(Plato’s Politeia is a complex, multidimensional work, covering metaphysics and the philosophy of science, ethics, with its focus on the concept of justice, and, generally speaking, the whole spectrum of philosophical contemplation, political philosophy and the Platonic idea of a perfect Politeia, being only one part of it.
The present entry makes no effort to make an exhaustive study of this work as no such critical endeavor has ever been the purpose, even in part only, of my undertaking. What I am discussing here, are just a few glimpses of my reading of Plato, with a relevance, in this case, to my exposition of the “totalitarian ideal.”)
Plato does not seem to like any of the existing political systems of the world. The authoritarian monarchy is, according to him, probably the best of them all, but, alas, the potentates do not quite measure up to the task of governing. The oligarchy pitches the wealthy few against the poor many, creating a disharmony that ruins any chances of good government. Democracy yields the power to the opportunistic demagogues, whose bid to governing depends on their cynical skill to manipulate the crowds.
The best bet for him is to vest the political power in the idealized figure of the philosopher-king (or, as I am calling him, philosopher-statesman). The next best thing, should their kind be predictably in short supply, is to vest all power in the State. Let us be reminded, however, that our philosopher-statesman, (should one be either luckily found, or propitiously bred), never pursues his “personal” interest in governing, that would be different from the interest of the State. (With this in mind, we may aptly joke that a true statesman is indeed a dedicated “State’s man,” and Plato would surely agree with this.)
Philosopher-statesman is thus a dedicated servant of the State and personal enrichment registers zero on his list of priorities, as money and luxuries mean nothing to him. Such is the essence of the “totalitarian ideal.”
…How many times do I have to repeat in different sections that Plato was a consummate totalitarian, and probably a fascist, that is, he had become one having been disappointed in the practicality of finding his ideal “philosopher-statesman.” That the latter is a sine qua non of perfect government follows directly from the following passage in his Politeia: “Unless philosophers bear kingly rule in cities, or those who are now called kings and princes become genuine and adequate philosophers, and political power and philosophy are brought together… there will be no respite from evil for cities.” In the absence of a perfect totalitarian leader, the fascist State becomes an imperfect substitute. Instead of being perfectly governed from above, it creates and controls the government, the imperfect leader, as a necessary state symbol, included.
...There I go again, as always, refusing to comply with the standard usage of the word “totalitarian,” handily relegated to the safe and secure area of indignant condemnation, reserved for the usual-suspect regimes of Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler, plus, in a limited sense, of Mao, although the mysterious idiosyncrasies of the Chinese national psychology make the subject rather difficult to fathom. Instead, I am employing the word totalitarian in a more philosophical, meaningful sense, just as Giovanni Gentile used it, and to him, Gentile, should go the credit for the first use, and therefore, his ought to be the definitive interpretation with which I am now choosing to stay, and operate.
Plato’s Politeia is an open and shut case of social engineering, a mental, rather than a test-tube creation of a controlled society. “Totalitarian,” in my understanding, means not only the act, or product, of such social engineering, but an enthusiastic public acceptance of this product, that is, of the socially engineered state. Whereas the word State evokes negative emotions, sarcasm, and cynicism, or, at best, neutral indifference from the non-totalitarian individual, the totalitarian mindset embraces “my State,” habitually referring to it as “our State.” Incidentally, I have counted thirty-four occurrences of “our State” in the English translation of Politeia. I do admit though that the enthusiasm exhibited by the creator of Plato’s State should not count for much without a parallel enthusiasm of the public, but these two are psychologically linked: as we know, political enthusiasm is an exceedingly contagious public affliction!
In other words, in the absence of an appreciative public, inhabiting Plato’s new-born, and still uninhabited, Politeia, its happy creator (I am deliberately withholding the name of Socrates, as Plato’s Politeia is Plato’s own creation, rather than of Socrates, to whom he attributes it), and his acquiescent listening public are the totality of the public, by default.
