Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

Today on Ascend, we open Book Two of Plato’s Republic with one of the most striking passages in the whole work: the myth of the Ring of Gyges. Glaucon does not simply disagree with Socrates. He says he has been talked to death by Thrasymachus and countless others, and he wants to know whether Socrates is trying to persuade him or only to seem to persuade him. He then restores the argument for injustice in its strongest form.
Justice, he says, is a compact struck by the weak. Those who practice it do so unwillingly. And the life of the unjust man is, after all, far better than that of the just. To make the claim vivid he tells the story of Gyges, who finds a ring that makes him invisible, seduces the queen, kills the king, and takes the throne.
Dr. Jennifer Frey joins me to walk through the argument, and she is clear that this is no mere academic exercise. Plato is mapping the options that are still with us. The seeds of Machiavelli and Hobbes are already here.
What makes the section so powerful is the way Glaucon strips justice of every external reward. He imagines a man of perfect injustice who has a reputation for justice, and then a man of perfect justice who has a reputation for injustice. The just man, they will say, will be whipped, racked, bound, have both his eyes burned out, and at the end, when he has undergone every sort of evil, he will be crucified. Dr. Frey notes that he will be treated like Christ. Plato is writing about his master, Socrates, but the parallel is unavoidable. The question the passage forces on the reader is simple and severe: is justice good in itself, or only for its effects? Glaucon wants the second kind of good. He wants to be shown that justice is desirable for its own sake and for what comes from it. Everything that follows in the Republic is an attempt to answer him.
More Resources on Plato’s Republic:
How to Read Plato
Reading schedule, podcast calendar, and more!
GUIDE: 12 Questions on Book One of Plato’s Republic
Republic Bk 1: Intro, Prologue & Cephalus with Dr. Alex Priou (327a-331d)
Republic Bk 1: Polemarchus with Dr. Grabowski & Thomas Lackey (331e-336a)
Republic Bk 1: Thrasymachus with Dr. Gregory McBrayer (336a-354c)
GUIDE: 24 Questions on Book Two of Plato’s Republic

If you are reading the Republic with us, this is the section that sets the stakes. The drama is part of the pedagogy. You cannot extract the argument and leave the myth behind. The question is first (i) what is justice and second (ii) is justice more profitable for the soul than injustice. That is the problem Book Two places before us, and it is the problem the rest of the dialogue will try to solve—at least on its face.
Chapters
00:00 Book II reading guide and the central question of justice
04:29 Dr. Jennifer Frey on why The Republic remains a masterwork
07:14 How Plato anticipates modern political philosophy
10:14 Why Plato’s literary form is part of the argument
14:05 Glaucon challenges Socrates to defend justice
17:08 Three kinds of goods and where justice belongs
22:19 Glaucon’s three-part case for injustice
24:45 Glaucon seeks reasons, not just persuasion
29:38 Justice as a compromise against mutual harm
34:49 Socrates’ maxim: better to suffer than commit injustice
37:53 The Ring of Gyges and the test of justice
42:13 Invisibility, power, and the gap between appearance and reality
45:35 Can an unjust person truly flourish?
47:23 Gyges, Superman, and what power reveals
49:45 Plato’s magical ring and Herodotus’s political coup
52:04 Does power immediately cast moral norms aside?
53:33 Virtue as the long cultivation of appetite
55:02 Thrasymachus, legal positivism, and power
57:17 Justice as a compact or a reality beyond rulers
59:43 Universals, nominalism, and where meaning comes from
01:01:20 Why Glaucon thinks injustice can benefit the individual
01:04:35 Justice as a virtue of the soul, not just a social system
01:08:18 Religion, sacrifice, and whether the gods see the soul
01:10:16 Doing a just act versus becoming a just person
01:13:11 The soul, cosmic justice, and the afterlife
01:16:40 The perfectly just person with an unjust reputation
01:18:39 Why Plato’s just sufferer recalls Christ and Socrates
01:21:27 Why Glaucon’s challenge remains a serious argument
01:23:41 How Plato and pagan philosophy shaped Christian thought
01:27:34 Glaucon’s case: the tyrant’s apparent happiness
01:31:39 What counts as the highest good and a happy life
01:34:25 Closing reflections and where to find Jen Frey
Be sure to check out our entire reading schedule, so you can be sure to read alongside us.

