Should We Swallow the Script if It Tastes Good?
Aug 28th, 2008 by Micah Tillman | 3 Comments |
My weekly article is up at The Free Liberal.
This time, I’m wondering about propaganda, whether its possible to think while reciting a script, and to what extent it’s okay to feel good about the propaganda you agree with (or which would get people to agree with you).
I think you’re misreading Plato. From The Republic:
“Then what gives the objects of knowledge their truth and the mind the power of knowing is the Form of the Good. It is the cause of knowledge and truth, and you will be right to think of it as being itself known, and yet as being something other than, and even higher than, knowledge and truth. And just as it was right to think of light and sight as being like the sun, but wrong to think of them as being the sun itself, so here again it is right to think of knowledge and truth as being like the Good, but wrong to think of either of them as being the Good, which must be given a still higher place of honor….
“The Good therefore may be said to be the source not only of the intelligibility of the objects of knowledge, but also of their existence and reality; yet it is not itself identical with reality, but is beyond reality, and superior to it in dignity and power. ”
Plato did say that the Good is higher than truth, but I don’t think you can reach the conclusion that Plato would agree with the concept of “noble lies.”
But Plato the godfather of the concept of the noble lie:
See here in Book II of the Republic (with regard to the distinction between kinds of lies). Read through “so turn it to account.”
See here in Book III. Read through 415E a couple pages later.
See here in Book V. Read through “and arrange accordingly.”
Your first example isn’t much. The only reasons he can come up with for lying are “dealing with enemies,” “friends in the fit of madness or delusion who might do harm otherwise,” and “creation of mythology.” The first two seem pretty sensible and we’d probably all agree with them. (As examples: “There are no Jews here” and “Your majesty shouldn’t kill people personally. Give me the gun and let me kill the unbeliever for you, sire.”) But, of course, that third is quite important and not one we can universally assent to.
I had forgotten that, despite banning poets because they are liars, Plato was willing to go quite far to create a new mythology to achieve his purpose. You ever get the impression that Plato had gone quite mad by the time he wrote The Republic? He’s forever contradicting himself. I actually find much value in the rest of Plato’s works (though he was surely far inferior to Aristotle), but I’ve always found The Republic to be worthless philosophy. But you were quite right, of course. After reading his earlier, saner works, it’s easy to forget that he went barking mad and created that insane utopian fantasy.