An interesting conversation about “citizen happiness” takes place at the start of Book IV. Adeimantus asks “Socrates” how the public can possibly not be miserable, with no money to buy things they might like, and all those pleasures and luxuries which are supposed to constitute a person’s happiness. Politeia’s creator has a ready answer: citizen happiness comes from contributing to the happiness of the State(!) The totalitarian ideal has never been better expressed!
Plato’s Politeia has an overwhelming body of supporting evidence to confirm it as Plato’s definitive vision of an ideal totalitarian society: All for one (meaning the State) and one (meaning the State) for all. There is no need to write a comprehensive essay here, especially, since this book will be under further discussion in other sections. Only a few other important points therefore will be made here, ostensibly omitting from any further consideration the temptingly inviting image of the philosopher-king, which incidentally was an ironic soubriquet of Giovanni Gentile, but may be already too self-evident and even superfluous for the purposes of this discussion.
The most intriguing subject that remains, and already invites a serious controversy, is about censorship.
As we are reading Plato’s Politeia, we realize that the author’s ideal is by no means in the creation of a free society, built on purely utilitarian principles, and, as we have been so used to in modern Western societies, morally non-judgmental. On the contrary, the objective of Plato’s social engineering is a virtuous State. It shall not allow the bad to coexist with the good, and this “unnatural selection” becomes the function of the censors. Few people would disagree with me that censorship is a bulwark of totalitarianism (again, the difference between authoritarian censorship, which serves the narrow political interests of the ruling clique, and totalitarian censorship, which is alleged, and, in fact, philosophically designed, to serve the best interests of the society as a whole, is in the quantity and the quality of public acceptance), and so, here is Plato the Censor:
“Then the first thing will be to establish a censorship of the writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of fiction which is good and reject the bad and we will desire mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorized ones only. Let them fashion the mind with such tales even more fondly than they mould the body with their hands; but most of those that are now in use must be discarded." (Book II.)”
Ironically, among those banned mischief-makers, in Plato’s Politeia, are the great giants Homer and Hesiod, followed into the darkness of the Verboten Zone by practically all other foremost partakers of the greatness of the Greek creative genius:
“But shall our superintendence go no further, and are the poets only to be required to express the image of the good in their works, on pain if they do anything else of expulsion from our State? Or is the same to be extended to other artists, and are they also to be prohibited from exhibiting the opposite forms of vice and intemperance and meanness and indecency in sculpture and the other creative arts; and is he who cannot conform to this rule to be prevented from practicing his art in our State, lest our citizens be corrupted by him? Let our artists be those who are gifted to discern the true nature of the beautiful and graceful; then will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid fair sights and sounds, and receive the good in everything; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, shall flow into the eye and ear, like a health-giving breeze from a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul from earliest years into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of reason.”
This “well-meaning” rationale for censorship is, incidentally, deceptively close to my own rationale for the “life-saving diet.” (See that eponymous entry in the Sensus Communis cluster, posted on this blog on January 16, 2011.) I guess, the standards of distinguishing arts from pornography, or morality from immorality, have by now long changed toward much greater tolerance, and it may well seem that Plato’s prejudice against immorality is just as strong as mine, provided the stipulation of the two-plus millennia of changing attitudes between us. Should my predisposition for censorship brand me as a totalitarian-leaning socialist, so be it. But there is an important difference between mine and Plato’s prudishness with regard to the obscene. Homer, Hesiod, and even Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (all banned in Plato’s Politeia, but for different reasons) have all indulged in varying degrees of obscenity (considering what Kronos did to his father Uranus, or Odysseus to the traitor Melanthios, for instance, just imagine what Plato would have said about the excesses of indecency in our Bible!!!), but their historical, aesthetic, and overall cultural value, as well as the distinct philosophical content of their masterpieces, elevates their alleged “obscenity” far above the muddy waters of offensive, in-your-face immorality, which in the past hundred years or so has become synonymous with “social freedom.” After all there is a world of difference between the refined frivolity of the elite and the lewd profanity of the mass culture. The Russian genius Pushkin, in Gavriiliada, or the artist Konstantin Somov, in Le Livre de la Marquise, provide examples of the former, whereas the pornographic orgy of the modern-day Western pop culture (and the post-Soviet Russian “culture” is by no means free from its hideous excesses) represents the latter. It is one thing to indulge in some measure of... well, cultured elitist frivolity, à la Petronius, Apuleius, Rabelais, et alii, but quite another to bring the culture down to the level of cheap circus, with no redeeming artistic value.
