Comment by fmajid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fmajid | Hacker News Reader

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The author’s conclusion that Plato was working for the betterment of humanity is simply laughable. He was an Athenian aristocrat, deeply resentful of his loss of social standing by the newfangled invention of democracy. Like many of Socrates’ students, he was disloyal to democracy (his uncle Critias, also a Socrates associate, was the leading member of the quisling Thirty Tyrants imposed by the Spartans when they defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War).

That’s why Socrates was executed, for treason really but under different charges because of an amnesty on collaborators imposed by Sparta in exchange for the restoration of democracy. And why Plato was exiled to Syracuse, where he failed to worm his way into Dyonisios’ favor with his transparent flattery.

The Spartan-inspired political system advocated by Plato in The Republic is totalitarian beyond the wildest dreams of a Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot. It does suggest philosophers ought to be the supreme rulers, which may explain that useless profession’s fondness for the guy, and the excuses they make for him.

Far better to read Karl Popper’s “The Open Society and Its Enemies”, volume 1, “The Spell of Plato” to understand how abominable Plato’s influence has been for mankind.

Right, but those supreme rulers (not a single ruler, but many) may not marry, they may not own stuff (kind of a monk caste), and they are not hereditary, but relentlessly sieved out until they reach that ruler status in old age.

I doubt that would have appealed to Hitler or Stalin.

I think your judgement is clouded by „democracy is good“ which is (a) a very modern stance and (b) one that many philosophers through the ages opposed.

Hitler did not marry until right before suicide. He believed that being married would lead to lower support among women. Hitler did not wanted children, because he thought they would want to make them inherit position and that children of powerful leaders tend to be unsuitable for such task. Hitler kept the image of asketic leader focused only on nation and cause.

So yeah, Hitler would not mind those rules.

Also, Athens were democracy for its citizens (minority of population.) They were in "democracy is good" mood, because Thirty Tyrants period mentioned above abolished democracy and killed/tortured significant percentage of citizens. It was not some kind of abstraction to them, it was "I had power to influence things and then lost it" practical concrete consideration. Athens citizens might be violent slaveholders themselves, but they sure as hell minded past violence against themselves and loss of their own freedom.

Socrates execution was miscarriage of justice, but the whole "democracy or not" was as down to earth as "no more nazi" was after WWII. It might be pure thought experiment to you, it was not to them.

"I doubt that would have appealed to Hitler or Stalin."

Probably not. But it could appeal to many popes, and it didn't prevent many of them to be scheming manipulating power-hungry a------s. (The "may not own stuff" is not really different from "I am a CEO with no salary and a company plane.")

I just don't see a smart and reasonable person wanting to rule over other people. And even if you wanted to, I don't think there is a good strategy on how to do it.

For any benevolent enlightened dictator, I see an analogue of the classical Epicurus quote about God:

Is the ruler going against the will of the people by manipulation? Then he cannot claim to be enlightened.

Is the ruler going against the will of the people by force? Then he cannot claim to be benevolent.

Is the ruler not going against the will of the people? Then he cannot claim to be a dictator!

What Plato is describing is simply a fantasy that glosses over many real-world complications of ruling. Such as, even if you were a genius ruler, how do you select your associates and underlings? You need a system anyway, there is no way around it.

(It is also kinda similar to fallacy of Cartesian theater - if only we had a perfect component where all the decisions are made, we wouldn't have to deal with all the complicated details of how that component actually arises from more elementary things.)

It's natural that you don't realize the answer yet. If you did, you'd be capable of being such a leader because the world would be filled with enough people who understood how they must behave in order to keep such a leader. Such a leader would not need underlings. The whole of society are the members of his society. The leader is in a special role because he can do or does do something the others can't or don't: he uses a single formula in order to correctly answer endless questions that are brought by people who realize that the leader can see something. It's like how a mathematician operates. The answers can still be correct despite the leader not yet having achieved 100% truthfulness (e.g. 98%). There is a certain threshold such a leader needs to have crossed in order to have the ability that others can't have. However, I'm extremely confident there have only been one or two men in history who had the ability and realized it. That's why you ought to be more careful using the word enlightenment. It's probably true that none of the people you think of in that set are actually close. If you yourself are not close, how can you use the term with confidence? If you say you can, I merely have to check your clear definition of the term. The genuine answer to the definition of it is very obvious and can be confirmed by anyone. Everything in the world is made according to one principle (which someone taught me). Every substance, material, and product are all made by very specific causes. That's why it's very easy for me, specifically, to tell who really knows about this subject from who doesn't after hearing only a little from them. But if even someone like you can't find out the real meaning of the term and confirm it then it's not right to expect people will simply recognize the leader and have the ability to actually question and learn from, MUCH less follow such a one.

"The Spartan-inspired political system advocated by Plato in The Republic is totalitarian beyond the wildest dreams of a Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot."

What do you make of the claim that The Republic isn't about an ideal state at all but is rather an allegory for how individuals should govern themselves (ideal "soul"), with "totalitarian reason" at the helm I suppose, and that it's even stated in the book itself that this is the case?

Can you point to or explain where this claim comes from?

I'm far from an scholar on Plato, but I've read a few dialogues and The Republic whole, and I never saw anything that made me think of it that way.

> The author’s conclusion that Plato was working for the betterment of humanity is simply laughable.

Many adepts, and, arguably, most of the leadership of horrible totalitarian ideologies of twentieth century have honestly believed that they're working for the benifit of the whole mankind. (In the meanwhile, western capitalist democracies, which managed to actually benifit mankind the most, were run mostly by people pursuing their own self-interest). Why don't you think that Plato have had the same idealistic devotion?

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