We followed our discussion of Plato’s famous Letter VII by looking at his lesser-known Letters VI and VIII. Together, they form a powerful trilogy in which “Love your neighbour” emerges as an overarching theme, and a principle that Plato says applies above all to kings, whose rule must be tempered by a love for their subjects. Plato’s concept of kingship is very different from the history of misrule by kings who exercise absolute and arbitrary power for their own benefit. The lessons that Plato provides in the three letters, from his own experience in politics 2,400 years ago, are especially important to our modern world, as tyrants and authoritarians impose injustice on their slavish followers and destroy the social harmony of their subjects. In Letter VI, Plato calls on members of The Academy to form a bond of friendship with a king who respects reason, and in Letter VIII he exhorts would-be tyrants to “shun and flee from what senseless and insatiate men call happiness; let them try to change into the form of kings and subject themselves to kingly laws, thus acquiring the highest honors from their willing subjects and from the laws.” A good king is the servant of the laws and justice, not one who enslaves his people with false images that, like the prisoner in the cave of Plato’s Republic, are mistaken for reality. More than two millennia after Plato wrote, we live in a world awash in false images that are broadcast to our screens with the speed and power of technology and cloaked as “opinion,” but what if we were to relinquish what we think of as a right to opinion? In our discussion, a proposal is advanced that we need to forgo claiming a right to opinion so that we can exercise reason, because reason and not opinion is the road the path to true freedom. We argue that this would be a step in the right direction on the divided line of knowledge that Plato described in The Republic, to us toward knowledge and then, with social harmony, to wisdom which is the greatest good.

The second half of our discussion on Plato’s Seventh Letter begins with a reading of Plato’s famous statement that he never published any statement of his opinions. That’s both the beauty and, for some, the frustration of Plato to his readers. The reason, as Michael Fitzpatrick states in our dialogue, is that Plato didn’t want to give us the answer key: “The only way your soul benefits is if these thoughts are born afresh in your soul, and you see the truth for yourself.” Plato weaves into his Seventh Letter much of the philosophy that he presented in his many dialogues, in particular that of the Republic, and one of the central questions of the Seventh Letter is “Can virtue be taught?” It’s a question that Plato also asked in the Meno, and we can see an answer from the Seventh Letter’s extraordinary account of his experience with the tyrannical rule of Syracuse by the tyrant Dionysius. Written to the supporters of the tyrant’s victim, Dion, and recounting his practical imprisonment by Dionysius on his third visit to the city, Plato admits that his attempts to teach virtue to Dionysius had failed. Is Plato saying virtue can never be taught? We don’t know his opinion on the matter, and that’s why he leaves the question hanging for us to consider.

In our first discussion on Plato's letters, we look at his best-known Seventh Letter. In the letter, Plato relates his experience with Dionysius, the tyrannical ruler of Syracuse, and the philosophically minded Dion was was persecuted by Dionysius. Plato's extraordinary recounting of his time teaching both Dionysius and Dion demonstrates his success with the latter, and failure with the former. There are many intriguing parallels between the situation in Syracuse 2,400 years ago, when Plato wrote, and the political and social environment in which we find ourselves today. Plato's account highlights the ills that befall a society whose rulers don't practise philosophy, and we see such rulers now, in the 21st century. The philosophical principles and observations about human nature that Plato expressed over two millennia ago remain relevant today, and in our next episode on the Seventh Letter we'll explore the age-old question "Can virtue be taught?"