Placement

So I've finished The Republic, and not a moment too soon; it's something of a slog. Mainly because of its construction as a dialog where all of the other characters seem to serve no real purpose other than to agree with Plato's Socrates. I started to suspect that they were meant to be avatars for the audience; either as a way of getting the audience to agree with the positions that Plato was taking, or as something of a pander, showing them to be as wise as Socrates was.

In any event, the interesting part of the book was seeing out some of its concepts have lasted through the years, like the idea that there is a better, and "more real," reality out there, and that's where the wise seek to focus their attentions. Or the idea that some people are simply better than others, and therefore they should be given leadership for the good of everyone. Although it could be said that the fact that The Republic's disdain for fiction and artistry never seemed to have caught on is also interesting.

I'm not going to say that the basic insight of The Republic, which seems to be that an autocracy of benevolent Philosopher Kings would make the best form of government (and likewise, the philosophical mindset, presided over by pure Reason makes the most just person), has been debunked, but it quickly becomes evident that it would be a difficult system to maintain in practice, even outside of the communal nature of the place. Plato's understanding is that the everyday world that people inhabit is so corrupting that only constant vigilance for any negative influences will prevent it from degrading. Plato's just state would take a phenomenal amount of effort to enact and relies on the best minds being given the best education at the correct times in their lives. There simply isn't enough room for error for the whole thing to be a human enterprise.

Unsung

The country's leader Ramzan Kadyrov told culture minister Musa Dadayev to make its music "conform to the Chechen mentality", said The Moscow Times. Announcing the ban, Dadayev said: "Chechen musical culture has always been diverse in tempo and methodology. We must pass on our cultural heritage to our children: the customs, traditions, our adats [traditional laws], nokhchalla [code of honour] – features of the Chechen character, which includes the entire spectrum of moral and ethical standards of life of the Chechens."
Why Chechnya has banned music that is 'too fast or too slow'

This is one of those things that occurs when I'm reading a book; I start to notice the parallels between that book and real-world events. In The Republic, one of first ideas that Socrates puts forth in the service of creating his ideal state is, effectively, censorship. Bad stories lead to bad character, and so the Guardian class (and presumably everyone else) need to be protected from those stories that do no reflect the world as Socrates thinks that it should be (and in some cases, is). Music is also on the list of things that Plato's Socrates thinks needs to be controlled. "Give me these two modes," says Socrates, "one stern, one pleasant, which will best represent sound courage and moderation in good fortune or in bad." All other music, such as that suitable for dirges, lamentations, relaxation and drinking songs, is to be banned from the State that Socrates and his interlocutors are planning. The goal here is to have music fit for the training of soldiers, but since it also happens to be the only morally upright music, it's all that anyone would be able to access.

So the idea that music carries the moral and ethical standard of a people, and music that does not conform should be restricted or banned is not new. Previously, the whole thing would have simply struck me as silly. And to a degree, it still does; I'm still not convinced that the ideals laid down in The Republic for a just state are to be taken at all seriously. But I expect that Plato meant for them to taken seriously, if not strictly literally. Granted, I haven't finished the book yet, but it seems that Plato is simply taking the Nurture side of the Nature versus Nurture debate to its logical conclusion. If people are shaped by their environments, if one can control the environment, then one can ensure that the people turn out properly. And that's a theme that recurs over and over again in human history.

In Chechnya's case, I suspect that the immediate impact of the new rules will be to make the country a laughingstock. The article in The Week wasn't exactly praising the decision. Whether it has anything approaching the intended effect remains to be seen. Conventional wisdom says that the ability of people to access information from all over the world will bring their efforts to naught; but people said as much about China's ability to control information, and that has mostly turned out to be wrong. So perhaps the Chechens have a shot at it.

Free To Be Free

The reason Plato called his book The Republic is that it's about the care and feeding of a morally upright State more than it is about individual ethics or morality. And Plato's Socrates has a highly-controlled situation in mind. Having made it to the end of Part III, I've been expecting the book to reveal that it's actually parody, given that Plato seems to be laying the groundwork for a stereotypical dystopia.

Interestingly, one of the critiques of the character of Socrates given back in Part I is that he never actually lays out his definitions of things; rather he asks others to define things, and then, if he disapproves, sets out to refute them. This is a criticism that may be made of the book as a whole, at least so far. For instance, I think, given the way that things are shaping up, that Plato is defining a "free" State as one that is free from being controlled by people foreign to it. The flourishing person appears to have little need for other freedoms, Plato's Socrates is adamant that even the music they listen to be subject to approval by the State.

The book may as well have been titled Why Athens Sucks, and it's pretty clear that Plato is pursuing grievances here, and basing a lot of things on the simple idea the he knows better then everyone else. He has, for instance, determined that the gods must be perfectly moral, and so much of Greek mythology, which tends to appear to us as the humanization of the seemingly capricious forces that people have to deal with on a daily basis, would be suppressed as both lies and corrosive to public morality. A public morality that is apparently unable to take hold unless people are scrupulous protected from any hint that bad behavior exists until well into adulthood. Given that the book has promised to explain to us why being Just is inherently better than being Unjust, it seems odd that Plato is apparently convinced that Injustice seduces people with the slightest whisper.

I hadn't really understood how influential Plato was before embarking on this. Now that I'm reading it, however, I can see a number of Platonic ideals that lasted well into history. It's a remarkable thing, how a single work like this managed to shape so much of what came after it, simply by virtue of surviving long enough to become widely-read and influential.

Socrates Among the Thoughtless

I started reading The Republic the other day, and found the first chapter to be quite strange. Most likely because I am otherwise unacquainted with Greek writing. I don't know what I was expecting, but a series of dialogs that made nearly everyone other than Socrates seem like an idiot wasn't it.

But I came to realize that it was merely an unfamiliar way of establishing the premises of what was to come. Rather than simply lay out the initial viewpoint of the book, Plato uses the dialogs between Socrates and those around him to build up a picture. What makes it strange is how agreeable everyone is, for the most part. There's almost no pushback against the ideas that Socrates lays out, even when they seem manifestly at odds with reality as most people understand it to work. For example, when Socrates says that it is generally agreed to be wrong to return a borrowed weapon or to be strictly honest with someone who has become mentally ill, a lot of assumptions are being made there. Yet there is no disagreement, or mention of those assumptions, allowing Socrates to easily stymie the others by driving them to repugnant conclusions.

Of course, if Polemarchus or Glaucon had more thoughtfully argued their cases, that could have easily taken up an entire book right there, and left no room for Socrates to lay out how he feels the Republic of the title should work.

But perhaps more importantly, Socrates' interlocutors illustrate the idea that many people adopt standards of ethics or justice that seem valid to them, but don't really think about them as deeply as, well, someone like Socrates does. For my own part, I don't argue with people like Socrates on an ad-hoc basis; I beg a day or two to consider the viewpoint that I plan to bring to the discussion; there is no surer way to lose a debate than to be convinced to undertake one while unprepared, and I don't think as well on my feet as I would like.

In the end, though, it was an interesting, if somewhat obtuse, way to set things up. The dialogs didn't do as good a job of laying out the initial premises as a more straightforward explanation would have, but I can see why it had been done that way; it reads much more like a play, and I could see it being staged for an audience in lieu of people reading the text for themselves, given that mass production of books was still centuries away.

This far, I'm not in agreement with most of what Socrates/Plato are putting forward, but that's likely due to a difference in overall world view. But it's interesting reading thus far.