In 1928 Rupert Lodge published Plato’s Theory of Ethics in the International Library of Psychology, Philosophy, and Scientific Method, edited by C.K. Ogden. Included with Lodge in the Library were such leading edge figures as G.E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein, C.G. Jung, I.A. Richards, Alfred Adler, C.S. Peirce, T.E. Hulme, E.A. Burtt, Bruno Malinowski, Bertrand Russell. and Jean Piaget. Rich company!¹

The title page of Plato’s Theory of Ethics introduces him as ‘Professor of Logic and History of Philosophy in the University of Manitoba, and Visiting Lecturer in Philosophy at Harvard University’. Lodge held his visiting lectureship at Harvard in that same year of 1928 in which Plato’s Theory of Ethics was published. He had been at Harvard in 1926 at the sixth international congress of philosophy in his capacity as the president that year of the western division of the APA. He presented a paper at the congress on ‘On a recent hypothesis concerning the Platonic Socrates‘ on a panel with W.D. Ross (representing John Burnet, who was ill), Léon Robin, and Paul Shorey. Presumably Lodge’s invitation to Harvard in 1928 resulted from a good impression made by him there in 1926.

Two years years after the publication of Lodge’s book in Ogden’s ‘International Library’ , McLuhan would take the year-long Introduction to Philosophy course at the University of Manitoba which was taught by Lodge in the first semester (Philosophy, concentrating on Plato) and Henry Wright in the second (Psychology).²

Wright’s course included his latest book, The Moral Standards of Democracy from 1925, perhaps as a set text, perhaps as a background reference. In any case, McLuhan owned the book and studied it carefully. It is preserved, ‘heavily annotated’, in his working library at the University of Toronto.³

Lodge’s course must have included his latest book in some way as well, although Plato’s Theory of Ethics is not found in McLuhan’s library at UT. Perhaps he never found an inexpensive used copy, as he did with Wright’s Moral Standards.⁴ But because McLuhan’s relation with Lodge was even closer than it was with Wright, there can be little doubt that he read, and presumably repeatedly read, Lodge’s book. For McLuhan must have quickly realized how exceptional it was, and how potentially important to him personally it was, that a scholar of Lodge’s caliber and international reputation was teaching in Winnipeg.⁵

For further on Plato’s Theory of Ethics, see Lodge on Plato’s ‘mean’. It seems plain that Plato’s ‘mean’ as articulated by Lodge is what became McLuhan’s ‘medium’.