Planet of the Apes and Philosophy

by Huss, John

  Ape society is as hierarchical as Plato’s, though there is less mobility. Plato recognized that the talents of a child often differ from those of the parents and so allowed that some children from the producing classes who show exceptional promise will be brought up as warriors and might even become rulers. On the other hand, if you aren’t born to orangutan parents, you just aren’t going to get a job in the administration or the church on the Planet of the Apes, regardless of your aptitude. Your species determines what you will be doing for a living. Unlike Plato’s elite, the orangutans are hereditary rulers, born to power rather than chosen for their abilities.

  White Lies and Orange Liars

  In Plato’s ideal city, the stories that young warriors hear are to be carefully screened. They must only be told inspiring tales of right moral conduct, especially in stories about the gods. There must never be stories about “gods warring, fighting, or plotting against one another, for they aren’t true.” On the other hand, it’s permissible to tell lies about the gods as part of education, provided that the stories do not misrepresent the nature of the gods. The point of the lie must be to convey some deeper truth, such as that the gods always act morally and always demand that we act morally too.

  What goes for the education of young warriors goes for the entertainment of the citizenry in general—any stories told in the city should be of a morally uplifting nature, with state-approved lies being propagated if they convey good moral and religious messages. To make sure that no inappropriate messages get through, Plato goes so far as to ban poetry, with the exception of religious poems praising the gods and poems eulogizing famous men of exemplary character.

  Like Plato’s ruling class, the orangutans try to ensure that the only ideas that get spread are those that will support the harmonious running of society under their guiding hand, even if this means spreading lies and manipulating religion in the interests of social order. The first article of faith among the apes, as related by Dr. Honorius, justifies ape rule over the planet on divine grounds—“that the Almighty created the ape in his own image; that He gave him a soul and a mind; that He set him apart from the beasts of the jungle, and made him the lord of the planet.”

  Plato likewise decided that the people of his city be told a myth about their own origins to make them accept the current political arrangement as the natural state of things and any deviation from it a dangerous threat. The citizens will be told that they were born out of the ground and thus that they must regard their home-ground as their mother and their fellow citizens as brothers and sisters. In accordance with their earthly origins, each of the three classes of citizen is infused with a particular type of metal. Those fit to be rulers have gold in their soul, those fit to be warriors have silver, and those fit to be producers have bronze or iron. The citizens will be warned that an oracle has predicted the destruction of the city if it should ever be ruled by someone with the wrong metal in their soul.

  One particularly important orangutan myth used for political control is that of reward in a future life. Taylor accidentally eavesdrops on a gorilla’s funeral, at which an orangutan minister preaches to the bereaved before a massive statue in the form of an orangutan. “He lives again! Yes, he has found peace in Heaven!” Ancient philosophers and modern politicians alike have understood just how powerful myths of heaven and hell can be.

  Plato thought that it was important that the warrior class in particular should only hear stories that would make them unafraid of death, while being kept from any tales that make death look unattractive. Heroes in the stories should never feel fear, and the afterlife should only be represented as somewhere welcoming, never as a depressing or terrifying prospect. That way, soldiers defending the city wouldn’t be afraid to die. He wrote “We must supervise such stories and those who tell them, and ask them not to disparage the life in Hades in this unconditional way, but rather to praise it, since what they now say is neither true nor beneficial to future warriors” (lines 386b6–c1). Likewise, modern armies come equipped with chaplains and other officials who assure soldiers that death will only open the door to a wonderful afterlife if they are in good standing with God.

  The towering orangutan statue behind the minister is of the great Lawgiver, the Moses-like orangutan out of distant ape history who presented the apes with their divine law and established their society. Plato likewise approved of turning political figures into holy figures in the interests of cementing the social order, recommending that in the case of particularly outstanding leaders “the city will give them public memorials and sacrifices and honor them as demigods, but if not, as in any case blessed and divine” (lines 540b6–c2).

  In Ape City, any evidence that challenges scripture is suppressed. The orangutans even forbid the teaching of the theory of evolution, recognizing that it undercuts their claim to divine authority. When Dr. Cornelius finally admits in court to being an evolutionist, it is enough for the orangutan Dr. Honorius to charge both him and Dr. Zira with “contempt of this tribunal, malicious mischief, and scientific heresy.” Dr. Zaius, Minister of Science and Chief Defender of the Faith, later makes it clear that their conviction is a foregone conclusion. Likewise, the orangutans are outraged by Cornelius’s announcement that he had “discovered evidence of a simian culture that existed long before the sacred scrolls were written.” His discovery undercuts the myth that ape society was set up in its present state by God, and the myth that the sacred scrolls convey an accurate account of history in general.

  Dr. Zaius is particularly active in destroying evidence. When Taylor writes in the dust to prove that he is intelligent, Zaius rubs it out again with his walking stick. Presented with a paper airplane made by Taylor, he crushes it in his paw rather than threaten the established doctrine that flight is impossible. When Cornelius shows him an archaeological site that proves the existence of an earlier human civilization, Zaius would rather obliterate it with explosives than admit that the sacred scrolls are wrong. The scientists may all be chimpanzees but the Ministry of Science is headed solely by orangutans, ready to make sure that the chimp scientists don’t discover anything that the orangutans don’t want them to.

