Letters to the Editor
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Elitists of all stripes can appropriate Plato
While Blackburn persuasively argues that the perverse idealism of the neocons has roots in Plato's Republic, was I the only Democrat following the 2004 elections marvelling at the stupidity of 51% of the electorate and implicitly pining for an era of the philosopher kings, who ruled benevolently but resolutely over the dimwitted masses?
The point is that we're all tempted by the idealism of The Republic. Blackburn's right: Aristotle's proto-pragmatism is too boring for us, conservative or liberal.
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Protagoras lives!
Great piece, Mr. Koppelman; the neocons certainly cribbed some from Plato to give themselves a fig leaf for their agenda. As for whether any Greek thinkers offered much for Democrats...
I'm afraid none of them were what we'd call good liberal Democrats.... I think that if you want to keep your feet on the ground, then Aristotle is the famous antidote to Plato.
What about the Sophists? For all of their demonizing at the hands of Plato, I think the Sophists offer views that are more suited to liberal attitudes -- that virtue can be taught, for example, and their belief in the subjectivity of truth surely necessitated tolerance for diversity of opinion (versus pursuing a One Truth[tm] model that is suited for neocons, reactionaries, and totalitarians everywhere).
Sophists' mastery of and understanding of rhetoric is something we're sorely lacking in today's America -- for all the influence of mass media, public relations, propaganda, and advertising in our daily lives, there really is very little clear awareness of rhetoric's influence and power, which makes people more, and not less vulnerable to it.
Of all of the classical liberal arts, poor Rhetoric is barely taught anymore, which I think is a loss for any free society -- clearly it was a valued liberal art for centuries. Ancient Greece's democracy thrived in the time of the Sophists, and their professional teaching certainly had to help that democracy grow, by enhancing people's powers of persuasion. The power to persuade is an important power; without persuasion, what are you left with? The brutality of force, and the duplicity of fraud.
My sense is that no Sophist would've found the GOP's ham-handed and hasty deceptions terribly convincing in the march to war, and would probably have been able to muster mighty rhetorical rebuttals to it.
Today, the most propagandized people think they're immune to it, paradoxically enough, and even the Platonic wannabes heading the country almost seem to believe their own lies.
It's unfortunate that the lion's share of knowledge of the Sophists comes by way of their biggest enemy, Plato, akin to asking Newt Gingrich to characterize liberalism for you.
Bring back the Sophists! Plato is so last century. ;)
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Re: Elitists of All Stripes Can Appropriate Plato
Jordon, you're NOT the only Democrat to be so appalled by the last few major election cycles that you'd find yourself sympathizing with the anti-democratic tenets of Plato (and of Aristotle too, according to my college philosophy teachers). However, when I find myself thinking that the average American is too illiterate and ill-informed to be trusted with a ballot, I generally remember that the citizens of other Western countries seem to make better civic choices than many of us do. I attribute this to the fact that their election systems have not been befouled as ours as has been by big business and the corporate media. Which ultimately contradicts the idealistic notions of Plato and Aristotle, by demonstrating that, in reality, government by the elite classes generally results in corruption of the entire political process.
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Look at the Beam in your own eye...
Alright, so let's assume that the interviewer is correct and neo-cons/Bushies/Republicans love the idea of an elite ruling over the uninformed masses.
So which group is it that thinks the judiciary should decide that evolving standards of decency means gay marriage and, for that matter, abortion? And that relying on popular votes on the subject is wrong because you shouldn't legislate on things that are 'so obviously' (to the informed) civil rights?
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I was under the impression that Aristotle
is better known for what he got wrong than what he got right. Calling him a "hard-headed man of science" is pretty generous.
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That's a strawman argument, Aberman
No Democrat I'm aware of is looking to justify Lawrence v. Texas or Roe v. Wade on the basis of the Platonic theories of governance. One the contrary, the idea that individuals have rights that governments may not abrogate derives from Enlightenment philosophy, which Plato would probably find quite foreign and perhaps objectionable. The opposition to neocon distortions of Platonic philosophy is that they reject some of the most fundamental aspects of his philosophy, but Plato's ideas still make a bad model for the republic. Nice try.
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This is hardly news...
Anyone familiar with the Straussian roots of the NeoCon movement knows the importance of The Republic in their Platonian fantasia.
It is just a damn shame that this story has been out there for almost two decades...and it is finally turning up in the fiction of Michael Palmer, medical thriller hack, before the political press picks it up.
Nice work, but twenty years too late.
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Plato's Republic, and its basis Agape, a bad model ...
Not according to Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
Whether or not agape and the pursuit of happiness make room for abortion, they are the bases for the Declaration of Indepenence and the Constitution.
Their authors wisely steered clear of Aristotelian existentialism and Sophistry's abandonment of reason in deference to agreements of least resistence and in lowest common denomonators. Comparing those two, at least Aristotle continued to pursue the OneTruth as labled above.
Leo Traus, the protoge of Carl Scmittt, himself the Crown Jurist of Hitler's unitary executive arguments ...
It doesn't stop there ... I am sure every presidential candidate has a Republic in mind.
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2003/3011profile_strauss.html
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By the way, whatever happened to Plato's Retreat?
Based on my own academic experience, I'd say that most of the confusion surrounding the philosophy of Plato has to do with the concept known as the "Platonic Relationship."
As I recall, my college roomate fancied a certain coed, and after several dates, she told him that she would continue to see him, but that their relationship could only be "Platonic" from that point on.
Since my roomate's philosophy professor had stated that Plato, Socrates, and most of the other Greek philosophers enjoyed anal sex, one can well imagine my roomate's delight upon hearing that the girl of his dreams insisted on a relationship based on the Platonic model.
And as one can also well imagine, their next date was a total disaster. My poor, confused roomate. I'm afraid that this incident turned him, not just against Western philosophy, but against the whole Greek race, as well.