Plato at the Googleplex

by Rebecca Goldstein

  MUNITZ: Ah, so now we get at it, the very pinnacle of elitism, surpassing anything even the warrior mother would be prepared to say—or even to write—since she, at least, is an egalitarian in her ruthlessness, believing that her warrior-mothering can turn almost any child into a super-achiever! She, at least, would not have children tyrannically tracked like trolleys, but rather push them all out to try to compete to the death in the fast lane.

  PLATO: And yet if you are truly to avoid the ruthlessness you decry, then precisely this specialization according to innate abilities is required. What is play and delight for one kind of child is coercion and torture for another, and will not take no matter how much coercion is applied (Seventh Letter 341d–344a). And I agree with you wholeheartedly that children should not be subjected to torture in their education, since it is entirely counterproductive. In fact, as far as is possible, a child’s education should not take the form of compulsion but the form of play (Republic 536d–e). In Greek, our word for play is paidia and the word for education is paideia, and it is very natural and right that these words should be entangled at the root, together with our word for children, paides, which gave you your words pedagogy and pediatrician.14 What one tries to force into a child against its own nature will never come to good. A child’s natural form of behavior is play, and in our aim to educate, play should be honored and preserved for as long past childhood as can be. So we may say, in fact, the sum and substance of education is the right training that effectually leads the soul of the child at play on to the love of the calling in its adult life (Laws 643d).

  MUNITZ: Well, on that particular point I am, of course, in agreement with you. What I refuse to countenance is your errant elitism. You lay out a program of enrichment only for your ruling class—your master race, as it were—as if the others, the merely average, do not concern you, since they are incapable of achieving the life of the mind you hold up as the highest ideal. You’re just like our warrior mother in dismissing the average human life as possessing no value, no dignity, concentrating all your efforts on producing a class of the exceptional, the privileged, and the powerful.

  PLATO: I have never been interested in producing the most exceptional class of person simply for the sake of their exceptionality. The city we want is one in which all the citizens are enabled to achieve the virtues and thus are happy (Republic 420b; Laws 630c3–6, 705d3–706a4). That would be a just city, since it does justice to all. And this requires rulers who are at one with the city and will never exploit it. So, for example, I do not think the rulers should be able to own substantive private property, for substantive property will immediately make them citizens of the city of the rich, with its own special interests to protect. And there are other privileges, besides wealth, that the citizens will enjoy but which should be denied to the rulers (Republic 416d–421c). The guardians of the just state should be the most underprivileged of all its citizens. It is an essential feature of the just state that the wealthy be kept away from political power and that the politically powerful be kept away from wealth.

  BURNS: Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. You must have some pretty strong views about campaign finance reform.

  PLATO: The temptations of power are enormous.…

  MUNITZ: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

  PLATO: Yes, precisely, Dr. Munitz. Since absolute power corrupts absolutely, I am concerned that the ruling class—and I don’t deny that that is what they are chosen to be and what they are trained to be, those whom I call the guardians—be, as far as is humanly possible, incorruptible, held in bond to the moral order. So long as they are, the just city will last.

  MUNITZ: So the unguarded guardians will guard themselves. And how likely is that?

  PLATO: Not very. Which is why I took such pains, in my beautiful city, to explain how the guardians should be trained to become such exceptional men and women as to be untouched—again, as far as is humanly possible—by the normal temptations of humankind. And yet even so I predicted, if you might remember, how even such a state will eventually unravel (Republic 546a–580b).

  MUNITZ: Well, might I humbly suggest that, given how difficult it is to keep the power elite clean from corruption, it would be better to reconsider your entire social structure and allow citizens control over, and accountability from, their so-called guardians? Guardians, indeed! You may counter that you were only theorizing in a utopian fashion, but the values are real enough, and I think them profoundly off-putting, first and foremost the paternalism that has free adult citizens requiring guardians assigned to them at all, as if they were orphaned children. Would it not be better to try and rear all citizens so that they can assume full power over their own lives as fully functioning grownups, according them the dignity and autonomy of responsible human beings, instead of putting them under the guardianship of those who would think and act for them?

  PLATO: Thinking is very hard.

  MUNITZ, glaring: Oh, so only your elite are allowed to think!

  PLATO: All the citizens think, of course, to the best of their abilities.

  MUNITZ: But some people’s abilities will allow them to make all the important decisions.

  PLATO: Just as some people’s athletic abilities will allow them to compete at the Olympics.

  MUNITZ: Oh, please, there’s no comparison! You can deprive people of the opportunity to compete in the Olympics and you’re not depriving them of the dignity of their humanity. But if you deprive your citizens of the right to call their rulers to account, then not only do you set the stage for tyranny but you diminish your citizens to the status of dependent children. And this is rendering them a grievous harm—even if the rulers have their best interests at heart.

  PLATO: You are a true democrat, Dr. Munitz.

  MUNITZ: Have you no faith in democracy?

  PLATO: Very little, I’m afraid.

  BURNS: I’m reminded of Winston Churchill’s remark, that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.

  MUNITZ: I wonder whether you would get Plato to agree to that.