But there is yet an additional profound difference between my fairly modest form of indecency censorship, and Plato’s wholesale embargo on independent thinking. Whereas my life-saving diet is a protest against the intentional and wicked corruption of society for corruption’s sake, Plato’s restrictions, as judged by his prohibitions of the great Greek tragedians, are in pursuit of thought control, lest the minds of the youth be swayed by some unauthorized ideas of free-thinking geniuses.
So, here is a powerful repudiation of Plato’s totalitarian ideal, namely, its outright rejection in principle of any kind of creative, or independent thinking, particularly in the broad field of the humanities, which does not explicitly submit its body and soul ad majorem civitatis gloriam. And, inasmuch as I realize the necessity, in a totalitarian state, to resist not only the insidious inroads of aggressive immorality, but all independent political thinking as such, to that extent I remain a firm opponent of the totalitarian paradise, even if some of its features look exceedingly appealing to me, considering the alternative.
Apparently, the power of persuasion, on which Giovanni Gentile had idealistically counted, in his apologia of the fascist state, and which I would have much preferred to be practiced in the Soviet State of my young years, instead of its crude, and eventually self-destructive, ideological public pressure and its pathetic, silly propaganda is not considered sufficient in keeping the public under the State’s kindly rule, just as the case is with all experiments with European Christian-communist polities in America, which so far have all failed.
Perhaps, Plato is wise enough to recognize the impracticality of anything less restrictive and coercive than his State, which only serves to demonstrate again how the social engineer’s prejudice, lying at the heart of his creation, against all independent thinking sours his social broth, not even at the actual birth of the ideal State, but at its very conception.
The present entry makes no effort to make an exhaustive study of this work as no such critical endeavor has ever been the purpose, even in part only, of my undertaking. What I am discussing here, are just a few glimpses of my reading of Plato, with a relevance, in this case, to my exposition of the “totalitarian ideal.”)
Plato does not seem to like any of the existing political systems of the world. The authoritarian monarchy is, according to him, probably the best of them all, but, alas, the potentates do not quite measure up to the task of governing. The oligarchy pitches the wealthy few against the poor many, creating a disharmony that ruins any chances of good government. Democracy yields the power to the opportunistic demagogues, whose bid to governing depends on their cynical skill to manipulate the crowds.
The best bet for him is to vest the political power in the idealized figure of the philosopher-king (or, as I am calling him, philosopher-statesman). The next best thing, should their kind be predictably in short supply, is to vest all power in the State. Let us be reminded, however, that our philosopher-statesman, (should one be either luckily found, or propitiously bred), never pursues his “personal” interest in governing, that would be different from the interest of the State. (With this in mind, we may aptly joke that a true statesman is indeed a dedicated “State’s man,” and Plato would surely agree with this.)
Philosopher-statesman is thus a dedicated servant of the State and personal enrichment registers zero on his list of priorities, as money and luxuries mean nothing to him. Such is the essence of the “totalitarian ideal.”
…How many times do I have to repeat in different sections that Plato was a consummate totalitarian, and probably a fascist, that is, he had become one having been disappointed in the practicality of finding his ideal “philosopher-statesman.” That the latter is a sine qua non of perfect government follows directly from the following passage in his Politeia: “Unless philosophers bear kingly rule in cities, or those who are now called kings and princes become genuine and adequate philosophers, and political power and philosophy are brought together… there will be no respite from evil for cities.” In the absence of a perfect totalitarian leader, the fascist State becomes an imperfect substitute. Instead of being perfectly governed from above, it creates and controls the government, the imperfect leader, as a necessary state symbol, included.
