Chapter 17 Chapter Fourteen Plato's Utopia

Plato's most important dialogue, The State, consists roughly of three parts.The first part (to about the end of Book V) includes the organization of a republic; this is the earliest utopia in history. One of the conclusions he reached was that rulers must be philosophers. Books 6 and 7 of "The Nation" are all about defining "philosopher".This discussion forms the second part. Part III includes a discussion of the various actual systems and their relative strengths and weaknesses. "Nation" is nominally to define "justice".But early on he decides that since everything is easier to see in the large than in the small, it is better to start with what makes a just state than what makes a just individual.And since justice must be one of the attributes of the best conceivable state, he first describes such a state, and then decides what kind of perfection it may be called "just."Let us first describe the general outlines of Plato's utopia, and then consider the various problems encountered.

Plato affirmed from the beginning that citizens should be divided into three classes: ordinary people, soldiers, and defenders.Only the last category of citizens can have political power.Their numbers are much smaller than the other two classes.At first it seems that they were chosen by the legislator, after that they are generally hereditary; but in exceptional cases promising children may be raised from the lower classes, When there are unsatisfactory children or youths, they can also be demoted. In Plato's view, the main problem is how to ensure that the guardian can realize the intention of the legislator.He made various proposals for this purpose, educational, economic, biological, and religious.But to what extent these suggestions apply to classes other than defenders is often not clear; some of them are clearly applicable to soldiers; The defenders of the country are a class of their own, just like the Jesuits in Paraguay in the past, the priests in the Holy See before 1870, and the Communist Party in the Soviet Union today.The first thing to consider is education.Education is divided into two parts, namely music and physical education.Each had a much broader meaning than it does today: "music" meant everything that fell within the domain of the daphnes, and "sports" meant everything concerned with the training and conditioning of the body. "Music" is about as broad as what we call "culture," and "sports" is broader than what we call "sports."

To engage in culture is to make a man a gentleman, a gentleman in precisely the sense familiar to England (mostly because of Plato).Plato's Athens at the time resembled nineteenth-century England in one respect: both had an aristocratic class that enjoyed wealth and social prestige but did not monopolize political power, and both aristocrats had to display their majestic and impressive manner to gain as much power as possible.However, in Plato's Utopia, the aristocracy ruled without restraint. Majesty, decorum, and courage seem to be the chief qualities that education seeks to foster.From the earliest age there is a strict censorship of the literature to which youth is exposed and the music which they are allowed to hear.Mothers and nurses could only tell official stories to their children.Both Homer and Hesiod are forbidden to tell for some reason.The first is that Homer and Hesiod say that the gods sometimes behave badly, which is not educational; the young must be taught that evil never comes from the gods, because "gods" are not everything Creator of all things but only good things.Next, there is something in the works of Homer and Hesiod that is supposed to make the reader fear death, whereas everything in education should make the young man willing to die in battle.Our children must be taught that slavery is worse than death, so they should never hear stories of good people crying, even if it is over the death of a friend.Third, etiquette requires that people never laugh out loud, yet Homer mentions that "those happy gods laughed a lot."If the children can quote this passage, how can the teacher effectively condemn the children's play?Fourthly, there are passages in Homer that praise great banquets, and others describe the desires of the gods; (Dean Inze, a true Platonist, objected to a line in a famous hymn: "The shout of those who triumph, the song of those who feast," which describes the heavenly happy scene).Lastly, there must never be stories of bad guys being happy and good guys being unhappy; this can have the most unfortunate moral effects on weak hearts.On all these grounds the poet should be derogatory.

Plato then advances a strange argument about drama.A good man, he said, should not wish to imitate a bad man; yet most plays contain villains, so the dramatist, and the actors who play them, must imitate the villains who commit various crimes.Not only criminals, but women, slaves, and inferiors in general should not be imitated by superiors. (In Greece, as in Elizabethan England, female roles were played by men.) Therefore, if plays were allowed, they could only contain immaculate, well-born male characters.The impossibility was so obvious that Plato decided to expel all dramatists from his city: when a showman so clever as to imitate anything came to us and offered to act him and his art and his poetry, we shall adore him with rapt attention as a lovely, divine, and great being; but we must also tell him that he is not to be tolerated in our country. Such people; the law cannot tolerate them.So we anointed him, and after we crowned his head with velvet, we sent him to another city.