  PLATO: Your democracy is quite different from the one with which I am familiar from my own Athens, and I have been trying to understand it. The Internet is invaluable but what I have not been able to figure out yet is if the Internet itself strengthens your democracy or weakens it.15

  BURNS: Well, when you figure it out, will you let us know? Anyway, as fascinating as all of this is, I’m afraid we’re straying far from the topic at hand, which is, if I remember correctly, the rearing of children. Now then—

  MUNITZ: Excuse me, Mr. Moderator, but if I might just be permitted to ask one pertinent question of Plato, quite apolitical. You do believe, don’t you, that your method of child-rearing produces the best possible person, the—to use the odious phrase of tonight’s event—most exceptional person?

  PLATO: I do. I don’t deny it (Republic 456e).16

  MUNITZ: And what is the measure of this person? On what scale is it decided that his exceptionality is the exceptionality that matters?

  PLATO: Reality is the measure.

  MUNITZ: And exactly whose reality would that be?

  PLATO: Nobody’s. Everybody’s. That which simply is, the same for all of us, out there to be discovered.

  MUNITZ: That which simply is because the ruling class says that it is.

  PLATO: That is to get it exactly backward.

  MUNITZ: Perhaps your way is to get it exactly backward. Who are you to say otherwise?

  PLATO: Not only do I say otherwise, but so, too, do you, Dr. Munitz. You have already said otherwise, and quite forcefully.

  MUNITZ: I? I hardly accept such a hegemonic vision of reality, which amounts to one more way for authorities to impose themselves on the powerless and deny them their rightful autonomy.

  PLATO: And yet, in your eloquent restatement of the Myth of the Cave, you stressed the difference between the shadowists and the truth seers.


  MUNITZ: The only realities I recognize are those embodied in the personal suffering buried deep in each person’s history. And that reality is not for any authority to authorize or not; that, at least, belongs to the person whose reality it is.

  PLATO: But it is a reality that few are able to see for themselves, according to your own account, but which you, Dr. Munitz, have seen and courageously try to get others to see, no matter that they reject the truth and make your life all the harder in their rejection.

  MUNITZ: Yes, that much is very true.

  PLATO: And there is far more of the reality that you have seen and the others have not, extending, as you yourself put it, into the normative sphere. Not only do you know of the personal suffering buried deep in each person’s history, but you are outraged at this knowledge, knowing how wrong are both the child’s suffering and also the stunted life to which it will lead. You know that it is injustice for one person to take away what rightfully belongs to another, and so you judge it unjust for the parents to deprive their children of the possibilities for joy and self-discovery that you know all people have coming to them. And when people who are chained so that they see only the flitting shadows on the back wall come to you for help with their lives, then you, knowing far more than they do of the reality that led them to their false apprehensions of reality, help them to open their eyes to reality, to recover their sight of that which is. You show them that which is, even though all but you deny it to be that which is, because only in apprehending that which is can they free themselves from their pain. Or have I not understood the nature of your life’s work?

  MUNITZ, almost whispering: You have understood exactly my life’s work. I have never heard it better described.

  PLATO: And when I, therefore, say, Dr. Munitz, that it is mistaken to say that reality is whatever the most powerful say it is, I only concur with you. And, conversely, when I say that it is right that the guardians should be those who are capable of apprehending reality, and most importantly the aspects of reality that account for goodness and justice and wisdom, then I would expect that you would concur with me. Let it be reality that chooses the powerful, rather than the powerful who choose reality. Isn’t that less tyrannical?

  MUNITZ, still speaking uncharacteristically softly: But then you enthrone reality as the tyrant.

  PLATO: It is a better tyrant than any one of us, certainly with more of a right to impose itself on our minds than any human being possesses.

  MUNITZ, gathering steam: But your guardians would still be human, all too human, and, with no other humans to control them, they’ll feast on their power and fatten into fascists in no time.

  PLATO: There is, of course, that danger, human nature being what it is. And this is why I tried to impose over them the greatest clamp of which I could conceive. Something far more forceful than other humans is meant to limit the power of the guardians, and this is reality itself. Any grandeur they might feel in their own position will seem risible to them compared to the grandeur of what is, awash in beauty and goodness. Do you think that a mind habituated to thoughts of grandeur and the contemplation of all time and all existence can deem this life of man a thing of great concern? (Republic 486a). And what an enlarged sense of responsibility the guardians will feel toward others, a tender sense of caretaking for those who are deprived of that very vision that gives blissful meaning to their own lives. It would not occur to them to exploit those who are not capable of seeing what they see, no more than it would occur to you, Dr. Munitz, to exploit the people who come to you for your help in easing them toward the light. You yourself turned away from the training you had undergone, even though it gave you so much power over others, precisely because you, seeing more of reality, understood that indulging that possibility of power is unthinkable. You yourself, in seeing what is and feeling the responsibility toward your fellow creatures that such seeing engendered in you, have demonstrated some of the qualities I would require of the guardians, and, I would even say, you have already attained in your life the position of a guardian.

