{"id":1773,"date":"2011-07-28T11:00:58","date_gmt":"2011-07-28T15:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=1773"},"modified":"2011-07-28T19:07:57","modified_gmt":"2011-07-28T23:07:57","slug":"platos-new-console","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=1773","title":{"rendered":"Plato’s new console"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even as Plato condemns the cave-culture game<\/a>, he expects the philosophical reader to understand that they (Plato and the reader together) are at that moment engaged in a culture-game of their own\u2014the game called Republic<\/em>. In this post we\u2019ll come to recognize that Republic<\/em> features a next-gen graphics-engine and truly emergent gameplay that provides an unparalleled philosophical thrill-ride.<\/p>\n

Republic<\/em> is a game that, like 2K\u2019s Bioshock<\/em>, brings the player face to face with his or her own cultural constitution through gameplay. The most obvious example of Republic<\/em> doing that\u2014perhaps the most obvious example of any Platonic game (that is, dialogue) doing it\u2014comes in the return of the ascended man to the cave. In fact, the philosopher\u2019s return demonstrates just how thoroughgoing Republic<\/em>\u2019s attempt to make the reader see him or herself as a prisoner of game culture is.<\/p>\n

Am I saying that Plato is the antidote to gamification? Yes, for in the light of the philosopher\u2019s return, the figure of that doomed dissident, the figure of Socrates himself, pushes his arguments both forwards and backwards through the entirety of Plato\u2019s majestic ten-book edifice, turning the whole thing into the new console\u2019s killer app: a game called Republic\u00a0<\/em>on a console called \u201cdialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republic<\/em> begins<\/strong>, after all, with Socrates telling his unknown interlocutors (that is, the interlocutors of the dialogue itself\u2014the unnamed characters to whom Socrates is narrating the story of the cool conversation he had with Plato\u2019s brothers et al. at the house of Cephalus: that is, us, the players of the Republic<\/em> game) that it all started when he went to the feast of Bendis, a new cult where there was going to be a thrilling new ritual: a night-time torch race on horseback\u2014such diverting games as, Plato expects the reader to realize, go to make up the cave-culture game.<\/p>\n

Republic<\/em> ends<\/strong> at last with the massive, enigmatic myth of Er, in which none other than problem epic hero Odysseus is shown gaming the system of reincarnation, and we are expected to learn from his example to game the system of myth and mimesis<\/em>. People usually don\u2019t read the myth of Er. If you want an idea of how different Plato is from what you thought, go read it\u2014it\u2019s at the end of Republic<\/em> 10. I\u2019ll wait.<\/p>\n

Republic<\/em> is one big mimesis<\/em>: one big game. How do we deal with that?<\/p>\n

If we decide not to do what most platonic scholarship through the course of history has done\u2014if we refuse<\/strong> simply to ignore the clues that tell us we\u2019re supposed to understand that Republic and all Plato\u2019s dialogues are in fact themselves mimesis<\/em>–that is, in our way of thinking, games; if we actually take the clues that say \u201cdialogue is a game\u201d seriously, we could still say something reassuring to the philosophers.<\/p>\n

We could say that what Plato in fact is trying to tell us with those clues is something different; we could say that he\u2019s actually saying \u201cthis is no game<\/strong>\u201d–that his dialogues may look like mimesis<\/em>, but really aren\u2019t mimesis<\/em>. We would lose a great deal of the irony that makes Plato wonderful instead of mind-numbing, but we would gain a philosopher who makes the kind of sense we tend to like in a guy upon whom our livelihoods depend.<\/p>\n

We would also, however, be ignoring an absolutely crucial piece of evidence.<\/p>\n

Next time: the smoking gun of Platonic mimesis<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even as Plato condemns the cave-culture game, he expects the philosophical reader to understand that they (Plato and the reader together) are at that moment engaged in a culture-game of their own\u2014the game called Republic. In this post we\u2019ll come to recognize that Republic features a next-gen graphics-engine and trulyContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[137,101],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["entry","author-travis","post-1773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-articles","tag-mimesis","tag-plato"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1773"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1779,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773\/revisions\/1779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1773"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=1773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}