Mouse Tells All: Plato Nods Agreement

So, if in his Republic Plato wasn’t prescribing the details of a practical system of government, what was he doing? Very simply, he was telling us of certain understandings that all men ought to employ in their conduct at all levels of their lives. The details of the republic – training of the philosopher-kings, organization of the armies, etc – were, in my opinion, laid on to provide a structure for the book’s “story.” Swift used similar devices in his great satire, Gulliver’s Travels. He created Gulliver as an almost completely different sort of being from those his travels brought him into contact with, and did so, not because he thought men were that much different in themselves, but because he needed a stark contrast of their differences if he were to successfully argue his case. Plato’s devices were more subtle, since his “props” seem almost believable. Only by a careful analysis – and by a large dose of imagination – can the “facts” presented in The Republic be separated from the book’s true intention.

Begin with the great lie – and bear in mind that Plato tells us, in bald face words, that it is a lie. Here’s the logic of the lie.

All men are made of earth, but the earth is not uniform in its being. Most of the earth is pure dirt, but the Gods have embedded within that great mass certain other substances, iron, for one, precious metals for another. Hence, some men, because they were shaped by the rare iron, are made to be soldiers, while others, who derive their being from the even rarer gold and silver, are made to be philosophers and rulers. But the great mass of men are made of the plentiful substance, dirt, and are thus fit only to be controlled by the men of iron, and ruled by the men of gold.

Now, Plato certainly was not of the opinion that all men possess the same qualities, but – because he told us he was lying when he said it – we know he did not believe men’s differences could be traced to the natural substances from which they all were made. But if not that, then what?

To answer, consider the education of the philosopher-kings. In yesterday’s blog I made the point that no great body of absolute truth existed that these pupils could be taught. What then specifically differentiates the method of their training from, say, the education of the masses? Two answers come to mind.

Answer number one: The prospective philosopher-kings were taken out of the world, isolated from the corrupting influences which every day were bombarding common men. They were shielded from life as it actually is. Plato, then, is telling us that there is something about the way life is being lived by common men (read, all men) that gets in the way of their being able to learn the way life ought to be lived. Throughout The Republic Plato offers an almost interminable list of influences that shape the way men see the world. Not all of these influences are frivolous, some are even necessary if life is to be successfully lived, commerce for example. The pressures placed upon the business man, the shop keeper, and those who work for wages divert their eyes and souls from the broader view of the world that, if they could but see it, would permit them to live more in harmony with nature and with themselves. I mentioned yesterday the difference between the work of the corporate executive officer and the wise king. The one must focus on a narrow objective – corporate success – while the other must seek to bring all the divergent forces of a nation into harmony. The CEO is not paid to harmonize anything other than the relationship between his company, its suppliers, and its customers. To the extent he does this, he is successful, though his success – which often comes at the expense of others – might constitute a major problem for the wise king. If during his training a fledgling philosopher-king were exposed to too many influences of the sort that naturally affect common men, he might not be able to achieve the necessary level of objectivity. He might become “one of them.”

Answer number two: Philosopher-kings were not taught truth in the sense that truth can be expressed as a body of facts. They were taught the method – dialectic – by which an effective “truth” could be derived. That is, they were taught how to think. Plato was sold on the dialectic (by which he meant, the discursive way of seeking answers). If the world is viewed as an infinity of constantly moving forces, each with aims and methods of its own, to understand the world as a body of facts would be virtually impossible. We may not therefore understand the world the way we might understand an arrangement of numbers, but we can understand the people of the world in the sense that we know they have aims that are their own which, if sought without restraints of any kind, might not – almost certainly will not – produce universal harmony. We can see that, left to their own designs, people and their society will become a conglomerate of individual forces, each setting the rules of its own behavior. Now, it is easy to see that trying to force these free entities into discourse, each with the other, would be difficult. So, if as Plato suggests, dialectic is the answer, what is to be the nature of the dialogue? This question brings us back to the noble lie.

“All men are created equal and are endowed with certain ‘unalienable rights’.” Both clauses of this sentence are lies. By no actual measure are all men equal, and even if there were such as natural rights, they would certainly not be “unalienable.” But just as Plato’s noble lie was intended to create belief in the infallibility of the philosopher-kings, so does the lie of the American experiment have a noble intent. To the extent that lie is believed, and to the extent it becomes a partner in the private dialogue all Americans have with themselves, so will the American nation avoid many of the internal conflicts that throughout history have plagued other forms of government. The lie that served to maintain the power of monarchies – divine right – stopped working when the monarchs started believing their own lie, began to think they were actually divine, and thus stretched their ambitions beyond the point they could be sustained.

The American lie is more believable than the other. There is a sense in which men are equal: we are all born existentially free. And there is a sense in which men’s desires and powers can be interpreted as “rights.” But the most fundamental problem of government lies in men’s existential freedom. Governments can, by force, control men’s tongues, but can never control men’s hearts. The drive to be free is not simply an act of so-called free will, but is rather a fact of the way men are. Our “rights” become rights only when we treat "power" and "right" as synonyms. They become logically and physically defensible when we recognize them as a part of the great lie we have agreed to believe.

Oh yes, the word is agreed. For, you see, the great American lie is unlike others lies – which lose their effectiveness when they are seen to be lies. I may know very well that all men are not equal and that my rights exist only because a powerful government has been committed to protect them, but I know just as well as I know the lie to be a lie, that if we the people begin to behave the way we respond to other lies, we will be doomed, not only as a people, but in all likelihood, as individuals as well. We are protected from the worst aspects of the Hobbesian notion of life as “mean, cruel, and short” by the ideas we have embodied in the notion that “all men are created equal and are endowed with certain unalienable rights.” It does not matter that the sentence contains two lies. What matters is that if we behave as if we doubt their truth, the power and glory of the American dream will come to a bloody end.

It must be admitted that many of the glories of “the dream” have been lost to us in recent times. Powerful forces within the land have found ways to use the lie the way Plato’s lie was originally intended: to establish the ultimate power of those in command. The dialogue that works – the one we must continually carry on between ourselves and our noble lie – has been turned on its head. The American dream has been made an apotheosis, has been made into “America,” has been given substance just as touchable as the real estate we live upon. And in defense of that physical substance we have too often found it necessary to discard the insubstantial ideas that form the core of America’s humanity. We have started to behave as if the lie were no longer relevant to the affairs of men. We’re behaving, again, as Hobbesian creatures, struggling all against each, and each against all. We have lost our awareness of our ideals.

Perhaps in the end that's all Plato's understanding has meant to us. His analysis has served as one of the many contributors to the evolving sense of self that finally grew into the American idea. But nothing in the evolution of ideas suggests that it has an end point. If it took men like Madison and Hamilton, Randolph and Mason, to thrash out the statement of a great and practical lie, perhaps history now has need for a convention of different men, new men who can manage in themselves the sort of isolation from the masses that’s needed if a better and more transcendent lie is to emerge. Perhaps we need open our minds to the possibility that the American ideal was but a small step on the way across the bridge from what we are to what we might become.

I would love to live long enough to see it, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. That’s OK. I can still imagine such a world and can still hope that the world we have remains sufficiently sane that I can carry that hope with me close to the edge.