...There I go again, as always, refusing to comply with the standard usage of the word “totalitarian,” handily relegated to the safe and secure area of indignant condemnation, reserved for the usual-suspect regimes of Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler, plus, in a limited sense, of Mao, although the mysterious idiosyncrasies of the Chinese national psychology make the subject rather difficult to fathom. Instead, I am employing the word totalitarian in a more philosophical, meaningful sense, just as Giovanni Gentile used it, and to him, Gentile, should go the credit for the first use, and therefore, his ought to be the definitive interpretation with which I am now choosing to stay, and operate.
Plato’s Politeia is an open and shut case of social engineering, a mental, rather than a test-tube creation of a controlled society. “Totalitarian,” in my understanding, means not only the act, or product, of such social engineering, but an enthusiastic public acceptance of this product, that is, of the socially engineered state. Whereas the word State evokes negative emotions, sarcasm, and cynicism, or, at best, neutral indifference from the non-totalitarian individual, the totalitarian mindset embraces “my State,” habitually referring to it as “our State.” Incidentally, I have counted thirty-four occurrences of “our State” in the English translation of Politeia. I do admit though that the enthusiasm exhibited by the creator of Plato’s State should not count for much without a parallel enthusiasm of the public, but these two are psychologically linked: as we know, political enthusiasm is an exceedingly contagious public affliction!
In other words, in the absence of an appreciative public, inhabiting Plato’s new-born, and still uninhabited, Politeia, its happy creator (I am deliberately withholding the name of Socrates, as Plato’s Politeia is Plato’s own creation, rather than of Socrates, to whom he attributes it), and his acquiescent listening public are the totality of the public, by default.
An interesting conversation about “citizen happiness” takes place at the start of Book IV. Adeimantus asks “Socrates” how the public can possibly not be miserable, with no money to buy things they might like, and all those pleasures and luxuries which are supposed to constitute a person’s happiness. Politeia’s creator has a ready answer: citizen happiness comes from contributing to the happiness of the State(!) The totalitarian ideal has never been better expressed!
Plato’s Politeia has an overwhelming body of supporting evidence to confirm it as Plato’s definitive vision of an ideal totalitarian society: All for one (meaning the State) and one (meaning the State) for all. There is no need to write a comprehensive essay here, especially, since this book will be under further discussion in other sections. Only a few other important points therefore will be made here, ostensibly omitting from any further consideration the temptingly inviting image of the philosopher-king, which incidentally was an ironic soubriquet of Giovanni Gentile, but may be already too self-evident and even superfluous for the purposes of this discussion.
The most intriguing subject that remains, and already invites a serious controversy, is about censorship.
As we are reading Plato’s Politeia, we realize that the author’s ideal is by no means in the creation of a free society, built on purely utilitarian principles, and, as we have been so used to in modern Western societies, morally non-judgmental. On the contrary, the objective of Plato’s social engineering is a virtuous State. It shall not allow the bad to coexist with the good, and this “unnatural selection” becomes the function of the censors. Few people would disagree with me that censorship is a bulwark of totalitarianism (again, the difference between authoritarian censorship, which serves the narrow political interests of the ruling clique, and totalitarian censorship, which is alleged, and, in fact, philosophically designed, to serve the best interests of the society as a whole, is in the quantity and the quality of public acceptance), and so, here is Plato the Censor:
“Then the first thing will be to establish a censorship of the writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of fiction which is good and reject the bad and we will desire mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorized ones only. Let them fashion the mind with such tales even more fondly than they mould the body with their hands; but most of those that are now in use must be discarded." (Book II.)”
