"How Do We Make Sure Everyone Is Persuadable Without Being Totalitarian?"
Inspired by an "Other Life" Discussion on The Republic by Plato. Section I.3 of II.1 ("Coming to Terms with Childhood"). Considering "Plato's Challenge."
Similar to the question of “How does anyone leave Plato’s Cave on their own?” and “How might people be Children?” another question arises that gets at the same problem but from a different angle, and it arises at the very start of The Republic, as was brought to my attention by Justin Murphy. I’ve had the pleasure of being part of the Other Life community since 2019, and I’ve always been impressed with Justin Murphy’s work, leadership, and vision. Starting in 2023, Mr. Murphy began organizing regular readings of the Great Books, which I’ve had the pleasure of attending. On October 9th, we discussed Plato’s Republic, and Mr. Murphy drew attention to the fascinating start of the book where Socrates and Glaucon are ‘[going] down to the Piraeus […] with Glaucon […] to pray to the goddess.’¹² Suddenly the slave boy of Polemarchus grabs the cloak of Socrates and orders him to wait for Polemarchus; they do and Polemarchus acknowledges that Socrates and Glaucon are in a hurry ‘to get away to town,’ but then basically says they have no choice but to stay because Polemarchus and his men are stronger than them (‘either prove stronger than these men or stay here’).¹³ It’s a strange way to start the dialogue, and I think Mr. Murphy is right to draw attention to it, for it might be a way to frame everything that follows. Socrates replies to Polemarchus that there might be ‘one other possibility […] our persuading you that you must let us go.’¹⁴ And Polemarchus replies with an answer that might help us understand the whole point of Plato’s Republic:
‘Could you really persuade […] if we don’t listen?’¹⁵
This is a staggering reply, for it suggests that all of philosophy is helpless if we don’t care. And this logic applies just as well to democracy, reasoning, and conversation in general, suggesting how powerless ideas and philosophy ultimately are (while at the same time seeming incredibly powerful, considering the warnings of Thomas Sowell and Paul Johnson on “The Intellectual Class”). Glaucon acknowledges there is nothing they can do if Polemarchus won’t listen, and Polemarchus tells them to ‘think it over, bearing in mind we won’t listen,’ as if he is presenting the ultimate, undefeatable argument.¹⁶ But what’s there to think about? Philosophy is powerless. Done. End of story. But then quickly Adeimantus brings up how ‘at sunset there will be a torch race on horseback for the goddess’ and makes it seem like Socrates and Glaucon are being given a great invitation, for which they accept.¹⁷ Gratefully? That’s left ambiguous, but what is the point of this starting episode if ultimately Socrates and Glaucon are going to so quickly move on? I think it’s to immediately highlight that philosophy is weak, which we should keep in mind if we see in The Republic a hard totalitarian regime, as suggested by Karl Popper. Indeed, there is an argument to be made that Plato if offering a nightmarish vision, but what if instead Plato is helping us think through a different question, mainly “What can we do if people refuse to be persuadable?” Well, nothing, so we find ourselves faced with a question that The Republic might exist to address:
“How do we make sure that people are always persuadable?”
