Plato's Shambling Feet 02
A Suggestion that We Know
“I supposed that I had become wise, and such was my stupidity.” -Justin Martyr, on his love of Plato
Plato has another problem: “what should be” is not.
As the story goes, Plato was the student of Socrates, a noble and virtuous pagan who gave his life willingly in the service of his integrity before the corruption of the government of Athens. Plato took this murder of his teacher very hard and saw in it embodied everything that was wrong with human governance. As a result, he withdrew to the Grove of Academus where (again, as the story goes) he started a school for those who sought a better way. Among the many things that the modern west inherits from this school is the political theory of “The Republic.”
However much you may like it, from its inception the republic is a platonic ideal. It is a dream. It is a fundamental assumption that the problem with man is a lack of education. If only men know what is right, then they will do it. If the men who know what is right rule, things will be right. If we were ruled by a marketplace of ideals, Socrates would still be alive.
But there is an dark underbelly to Plato’s idealism. Corruption and collusion, greed and malice, and all the grime of Athenian realpolitik are not just “wrong” as in “morally abhorrent.” They are “wrong” in the sense that “it doesn’t have to be this way.” This may seem harmless on the surface, but in the end it is the seed of a rank megalomania of man. It ignores the possibility that things are the way they are because that is the way God wills them to be.
Of course, seeking man-centered solutions to “The Problem of Evil” is not uniquely platonic. All philosophies and religions must eventually encounter it. “Who am I?” always awakens the counter question, “What is wrong with me?” Thereafter follows, “How do I fix it?”
But the degenerative assumption is that the evil that we see is beyond of God’s control. Thinking that “what is” is not “what should be” is a small step down from not believing in God at all. It is an inability to accept the creaturely state, propping up as justification the discovery of our mutual mortal wound.
What if “what is” is always exactly “what should be”? What if the ideal is the enemy of the real? What if the dream is the blindfold that blocks out true wisdom?
Plato has another problem: “Maybe.”
The socratic method of dialogue in an ingenious tool for hunting answers on the basis of logic, or “the law of non-contradiction.” By asking the right questions, hypothesizing and testing the results, we wittel down to the truths we can really (almost) know for (mostly) certain. It’s not that this is never useful. It’s only less reliable than it appears. On the one hand, it assumes that man is a logical creature (something very much disputable,) and on the other hand it also speculates that what we believe might be true (because it appears to make sense from our vantage) is therefore true. I am not saying that socratically derived thoughts are all therefore false. I am saying that they are therefore “maybe,” and “maybe” is anything but a firm goad.
As the republican ideal of the west collapses (again,) I’m on the hunt for firm goads, not more platonic dreams.
The “Collector/Preacher,” who reigned in Israel hundreds of years prior to all republican aspirations, “taught the people knowledge” (Ecc. 12:9). Moreover, “he pondered and sought out and set in order many rules” (12:9). Yes, he “sought to find acceptable words…what was upright - words of truth…like goads…like well-driven nails, given by one shepherd” (12:10-11).
Call me crazy, but that doesn’t sound like a fool’s errand. That doesn’t proclaim “might be” speculation. It certainly doesn’t try to make “what isn’t” into something that is. It looks to me like a God-honest (dare we say “inspired”) claim to true philosophy. And, further, he said, “be admonished by these” (12:12).
To grant brilliance to the open, to the initiate knowledge and a framework.
- Solomon, Prv 1:4
To be continued…