~by David Aiken~
Many and sundry have been the attempts to
“get a handle on” a deceptive idea that has its origins in Plato’s Republic—the idea of the Noble Lie. The
Noble Lie was never intended to be an element of political theory—this is only
the shallow storyline, the theatrical mask that Plato lends to his narrative to
throw the profane reader off the track of the sacred richness of his
philosophical teaching. In matter of fact, Plato’s Noble Lie is a very clear
rational mechanism of Plato’s fully human and fully philosophical ontology; it
is not some device to be used for political or state enablement, but rather, it
is a constructive philosophical mechanism that
enables the 'golden' part of the individual, the rational mind, to
construct the individual as a philosophical whole!
One recent transmogrification of the Platonic idea of the Noble Lie was in the 2008 Batman
film, The Dark Knight.
At the heart of
this dark comic book, cinematographic narrative is the pattern of the black
& white, yin & yang quality that defines Everyman. We are none of us entirely white, the Harvey Dent cum White Knights of the world who dare
to oppose Evil in the open light of day; nor are we entirely black, the unproblematic embodiments of the unpredictable
Joker, the modern Johnny Appleseed of pain and loss, of random suffering and
harm. Rather, Everyman is both of these in
differing and mixed degrees. In perhaps our best incarnations we are actually
all of us, individually, both the tormented Black Knight, the man-bat, the
creature who comes out of the night to drag bad actors and their actions into
the light of day, and that complex human creature who, on a much more personal
level, is consumed by his personal struggle to make sure that, at least most of
the time, the enlightened goodness in his soul that reaches out for justice, overshadows
the gnawing, inky hunger of the psychic demon that urges him, almost irresistibly, to punish and to
avenge.
On
this telling Harvey Dent fails to live up to one side of his persona by
embodying only the White Knight of Justice, and the darkness of his obscured yin
overawes the lightness of his aggressive yang. In his high-handed hubris Harvey
Dent fails the task of being Everyman; unlike the unusual man-bat who manages,
somehow, to balance delicately in the nether regions of his humanity the vital
forces of his yin in the light of his yang. In an additional and interesting
move, the narrative flow of the film demands that the lead players mask the
imperfections of the man under the “persona” of a social Story, behind a myth,
a noble lie: that Harvey Dent died heroically in the line of duty, fighting for
justice, and in the service of the community. For the “brassy” commoners of the
city must not learn that the “golden” man, Harvey Dent, failed; that he turned;
that he became mostly lost in the dark. For the sake of the people the Cover
Story must not fail; and even if the man behind the mask/myth/Story fails, the
Narrative of Justice must not fail; it must remain eternal.
When
all is said and done, this filmic “read” is actually a faithful reflection and
reworking of the idea of Plato’s noble lie as it has come down to us in the
western thought traditions of philosophy and political theory. And that is
unfortunate.
At the risk of sounding adamant, let us
just say it right out in the open: Plato’s Republic,
one of the perennial great works in the corpus of world literature, which has
resided for centuries in the intellectual domain of political philosophers and
theorists, is not really about a
republic, ideal or otherwise. In the same way that war movies are not about
war, i.e., their Subject is not “war,” but rather about Men’s Character and
Human Action framed situationally around the thematic of war, so also, when
Plato dramatizes a conversation with Socrates around a political thematic, it
does not mean that the Subject of the work is political in nature or even
anything that is remotely concerned with political thinking. Plato’s Republic is framed around the idea of the
City; the City, in turn, is built in the image of Human Ontology, and seeks to
answer the question – what is a man? How should a man act? What role does right
education play in the evolution of the human mind and soul? In this Platonic
metaphor for the philosophical life, as the soul goes, so goes the City.
If
we fail to grasp this distinction between the subject of a work and its
opportunistic framing or narrative thematic, then with works such as Plato’s Republic or Machiavelli’s The Prince, once they are construed as
politically or philosophically earnest texts, we hermeneuts who come after in
the thought tradition are obliged to construct interpretations that correct
other interpretations, and in so doing, by committing ourselves to reading
literally and failing to read metaphorically, we inadvertently create a whole new
set of interpretative problems.
 | |
| Dr. Frankenstein creating his monster |
For
example, by committing to a political interpretation of Plato’s Republic, we also necessarily create as
an interpretative by-product an antique Frankenstein in the person of the great
Socrates, thereby “disappearing” this irreplaceable thinker behind a political
interpretative persona. This tradition’s earnestly-political “read” of the Republic includes almost all the great
thinkers, except Augustine, from Aristotle to Machiavelli, and, in the
contemporary political philosophical arena, from Karl Popper to Leo Strauss.