Today on Ascend: The Great Books Podcast, Deacon Harrison Garlick and Mr. Thomas Lackey sit down with Dr. Louis Markos—author of From Plato to Christ—for a lively, wide-ranging conversation on how Platonic thought prepared the world for the Gospel.
From the fullness of time and the meeting of Athens and Jerusalem to C.S. Lewis, classical education, the myths of the Republic, and why even modern Christians still need Plato, this is a rich exploration of the intellectual roots of the faith and the enduring power of the Great Books.
Dr. Markos is a whirlwind on a mission.
Join us.
And THANK YOU again to the Classic Learning Test for sponsoring this episode.
Dr. Markos opened by framing his lifelong project of uniting Athens and Jerusalem—the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian inheritances that together shaped the West. He argued that the “fullness of time” was not only political and linguistic but intellectual: Greek philosophy, especially Plato, prepared the human heart for the Gospel through general revelation. God did not ignore the nations; He used reason, conscience, and imagination to plant redemptive analogies that pointed toward Christ.
Dr. Markos noted that this recovery is now happening among evangelicals, who are reclaiming the classical tradition just as many secular universities abandon it, and that classical Christian education is quietly reintroducing Plato, the Church Fathers, and a hierarchical view of reality to a generation once wary of anything outside the Bible alone.
The conversation then turned to Plato’s specific role as a kind of pre-evangelism. Dr. Markos distinguished Socrates’ negative work of clearing false definitions from Plato’s positive construction of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. He highlighted how the Republic uses the just and unjust man, the city-soul analogy, and the Myth of Er to show that injustice disorders the soul itself—an insight modern students often encounter first in Plato rather than in Scripture. Myths, he explained, are not mere stories for those who cannot grasp philosophy; they incarnate truths that pure dialectic cannot fully express, especially the reality of final judgment and the damage sin does to the soul.
Deacon Garlick and Thomas Lackey pressed further on St. Augustine’s decisive Christianization of the Forms: relocating them in the divine Logos and affirming that God knows both universals and particulars, so that Platonic metaphysics is not an alien overlay but something already latent in the New Testament’s language of participation, shadows, and heavenly patterns.
The episode closed with C.S. Lewis as the modern bridge who makes Plato accessible to Protestants. Dr. Markos pointed to the heavenly Narnia that is “more real” than the earthly one, the Silver Chair’s psychological undoing of the children’s knowledge of Aslan and the sun, and Lewis’s consistent realism against nominalism.
Throughout, the guests returned to the practical stakes of the Republic for first-time readers: follow the through-line that justice is better than injustice even when it costs everything, let the allegory of the cave reorient what counts as real, and treat Plato not as an opponent to be purged but as a candle whose light is completed, not extinguished, by the greater light of Christ.
If you’re interested in reading more on how Plato and the broader Hellenized culture impact the Gospel, check out “Do Christians Owe a Debt to Homer” and “How Plato Helped St. Augustine Convert to Christianity.”
Good work!
Next week we start Book Two of the Republic. Check out our reading schedule for more information.
Chapters
00:00 Why discuss Plato’s impact on Christianity
00:28 Myth, sin, and what our actions do to the soul
03:06 Meet Lou Markos and the Athens-Jerusalem connection
04:00 Why poetry’s ambiguity can deepen meaning
07:06 Greek thought and general revelation
09:03 Plato’s influence on Scripture and Christian thought
11:05 Classical education’s return among evangelicals
13:58 Augustine, Aristotle, and the nature of universals
18:20 How Markos came to Plato
18:47 How C.S. Lewis brings Plato to life
22:03 Plato’s ideas, Christian language, and pre-evangelism
25:06 The Silver Chair and the reality behind appearances
29:00 Recovering metaphysics and the unseen world
30:55 Why Christians need the classics and Church Fathers
32:16 Augustine, the candle, and the greater light of Christ
34:51 Advice for reading Plato’s Republic
35:19 The Magi, natural reason, and the journey to faith
41:08 Why the Republic still speaks to modern readers
45:16 Justice, the soul, and the tyrant’s inner slavery
50:10 What Plato’s myths reveal about cosmic justice
Keywords
Plato and Christianity, Louis Markos, From Plato to Christ, classical education, general revelation, Plato's Republic, Augustine, Christian philosophy, Socrates, metaphysics Lou Markos, Plato, Christianity, Platonic thought, Augustine, Aristotle, C.S. Lewis, The Republic, Chronicles of Narnia, Christian philosophy