  MUNITZ: Are you saying that you would have me be a guardian in your utopia?

  PLATO: The conclusion to be drawn is obvious.17

  MUNITZ: I am overwhelmed.

  BURNS, grinning: Well, Dr. Munitz, you got in the easy way, without going through Plato’s extensive program of child-rearing.

  MUNITZ: I assure you that it has not, any step of the way, been easy.

  BURNS, still grinning: Okay, well, let’s get back to Plato’s recommendations for raising the exceptional child—raised, as he just pointed out, not so much for the sake of the exceptionality of the child but rather for the sake of society, to ensure that those with power don’t abuse their power.

  ZEE: But, Plato?

  PLATO: Yes?

  ZEE: What about the city of pigs?

  PLATO: Yes?

  ZEE: Well, isn’t it also imperative, for the good of society as a whole, for the good of society in the future—and that’s what we’re really speaking about when we’re talking about raising the best possible children—isn’t it imperative that we form the habits of excellence, driving ourselves to gain more and more distance from the pigs, who just accomplish nothing with their lazy, lay-about lives?

  PLATO: The real question you are asking is whether what we want from society is for it to protect us or to perfect us.

  BURNS: Well put. And your answer, Plato?

  PLATO: We must ask, first and foremost, for it to protect us—protect us from our outside enemies and also from the worst that we can do to one another.

  BURNS: Call me a cockeyed optimist—my wife often does—but why can’t we ask both of those things from society, ask that it both protect and perfect us?

  PLATO: I suspect your wife would call me a cockeyed optimist, too.

  BURNS: Yes! That’s what I wanted to hear from you! Because your beautiful city is meant to do both, isn’t it?

  PLATO: It is meant foremost to protect us. But by demanding that the best among us perform this task—and they are the best among us precisely because they would also protect us from themselves—it demands the program of perfecting.

  BURNS: So the perfecting is the icing on the cake.

  PLATO: Where I come from, we call it the honey on the baklava.

  BURNS: The honey on the baklava: I like that! So now let’s get to the honey. Wasn’t that a line in some movie? Show me the honey! Feeble laughter. Okay, sorry. My sense of humor is something my wife has also commented on, to little effect, obviously.

  Okay, let’s get down to brass tacks here, your practical suggestions for how we can be perfected. You start very early in a child’s life, and you single out a certain kind of child as having the potential for going all the way to the top. How can you see that kind of potential so early in a child’s life? What is it that you’re looking for? Is it a matter strictly of IQ, general intelligence?

  PLATO: No, not strictly. A quick mind, yes, is part of what it takes to go, as you put it, all the way to the top, but there is also the all-important matter of character.

  BURNS: Character, yes, exactly!

  PLATO: And, in particular, mettle. Mere intelligence without mettle makes for a feeble material. There must be something of what we in Greek call thumos.

  BURNS: Thumos. Can you give me an example?

  PLATO: Well, I would say that Professor Zee presents a very good example of thumos. My warrior class is composed of those who are most distinguished by thumos, and Professor Zee is a warrior mother.

  MUNITZ: I think you might have misunderstood the title of that book of hers, Plato. She’s clearly using the word “warrior” figuratively.

  PLATO: I understand. She is using the term “warrior” to signify a certain type of person, a certain type of nature, the type who has a great desire for recognition and glory.

  MUNITZ: For self-recognition and self-glory.

  PLATO: You say that as if there is something wrong with it. And yet this is the driv
ing goal of the thumotic person.

  MUNITZ: Yes, I do most vehemently say there’s something wrong with an obsession with self-recognition and self-glorification. And I should have thought that you would agree with me on that yourself, and just as vehemently, you who paint a picture of the virtuous person as transcending his own petty self, subsuming his personal ends and desires under the requirements of the good.

  PLATO: You cannot change human nature. You can only change the polis so that what is potentially dangerous is rendered innocuous or even, in the best-ordered society, beneficial. The desire for distinction is present in a great many, and in some natures it is a driving force, and it yields in such a person a vigorous spiritedness, characterized by a robust desire to distinguish him- or herself. Those who lack this vital spiritedness will never do much harm in the world, it is true, but they will never do much good either.

  BURNS: So you approve of thumos?

  PLATO: It isn’t for me, or for any of us, to approve or to disapprove of human nature. It’s only for us to try to work with it.

  BURNS: And in fact, it’s the children who are well endowed with thumos whom you single out for your enrichment program.

  PLATO: Yes. Spiritedness shows up early, shows up in the manner in which children play. We should pay close attention to how children play, since the nature of their individuality is revealed in it (Republic 536). And a child who evinces great pride in its games, exerting itself with focus and passion, is the kind of person who will be dedicated to perfecting himself or herself. Mediocrity is not an option for such a soul. It recoils at the idea. Professor Zee presents a fine example of this spiritedness.

  MUNITZ mutters something inaudible, perhaps in German.

  BURNS: So the die is cast, you’re saying, from an early age? You can’t give spirit to an unspirited child?

  MUNITZ: You can certainly go in the opposite direction and kill the spirit in a child.