  Masters of Gorilla Warfare

  The gorillas correspond to Plato’s warrior class, keeping order in the city and defending it against outsiders. When human beings infest the ape’s crops, or wild humans escape from the laboratories and run amok in town, climbing all over the buildings and knocking over fruit stalls, it is the gorillas who ride out with rifles and whips to kill or capture the beasts. Likewise, in the labs and stockyards where captured humans are kept, it is the gorillas, now armed with truncheons and hoses, who maintain order.

  It’s true, the gorillas don’t seem to be particularly good at their jobs. The athletic abilities of gorillas have declined a long way from those of their modern counterparts when ten of them have trouble out-running, out-climbing, out-jumping, and out-wrestling one skinny human with no shoes and a major wound. Still, their social role is to bring force to bear on behalf of the state. They also hose down and sweep up the lab, which is work more suited to Plato’s producing class, but even a soldier must occasionally sweep a floor. Serving as police as well as military personnel, gorillas provide security in courtrooms and presumably other government buildings. There can be little doubt that the prison that Zira and Cornelius are due to be sent to at the end of the film is staffed by unsympathetic gorillas.

  The gorillas may understand the orangutans’ mission to suppress unwanted truths. Certainly, Taylor’s gorilla keepers don’t want to know that he can speak, let alone hear what he has to say—“Shut up you freak!” shouts one gorilla, spraying Taylor with the hose until he yells “It’s a madhouse!” At the funeral gate-crashed by Taylor as he flees his cage, the deceased gorilla is praised as a model, the orangutan minister declaring him “hunter, warrior, defender of the faith.” emphasizing both his martial skill and his role as the enforcer of orangutan authority. Plato believed that in order to pre
vent the warriors and rulers from growing corrupt, “none of them should possess any private property beyond what is wholly necessary . . . whatever sustenance moderate and courageous warrior-athletes require . . . they’ll receive by taxation on the other citizens . . . they’ll have common messes and live together like soldiers in a camp” (lines 416d4–e4). Members of the warrior and guardian class were not even permitted to own money. There are no such limitations for gorillas on the Planet of the Apes, as the departed primate is ominously described as a “generous master.” From the sounds of it, the gorilla had many chimpanzee servants in life and the wealth to maintain them.

  On the other hand, the virtue for which the late gorilla is praised most is not his dedication to honorably performing his civic duty, but his compassion: “He was a font of simian kindness. The dear departed once said to me, ‘I never met an ape I didn’t like’.” On the face of it, this might seem like strange praise to offer at the funeral of a warrior, yet Plato regarded it as essential for members of the warrior class to balance their toughness with kindness. They must be ferocious enough to stand in battle or to apprehend criminals, but they will be useless if they are thugs who brutalize the very population they are pledged to protect. Plato wrote “those who devote themselves exclusively to physical training turn out to be more savage than they should . . . the source of the savageness is the spirited part of one’s nature. Rightly nurtured, it becomes courageous, but if it’s overstrained, it’s likely to become hard and harsh.” It’s not enough for a warrior to be as strong as a gorilla and skillful in combat. A useful warrior must love truth and honor and must be driven by the desire to do what is right.

  Ordinary Working-Class Chimpanzees

  The chimpanzees correspond to Plato’s producing class. Like Plato’s producers, they seem to form the bulk of the population on the Planet of the Apes—most of the citizens we see milling around town or gathering in angry fruit-hurling mobs are chimps. They also seem to do most of the work that doesn’t boil down to administration or fighting. The chimpanzees supply society’s doctors, like Zira and Galen; and its merchants, like the chimps we see working in stalls selling clothing, fabric, and fruit; and society’s menial labor, like the chimps we see sweeping around the marketplace. While we are never shown who was growing the crops that the humans were raiding when Taylor first arrived, it seems safe to assume that it was hardworking chimp farmers in green overalls.

  Significantly, it is the chimpanzee producers, not the orangutan rulers and arbiters of truth, who provide the scientists. Plato makes no special provision for scientists in the Republic. Living in the fourth century B.C.E., he had no conception of the possibility of scientific and technological progress as we understand it. He did believe that humanity could obtain understanding about the universe, but thought that this could only be achieved by philosophers using pure reason. Perhaps Plato would consign scientists to the producing class, which includes the doctors, craftspeople, navigators, architects, shipbuilders, and all other individuals with specialized practical knowledge. Or perhaps Plato would draw scientists from the ranks of the philosopher rulers, entrusting the search for truth to those who are supposed to love truth above all. In any case, on the Planet of the Apes, it’s the chimps, at the bottom of ape society, who inherit science. It’s chimps who work in the laboratories and chimp parents who take their little monkeys out to the museum to see the zoological exhibits about humans.

