered. You're either concerned with the consequences of your actions or you're concerned with what actions are permissible and what actions are impermissible, you know, rights and duty-based ethics”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Through a varied cast of characters, Socrates is usually the main character, not always. Plato never speaks in his own voice. And again, this is a really clever way of bringing us into the conversation. He's bringing in not just people in his own time, but in future generations and saying, come on, you can be a voice here. Join in the conversation.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Only practice philosophy through dialogue, through conversation, through question and answer. Now, Plato does choose to write, but he chooses to write in a dialogue form.”
2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT