Oof. Been working on this one in stop-and-go fashion for a while now. It's not a long read, but it's a very dense one, the whole thing a conversation, and every line putting forth a new proposition that's either agreed upon or rebutted. The very rigid prose doesn't make it a breezy read and there are logical fallacies everywhere acting as speed bumps besides.
The main question Socrates seeks to address here - yes, it's written by Plato but the main character here is Socrates, so let me know which one I should credit here - is, "What is justice?" From this relatively straightforward question comes an entire utopian society and plenty of philosophical discussion beyond, regarding the importance of education and rational thought. It's easy to see why this thing's a classic.
But! What a mess. What Socrates (Plato?) concocts as a hypothetically utopian just society essentially amounts to this proto-fascist state. It's a society of specialists who all "know their role" and don't stick their nose into business that doesn't concern them. For instance, the farmers shouldn't concern themselves with how they're being governed, the merchants don't need to worry about warfare, and so forth. Media censorship, insofar as it exists back then, should be tight and rigid, with the youth of the state indoctrinated with virtuous stories, no cynical or immoral ones, so it can be made sure that young warriors don't fear death. Plato (Socrates?) also doesn't think, for instance, that doctors should be burdened with caring for the chronically ill - so basically he's building Paul Ryan's America. It's a decidedly non-democratic vision, considering that Greece back then was the birthplace of democracy.
It gets weirder, bigger, grander. He advocates for common families, in which copulation is performed as a ritual and never otherwise, and all children born in any generation are said to be children of all the adults who were sexually active with each other nine months prior. In this way all the adults can be said to be parents of all the children, and all the children siblings with each other. Feels very similar to that "takes a village" proverb, and I know there've been many societies throughout history that successfully used this approach for hundreds of years or more. Plato also bans poets form his grand city (so, artists and creative types, in the modern sense?) because they pretend to know everything but in fact know nothing. (Whoa.) Oh, and the ruling class can't own anything. That's important. Because if you allowed rich people to rule, they'd seek only to protect their riches. So it's sort of like communism and priesthood, in that way.
Ideally, says Plato, the rulers of such a society will be philosopher-kings - basically these proto-Jedi wisemen who have no passion, no lust, and are content to rule with and be ruled by logic
and reason. It's as idealistic and fantastical a notion today as it was 2400 years ago, before "absolute power corrupts absolutely" was ever uttered. But Plato seems to realize this! Toward the end of Republic, after building up this intricate utopian society so thoroughly, Plato outlines the state's inevitable decline into tyranny. He predicts that even the most just philosopher-kings, being human, will err in selecting and training their own replacements. This will lead first to oligarchy, in which the rulers begin to amass riches and the rest of society becomes impoverished, then to what sounds like a Marxist revolution, or at least the French one, in which the masses revolt and drive the kings away and decide that every man has the freedom and license to do as he pleases. This is all chaos and no order, with no one occupying the right roles, and it ultimately leads to tyranny, as an opportunistic, crafty, political few will amass wealth and power, rising to the top and enslaving everyone else. (I mean, this sounds to me a lot like the original utopia for the lower classes - the farmers are just going to farm either way, right?)
Granted, it's not clear what exactly Plato is doing, writing this whole dang thing. Taken literally, it sounds like he's constructing (and then lamenting the inevitable decline of) an ideal society. But perhaps he's being willfully obtuse, sarcastic, ironic. He quickly admits that his own utopian society is doomed from the start, after all. And remember, the entire book and conversation are meant to be an exploration of justice - is it possible the entire city-state is a metaphor for the human soul? Maybe we, as individuals, are best off when we use our brains to reason our way past succumbing to our lustful desires. When we let our bodies become democracies, with each vice and desire weighing equally on our actions, do we not end up acting and behaving unjustly? There's a whole late chapter dedicated to exploring the tyrannical man - not a tyrant who rules a dystopian city, but an everyday man who lets animal instincts rule him, turning into a lecherous and violent glutton. Is such a man actually happy though? Here's the crux of Plato's argument - no. No, he is not.
I can see why this is such a classic for both historians and philosophers, and its value has everything to do with how it has shaped Western thought for millennia. That said, as a contemporary read, holy shit, this thing is a disaster. It's loaded with leaps in logic, contradictions, and circular reasoning. It's possible these are translation issues across several languages and thousands of years, but this reads like a guy just spitballing, thinking out loud, churning out these half-baked ideas like a high school senior designing society from scratch. Now, that's okay if the point of Republic is to defend and promote philosophical navel-gazing. If there's one main takeaway, perhaps it's not "this is how society should be," but instead, "this is why thinking long and hard and questioning everything is very important." But man, the thought process on display here is staggeringly incomplete. The whole thing predates the scientific method; claims are made and accepted with no regard for pragmatics or outcomes. Every claim here is subjective or unfalsifiable, and even a smart child could probably poke a few dozen holes in the path Socrates takes to defend some asinine claims. There are too many barely coherent examples to choose from, but for instance, here's how Socrates or Plato ultimately defends the idea that justice is good and worthwhile, paraphrased of course:
"You would agree that there are three types of men. Those who love the truth, those who love honor, and those who love profit."
"Yes, of course."
"And only a man who has loved all three can lay claim to knowing which love leads to happiness."
"Yes, of course."
"And only a man who has loved all three can lay claim to knowing which love leads to happiness."
"Naturally."
"And only the philosopher has attempted to do this."
"And only the philosopher has attempted to do this."
"Sure. Go on."
"So the philosopher alone can say whether truth, honor, or profit leads to happiness."
"Certainly."
"And the philosophers all agree that loving truth leads to the most happiness."
"And the philosophers all agree that loving truth leads to the most happiness."
"Okay."
"Therefore the pursuit of justice is its own reward."