  In Plato’s ideal city, the rulers were to be the champions of truth, even though they also deceived the people in the interests of maintaining social harmony. As philosophers, their pursuit of the truth was to be their ultimate goal and desire, with their understanding of the truth guaranteeing the wisdom of their rule. On the Planet of the Apes, it is curious chimpanzee scientists like Dr. Zira and Dr. Cornelius who are the champions of truth, casting off religious dogma to ferret out reality. The orangutans are champions only of falsehood; their primary function is to prevent the truth from ever being known.

  The orangutans may not respect the chimpanzees, but just as Plato’s rulers understood the need for the producing class, so the orangutans appreciate the importance of the chimpanzee’s scientific work. Zira explains that her research into the human brain is so generously funded because “Dr. Zaius realizes our work has value. The foundations of scientific brain surgery are being laid right here in studies of cerebral functions of these animals.” Even orangutans can develop brain tumors. Plato likewise recognized that doctors have a vital role to play in his city. Even philosophers can get a bellyache.

  However, all scientific research on the Planet of the Apes requires the approval of the National Academy, an organization of orangutans charged with suppressing inconvenient truths. Dr. Zaius is quick to stifle any research that threatens to contradict the written holy law. He sneers at the archaeologist Cornelius, dismissing him as “the young ape with a shovel” and warns him “as you dig for artifacts, make sure that you don’t bury your reputation.” Later, he makes sure that Cornelius’s travel permit to the Forbidden Zone is revoked, even though the academy had earlier approved it.

  When Zira asks Cornelius how he accounts for the fact that Taylor can write, Cornelius rejects the question out of fear, replying, “I can’t and I’m not going to.” Zira naively assumes that truth is everyone’s goal just as it is hers, insisting, “If it’s true, they’ll have to accept it,” but Cornelius has a more realistic understanding of how his society functions. When she points out that Taylor’s existence might prove Cornelius’s theory that apes evolved from lower primates, he asks, “Zira, do you want to get my head chopped off?” and observes that “Dr. Zaius and half of the academy declared that my idea was heresy.”

  When Zira demands, “How can scientific truth be heresy?” she’s showing that she doesn’t understand the function of heresy prosecutions as a political tool. Heresy that is also the truth is the most dangerous kind. As Cornelius observes, if Taylor were the missing link in ape evolution, “the Sacred Scrolls wouldn’t be worth their parchment.” Naturally, the orangutans are dishonest enough to deny that they are concealing scientifically demonstrated truths. Zaius announces, “There is no contradiction between faith and science. True science.” This is an insistence that we often hear today, yet it can’t be true unless “faith” is defined in such a way that having faith doesn’t commit you to any claims about the origin or nature of the universe and its contents.

  Taylor calls ape society an “upside-down civilization,” presumably because humans are at the bottom and other primates at the top. But ape society is also upside-down in that the closed-minded and deceiving orangutans are at the top and the open-minded and productive chimpanzees are at the bottom. If the orangutans would just let the chimps get on with their scientific monkey business, the apes could gain a genuine understanding of their universe to replace religious dogma. That they also stand to gain technologies like refrigeration, painless dentistry and reliable flea-repellent, along with all of the other benefits of advancing past the nineteenth century, is just icing on the cake.

  Filthy Humans

  There’s one last class of primate on the Planet of the Apes, a branch of the family so reviled that they are not even recognized as people, let alone citizens. The humans have degenerated almost to a level of simplicity once occupied by the apes. On the Planet of the Apes, we grow no crops, build no houses, and have even lost the art of speech—though for some reason we still make a pretty good pair of pants. The apes regard us as “beasts” and, apart from bleeding-hearts like Zira, seem to have no moral concerns about how humans are treated. Dr. Honorius, Deputy Minister for Justice, notes that a human “has no rights under ape law.” Taylor is treated as humans would treat an animal today, and his fellow astronaut Landon has his brain cut up by chimps just to see what makes him tick. Dr. Zaius even says of humanity that “the sooner he is exterminated, the better.”

  The apes generally limit their moral concerns to members of their own society. In
this, they are like Plato, who designed his ideal city to benefit the city’s citizens with little thought about anyone else. Dr. Zaius’s views on the need to exterminate humans even echo Plato’s view that while fellow Greeks should never be subjected to “enslavement and destruction” in warfare, anything goes when fighting against barbarians (everyone who isn’t Greek). After condemning brutality between Greek states, he concludes that the people of his city “must treat barbarians the way Greeks currently treat each other” (line 471b5).

  Gorilla Girls and Other Simian Women

  Perhaps the most socially revolutionary of all of Plato’s doctrines is that women should be allowed to do any job that men can do, including fighting in the army and working as a member of the ruling class. Females of the warrior class should be educated right along with males since “if we use the women for the same things as men, they must also be taught the same things.”

  Plato did not believe in the equality of the sexes, though. He thought women were, in general, intellectually and morally inferior to men. On the other hand, he didn’t think that every woman is inferior to every man. He wrote: “It’s true that one sex is much superior to the other in pretty well everything, although many women are better than many men in many things” (lines 455d2–3). For this reason, Plato believed that women of unusual ability should be allowed to fulfill their potential, even if it meant promoting them to positions of power and authority over less able men.