Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song in the course of introduction to philosophy at Washington College.
In light of the situation of the on-going global pandemic of Covid-19, and its seemingly unstoppable vigor in the U.S., we are witnessing a phenomenon in the American society which is very disturbing from a philosophical point of view. In the U.S., there is a strong trend of public opinion navigated by top politicians and pundits to be “anti-science,” and thus, to challenge the authority of scientists and experts during the process of policy makings in face of this public health crisis. This trend has contributed significantly to the direly high number of infection and death in the U.S.
This phenomenon looks particularly striking for me, and I also believe it looks so for people who share a similar personal experience with me. I grew up in a non-Western country, and have a memory on how in the colonial era, Western countries used their advanced science and technology to defeat our indigenous cultures, and ever since, to learn, pursue, and even transcend the scientific achievement of Western countries has become a national priority for many of these once-colonized non-Western countries. However, while non-Western countries are trying to imitate what the U.S has achieved in science, a large proportion of American citizens seem to not respect science at all, even if this would imply the tragical death of their fellow citizens!
So, the question is: why so? Why could it happen that in such a robust democracy as in the U.S., the country has the best scientists in the world and the strongest advocacy on freedom of speech, while voters can significantly defy against science so as to have irreversibly influenced the making of defective (to say the least) public policies?
This question, believe me, is very philosophical, because more than two thousand years ago, in ancient Greece, there was a giant philosopher who asked almost exactly the same question to the Athenian democracy, the very democracy which is often seen as the original model of the liberal democracies all over the world today. And this philosopher is Plato (c.a. 429-347 B.C).
Plato grew up during the Peloponnesian War, and learned with Socrates as his student for an extensive period of time in his youth. After Socrates was sent to death by the democratically elected Athenian court, Plato spent another 12 years travelling around, and studying with another philosopher, the mystic mathematician Pythagoras. During this time, he also began a lifelong relationship with the ruling family of Syracuse, and frequently gave advice on how to govern the city-state. After turning into his 40s, Plato returned to Athens, and founded his school named “Academy.” This is also allegedly the first liberal arts college in the Western civilization.
The question asked by Plato, which is extremely similar to the one that I just asked, is that: why did Athens kill Socrates? In other words, why did such a proud and powerful democracy kill its most intelligent citizen?
As discussed in last unit of this course, Socrates chose the sentence of death rather than being exiled because he had a faith in democracy. Despite being acutely aware of the fault of democracy, Socrates still believed that only in a democracy, can its citizens retain the right of questioning, and thus, sincerely believe what they do on the basis of vetting alternative answers to their questions. However, as Socrates’s most staunch and outspoken student, Plato understood his teacher’s death as more a sign of the stubborn and wicked ignorance of the Athenian mob, rather than as embodying any intrinsic strength or merit of the Athenian democracy. More importantly, in order to answer the question why Athens killed Socrates, Plato applied the Socratic method which he learned from Socrates to systematically tackle issues that the later development of philosophy was intensively focusing upon, such as the issue of metaphysics to explore what really exists in the world, the issue of epistemology to investigate, if some essential realities exist behind the appearance of the world, how humans can know them, the issue of ethics on how to differentiate good from bad human behaviors or habits, and the issue of political philosophy on who should be a ruler. In fact, Plato could be considered as the first systematic philosopher in human history, and because of this, some historian even claimed that the entire history of Western philosophy is just a long footnote to Plato.
Nevertheless, among all the writings of Plato’s, there is one work to stand prominently, and its title is The Republic. In The Republic, using the mouth of Socrates, Plato depicts a utopian state which is centered upon the supreme government of a philosopher-king, and thus represents his ideal of the best politics that humans can ever imagine. From this work, we select Book VI for this week’s required reading, and this excerpt also presents the most exemplary thinking of Plato to answer his question, why did Athens kill Socrates?
So, Why did Athens kill Socrates, its most intelligent citizen?
In the first part of the excerpt, Plato talks about who should be a ruler of a state. His view is that the person who affords to be a ruler should have genuine knowledge of rulership, viz., the knowledge about how to govern, how to organize, and how to put right persons into the right positions so as to realize the overall justice of their state. But what does genuine knowledge look like? Plato says that it would be like the knowledge of mathematics. In mathematics, once we have a definition of a triangle, for instance, and all its proven attributes, such as the sum of its three angles equal to a flat one, then, every particular triangular thing in the physical world, no matter how different they are from each other, must comply with the knowledge. By the same token, Plato thinks that genuine human knowledge is always about abstract objects in an intelligible world, and these intelligible objects are eternal, unchanging, always manifesting harmony and proportion. Plato has a great name for these intelligible objects, viz., this is a world of “forms.” After all, who can be a ruler? Plato’s answer is that only those people who have genuine knowledge of the forms of “rulership,” “governance,” “justice” and all others related to good government can rule, and accordingly, these people transcend limited opinions of human individuals and are able to claim “authority” over those public opinions. For Plato, this sort of people, who are definitely not many, have a proper name, “philosopher,” and his ideal state will be governed by a philosopher-king. In today’s context, particularly the one we just discussed above, these people would be those scientists and experts on public health, so that when a crisis of pandemic takes hold, ordinary citizens in a country can expect genuine knowledge from these scientists and experts about how to control it.