And, yet, this telling also transforms the story’s hero, the Socrates of the history
of philosophy, into the much more well-known Franken-Socrates, once-upon-a-time
master teacher of the life of the Just Man, who seems, all irony aside and in
great seriousness, to be making the case for Justice and the Just Man by
promoting the practice of euthanasia, social classism based on racial purity,
selective breeding, and telling noble lies to motivate leaders to act well in
the City. Really?!
This
philosophical transmogrification of Socrates is simply too implausible, though,
and so the tradition ends up speaking dismissively, or not speaking at all, of the
Franken-Socrates it has created, because he is simply too Hitlerian to retain
any “street credibility,” philosophically speaking. This interpretative process is precisely what a
sin against Thinking looks like.
With
transmogrifying interpretations such as this, at the end of the day we end up
dismissing the work not only because it portrays for us a Socrates qua Machiavellian prince, which violates
our politically correct sensibilities, but also because we do not find other
cases made in the Republic, such as the
case for an ideal state, to be politically persuasive in general. So, the
thought tradition that wanders down this interpretative Holtzweg succeeds only in creating an unacceptable political theory
and an anti-Socrates—but then, this might have been the intention all along.
And perhaps there is some masked man yet “out there” who will come along, some man-bat
or Lone Ranger of philosophy, to help us out of the intellectual quagmire
created by such a mishmash of non-thinking and pseudo-interpreting on this
question of noble lies… Quien sabe, Kemosabe?
So, what sense is there to be made of a
Socratic statement such as Plato places in of Resp. 377c: "it is imperative for the rulers of the city to
supervise the makers of tales," and of the idea of the Noble Lie that
follows? In Resp. 414c we begin to
learn about this γενναῖον ψεῦδος
(gennaion pseudos), which better translates as a false (lying, untrue,
mendacious, fraudulent) genealogy (family history). So,
our adopted family history, “according” to Socrates, would actually have two
parameters. The first is that the citizens of the “Socratic” republic are
earth-born, which is to say that we are all inter-related and therefore
interconnected. This is a straightforward idea borrowed from the Stoic
philosophers. The second parameter is that, as with all that is earth-born, we
each contain elements from our Earth-Mother, but not necessarily all the same
elements. Some of us are born out of gold metal, some from silver, and others out
of bronze and iron. The metal core of the individual will determine his worth
and role in the city.
At face value,
at least for politically minded thinkers, the Noble Lie is essential for the
political apparatus to maintain stable social structures; it is a lie, in the
sense of an “opiate for the masses,” which is force-fed to the masses to subdue
them, to keep them happily at their stations in the structures of state. If this argument is teased out literally, we arrive at the
conclusion that Socrates promotes, in an ideal kind of way, the practice of
euthanasia, social classism, racial purity and separation, selective breeding,
and the telling of “lies” to motivate people to behave themselves in their
social environment.
Yet, this simply
cannot be the case, unless, like Mark Anthony before us, we
philosophers-turned-Philistines also come to bury Socrates, not to praise him;
for it will be true of this Franken-Socrates, as with the many others who have
shared similar controlling, manipulating, and authoritarian ideas, that “The
evil that men do lives after them.”
However, what if we tease out this argument
metaphorically, rather than literally? What if we seek to praise Socrates
rather than to bury him? Most philosophers would agree, generally, that there
are two ideas that must remain consistent and valid for interpretations of
Plato to be plausible. First, Plato the philosopher was clearly a dualist who thought
that unchanging truth was possible. Conjecture and Belief, thought Plato, are
forms of knowledge linked to the changing world; True Knowledge (or “Seeing”) and
Wisdom, on the other hand, are linked to things that are by their nature
eternal and unchanging, such as the Forms or Ideas. In this respect Plato shows
that he was influenced by the 5th century philosopher from Elea
(Southern Greece), Parmenides.
