Many and sundry have been the attempts to “get a handle on”
a difficult idea that seems to have its origins in Plato’s Republic—the idea of the Noble Lie. One recent transmogrification of
that idea was in the 2008 Batman film, The
Dark Knight.
At the
heart of this 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 degrees of mixture; and in our best incarnations we are 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 who, on a much more
personal level, is consumed by his personal struggle to make sure that, 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 his persona as the White Knight of
Justice, and the darkness of his yin overawes the lightness of his 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 over and against 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, 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 people” of the city must
not learn that the 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? 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
political and philosophical earnestness, we who come after are obliged to
construct interpretations that correct other interpretations, because we have
inadvertently created a whole new set of interpretative problems by committing
to read literally, and failing to read metaphorically.
For
example, by committing to a political interpretation of Plato’s Republic, we create an antique Frankenstein
in the person of the great Socrates, thereby “disappearing” this invaluable
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 people 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 of the Franken-Socrates it
has created because he is simply too Hitlerian to retain any “street
credibility” philosophically speaking. This interpretative process is what a sin
against Thinking looks like.
At the end
of the day, with transmogrifying interpretations such as this 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 Holtzweg
succeeds only in creating an anti-Socrates—but then this might have been its
intention all along. And perhaps there is yet some masked man “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 thinking and
interpreting on this question… Quien sabe, Kemosabe?
So how might we make better sense, for example, 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 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. 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,” that 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?
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 any interpretation of Plato to be plausible. He 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,” 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 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
eternal.
The second concept that must remain consistent and valid for
any interpretation of Plato 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 from Socratic thought. A
Platonic Socrates, one might expect, might normally 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 unplatonic 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 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 have said, I may
not be able to find a full-proof definition of Justice, but I 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), 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 his 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.
In The Dance Song, a discourse found in
Part II of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, Nietzsche helps his reader “feel” the nostalgia that permeates
the life lived outside the comforting confines of the foundational myths that
surround us, the myths by means of which we construct our very personal identity,
and without which we are the ultimate Stranger: at once native, and yet oh so
very foreign in this our native land.
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? 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 a utilitarian
calculation.
As a suggestion, though—perhaps we might adopt as
philosophically 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.
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 I 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.
