Episodes

  • Plato - Apology

    Plato - Apology
    Jun 5 2026
    Roger introduces Plato's Apology as a gateway into the foundational root of the entire Western philosophical tradition. At the heart of this lecture is Socrates standing trial for his life before the city of Athens — delivering not an apology in the modern sense, but a fearless defense of the philosophic life. Guided by an inner divine voice since childhood and charged by the Delphic Oracle as the wisest of men, Socrates spent his life exposing the ignorance of politicians, poets, and craftsmen out of a deep religious duty to awaken Athens to the truth that real wisdom belongs to God alone. Drawing on Pythagorean roots, the nature of imagination and memory, and the Socratic practice of inquiry as spiritual transformation, Weir illuminates why Socrates remains the single root source from which all of Western education and philosophy ultimately flows.

    This presentation by Roger Weir was delivered on January 4, 1990.

    More information about these presentations can be found at
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/platos-theory-of-education
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato-ii

    More presentations by Roger Weir are available at the Shared Presence Foundation website and on our YouTube channel
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    1 hr and 20 mins
  • Timaeus 2 - Presentation 13

    Timaeus 2 - Presentation 13
    Mar 18 2024
    This presentation was originally delivered by Roger Weir on March 28, 1991.

    This series is a basic introduction to a major root of the entire Western Philosophic Tradition. This is a rare opportunity to survey an essential heritage. We will follow the translations in the Collected Dialogues of Plato, Bollingen Series LXXI, Princeton University Press. These Dialogues also appear in the Penguin Classics Editions: Phaedrus & Letters VII and VIII, Philebus, Early Socratic Dialogues, Timaeus and Critias.

    More information about these presentations can be found at
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/platos-theory-of-education
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato-ii

    More presentations by Roger Weir are available at the Shared Presence Foundation website and on our YouTube channel
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    1 hr and 17 mins
  • Timaeus 1 - Presentation 12

    Timaeus 1 - Presentation 12
    Mar 15 2024
    This presentation was originally delivered by Roger Weir on March 21, 1991.

    This series is a basic introduction to a major root of the entire Western Philosophic Tradition. This is a rare opportunity to survey an essential heritage. We will follow the translations in the Collected Dialogues of Plato, Bollingen Series LXXI, Princeton University Press. These Dialogues also appear in the Penguin Classics Editions: Phaedrus & Letters VII and VIII, Philebus, Early Socratic Dialogues, Timaeus and Critias.

    More information about these presentations can be found at
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/platos-theory-of-education
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato-ii

    More presentations by Roger Weir are available at the Shared Presence Foundation website and on our YouTube channel
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 14 mins
  • Plato II - Phaedrus II

    Plato II - Phaedrus II
    Mar 12 2024
    In this lecture on Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates and Phaedrus pause under a plane tree in the midday heat when Socrates hears the cicadas singing, and tells the myth of men who were so carried away by the first music of the Muses that they forgot to eat and became the first cicadas. Roger reads the myth through Marsilio Ficino's Renaissance commentary, published 500 years before this talk. Ficino treats the cicadas as an allegory for airy spirits who live by contemplation and praise. From there, we follow the nine Muses as nine stages of philosophic inquiry, culminating with Apollo, and then traces their transformation into the nine celestial orders of Dionysius the Areopagite, including the origin of the word "angel," with links to Hermeticism and the Botticelli paintings. It returns to the dialogue's central claim that love and language are bound together, and that only truth spoken to someone and "written on the soul of the hearer" has lasting value, far more than anything written down.

    More information about these presentations can be found at
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/platos-theory-of-education
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato-ii

    More presentations by Roger Weir are available at the Shared Presence Foundation website and on our YouTube channel
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 24 mins
  • Plato II - Phaedrus Chariot

    Plato II - Phaedrus Chariot
    Mar 9 2024
    In this presentation on Plato's unfinished Critias, the myth of Atlantis is read not as a travel-brochure fairy tale, as many introductions treat it, but as a philosophical allegory. The dialogue is the second part of a trilogy with the Timaeus, and its lost third part, the Hermocrates, would have completed it. It contrasts ancient Athens, a society of inner freedom, memory, and self-discovery, with Atlantis, a rigid, authoritarian order built around Poseidon's unchangeable law code and the sacrificial rituals of its ten kings. The lecture shows how Plato calls on memory and Pythagorean discipline to loosen the grip of mythic images and sloppy language. It then connects the dialogue to the mythic gods of Plato's own Athens and to the ongoing struggle between individual freedom and imposed tyranny.

    More information about these presentations can be found at
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/platos-theory-of-education
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato-ii

    More presentations by Roger Weir are available at the Shared Presence Foundation website and on our YouTube channel
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 29 mins
  • Cratylus - Presentation 9

    Cratylus - Presentation 9
    Mar 6 2024
    This presentation was originally delivered by Roger Weir on February 28, 1991.

    This series is a basic introduction to a major root of the entire Western Philosophic Tradition. This is a rare opportunity to survey an essential heritage. We will follow the translations in the Collected Dialogues of Plato, Bollingen Series LXXI, Princeton University Press. These Dialogues also appear in the Penguin Classics Editions: Phaedrus & Letters VII and VIII, Philebus, Early Socratic Dialogues, Timaeus and Critias.

    More information about these presentations can be found at
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/platos-theory-of-education
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato-ii

    More presentations by Roger Weir are available at the Shared Presence Foundation website and on our YouTube channel
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 31 mins
  • Plato II - Critias

    Plato II - Critias
    Mar 3 2024
    In this presentation on Plato's unfinished Critias, the myth of Atlantis is read not as a travel-brochure fairy tale, as many introductions treat it, but as a philosophical allegory. The dialogue is the second part of a trilogy with the Timaeus, and its lost third part, the Hermocrates, would have completed it. It contrasts ancient Athens, a society of inner freedom, memory, and self-discovery, with Atlantis, a rigid, authoritarian order built around Poseidon's unchangeable law code and the sacrificial rituals of its ten kings. The lecture shows how Plato calls on memory and Pythagorean discipline to loosen the grip of mythic images and sloppy language. It then connects the dialogue to the mythic gods of Plato's own Athens and to the ongoing struggle between individual freedom and imposed tyranny.

    More information about these presentations can be found at
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/platos-theory-of-education
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato-ii

    More presentations by Roger Weir are available at the Shared Presence Foundation website and on our YouTube channel
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 24 mins
  • Plato II - Philebus

    Plato II - Philebus
    Feb 29 2024
    In this lecture on Plato's Philebus, one of his last and deepest dialogues, Socrates debates the young hedonists Philebus and Protarchus over whether the good life is one of pleasure or one of intelligence, while quietly steering toward a hidden structure beneath the question: the Pythagorean pairs of limit and unlimited, and the divine mind that is their source. The lecture follows how Socrates tests the young men's ability to take the next step in an argument, restating the question when their arrogance and quibbling cause it to collapse, and shows why philosophic inquiry is the only alternative to babbling. It ends with the puzzle of the one and the many and the story of Thoth discerning the alphabet, which reveals that mastering a finite structure is the key to recollecting the mind's deeper powers.

    More information about these presentations can be found at
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/platos-theory-of-education
    https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato-ii

    More presentations by Roger Weir are available at the Shared Presence Foundation website and on our YouTube channel
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 21 mins