In
his poem, On Nature, which is by and
large the most significant fragment still existing from Parmenides, he tells
the story of the Young Man who, in his quest for virtue, which is the
philosophical or just life of True Knowledge, sees all things (ln. 3) with the
same eternal and unblinking Gaze as the Goddess (Muse) (stanza 25-30).
Meet
it is that thou shouldst learn all things, as well
the
unshaken heart of persuasive truth, as the opinions of
[30] mortals in which is no true belief at all.
Χρεὼ δέ
σε πάντα πυθέσθαι
ἠμέν Ἀληθείης
εὐκυκλέος aτρεμὲς ἦτορ
[30] ἠδὲ βροτῶν δόξας, ταῖς οὐκ ἔνι πίστις aληθής.
Where Parmenides speaks in his poem of
“opinions” (δόξας), this
idea will translate into Plato’s thought as “Belief,” a type of knowing
reserved for transient things instead of permanent things; and as this lower
form of knowing is juxtaposed over and against True Belief (πίστις aληθής) in Parmenides, so it is as well in Plato, where “Seeing” will be
the knowing of eternal truths, of things that are not subject to change because
they are transcendental, hence unchanging and permanent.
The second concept that must remain
consistent and valid for any interpretation of Plato’s philosophy to be
plausible, is that he was enormously impressed by his teacher, Socrates, who
was not so much a teacher of Justice, but rather a teacher of the Just Man. Ironically,
it is precisely this distinction that allows one to begin unraveling Platonic
thought and separating it from Socratic thought. A Platonic Socrates, for
example, would typically be expected to articulate some clear teaching on
Justice as a permanent and eternal value; this would be consistent with Plato
and his love of the Idea/Definition of things. However, this does not seem to
be the case in most of the Platonic dialogues involving Socrates, especially
the so-called aporetic dialogues.
These dialogues are problematic, aporetic,
precisely because, in a decidedly un-Platonic move, Socrates does not provide
us or leave us with any definition of the virtue desired, such as Piety (Euthyphro) or Justice (The Republic). Instead, the historical
Socrates actually argues against such an Eternal Definition of the virtue in
question, by showing that any such argument must necessarily contradict itself;
and he leaves us understanding and valuing the perception that, as he might well
have said behind the scenes of history, we may not be able to find a full-proof
definition for Justice, but we can recognize a Just Man from a mile away.
So, in fact, it will actually be the
Socrates of history who shows us that Noble Lies, however this idea might be
variously interpreted in aftertimes, will have no effect upon the man whose
character is not naturally virtuous. A myth or belief of any sort,
genealogical, religious, or nationalistic, even though we might be born into it
and know nothing else our entire life, will ultimately be for naught if the
individual man fails to act out of a fundamental sense of his own character’s
virtue. According to Socrates, failure of individual character necessarily
trumps any mythological or metaphysical prop; because virtue does not derive
from some Belief or other, but rather from individuals who act out of Reasoned
Seeing.
So how does this little reflective journey
inform those of us who, worlds away from the Greece of antiquity, live in an
existential no-man’s land where, possibly for the first time in human history,
there is an opportunity for true and authentic individual freedom (for better
and for worse) in a land where ancient philosophico-religious mythologies yet still
hold sway, and where every variety of nationalism scorches the earth of our
souls?
Is truth possible? Plato thinks so, as does
Socrates; although their conceptions of truth were quite distinct—Plato’s being
framed by an other-worldliness, and Socrates’ by a this-worldliness. Yet either
conceptualization of truth would have the effect of bringing like-minded
(philosophical) men together, of unifying those who seek to live out the
virtuous life. This is one of the true teachings of Plato’s Republic. This philosophical truth
stands in obvious contrast to the idea of binding differently-minded men
together through any variety of Noble Lie, viz., genealogical, religious, or
nationalistic, thus seeking to enslave their emotions rather than to persuade their
reasoning minds.