"Therefore the pursuit of justice is its own reward."
"I'm sold!"
Centuries of Westenr policy, based on the ramblings of a madman. Human nature, everyone!
Oof... I think I've read this guy around three times (once at Lawrence Academy, once at WA, and once at LMU). And, yeah, I was always wildly confused by it. Not because I didn't understand it -- at least not around the third read -- but because I really didn't agree with most of what Plato was trying to say.
ReplyDeleteThe only part I could somewhat agree with was how a utopian society could eventually fall into corruption. While this does seem to be extremely applicable to what's happening with our current society, I disagree with way he asserts that this is frankly inevitable. But, then again, could Plato have ever fathomed a society with the wealth of communication we have now (albeit, there's pros and cons to that argument too)? Point is, I agree with the notion of how power and corruption can cause society to devolve from it's purest point -- if it could ever reach that place in the first point. On the same note, I think there's also a counterargument that could be made that this downward spiral could be reversed if corruption gets too bad and the people revolt.
My point is that I think society oscillates slightly bouncing between something that's closer to a utopia and something that's closer to a fascist-corrupt state. There is no final destination for society. It's always morphing into what the people demand from it. The question is, how motivated is society to change what it is?
I will say that it seems like you skipped over what's probably the most iconic part of The Republic -- the allegory of the cave. Whenever anyone attempts to stick their big toe into the waters of philosophy, they'll likely get this one dumped on them. I think that's because it's an idea that's just fucked up enough to start getting a person to "think outside the box" in a manner of speaking. I like the exercise the allergory puts your brain through. An attempt to understand what is absolutely pure. But I disagree that anything that's not "the source" is garbage.
For instance, he explains that a painting of a flower is something "less" than the flower it's based on. (If I remember right, I think that's the argument he's trying to make.) Basically anything that's derivative of it's source material, it's something less than. So then the painting of a flower should be shunned upon compared to the flower itself. Or with the example Plato lays out, the shadows in the cave are lie that deceives people when it's the sun that's really pure truth.
Maybe this shouldn't be applied literally to art or life, but... fuck that. I always that this whole argument, while a fun critical thinking exercise, was ultimately bullshit. I feel like there's something we can gain from every iteration of something else, even if that's not the "source," if that makes any sense.
Like, sure maybe there's something to be said about seeing a flower in person. If I were to quote Robin Williams' monologue in "Good Will Hunting," I could say something to the affect... well, I'll have him say it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM-gZintWDc
Moving closer to the source does have its benefits, but so does its derivations! Would you scoff away Von Gogh's Irises panting just because it's not a real bunch of flowers? No. There's plenty to be learned from either area.
I think I just wished the cave allegory ended with the people originally trapped in the cave, one day making it out to see the sun, then having the freedom to live in both worlds (one with shadows and one with light) rather than facing an ultimatum that only one leads to enlightenment.
That's my best at trying to unpack these readings that are now almost a decade old in my brain. Feel free to point out how much I'm misunderstanding or misquoting.
Wow, yes, this is meaty! I'm impressed you read this thing three times. I found myself skimming a bit in the later sections even just on my first (and only) go-through.
DeleteThanks for bringing up the cave allegory and the idea of forms. I didn't include these because they felt more tangential to the overall thread of Republic, which I think was primarily Socrates attempting to define and defend the concept of justice, but, you're right - the cave's probably more well-known than most of the rest of Republic.
The cave and your Good Will Hunting quote remind me of the "Mary's room" thought experiment. Mary lives in a black-and-white room and spends all day every day reading and learning about everything. She knows everything both quantitative and qualitative about the color red, for instance - its wavelength on the visible spectrum, its symbolic nature for violence, lust, fire, passion, blood. She knows what things are red and what things are not. Then one day Mary finally leaves her room and sees the color red for the first time. Plenty of questions and thoughts here, but the thought experiment is generally brought up to prove (or at least suggest) that despite knowing "everything there is to know" about the color red, Mary didn't actually fully understand what the color red was until she stepped out into the world and experienced it for the first time. In other words, that there's something fundamental about the human experience of seeing red that can't be characterized by numbers or by descriptions - and not because we lack the proper resolutions or scales or vocabulary.
I know this isn't really what Plato's driving at - his allegory ends with the "enlightened" man returning to the cave only to be completely blind inside it (his eyes having grown accustomed to the sun) and for the rest of the cave dwellers to deduce that leaving the cave has somehow harmed the enlightened man, and thus being afraid to leave the cave. It's as story-like and insane as the rest of Plato's arguments, and it's a delicious metaphor about people fearing knowledge, enlightenment, religious awakening, etc. Still, on some level, I think Plato's driving at the Mary's room experiment - or more accurately, I think Mary's room is sort of a spin-off, a new flavor, a retelling of one of Plato's points.
The Gunslinger - which I loudly and begrudgingly tore apart here several years ago - includes sort of a throwaway line at the end that always stuck with me, about a fish pulled from the ocean for the first time. Imagine its little fish mind being blown away by the complete environmental shift - light, gravity, pressure, sound, temperature, all behaving in these new and strange ways.
Rambling, sorry. But this is what's crazy about Plato. (And Socrates, and the rest of them.) They're living in a time when ideas like "visible light" and "matter" and "atoms" don't even exist yet, which leads to these weird, antiquated ways of using, I dunno, essentially what are adjectives - an apple is red. A flower is beautiful. Plato would say the apple participates in the form of redness, and that the flower participates in the form of beauty. Shadows only exist because of a fire? Well, by the same token, our entire world only exists because of some divine light or goodness. It barely makes sense, even as a metaphor, but it's all they had to work with. (And yet still they're able to crack jokes about ignorant men in a cave distrusting the light outside - looks like human nature's a lot more constant than any of our scientific models!)