Six Quotes: Roochnik on Plato

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  1. “Is” is the simplest word in the English language and yet it is the hardest to understand in The Republic.
  2. Intelligible reality, what we think with our minds, is more real than the individual instances we attribute to our reality.
  3. What is clear about American politics, whether you are Democrat or Republican, is that knowledge has nothing to do with it. I think that started with Jimmy Carter. Why did we call the President ‘Jimmy’ instead of ‘James’? Jimmy is what you call a seven-year-old with freckles, not the leader of our country. But they engineered it so he appears to be as ignorant as us.
  4. The purpose of mathematics is to turn our focus around to a better, intelligible reality.
  5. If you can define something, the definition has to be applicable to every single case within that area.
  6. The best parts of reality, what reality is anyway, is not what we see with our eyes, we hear with our ears, or touch with our hands, but what we think.

As recorded by Core office employee Winona Hudak during Prof. David Roochnik’s discussion of The Republic, at the November 15th CC101 lecture.

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