Esoteric Roman v. Greek Ranting (was Philosophers)

[Tichy]

I can't envision a possible world in which Popper is a Marxist, the attack on historicism seems to preculde it. But I don't have any particular rancor about Popper's politics, and I haven't studied them carefully. I've always thought of him as a garden variety liberal. I just think his interpretation of Plato is one-sided.

Popper's best known as a philosopher of science. He coined the idea of 'falsification': that a scientific theory can only be legitimate if it is possible to be falsified (i.e. that it's possible for there to be concrete evidence *against* it).

In terms of his relation to Plato I've always thought of him as the opposite of Leo Strauss. Both point to the manipulative or elitist features of Plato's politics (rule by the 'best', the legitimacy of 'noble lies' told to the people by the leaders if they move society towards the Good, etc.) Strauss lauds these things in a roundabout way: he's a subtle (or subtilizing) reader, and doesn't treat the Republic as a blueprint for a state, but a meditation on politics more generally. Popper straightforwardly attacks them as the seeds of tyranny. I'm not a fan of either of them as readers of Plato.

[noname]

Plato once said that lies infected the soul with evil, and he didn't support the noble lies, as that kind of state was rejected as insufficient (to be fair, Plato rejected all existing states as insufficient.) Also, rule by the best doesn't mean rule by a few or by the rich; it means that those who can comprehend reality and morality best ought to be able to rule. Of course, a few people DO rule modern countries (a few hundred legislatures plus an executive and a supreme/constitutional court rule of states with many millions or even over a billion), and those people tend to be rich. So what I'm saying is, when people criticize Plato, they are really criticizing the world in which we live today, as Plato's philosophy and its ideals (republican government, rule of law, the social contract, etc) have defined the political landscape.

P.S. I called Popper a Marxist because, like Marx, he seems to be upset at the existence of a social contract, or that a state can be guided by an agreement between the government and its people, rather than a monolithic set of ideals as expounded by a single, all-powerful political party. Of course, a single party isn't 100% necessary for Popper, so how Marxist he is is indeed in question, to be fair.

[Tichy]

Right: an earlier version of my post specified how Plato thought of the "best" but I yanked it to not go on too long. Best = morally and intellectually disciplined, motivated by the Good, undesirous of wealth and physical pleasure, and uncorruptible. Oh, and, to *not* want political power.

But Plato is maddeningly ambiguous about lying; in general he comes out utterly opposed to it, but then seems completely willing to have leaders tell followers things that aren't true as long as belief in those things will lead the people towards what is truly good.

If someone criticizes elitist or undemocratic elements in Plato's politics, they're not critiquing present-day political ideals -- according to you, they're just misreading Plato. That's been the nature of our debate. I think it's misreading Plato to take him as straightforwardly advocating modern democratic political ideals. There are things in his dialogues that strongly influence those ideals, but he also says things that seem to advocate top-down, undemocratic governance -- and have influenced thinkers who favor those types of governance.

If what you say is true about Popper, he shares one feature of Marx's view, but not the essential stuff about alienated labor, class conflict, and revolution. And to be fair, Marx considered the one-party 'dictatorship of the proletariat' to be a temporary waypoint on the road to freedom...it's just that no existing or extinct communist state ever seemed to get past it.

Going on too long my specialty...

[noname]

Not to mention that just about every communist state killed millions in purges, gulags, and artificially induced famines.
It's funny that we should be debating this... your location reads Moscow, but it isn't Russia; it's Idaho. Are you at the university there, Tichy?

[Tichy]

Yessir.

[Tichy]

And it's also funny we've gone full circle, from is Plato a "Platonist"? to is Marx a "Marxist"? (Or at least is Marx responsible for Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot? He certainly wouldn't have been happy to find out about them...)

[HoneyBadger]

If this quite fascinating debate ever does get thrown off this thread for being off-topic, you're more than welcome to move it over to my history of the multiverse thread.

My opinion on Socrates is that he simply envisioned the "best" government being one in which he would have a place he would most enjoy.

He was a teacher of morality. One either becomes a teacher of morality by believing that "God" has made you "right"-which was clearly not the case with Socrates, and has it's own set of problems attached to it, or you do by being driven to it by your consciousness because you're able to see the evil around you, compare it to the evil inside yourself, and come to a conclusion that, through reason, and reasonable men, there's got to be a better way.

He didn't want to lead society as a leader, he just wanted to teach the leaders of the society, and turn them into men "who know the good" so they could go forth and lead society in good directions, and make his own life less complicated in the process.

This national vision gave him a place of value and respect in a society where he'd be able to live a life he'd enjoy living, while at the same time, separating him from those aspects of leadership he found undesireable-namely, absolving him from taking the head spot and all the headaches, etc. that would go along with it.

Democracy was a path to the position he desired in the society-as opposed to strictly an end result-because, as a poor mason/soldier/laborer/whatever, he was limited by his position in an arbitrarily classed society, but less so if he were able to drive the vehicle of an established democracy-wherein, we must remember, military service was required-and which he already had done his time.

Socrates was building a nation around himself, to fit himself, in my opinion, thus invoking the old maxim that "everybody wants to rule the world."

(Keeping in mind that he just wanted to rule it in a more abstract way, as part of a greater, and less fallable, governing machine.)

He wanted what he wasn't ever really able to obtain-a comfortable life of less stress and more respect where he could just exist, occasionally advise, and seek happiness, rather than having to fight for ideals he was driven to fight for by both his intellect and reasonability, and his consciousness as a "man who knew the good".

Plato, in the end, was smart enough and perhaps disillusioned enough by the death-and manner of death-of Socrates to understand that, despite all of Socrates' hopes for himself and everyone, and for all his upstanding character and ideals, ultimately the world would not allow such a society to exist within Socrates' lifetime, if ever, thus we come to Plato's concept of a "Utopia".