Since the difference between philosophers vs non-philosophers, between the authority of knowledge vs uninformed public opinions be understood as such, why did the Athenian democracy kill the best philosopher in its time? And why were the views of scientists and experts frequently overlooked and disregarded by the public during a crisis of public health?
Plato’s answer to this question is crystalized in his very famous “allegory of ship”. So, in the second part of the excerpt from The Republic, Plato tells a story about a mutiny among sailors against their captain. In this story, the owner of a ship, the captain, could not navigate the ship, so he has to appoint a leader among his sailors to hold the helm. Now, there were two people who can potentially be this leader. One is a demagogue who can do nothing but cater for the needs of those rebellious and greedy sailors; and another is a “star-gazer,” who knows genuinely how the season changes and how the wind blows on the seas, and thus, can really navigate the ship well. However, this star-gazer does not appeal to the needs of the sailors, since according to his best judgement, this star-gazer thought of those needs as largely irrelevant to the knowledge of seafaring, and what matters most for him is to get those authentic knowledge of seafaring. So, the result of the mutiny is quite expectable: since every sailor has the equal amount of freedom to vote, the demagogue is elected, and the star-gazer is disregarded, and what lies ahead of the crew would be just a complete disaster since no one in power really knows how to navigate the boat.
There is one sentence that summarizes the conclusion of Plato’s allegory of ship quite well, which is “the pilot should not humbly beg the sailors to be commanded by him – that is not the order of nature; neither are ‘the wise to go to the doors of the rich’ … but the truth is, that, when a man is ill, whether he be rich or poor, to the physician he must go, and he who wants to be governed, to him who is able to govern.” (The Republic, Book VI 490e)
So, in a word, why does it happen that in a democracy, philosophers were disregarded, Socrates got killed, while the authority of scientists and experts are distrusted and challenged? For Plato, this is because there is one intrinsic dimension to the existing political institution of democracy which can utilize the cruel power of the majority vote, viz., “the tyranny of the majority,” to defeat the authority of knowledge and merit. Because of the existence of this dimension of democracy, if the majority of voters remain uninformed, no institutional arrangement within such a democracy can guarantee an elected leader who has the needed knowledge and merit of leadership, and all policies can accordingly be made wisely for the genuine benefits of humanity.
My questions to you are that: do you agree with Plato’s answer? Do you have any better answer? Or, are you thinking about solutions to deal with this intrinsically self-defeating dimension of democracy?
Required Reading:
Plato, The Republic: Book VI (484a-490e), Trans. by Benjamin Jowett.
Recommended Further Reading:
About “freedom of speech and meritocracy,” please read Bryan W. Van Norden, “The Ignorant Do Not Have a Right to an Audience,” in The New York Times (June 25, 2018)
About an analysis of American politics about and during the pandemic, please read Jonathan Chait, “American Death Cult,” in New York magazine (July 20, 2020)
Recommended Further Watch:
Quiz:
1, which philosophers have influenced Plato’s thought?
A, Socrates
B, Pythagoras
C, Aristotle
2, According to the required reading from The Republic Book VI, which of the following qualities belong to a philosopher?
A, Good memory
B, Having eternal, true knowledge
C, Being a lover of learning
D, Generosity
E, Being sociable and gracious rather than jealousy and covetous
F, Not fearing death and thus, being brave
3, According to the required reading from The Republic Book VI, Adeimantus critiques philosophers because he thinks philosophy is too abstract, and thus, useless for the public. Is this statement true or false?
4, Who is the analogy of “philosopher” in the allegory of the ship?
A, The star-gazer and able navigator.
B, The captain as the owner of the ship.
C, The elected leader of the sailors.
5, According to Plato, where should the authority of a leader come from?
A, the majority vote of the people
B, the needed knowledge and merit for genuine leadership.
C, the appointment of a monarch
C, the divine command of the God.
6, Plato calls abstract objects of genuine human knowledge as “forms,” and thinks that these forms are eternal, unchanging, and lies in an intelligible world which is different from the becoming and corruptible physical world. Is this statement true or false?
7, At the end of the lecture in this unit, Dr. Bin Song asked several questions. What’s your thought on them? Please choose some of these questions, and write a couple of sentences to answer it or them.
Bin Song 