Today on Ascend: The Great Books Podcast, Deacon Harrison Garlick and guest Dr. Gregory McBrayer dive into the fiery third part of Book One of Plato’s Republic: the showdown between Socrates and the sophist Thrasymachus.
Thrasymachus bursts onto the scene “hunched up like a wild beast,” roaring that justice is nothing more than “the advantage of the stronger.” What follows is a masterclass in Platonic drama and pedagogy—complete with forced feedings, blushing, and precision battles over definitions—as Socrates methodically unravels the sophist’s position.
And THANK YOU again to the Classic Learning Test for sponsoring this episode.
Dr. McBrayer and Dcn. Garlick explore why this confrontation matters so much. They compare Thrasymachus to the even more ferocious Callicles of the Gorgias (which Dr. McBrayer also discussed with Dcn. Garlick on Ascend) and discuss whether Socrates truly refutes him or merely “out-sophists the sophist.” They also go back and forth on the famous shepherd-and-sheep analogy, the arts-versus-money-making distinction, and the early hints of the philosopher-king and city-soul analogy.
Along the way they surface deeper questions that haunt the rest of the dialogue: Is justice a real thing or merely a name the powerful give to their own advantage? Why does Plato bookend the Republic with religious myths? And how much of Book One is a deliberate deconstruction meant to clear the ground for Glaucon’s more serious challenge in Book Two?
More Resources on Plato’s Republic:
How to Read Plato
Reading schedule, podcast calendar, and more!
GUIDE: 12 Questions on Book One of Plato’s Republic
Republic Bk 1: Intro, Prologue & Cephalus with Dr. Alex Priou (327a-331d)
Republic Bk 1: Polemarchus with Dr. Grabowski & Thomas Lackey (331e-336a)

Whether you’re a first-time reader still finding your footing or a returning student who wants to wrestle with one of the most famous attacks on justice in the Western tradition, this conversation models how to read Plato slowly, dramatically, and in good company. Tune in for sharp analysis, unexpected humor, and a clear sense of why Thrasymachus still feels so familiar—and so dangerous—today.
Be sure to check out our entire reading schedule, so you can be sure to read alongside us.
A good path is before us.
Let’s take it and ascend.
Chapters
00:00 — Introducing Thrasymachus and the end of Book One
13:00 — Thrasymachus and Callicles: comparing the “nasty” challengers
21:00 — Thrasymachus’s dramatic entrance—and why to take him seriously
31:00 — “Justice is the advantage of the stronger”
40:00 — Ruling as an art, and Socrates’ argument
52:00 — The shepherd, the sheep, and Thrasymachus’s shifting claims
66:00 — The soul, leadership, and the reluctant ruler
81:00 — The penalty of being ruled by someone worse
93:00 — Justice, injustice, and Thrasymachus’s defeat
106:00 — What Book One establishes—and what it leaves unresolved

Today on Ascend: The Great Books Podcast, we continue our slow, beautiful pilgrimage through Plato’s Republic. Last week Dr. Alex Priou walked us through the opening and the dialogue with Cephalus. This week we focus on Polemarchus, Cephalus’ son who inherits his father’s argument.
We are joined by two excellent guides: Dr. Frank Grabowski, Dean of Faculty at Holy Family Classical School, and Mr. Thomas Lackey, independent scholar and a longtime friend of the podcast.
Today, we ask what is owed and to whom.
“Shall I be your heir?” Polemarchus takes his father’s definition and attempts to provide a standard: Friends owe friends some good and nothing bad. Notice that the concepts of friendship and the good enter the Republic. Polemarchus’ name means war-lord, and the opening of the Republic made him look like political force, maybe even tyranny (commanding Socrates to wait). In the argument, however, he shows himself to be a good-faith interlocutor. Lackey notes that the Piraeus will later be the center of the revolt against the Thirty Tyrants (the puppet government set up by Sparta over Athens after the Peloponnesian War), and that Polemarchus will die by drinking hemlock (the same death Athens will later condemn Socrates to). The line about being “an heir” applies more directly to Cephalus, but in a way could apply to Socrates as well—Polemarchus is an heir to Socrates, someone who loves wisdom and then dies by drinking hemlock.
Further Resources to Help You Read the Republic:
GUIDE: 12 Questions on Book One of Plato’s Republic
Republic Bk 1: Intro, Prologue & Cephalus with Dr. Alex Priou (327a-331d)
How to Read Plato
Reading schedule, podcast calendar, and more!

Justice means to benefit friends and harm enemies. That is the Greek cultural default observed in the Oresteia and in Oedipus at Colonus. Socrates then asks: what is the art for? The man useful for keeping a deposit is also useful for stealing it. Then the harder question: Is a friend the man who seems good, or the man who is good? The one who decides can be wrong. The last turn is on the word harm. A first reader may hear a pacifist. Horses and dogs that have been harmed become worse in the virtue of horses and of dogs—but the just man cannot make a man more unjust. After they agree not to harm anyone, they call themselves partners in battle—a notable juxtaposition. The conversation is interrupted before Polemarchus can fully work through his aporia, his bewilderment.
Be sure to check out our entire reading schedule, so you can be sure to read alongside us.
A good path is before us.
Let’s take it and ascend.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the dialogue and main themes
02:06 Who is Polymachus and his background
11:55 Polymachus inherits his father's argument on justice
20:54 Definitions of justice: giving to each what is owed
27:20 The significance of logos in the dialogue
35:34 Expanded definitions of justice and their implications
42:16 The role of techne and moral knowledge in justice
52:25 The teleology and purpose of justice
01:02:53 Historical and cultural context of the characters
01:17:22 The development of the concept of Arete
01:23:04 The objective versus voluntaristic understanding of justice
01:28:35 Humor and pedagogical style in Plato's dialogues
01:31:03 Conclusion and preview of next week's discussion

