Plato and McLuhan: Truth, Innatism, and the Medium
This paper examines the relationship between Plato's philosophy of innatism, as expressed in the Phaedrus, and Marshall McLuhan's media theory from Understanding Media. It argues that while Plato uses dialogue to guide readers toward recollecting objective, transcendental truth, McLuhan shifts attention away from content entirely, insisting that the medium itself carries meaning independent of any message. The paper shows how these two thinkers intersect: the written form of Platonic dialogue carries its own authority as a medium, reinforcing the acceptance of its philosophical content. Drawing on comparisons with empiricism, Cartesian rationalism, and modern mass media, the paper concludes that understanding the medium is essential to evaluating any claim to knowledge or truth.
- Introduction: Two Theories of Meaning: Plato and McLuhan on medium and truth
- Plato's Innatism and the Phaedrus: Recollection as innate transcendental truth
- McLuhan's Medium as Message: Medium conveys meaning beyond content
- Knowledge, Empiricism, and the Intellect: Comparing empirical, faith-based, and innate knowledge
- The Medium of Dialogue and the Question of Truth: Applying McLuhan's framework to Platonic dialogue
- Conclusion: The Guard at the Gate: Understanding the medium guards the mind
✍️ How to write this paper — guide, tools & examples ▾
What makes this paper effective
- The paper draws a genuinely non-obvious intellectual connection between ancient philosophy and twentieth-century media theory, giving the comparative analysis real depth.
- It uses specific textual citations from both Plato and McLuhan to ground abstract claims, preventing the argument from becoming purely speculative.
- The concluding metaphor of the mind as a guard at a gate elegantly synthesizes both thinkers without forcing a false resolution between them.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates comparative philosophical analysis: it places two thinkers in dialogue without collapsing their differences. Rather than arguing that Plato and McLuhan agree, it carefully identifies where their projects overlap (the medium shapes reception of ideas) and where they diverge (Plato seeks objective truth; McLuhan brackets truth entirely). This technique of productive tension is a hallmark of strong philosophy and media studies writing.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a thesis framing both thinkers, then unpacks Plato's theory of recollection before introducing McLuhan's concept that the medium is the message. A middle section situates both within the broader history of epistemology, including empiricism and Cartesian rationalism. The paper then applies McLuhan's framework back to Plato's own chosen medium—written dialogue—before closing with a synthesizing metaphor about intellectual guardianship. The argument moves logically from exposition to application to synthesis.
Introduction: Two Theories of Meaning
In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan makes the case that the medium contains as much meaning as the content it conveys. In a sense, McLuhan deconstructs the process of communication to show that messages are inseparable from the medium used to transfer them. Plato, however, suggests that messages are distinct from a medium in the sense that they either relate or do not relate to objective truth. McLuhan's focus is not on truth but rather on the meaning of the medium used to convey ideas — whether those ideas concern truth is, for him, irrelevant.
This paper shows how Plato's message relates to McLuhan's in the sense that the text containing Platonic philosophy is related to how that message is perceived, and thus impacts the acceptance of that message. This understanding of the medium bears on the overall idea of innatism by giving it substance (visual text) and validation (through the Socratic example of dialogue).
Plato's Innatism and the Phaedrus
The written message in the Phaedrus is essentially that all knowledge comes from a process of recollection — which suggests that "truth" is innate — that it is written on our souls or in our minds when we are created, and that when we recognize something as being "true" it is because we already carry this concept of truth within us, and we recall it when something outside us compels that recollection. In this sense, Plato is a believer in an objective truth outside ourselves — a transcendental truth — the unum, bonum, verum. As he states, "This is recollection of the things which our souls once saw during their journey as companions to a god, when they saw beyond the things we now say 'exist' and poked their heads up into true reality" (Plato 32).
But as McLuhan notes, the printed text itself also conveys a message — in this case, a message of authority.
McLuhan's Medium as Message
McLuhan in Understanding Media asserts that "the medium is the message" (McLuhan 4), and this suggests that Plato's innatism may be viewed as the transference of the "thought" of speech — the content — through the ears and into the mind, or, when we read Plato, the "text" of print through the eyes and into the mind. The content, as McLuhan suggests, is what carries the meaning — and in every medium there is typically some content that is separate from the medium conveying it — a medium within a medium, so to speak.
How does this lead to innatism — or "recollection" as Socrates calls it in the Phaedrus? That is a question that might more readily be put to Socrates, or to Plato — depending upon how one chooses to approach the dialogue — as a character within the scene or as a reader of the text.
Conclusion: The Guard at the Gate
While Plato's method of knowing reality and truth is to "dialogue" his way to it — which leads ultimately to recollection, or to the innate truth that is in all of us — McLuhan's method of unraveling the structure of media contrasts with this in the sense that McLuhan does not assert any truth or innateness. Rather, he states that one must examine the medium rather than the content, which is ultimately irrelevant, because it is the medium that directly impacts the senses. When one stops and examines the medium, one knows how to control it — to refuse or to accept it, by either opening the door to it or closing it.
It is an empirical and skeptical approach to the content of the medium in the sense that it examines the messenger before it even considers the message — which is perhaps how a guard ought to act. If a person is a guard for the mind and soul, then halting the messenger (the medium) at the gate and understanding it first may be the best step toward understanding reality.
For it is the medium, ultimately, that conveys the message of reality, as Plato's own choice of form suggests. There is much more to be said about the messenger itself — the medium — which also conveys a meaning that is often more important than the content of the message within it. It is the meaning of the medium that truly reveals wherein the control lies in any exchange of ideas.
Works Cited
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media, critical edition, edited by W. Terrence Gordon. Berkeley, California: Gingko Press, 2013.
Plato. Phaedrus, new translation by Robin Waterfield. UK: Oxford World's Classics.
Create your account
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.