Plato’s Republic
Philosophy, Religion May 9th, 2010I finished Plato’s Republic. It is the first ancient philosophy book I have read first hand. I obviously knew them second hand via Russell and Nietzsche and so on. It is a very different style and it is rather naive compared to the more modest and more obscurantist modern philosophy. It is very inventive and imaginative, I can’t deny Plato made a contribution to philosophy. I certainly was surprised how easy he was to understand! The book features several famous ideas including the parable of the cave and the myth of Er. My appreciation was perhaps through the optics of Popper’s Open Society and Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols (and Birth of Tragedy), so it perhaps is unsurprising that Plato fails to impress because of 2500 years of hindsight!
Plato loves the dialectical style, reduction to the absurd and argument from analogy. The frequent use of analogies reminded me of C S Lewis’s style. Perhaps Lewis belongs in the ancient world? The problem with argument from analogy is it is a very circumstantial. As Hume said:
Unless the cases [being compared in the analogy] be exactly similar, they repose no perfect confidence in applying their past observation to any particular phenomenon. (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)
To be sure the analogy is sound, it is necessary to make future tests to verify the properties of one entity is shared with a second. If we have no experience of one of the instances being compared in the analogy, the validity of the analogy is sheer speculation. Plato for instance compares the “true being of things” with the Sun. Since no specific resemblance can be verified, the analogy is no more than an opinion or guess. (This also dispatches the Design Argument.) He also uses false dichotomies several times, which is most annoying. They generally follow the pattern: 1) A or B is true, 2) A is absurd, 3) therefore B. Of course the first step may be invalid…
In another place he seems to accidentally imply his theory of “true being” is simply opinion. He already stated that opinion cannot inform us about the “true being” of things.
[...] in my opinion, that knowledge only which is of being and of the unseen can make the soul look upwards,[...] (emphasis mine)
[...] opinion [is] concerned with becoming, and intellect with being [...]
So we might ask, how does Plato know beyond mere “opinion” about his “true” world?
I found other sections amusing, in terms of what propaganda must be fed to the masses, in order to keep them under control. He insists that we must call God absolutely good because it is an effective tool for social control, along with various other ideas. Most of these ideas were directly absorbed into Christianity (by St. Augustine). Consider the well known problem of evil; it is not even an issue if we admit the existence of evil gods? As Popper pointed out, The Republic was intended to be a political manifesto for a Plato headed dictatorship of Athens. Compared to the flak that Machiavelli and Nietzsche get for their ideas having political consequences, the ideas of Plato are far, far, FAR closer to justifying genocide, slavery, racism, propaganda and tyranny. (I know Plato condemns “tyranny” but this only seems to be tyrannies where he is not in control. Be careful of Plato’s words!)
Plato’s attack and planned censorship of the tragic poets (Homer, etc.) was certainly a surprise to me, I did not expect such an open attack on one of the most famous Greek cultural icons. He also attacks democracy. And objectionable types of music. And the equality of humans. For almost everything we associate with the ancient Greeks, Plato wanted to destroy it (to attain a “blank slate” as he calls it) as a starting point for his utopia. This lead to Nietzsche labelling Plato an “anti-Greek” along with the “Socratic equation” (also adopted by Plato), which is allegedly “reason = virtue = happiness”, being called “the weirdest equation ever seen”.
Anyway, fascinating stuff.
Anti Citizen One
PS Plato’s calculation of the unhappiness of tyrants and philosophers is almost a foreshadowed unintentional parody of utilitarianism, IMHO.
May 10th, 2010 at 2:43 pm
Some quick thoughts…
Socrates/Plato’s ideal city state is an anti-tyranny tyranny. Insofar as the Philosopher-King is the servant for the good of the state and not for his own self-aggrandisement.
(Of course tyrants have also claimed to be servants so Popper’s observation may stand – even if this is not Plato’s intent).
“As Popper pointed out, The Republic was intended to be a political manifesto for a Plato headed dictatorship of Athens.”
Neither Cicero, Kierkegaard, Leo Strauss or Allan Bloom would agree with Popper’s literal interpretation of The Republic. They all approach it as allegory, irony, “just-city-in-speech”, or a means of elucidating the nature of political things.
Of the modern interpreters only Russell and Popper (who were ideologically aligned) percieved the intent of Plato’s the Republic to be a practical work rather than a theoretical one.
An interesting aside: Augustine made use of many Platonic analogies (though Augustine was a neo-platonist and I am hoping to post on this system soon). The city-state and Augustine’s City of God show many similarities.
Likewise Augustine is accused of transferring his theories into practise “Most of these ideas were directly absorbed into Christianity (by St. Augustine).”
Yet the Civitate Dei the City of God was an esoteric construct not an exoteric blue-print.
Augustine himself indicates this, writing his book in the context of the sacking of Rome by the Visigoths, which was popularly percieved at the time as a vengeance on the empire from its abandoned polytheistic gods (Christianity by now the state religion), Augustine seeks to reassure the converts and new Christians that even though the earthly rule of the empire was in danger it is the heavenly City of God that would eventually triumph.
In other words the City of God was a mystical and esoteric construct, Christianity he argues should be concerned with the mystical new jerusalem rather than earthly politics.
(This dualism would seem appropriate given Augustine’s pre-christian adherence to Manichaeism which identified the universe in dichotomous terms of a balance between a tangible good and a tangible evil… his later theodicy that evil is not a real thing but rather is the absence of good is a direct platonic inheritance).
“Consider the well known problem of evil; it is not even an issue if we admit the existence of evil gods?”
This would be Augustinian Manichaeism, but by the time of his conversion to Christianity he has rejected Manichaeism for neo-platonism as a consequence evil does not exist in this philosophy, it cannot be given a positive form, it is merely absence. For Augustine, the problem of evil wasnt solved or indeed defended, it was dissolved.
May 10th, 2010 at 7:20 pm
I suppose it is a possibility. Plato does talk about degrees of separation of specific people from objective truth and that each step removed dissipates its relation to true being. For example he claims the tyrant is three times removed from true being compared to the philosopher. Having the whole book as an allegory seems out of keeping with his style, if it was maintained across other works. I am not sure but I assume he developed the ideas in The Republic from earlier works. It seems like modern philosophers are doing what they do best – considering subjectivity – but it probably was not a concept in Plato’s time. I mean it if was, it would appear in other extant works stated literally, not ironically (perhaps it was?).
Interestingly, Popper’s view, even Plato considered practical considerations as secondary, although they get a mention. Plato states many times that knowledge that comes from the sciences cannot address the central issue of true being, which is his foundation. I think he states the practicality of this idea is irrelevant.
I do find Plato’s analysis to be fairly useless and superficial, if it is a teaching tool. That might allow it to be a work of irony, but he seems to have developed the ideas and not expressed opposite views(?). I think the argument being completely focused on justifying his political results, it is a work of propaganda. It’s influence on European politics (not philosophy) was not taken in irony? quite the opposite? (Was it the ultimate practical joke?)
Although I don’t worry about the problem of evil as much these days, being friendly to existentialism, I don’t think Augustine’s objection even addresses the problem of evil. Substituting “absence of good” for “evil” still leaves the problem standing. I know he tried explicitly address it, I guess I am not convinced by his attempt.
AC1