Today on Ascend: The Great Books Podcast, we start our slow, beautiful pilgrimage through arguably the most important book in Western philosophy: Plato’s Republic. It is about justice and whether justice is more profitable to the soul than injustice—but along the way it provides rich conversations on the soul, virtue, education, metaphysics, and the afterlife. If you read this book and read it well, it will change your life.
And we have an excellent guide and mentor to walk us through the opening of Plato’s Republic and the dialogue with Cephalus in Book One (327a-331d), Dr. Alex Priou who currently serves as a professor of political philosophy at the University of Austin.
Today we start something life-changing.
Plato is philosophy. To summarize a famous line, all of Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato, and Plato’s Republic is his masterwork. He does not offer you a sterile, intellectual idea that is neat to contemplate—he makes claims on your soul. For Plato, philosophy is transformative. The goal of the pursuit of wisdom is to have a good soul, a beautiful soul.
Further Resources to Help You Read the Republic:
GUIDE: 12 Questions on Book One of Plato’s Republic
How to Read Plato
Reading schedule, podcast calendar, and more!

“I went down to the Piraeus.” The famous opening line gives you much to contemplate, and Dr. Alex Priou is a wonderful guide. We have the verb of descent, which will be important to the entire text, and we have the Piraeus, the port of Athens, which is hosting a new festival to a new goddess. Moreover, Socrates narrates the entire Republic to an unnamed listener who never interrupts… but this allows Socrates to give commentary on the argument he otherwise could not. Dr. Priou shows us how the prologue to the Republic is simple but rich with meaning—a great introduction to how Plato teaches.
In the house of Cephalus, age, wealth, and the old myths give the first account of justice. Asked the greatest good of his money, the old metic does not speak of friends or food. He speaks of the myths he laughed at when he was young, and of the peace of facing them without unpaid debts. Justice, for him, is telling the truth and giving what one owes. Socrates asks whether you return a borrowed weapon to a man who has gone mad. Cephalus cannot defend the rule he has lived by. He laughs, leaves the argument to his son, and goes back to the sacrifices. Cephalus leaves, but his conversation will haunt the entire Republic—as the text begins with a descent and religious myth and will end with an ascent and a religious myth.
Be sure to check out our entire reading schedule, so you can be sure to read alongside us.
Also, thank you to the CLASSIC LEARNING TEST for sponsoring our first month of Plato’s Republic. They are a really excellent group of people trying to change the landscape of education in America. Go check them out.
A good path is before us.
Let’s take it and ascend.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Plato's Republic and guest Dr. Alex Priou
02:01 Why read Plato's Republic today?
04:05 Historical and dramatic context of the dialogue
06:05 Dr. Priou's background and love for Plato
08:00 The purpose of the Republic and its themes
10:03 The setting and composition of the dialogue
11:57 The character of Cephalus and traditional justice
14:01 The significance of the Myth of the Cave
15:49 The pedagogical method of Plato's dialogues
18:13 The role of myths and poetry in philosophy
19:57 The purpose of the Republic and its relevance today
22:11 The character of Polemarchus and justice as friendship
23:50 The challenge of understanding the dialogue's structure
26:12 The importance of rereading Plato's works
28:07 The character of Thrasymachus and cynicism
30:06 The significance of Socrates' narration style
32:06 The allegory of the cave and ascent to truth
34:13 The role of myth and poetry in conveying truth
35:47 The balance between tradition and innovation in the Republic
37:51 The practical purpose of the dialogue
40:00 The limits of human knowledge and the form of the good
42:03 The political and moral lessons of the Republic
43:57 The significance of justice as a personal and political virtue
46:12 The character of Cephalus and his traditional views
48:02 The transition from traditional to philosophical justice
49:59 The role of Socrates in guiding the dialogue
51:56 The importance of self-knowledge and inner reflection
54:05 The myths of the afterlife and their philosophical purpose
55:58 The ongoing relevance of Plato's Republic
Join us next week as we continue our studies on Plato's Republic!