In “The Republic,” Plato imagines a world in which man follows only his basest desires. It would be, he says, a sort of “city of pigs.”
Plato’s thought plays a central role in a Columbia education. We read him in Contemporary Civilization and myriad philosophy classes, and his name is up there on the façade of Butler, the place where all the greatest people in history have their names carved.
Yet, even those of us who have not read Plato have been deeply influenced by his writings: Our daily lives here are an embodiment of his thought.
For Columbia is a city of pigs.