WWNS? What Would Nietzsche Say, perhaps, or
a Nietzsche inspired philosopher, about this meandering reflection on noble
lies and failures of character? In the unappeased
craving for the freedom to think thoughts that are truly one’s own, and in
light of the fact that we are so obviously wandering around lost in the
undefined fields of human existential history, Nietzsche might encourage us to
break free of all of the noble lies that surround us, or at least as many as we
become aware of. A State’s noble lies certainly have no supremacy when measured
against the truths of our philosophical wanderings; and the role of a
free-thinking res cogitans is,
precisely, not to allow itself to be duped by a state’s myths about foundations
or origins—beliefs and myths such as patriotism, father- or mother-land, God
& Country, among all the others.
An unknown
presence is about me, and gazeth thoughtfully. What! Thou livest still,
Zarathustra?
Why?
Wherefore? Whereby? Whither? Where? How? Is it not folly still to live?—
Ah, my
friends; the evening is it which thus interrogateth in me. Forgive me my
sadness!
Evening hath
come on: forgive me that evening hath come on!"
Thus sang
Zarathustra.
Ein Unbekanntes ist um mich und
blickt nachdenklich. Was! Du lebst noch, Zarathustra?
Warum? Wofür? Wodurch? Wohin?
Wo? Wie? Ist es nicht Torheit, noch zu leben? –
Ach, meine
Freunde, der Abend ist es, der so aus mir fragt. Vergebt mir meine Traurigkeit!
Abend ward es: vergebt mir, daß
es Abend ward!«
Also sprach
Zarathustra.
And what would an individual’s life outside
the foundation Stories and Myths look like? How do we recognize the life of the
man who is free? The freedom of one’s mind does not necessarily reflect through
the life of the individual, although it certainly may; so, frankly, no one
really knows. Nietzsche simply tells us
that this transformation of the way our minds think will make of us children
again—New Beginnings who are free to explore to our heart’s content. “Innocence,” he writes in The
Three Metamorphoses, “is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a
game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea (Unschuld ist das Kind und Vergessen, ein Neubeginnen, ein Spiel, ein
aus sich rollendes Rad, eine erste Bewegung, ein heiliges Ja-sagen.).” Nietzsche does not seek to validate any particular code of moral behavior;
any moral/ethical construct will do the job, including the heroic and virtue
ethics, religious ethics and deontology, and all the various incarnations of utilitarian
calculations.
As a suggestion, though—perhaps we might adopt
as philosophically and ethically unproblematic in this new life of the child, that
we may assume the general rightness or propriety of courtesy toward the Other,
and kindness, and consideration. This is the stock-in-trade of the Just Man.
If
there are Dissenters from this idea-axiom, then they may abstain from reading
further, as they have already clearly abstained, by dissenting from this
fundamental valuation of Self in the form of the Other, from thinking humanely
about their fellow humans. As they progress along their dissenting path, we may
await any and all conduct/thought… for the failure of character, the lack of
the will to virtue, is already evident.
There is certainly a dilemma here, though,
as we try to imagine a thought-life outside of our Stories; and one can
absolutely see why Wittgenstein did not write much in his life. Imagine: here
we all are, sitting around at the foot of Wittgenstein’s Mauer des Schweigens, the wall of silence beyond which knowledge is
impossible, and so silence becomes the byword… And yet that very silence is
equivocal—it has two voices. Because just as the “word” cannot embrace the
transcendental “thing,” the thing on the other side of that Mauer of silence, which is by its very
definition “no-thing,” nor can a “word” rightly encompass the immanent “thing”
on this side of that Mauer. If the
word is not the thing, then all it can do is reach up toward whatever inchoate
obscurity it is trying to grasp in an attempt to get us, approximately, to some
kind of meaning. At the end of the day, Wittgenstein’s
thinking succeeds in reminding us that we are isolated in the time capsule of ourselves,
in the closed loop of our own reasoning processes. Pace Wittgenstein, though; for Lady Philosophy still has her role
to play in sorting out the noble truths that will help ground the Historical
Animal who is slowly descending into the quagmire of fleeting time.
Perhaps, after all, it is for the best that
Wittgenstein did not write much.
(reworked from an essay published 1 June,
2014)
Further Phrontisterion readings around the theme
of ‘becoming’:
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