Secondly, let's look at their censorship system for music (music in the modern sense).Lydian and Ionian music are forbidden, the former because it expresses melancholy, the latter because it is dissolute.Only the music of Doria (because it is brave) and Phrygia (because it is temperate) is permissible.The rhythm that is allowed must be simple, and must be able to express a courageous and harmonious life. Physical training is very strict.Except for grilled fish and meat, no one is allowed to eat fish and meat cooked in other ways, and neither are allowed to add any condiments, nor are they allowed to eat any snacks.He said a man who followed his diet would never need a doctor.

Young people are not allowed to see ugliness and sin until they reach a certain age.But when the time is right, they must be exposed to "temptations"; let them see horrible images so as not to terrorize them, and bad pleasures so as not to tempt their will.Only when they have passed these tests can they be considered fit to be defenders.Boys should see war before they grow up, though they don't have to fight it themselves. As for the economy: Plato proposes that the defenders should practice a kind of out-and-out communism, and (I think) the soldiers should too, although this is not very clear.Defenders are to have small houses and simple food; they are to live as if in a barracks, eating together; they are to have no private property except what is absolutely necessary.Both gold and silver are forbidden.Although they are not rich, they have no reason to be unhappy; the purpose of the city is the good of the whole people, not the happiness of a class.Both wealth and poverty are harmful, and neither exists in Plato's city-state.He had a very strange argument about war, saying that since the city never wanted to share any of the spoils, it must be easy to buy off the allies.

Plato's Socrates applies, with feigned reluctance, his communism to the family as well.He said that friends should have everything in common, including wives and children.He admits there are difficulties, but doesn't think it's insurmountable.In the first place, the girls were educated exactly as the boys, learning music and sports, and learning the art of war with the boys.Women are completely equal to men in all respects. "The same education that makes a man a good defender will make a woman a good defender; for their natures are the same."No doubt there is a difference between men and women; but that has nothing to do with politics.Some women are philosophical and fit to be defenders of the country; others are warlike and make good soldiers.

After the legislator had chosen a number of men and women to be defenders of the country, he ordered them all to live in common houses and eat common meals.Marriage, as we understand it, must be completely remodeled.On certain festivals the bridegrooms and brides (whose number should be sufficient to keep the population constant) are united, and they are made to believe that they themselves were united by lot; eugenic principles to be distributed.They will be arranged so that the best father will have the greatest number of children.All children are taken from their parents at birth, and the utmost care is taken that the parents never know who their children are, and the children never know who their parents are.Deformed children and children of bad parents "are to be put in a mysterious place unknown to man, as they should be."Children born from unions not sanctioned by the state are considered illegitimate.The age of the mother should be between twenty and forty years, and that of the father should be between twenty-five and fifty-five.Sexual intercourse is free for those not within these age limits; but they are forced to abort or kill infants.In "marriages" arranged by the state, the individuals concerned have no voice; they are moved by the idea of ​​their duty to the state, not by any of those exiled poets so often sung. Driven by that mediocre feeling.

Since everyone does not know who their parents are, he calls everyone who is old enough to be a father "father", and the same goes for "mother", "brother", and "sister". (This also occurs among certain savages, and often confuses missionaries). There is no "marriage" between "father" and "daughter", or between "mother" and "son"; generally speaking (but not absolutely), "brother" and "sister" are also prohibited from marrying. (I think Plato, if he had thought this through, would have found that he had banned all marriages, except what he regarded as the extreme exception of "brother and sister" marriages.)