Ironically, among those banned mischief-makers, in Plato’s Politeia, are the great giants Homer and Hesiod, followed into the darkness of the Verboten Zone by practically all other foremost partakers of the greatness of the Greek creative genius:
“But shall our superintendence go no further, and are the poets only to be required to express the image of the good in their works, on pain if they do anything else of expulsion from our State? Or is the same to be extended to other artists, and are they also to be prohibited from exhibiting the opposite forms of vice and intemperance and meanness and indecency in sculpture and the other creative arts; and is he who cannot conform to this rule to be prevented from practicing his art in our State, lest our citizens be corrupted by him? Let our artists be those who are gifted to discern the true nature of the beautiful and graceful; then will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid fair sights and sounds, and receive the good in everything; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, shall flow into the eye and ear, like a health-giving breeze from a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul from earliest years into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of reason.”
This “well-meaning” rationale for censorship is, incidentally, deceptively close to my own rationale for the “life-saving diet.” (See that eponymous entry in the Sensus Communis cluster, posted on this blog on January 16, 2011.) I guess, the standards of distinguishing arts from pornography, or morality from immorality, have by now long changed toward much greater tolerance, and it may well seem that Plato’s prejudice against immorality is just as strong as mine, provided the stipulation of the two-plus millennia of changing attitudes between us. Should my predisposition for censorship brand me as a totalitarian-leaning socialist, so be it. But there is an important difference between mine and Plato’s prudishness with regard to the obscene. Homer, Hesiod, and even Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (all banned in Plato’s Politeia, but for different reasons) have all indulged in varying degrees of obscenity (considering what Kronos did to his father Uranus, or Odysseus to the traitor Melanthios, for instance, just imagine what Plato would have said about the excesses of indecency in our Bible!!!), but their historical, aesthetic, and overall cultural value, as well as the distinct philosophical content of their masterpieces, elevates their alleged “obscenity” far above the muddy waters of offensive, in-your-face immorality, which in the past hundred years or so has become synonymous with “social freedom.” After all there is a world of difference between the refined frivolity of the elite and the lewd profanity of the mass culture. The Russian genius Pushkin, in Gavriiliada, or the artist Konstantin Somov, in Le Livre de la Marquise, provide examples of the former, whereas the pornographic orgy of the modern-day Western pop culture (and the post-Soviet Russian “culture” is by no means free from its hideous excesses) represents the latter. It is one thing to indulge in some measure of... well, cultured elitist frivolity, à la Petronius, Apuleius, Rabelais, et alii, but quite another to bring the culture down to the level of cheap circus, with no redeeming artistic value.
But there is yet an additional profound difference between my fairly modest form of indecency censorship, and Plato’s wholesale embargo on independent thinking. Whereas my life-saving diet is a protest against the intentional and wicked corruption of society for corruption’s sake, Plato’s restrictions, as judged by his prohibitions of the great Greek tragedians, are in pursuit of thought control, lest the minds of the youth be swayed by some unauthorized ideas of free-thinking geniuses.
So, here is a powerful repudiation of Plato’s totalitarian ideal, namely, its outright rejection in principle of any kind of creative, or independent thinking, particularly in the broad field of the humanities, which does not explicitly submit its body and soul ad majorem civitatis gloriam. And, inasmuch as I realize the necessity, in a totalitarian state, to resist not only the insidious inroads of aggressive immorality, but all independent political thinking as such, to that extent I remain a firm opponent of the totalitarian paradise, even if some of its features look exceedingly appealing to me, considering the alternative.
Apparently, the power of persuasion, on which Giovanni Gentile had idealistically counted, in his apologia of the fascist state, and which I would have much preferred to be practiced in the Soviet State of my young years, instead of its crude, and eventually self-destructive, ideological public pressure and its pathetic, silly propaganda is not considered sufficient in keeping the public under the State’s kindly rule, just as the case is with all experiments with European Christian-communist polities in America, which so far have all failed.
Perhaps, Plato is wise enough to recognize the impracticality of anything less restrictive and coercive than his State, which only serves to demonstrate again how the social engineer’s prejudice, lying at the heart of his creation, against all independent thinking sours his social broth, not even at the actual birth of the ideal State, but at its very conception.
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