Republic of Thought

Plato: Republic by Robin Waterfield
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was my second dip, and this time I swam from one end to the other and read almost all of Waterfield's notes. There are things to be said about Plato and about Waterfield as a translator and commentator. Plato first.

The republic is an empire of thought. Plato knows that it is a mere thought experiment and that it will never take. That said "Ideas have consequences" and Plato certainly tries to make his mark on political, philosophical, and theological policy. What is refreshing about this ancient air that blows off every page is that Plato's goal is to convince that in order to have an orderly civil order laws and behavior must be grounded in the absolute or what he calls "the Form of the Good." In the argument between the Christian and the secularist Plato is firmly in the camp of the Christian. He knows that a robust morality cannot be brewed from the grounds of "enlightened self-interest."  Enlightened self-interest is like the shifting shadows on the "cave" wall - just "shadows of morality" (517.d). There must be an absolute standard to even distinguish good and evil, much less be able to legislate it for a community. Today we expect morality to spontaneously generate apart from moral authority. Plato argued that the Form of the Good not only casts light for the mind's eye to see all of reality but it was the source of all reality and thus everything good. It is even the source of 2 + 2 = 4, so that it would actually be immoral to teach that 2 + 2 = 5. We can't have morality on any other terms but a knowledge of God, whom he called the One, and his true Ideas. Plato wrote:

"It isn't only the known-ness of the things we know which is conferred upon them by goodness, but also their reaity and their being .... It's my opinion that the last thing to be seen -- and it isn't easy to see either--in the realm of knowledge is goodness; and the sight of the character of goodness leads one to deduce that it is responsible for everything that is right and fine, whatever the circumstances, and that in the visible realm it is the progenitor of light and of the source of light, and in the intelligible realm it is the source and provider of truth and knowledge. And I also think that the sight of it is a prerequisite for intelligent conduct either of one's own private affairs or of public business" (509b, 517c).

It's true that Plato was an elitist, dividing society into the castes of guardians, who are philosopher kings, auxiliaries, who oversee the military, and workers who farm, build, buy, and sell. He believed that the guardians must be given an education in what T. S. Eliot called the "permanent things:

"Imagine someone who really lacks the ability to recognize any and every real thing and has no paradigm to shed light for the mind's eye. He has nothing absolutely authentic to contemplate ... and use as a reference-point whenever he needs to, and gain a completely accurate picture of, before establishing human norms of right, morality, and goodness (if establishing is what is required), and before guarding and protecting the norms that have already been established."

This means that those who govern need an absolute standard or transcendent basis for law. Laws must transcend individuals if they are to bind all individuals and thus whole communities. Are we the first civilization, where most of the elites think we can dispence with the transcendent and still have a moral order? Every time someone declares someone else in the wrong he assumes something binds them both. Where does he get this moral authority over other people?

Plato has his problems as well. He would like for the government of the philosopher kings to take over the role of the family and all children to call older men father so that the family fades into the larger community. The Philosophers are to arrange marriages of the best and brightest of both classes in order to improve the race and men are to share the women and have multiple marriages. The Philosophers are to tell everyone the noble lie that some are made of gold and meant to govern, while others are silver, and the rest are copper and iron and meant for manual labor. But all are rational enough to accept this as corresponding to their nature and thus good for them. Plato would abolish private property and personal possessions among the guardians in order to get rid of envy and ambition. The workers are allowed to own and possess and thus they might not be jealous of the guardians unless they were rational and wanted to rule for the right reasons. These could be recognized and moved up to the philosopher class and others could be demoted if they weren't interested in philosophy.

From a Christian point of view Plato is still playing with the "shadows of morality" since he doesn't know God's special revelation, but he does better than most with general revelation. It's not until we read the best of the ancient world that we realize what an effect Christianity has had on the West and just how much of our morality that we take for granted as rational, such as marital fidelity and equality of women and children, was actually revealed by the God of the Bible.

Now on to our translator Robin Waterfield. Waterfield doesn't go with the traditional translation of "eidos" as "form" but uses "type" instead. For some reason modern translators can't leave well enough alone and go for worse. The type of the good doesn't have the same force as the "form" of the good. On top of this Waterfield is a materialist who can't understand Plato at points.

Plato apparantly stands out in Greece for believing in the minds immortality. He argues that a things disease always destroys it like when rust reduces metal to dust. The mind must be immortal however because its disease, which is immorality, doesn't destroy it. In fact most, like an early character named Thrasymachus, become clever and vivacious in their promotion of immorality. Waterfield calls Plato's argument circular and here's why:

"There is no reason to suppose that physical death and psychic death are not identical, or that what destroys bodies does not also destroy minds, unless one already believes that the mind is different in substance from the body."

If the mind is reducible to the brain, which is grey matter and chemicals, then explain self-consciousness. Computers aren't self-conscious. If all we have is nerves and synapsis then how are we able to tell ourselves how and what to think? Explain the longing for transcendent meaning in this bag of chemicals that we call man. There's no reason to suppose that our minds die when our brain function stops unless one already "believes" that the mind is reducible to the brain.

In another place Plato says, "It's goodness which gives the things we know their truth and makes it possible for people to have knowledge." Waterfield says, "what is the meaning of the assertion that goodness is responsible for truth and knowledge? (Truth means little ore than just knowability here) .... It cannot be merely that to know a thing is to know in what way it is good, because Plato envisages knowable types of immorality and evil." Why can't Plato be saying that knowledge of the good is the source of our knowledge of all things and even our knowledge of bad things because the bad things are a perversion of the formerly good thing. Knowledge of the good means we know 2 + 2 = 4, and we know that it would actually be immoral to teach that 2 + 2 = 5.

That said Waterman's translation is a good read and his notes are certainly more than worthwhile.




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