It is conceivable that the sentiments now associated with the words "Father," "Mother," "Son," and "Daughter" would still be associated with them under Plato's new arrangement; An old man, because he might be beating his father. The advantage Plato was after was, of course, the reduction of private affection, thereby removing the obstacles to the dominance of the public spirit and against the abolition of private property.Monks were largely celibate for similar motives. I will end with the theological aspects of this system.I don't want to talk about the Greek gods it adopted, but only about certain myths inculcated by the government.Plato clearly said that lying is the prerogative of the government, just as prescribing medicine is the prerogative of doctors.We have already seen that the government is deceiving the people by pretending to arrange marriages by drawing lots.But this is not yet a religious thing.

There is "a noble lie," which Plato hopes will deceive the ruler and, in any case, the entire city's people.This "lie" was fabricated in considerable detail.The most important part of this is the dogma that God created three kinds of people: the best one is made of gold, the second best is made of silver, and the common people are made of copper and iron.Those made of gold are fit to be defenders; those made of silver are supposed to be soldiers, while the rest are for manual labor.Children usually (but not always) belong to their parents' class; if they do not, they must be promoted or demoted accordingly.He thinks that it is impossible to convince the present generation of this myth, but that the next generation, and all generations to come, can be educated so that they do not doubt it. Plato was quite right that belief in such myths could be cultivated within two generations.The Japanese are taught that the Emperor was born of the Sun God, and that Japan was founded earlier than any other nation in the world.Any university professor who doubted these dogmas, even in an academic work, would be expelled for anti-Japanese activities.But what Plato seems to fail to realize is that imposing such myths on others is incompatible with philosophy, and that it involves an education that would damage human sanity. The definition of "justice" is the nominal aim of all discussions, and this definition is reached in Book IV.Justice, he tells us, consists in each doing his own work and not being a meddler: when merchants, auxiliaries, and defenders each do their own work and do not interfere with the work of other classes, the whole A city-state is just. It is no doubt a laudable teaching that every man minds his own business, but it hardly reconciles with what modern man so naturally calls "justice."The Greek word we have thus translated corresponds to a very important idea in Greek thought, but we lack an exact counterpart to it.It is well worth recalling what Anaximander said: that from which all things arose, to which all things return after their annihilation is ordained by fate.For all things repay each other for their mutual injustice in due time. Before the beginning of philosophy, the Greeks had a theory of the universe, or a feeling, which can be called religious or ethical.According to this theory, everyone or everything has his or its prescribed status and prescribed function.But this does not depend on the decree of Zeus, because Zeus himself is also subject to this decree that governs all things.This theory is associated with the idea of ​​fate or necessity.It is applied with particular emphasis to the celestial bodies.But wherever there is life, there is a tendency to push the bounds of justice; hence the struggle.There is an inhuman, supra-Olympic law of punishment. wanton, and is constantly restoring the eternal order that the invaders want to destroy.The whole of this point of view (perhaps at first almost unconsciously) passed into philosophy; it is also expressed in the cosmology of struggle, such as that of Heraclitus and Empedocles, and in monistic doctrines, for example in Parmenides.This is the root of the Greeks' belief in the laws of nature and the laws of the world, and this is obviously the basis of Plato's concept of justice. The sense in which the word "justice" is still used in law resembles Plato's ideas more closely than in any other sense in which it is used in political thought.We have been conditioned by democratic theory to associate justice with equality; but in Plato there is no such connotation. "Justice"—in the sense that it is almost a synonym for "law" (for example, we say "courts")—means primarily property rights, and that has nothing to do with equality. The definition of "justice" mentioned for the first time at the beginning of "The Nation" is: justice consists in paying debts.This definition was immediately dismissed as inappropriate, but some elements of it carry through to the end of the dialogue. Several points in Plato's definition are worth noting.First, it enables inequality of power and privilege, but not injustice.The guardians must have all the power, because they are the wisest members of the society; in Plato's definition, only when there are people in other classes who are more intelligent than some defenders justice.This is why Plato proposed the promotion and demotion of citizens, although he believed that the double