The world today seems filled with illiberalism that cannot be reasoned with, people who are certain they are right, and so there is nothing to discuss. Belonging Again (Part I) discussed regularly the trouble with “the banality of evil” and “closed mindedness,” as it also discussed the trouble with those who are “rebelling against the system” in the name of justice, freedom, etc. Once people become like this, what can philosophy do? Nothing, perhaps — the Owl of Minerva can fly off. Indeed, looking around, what can philosophy say? It often feels like it can’t do anything, and perhaps what Plato is suggesting is that once the world becomes unreasonable and illiberal, it’s too late. The game is over. If that’s true though, can we really so quickly condemn the “totalitarianism” of The Republic? Perhaps the issue is just that Plato takes the problem more seriously than we do…more of a realist…
Once a people become unpersuadable and closed to philosophical inquiry, we seem doomed. Can we really say that Plato is oppressive to work to create a Republic where it’s impossible for people to become unpersuadable? Would justice have us do things any other way, given that it seems to be “too late” once people become unpersuadable? Westerns may speak of freedom and wanting to defend it, but are we so sure of freedom if it means people use it to become Fascists, radicals, terrorists…? We might continue to verbally support freedom when directly asked, but bit by bit we might start supporting the removal of a little freedom here, a little freedom there, and step by step we might approach Plato’s vision in the name of justice. And please note this isn’t necessarily bad; after all, as Belonging Again (Part I) discusses, it is precisely in the name of values and justice that we can work against the conditions that make “belonging” and society possible. How else should we act? This suggests “The Value Circle” and “The Conflict of Society,” central notions that pointed out “the essential incompleteness of society” (Gödel-esq), and perhaps what we see in Plato is an effort to create a society which isn’t “essentially incomplete” — unfortunately, that seems to require force and totalitarianism, and furthermore Plato doesn’t seem to have a good answer for “how someone might leave Plato’s Cave on their own.” But are we any better? At this point in history, I don’t think so, a realization that I will call “Plato’s Challenge” that, in a way, all of Belonging Again is dedicated to addressing.
Philosophy can be about anything and anybody, so if there is a way to make “everyone persuadable” — which is to make it so that there is always hope for discussion, democracy, conversation, and the like — philosophy is likely a good candidate (though at the same time philosophy can cause a mass spreading of “autonomous rationality,” which is self-effacing, exactly as Samuel Barnes warns in The Iconoclast, but after the loss of “givens,” we’re all philosophical now — the risk cannot be avoided). Furthermore, Plato tells us that philosophy is not about being a ‘lover[] of opinion [but someone] who delight[s] in each thing that is itself,’ and a corollary to being a philosopher would seem to be that a person is persuadable, for how else could we move from opinion to “what things actually are” if not through persuadability?¹⁸ It’s unclear to me if Plato himself hopes to “spread philosophy to the masses,” though it’s clear that at least “the best philosophers” are rare for him and should be rulers and kings. Regardless Plato’s thoughts though, we might inquire to that possibility ourselves, for it will be for us to consider if we might “spread Childhood.”
The Republic could be approached to help us inquire into the conditions which would make everyone in a society philosophical enough to be changed. If the vision of Plato is totalitarian, it might be totalitarian precisely to prevent the unstoppable power of “refusing to listen” from being employed by the citizenship. Plato might be trying to stop an unstoppable force with an unmovable object, an effort that might not seem so forceful and oppressive if we see it as a way to stop people from ever being “unpersuadable,” at which point only force seems like it could change people (a failure which we might be suffering ourselves, this very day, hence why “The Meta-Crisis” is such an issue).
Since Plato does not seem to have answers for how we might leave his cave without being dragged, Plato might not be able to help us think the conditions in which people might, on their own, choose to “leave the cave,” which would require being persuadable. That “meta-architecture” is our goal, and those would be the conditions that would help assure “everyone is persuadable” without being totalitarian — which are also the conditions by which we can “spread Childhood” (as we will discuss). Plato then can be seen as presenting us with a challenge, and though we might critique him for being oppressive, he might gaze back at us with Socrates and ask, “Is your way really better?” As of 2023, can the West respond with as strong, “Yes?”
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Notes
¹²Bloom, Allan. The Republic of Plato (Second Edition). Basic Books, 1968: 3.
¹³Bloom, Allan. The Republic of Plato (Second Edition). Basic Books, 1968: 3.
¹⁴Bloom, Allan. The Republic of Plato (Second Edition). Basic Books, 1968: 4.
¹⁵Bloom, Allan. The Republic of Plato (Second Edition). Basic Books, 1968: 4.
¹⁶Bloom, Allan. The Republic of Plato (Second Edition). Basic Books, 1968: 4.
¹⁷Bloom, Allan. The Republic of Plato (Second Edition). Basic Books, 1968: 4.
¹⁸Bloom, Allan. The Republic of Plato (Second Edition). Basic Books, 1968: 161.
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