So Plato has gotten a lot of crap over the last 2500 years for the system he set up in The Republic. Hey, maybe he deserved it. At the same time, I would keep in mind that as far as political systems go, Plato's is actually fairly lenient for his time. I wouldn't ever suggest putting that police state of his into practice, but culturally, Plato is pretty liberal. For example, unlike Aristotle (and most Athenian men at the time, I would assume), Plato viewed men and women as fundamentally equal;* he was a pioneer in feminism (no joke). Plato also bitterly opposes class oppression: in Book I of The Republic, for example, he has Socrates tear apart Thrasymachus (a Sophist) for claiming that justice is a tool used for "the advantage of the stronger," rather than something inherently valuable in-itself. And his rigid class structure (with the guardians, drones, philosopher-kings, etc.) sounds pretty despotic** now, but the Republic probably wouldn't have sounded too bad by ancient standards.
Granted, to the twenty-first century American reader, Plato's Republic sounds horrible. I wouldn't want to live there. At the same time, it's unclear whether Plato actually considered The Republic to be a blueprint for an real government. There's a good argument to be made that Plato really just wrote The Republic to be an extended metaphor for the nature of justice,*** and you'll find strong proponents on either side. But that's another matter entirely. In any case, like Doug said on the first day, theory takes context into account. I think we should do the same for Plato.
Maimonides, though; what's up with that guy.
*Plato's reasoning was that our material bodies don't really matter-that it's the Form of Humanity that matters, and people should focus on human unities, rather than human differences.
**As opposed to Democratic. Plato hated Democracy. So did Aristotle. The mob killed Socrates, yo.
***In addition, some philosophers think that The Republic is actually composed as an extended metaphor designed to show people why politics suck. Forrest Baird will fly into a rage if you mention this, though.
Bridger,
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that The Republic is an extended metaphor. It might read as a less repressive document, then. I do think Plato meant it as a blueprint/mirror for good government.
Bridger,
ReplyDeleteTell me if I'm wrong. Wasn't it Plato who thought each person was a half a person-- that a real person had, in fact, four arms, four legs, etc, etc-- and that the best union was not between man and woman, but between man and man?
...And isn't that kind of sexist?
Hey Caitlin; I'm glad you brought that up. The story you're thinking about is from the Symposium. In that dialogue, Socrates Phaedrus, Erixamachus, the playwright Aristophanes, and a few others are sitting around getting drunk and telling stories, trying to find out the nature of love.
ReplyDeleteIt's important to remember that the events in the Symposium never really took place as Plato describes them. Basically, Plato has Aristophanes tell this absurd creation story, where people used to be round, four-armed beings until they got cut in half by Zeus for challenging the gods, and are forced to wander about, searching for their missing half. Before they got chopped in half, these "double people" were one of three genders: male, female, or androgynous. The males who had been chopped in half went searching for their other male half, and these became the male homosexuals. The females did the same, and became female homosexuals. The androgynous had both male and female parts, and those became the heterosexuals. And you're right; Aristophanes claims that the male-male relationship was the best union, for various reasons.
The point is, Plato clearly meant for that story to be absurd. His language is actually pretty funny (the people were very fat and round, and would roll across the countryside to get where they needed to go. Lol). Essentially, he was getting back at Aristophanes for writing The Clouds (a comedy making fun of Socrates). This also ties into his doctrine of kicking out the poets/writers/artists--he thinks that they tell lies and twist the truth, and he's willing to portray them as being stupid in order to press that point (which says something about Plato, ironically).
Anyway, later in the dialogue, we get to Socrates's speech, where we get Plato's real theory of love. In brief, he defines love as a desire for what you don't have. True love, for Plato, is a desire for the Forms, especially the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.
Of course, that's not to say that Plato or Socrates physically *liked* women; they were bisexual at best. Socrates, though he had a wife, actually frames his "love" account in terms of "boys" rather than "women." That was the culture at the time, I suppose. But the point is, neither one was a sexist--after all, it's the Forms that count, not Matter, and as far as Forms go, men and women participate in the same one, and are equal where it counts.