Mouse Reveals Plato's (Secret) Plan

Twenty-four centuries ago Plato complained that governments based on pure democratic principles were bound to result in nations that were poorly administered. He based his pessimistic view of democracy on what he saw of the masses that constituted the vast majority of the population of 5th century BC Athens and the other city-states of the Peloponnesian peninsula. He saw people who were not only illiterate, but whose lives were so completely given over to making ends meet they didn’t have the time or energy to devote to a reasoned consideration of the issues they would have to deal with in order to make an effective contribution to self-government. He was disappointed with even the limited democracy practiced in Athens; out of a population that may have numbered 200,000, only about 6,000 Athenian citizens – primarily the propertied class – were allowed a vote. Perhaps Plato, in taking his anti-democratic stand, was still teed off about the death sentence those privileged Athenians had laid upon Socrates, the man he regarded as the finest Greek who ever lived.

As an alternative to democracy, Plato proposed a "sophistocracy," a government administered by professional “philosopher-kings” who, from childhood, had been selected and trained for the work of governing. Their training would be perfectly geared to produce men whose every thought would be for the good of the nation, and whose ability to govern would be assured by their mastery of what Plato called “dialectic,” but which was nothing other than logical reasoning. My own opinion is that Plato never intended his ideas to be implemented, but that The Republic, the book he wrote describing the system, was intended as irony, a demonstration of a system of government so obviously impossible that the difficulties of government would be made visible. It was a fine example of indirection, a plan designed to reveal insurmountable problems, while pretending to propose solutions.

My opinion is, of course, debatable. Nowhere does Plato say, or even suggest, that The Republic was not meant to be taken as a realizable plan. But one thing about that plan, and another thing about the philosopher-kings, must be admitted as possible clues to its ironic intent: the plan assumed that an indisputable body of truth could be identified, and that teachers could be found to inculcate that truth into the fledgling kings. Plato must certainly have known – because Socrates had been his instructor – that no such body of truth existed, and that, as a consequence, no teachers to teach it existed either. As for the kings themselves, if they actually materialized as Plato described them, they would be specialists so perfectly focused on their work they would seem almost inhuman.

But the superhuman focus of the kings would not appear to be impossible to obtain. Modern corporate executive officers are expected to display similar total commitment to their work, so much so that they too, if they actually did it, might seem inhuman. But the task of the CEO is remarkably different from the task of a king. Without argument, the CEO can be said to have succeeded if he optimizes a tangible reality, bottom-line profit; but the rulers of a nation are successful only if they govern in such a way that the people being governed are reasonably happy and assuredly safe.

Plato recognized, though, that not all people would be made happy by the same governmental policy, even when the justice of the policy was not in question. So Plato’s republic would succeed only if the people were to believe the philosopher-kings were always right.

We can certainly agree that people might seem to be happy if they are made to believe they are happy, and that’s exactly what Plato proposed as the grand strategy for his philosopher-kings. The details of the lie by which that goal was to be achieved are too silly to imagine that it would work in today’s world, but the same lie has shown up, in different forms, throughout history. The so-called divine right of kings was a variant of Plato's lie, as are the superstitions that under gird theocratic governments, and those more-or-less secular governments whose leaders claim divine guidance. In any case, such lies only work when the people remain relatively ignorant.

We might imagine that in today’s world Plato’s low opinion of the people’s abilities might not be quite so valid as it was in his day. Free public education has certainly created a much higher percentage of literate people, and the internet has made possible a much wider debate of the issues. But some of the facts of Plato’s time remain with us. It is still true that the great masses of us still spend huge amounts of our time working for a living. Even if we might have a few more free hours, the same sorts of technological breakthroughs that gave us the internet and the nightly news, also brings us boatloads of time consuming entertainments that have nothing to do with public debate of critical issues. We as a people are probably no more able to make an assessment of the issues than were the plebeians of Athens. Moreover, because the techniques by which believable lies are formulated and delivered have been vastly improved since Plato’s time, we are perhaps even more prone to believe lies than the Greeks were. As I wrote two blogs ago, we are also not educating ourselves to be critical thinkers, but rather, to be true believers in the infallibility of “the American way.”

Well, the American way may not be perfect, and the American people may not be as aware of its imperfections as they might be with a more liberal education, but the American experiment has played a necessary role in the progressive development of government as it is now practiced in all of the western democracies. And tomorrow, Gates willing, I will continue this exposé of Plato’s secret plan.