convenience of birth and education already made the descendants of the defenders superior to those of other people in most cases.There would be much to be admired about Plato's system if there were a more exact politics and its teachings were more exactly followed.No one would argue that it is unjust to put the best footballers in football teams, even though they can gain a great deal of privilege by doing so.If the football team was run as democratically as the government in Athens, the students who represented the school would be elected by lot.However, it is difficult to know who is the most skilled in political affairs; and it is also difficult to say with certainty that a statesman will be able to use his skill for the public good and not for his own benefit, or His class or party or sectarian interests. The second is that Plato's definition of "justice" presupposes a "state," whether organized along traditional lines or in Plato's own way, so that its whole can achieve some kind of ethical justice. ideal.He told us that justice consists in each doing his own work.But what is a man's job?In a country that has not changed from generation to generation, like ancient Egypt or the kingdom of the Incas, a man's work is his father's work, and no problem arises.But in Plato's country no one has a legal father.His work, therefore, is determined either by his own interests, or by the state judging his talents.The latter is clearly what Plato desires.Some jobs, however, despite their high technicality, can be considered harmful; Plato thought poetry was harmful, and I think Napoleon's work was harmful.The intentions of the government, therefore, come to the fore in determining what a man's job is.Although all rulers have to be philosophers, there is no innovation: a philosopher is always someone who understands and agrees with Plato. If we ask: what can Plato's "state" accomplish?The answer is rather boring.It can win wars against states of roughly equal population, and it can secure the life of certain minorities.Because of its rigidity it almost never produces art or science; in this as in many other respects it is Spartan.In spite of all the rhetoric, all it has accomplished is skill in warfare and sufficient food.Plato had lived through the famines and defeats of Athens; perhaps subconsciously, he believed that avoiding these disasters was the highest achievement a statesman could achieve.A utopia must obviously embody the ideals of its creators, if it is to be taken seriously.Let us first consider what we mean by "ideal".First, it is desired by those who believe in it, but its being desired is not quite the same as one's desire for personal enjoyment (e.g., food and shelter).What constitutes the difference between an "ideal" and the object of an everyday wish is that the former is impersonal; relational, and thus theoretically possible to be desired by everyone.We can thus define an "ideal" as something that is not egocentrically desired, such that the person who desires it wishes that everyone else will also desire it.I can wish that there is enough food for all, that all be kind to others, etc.; and if I wish any such thing, I also wish that others wish it too.In this way I can build up a seemingly impersonal ethic, though in fact it is based on my own desires on an individual basis;—for the desires are always mine, even if they are What I wish has nothing to do with me personally.For example, one person may wish that everyone understands science; another wishes that everyone appreciates art; but it is their individual differences that make this difference between their wishes. The personal element is immediately apparent as soon as an argument is involved.For example, someone said: "You are wrong to want everyone to be happy, you should want the Germans to be happy and everyone else to be unhappy".The "should" here can be regarded as referring to what the speaker hopes I can desire.I could retort that I am not a German and that it is psychologically impossible for me to wish all non-Germans unhappiness; but this answer does not seem appropriate. Moreover, there may also be a conflict of purely impersonal ideals.Nietzsche's heroes are different from Christian saints, yet both are worshiped impersonally, the former by Nietzscheans, the latter by Christians.How can we choose between the two unless it is our own desire?If nothing else, however, an ethical difference of opinion has to be decided by sentimental likes and dislikes, or by force—eventually by war.For questions of fact we have recourse to science and the scientific method; but for fundamental questions of ethics there seems to be no such thing.However, if this is the case, then the ethical debate itself is reduced to a struggle of power, including the power of propaganda.This point of view is already sketched out in the first book of the Nation by Thrasymachus, who, like almost all the characters in Plato's dialogues, is a real figure.He was a wise man from Chalcedon, a famous teacher of rhetoric; he appeared in Aristophanes' comedy in 427 BC.After Socrates had discussed justice amicably with an old man named Cephalus, and with Plato's brothers Glaucon and Ademtus, Tracymachus had become less and less listened to. Impatient, he broke in with a vehement protest against this childish nonsense.He emphasized that "justice is nothing but the interests of the strong." Socrates refuted this view with sophistry; it was never well received.But it raises the fundamental question in ethics and politics, that is, is there any standard of "good" and "bad" other than what people desire when they use the words "good" and "bad" Woolen cloth?If not, many of the conclusions drawn by Terrasimachus seem inevitable.But how can we say that there is such a standard? At this point, it may seem at first glance that religion has a short answer.God decides what is good and what is bad; a man is a good man if his will is in harmony with the will of God.However, this answer is not very orthodox.Theologians say that God is good, but this implies a standard of good or bad that exists independently of God's will.We are then forced to face the following question: namely, is there objective truth in the same sense as in the statement "Snow is white" in a statement like "Pleasure is good"? or fake it? To answer this question, a long discussion is necessary.One could imagine that we could dodge this fundamental argument as much as we could practically, and say: "I don't know what objective truth means. But if all (or indeed equal to all) who have looked at this question are in agreement to uphold a statement, then I shall consider that statement to be 'true'." In this sense, snow is white, Caesar was stabbed to death, water is made of hydrogen and oxygen, etc. Wait, it's all "true".We are then faced with a question of fact: namely, is there any statement of agreement similar to this in ethics?If there were, they could serve as the basis for a personal code of conduct as well as for a political theory.But if not, then whatever the philosophical truth may be, as long as there is an irreconcilable ethical divide between powerful groups, we are practically compelled to resort to a contest of force, or a contest of propaganda, Or both at the same time. For Plato, the problem doesn't really exist.Although his sense of drama led him to forcefully state the position of Trasymachus, he was utterly unaware of its force, and he himself rebutted it with unusual crudeness and injustice.Plato was convinced that the Good existed, and that its nature could be ascertained; and when men disagreed, at least one of them was guilty of an intellectual error, just as these disagreements were a science concerning certain facts. Same problem. The difference between Plato and Terrasimachus is very important; but for the historian of philosophy it is a difference that requires attention, not resolution.Plato thinks he can prove that his state is good; a democrat who admits that ethics has its objectivity may think he can. The country is bad; but anyone who agrees with Thrasymachus will say: "There is no question of proof or disproof here; the only question is whether you like. State. If you like it, it is good for you; if you don't like it, it is bad for you. If many people like it, and many people don't like it; it is impossible to use reason, but only the truth Or covert violence to decide." This is a philosophical question hitherto debated; each side has many respectable figures.But for a long time, the views that Plato preached remained almost unchallenged. We should also note, moreover, that the substitution of consensus for an objective standard has consequences which few are willing to accept.What should we say about a scientific innovator like Galileo who proclaimed a view that few people agreed with at the time, but which eventually gained almost universal support?These people use reasoning rather than emotional agitation, state propaganda or forceful methods.This implies that there is another standard besides general opinion.In ethics there is something of the same kind with the great religious teachers.Jesus Christ taught that it is not wrong to pick and eat ears of wheat on the Sabbath, but it is wrong to hate your enemies.Such ethical views obviously imply some standard that is different from the opinions of the majority, but whatever the standard is, it is by no means like an objective fact in scientific issues.This problem is a difficult one, and I don't claim that I can solve it.For now let us content ourselves with merely noticing the problem. Plato's state, unlike many utopias of modern times, was probably meant to be put into practice.This is not so fanciful and impossible as we naturally think.Many of its provisions, including some that we would have thought utterly impossible, were actually fulfilled at Sparta.Pythagoras had experimented with the rule of philosophers; in Plato's time, when Plato visited Sicily and southern Italy, the Pythagorean Archytas was in Taras (modern Taranto). ) are very powerful politically.It was the custom in the city-states to have a sage draw up the laws; Solon had done it for Athens, and Pythagoras for Thuria.At that time, the colonies were completely independent of their mother states; it was quite possible that some band of Platonists would establish an utopia on the coast of Spain or Gaul.Unfortunately chance brought Plato to Syracuse, and that great merchant city was engaged in a desperate war with Carthage; and in such an atmosphere no philosopher could achieve much.In the next age, the rise of Macedonia made all small states obsolete, and made all rudimentary political experiments futile.