Out from Plato
Why free science comes from free societies
In the 5th century BC, a war occurred that was forever to effect Western Civilization. The Peloponnesian War lasted for 30 years and occurred when the Greek city-state of Sparta rose up in battle against Athens and her allies. Sparta was a totalitarian dictatorship focused primarily on military defense. When children were born, the governors decided whether or not the child was fit enough to live. If deemed unhealthy, infanticide was routine. Children who were deemed fit enough to live were taken by the state and trained for battle, while all marriages were pre-arranged to maximize fit and healthy children. Children did not know who their individual fathers and mothers were, so they were all wards of the state. The entire goal of Sparta was to be strong in battle. Young boys in military training were deprived of food so they could experience privation, and were regularly molested by their male tutors.
Athens was another city-state, about 150 miles from Sparta. Unlike Sparta, Athens was the center of Greek philosophy and theater. Before the Peloponnesian War, Athens was the home to the Academy of Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato, and was the first society to have a democratic government. All of the free, male citizens of Athens had rights and were required to be a part of the government. After Sparta attacked Athens and her allies, the Greek city-states were thrown into a period of civil unrest, causing many of Athens’ philosophers to question the fundamental laws of the universe. During the war, Heraclitus and Parmenides argued over whether there was any stability in the universe. Parmenides argued that despite appearances, stability is the fundamental basis of the universe. However, Heraclitus embraced social unrest and change. He went so far as to argue that even the material things that appear permanent are really in different stages of processes. His famous phrase, “you cannot step into the same river twice” was a justification that the outcome of history is always just because justice is what happens.
Clearly this philosophy has the potential of creating long-term instability for a civilization. In the generation after Heraclitus, Plato also addressed this same question by stating that everything in the material world is an imperfect copy of the ideal spiritual realities, which he called the World of Forms. Any alteration from the World of Forms results in injustice, so war is sometimes necessary to maintain stability in a society. His answer to Heraclitus was that instability only exists because humans are imperfect. Plato believed that a just State would never need war, so political corruption could be stopped if social change could be stopped. He wrote his work The Republic to devise a system whereby social engineering could ensure a stable and just society (Popper 20-21).
Plato’s Republic ensures a just society by making sure that the State is preserved, and the State’s authority remains unchallenged. To do this, the authority of the ruling class can never be challenged. In Plato’s Republic, only the ruling classes have rights and receive education. Censorship is enforced to keep intellectual activities only among the ruling class. Eugenics, abortion, and infanticide ensure the purity of the ruling class, so that they do not intermingle or intermarry with others (Popper 49). The preservation of the state even alters the goal of medicine: no longer is medicine required to prolong life, but to preserve the life of the State. Rather than individual responsibilities, the moral code is defined as what is good for the State:
“The greatest principle of all is that nobody, whether male or female, should ever be without a leader. Nor should the mind of anybody be habituated to letting him do anything at all on his own initiative, neither out of zeal, nor even playfully. But in the midst of war and in the midst of peace—to his leader shall he direct his eye, and follow him faithfully. And even in the smallest matters he should stand under leadership. For example, he should get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals…only if he is told to do so. In a word, he should teach his soul, by long habit, never to dream of acting independently, and to become utterly incapable of it” (Plato, The Republic).
Since the common people, “human sheep” in Plato’s words, did not have the education to be a part of the government, they had to be ruled by the experts. In The Republic, these experts are the philosopher-kings. According to the doctrine of the World of Forms, everything material is inherently corrupted, which is why Plato also believed that any empirical knowledge is tainted. Philosopher-kings were needed who could fully immerse themselves in purely rational knowledge that qualified them to make all of the decisions regarding the State. Plato’s definition of reason was what man could correctly deduce from perfection, so only the most highly educated could be rational. This was why Plato embraced eugenics in his Republic: although human emotion revolted against the idea of letting the unfit die and manufacturing a pureblood society, it was clearly the most rational option to keep the State pure. Philosopher-kings would need to keep themselves from being polluted by their surrounding experiences in their quest to preserve the State. This notion that human nature can be altered by social engineering is what Thomas Sowell called the unconstrained vision of man. As G.K. Chesterton noted, “Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved” (Orthodoxy). Since it is self-evident that humans are flawed, any society that does not see human nature as a fixed given will try to engineer society in order to get humans to behave in a civilized way. Plato’s project was to create a society that is rationally designed in a perfect order, so humans will be forced to behave in a rational way. Contrary to this notion of the unconstrained vision is the constrained vision of man. This is the notion that most aspects of human nature are unalterable givens. Some societies may work better with man’s nature, while more poorly organized societies may work against it, but the fundamentals of human nature cannot be changed.
This description of the ideal state may sound eerily similar to the city-state of Sparta, and some scholars have assumed that Plato actually looked to the model of Sparta as the model for his Republic. Since Sparta had bested itself against Athens in the Peloponnesian War, their military strength and prowess clearly had a better society. As Bertrand Russell states:
“Sparta had a double effect on Greek thought: through the reality, and through the myth…The reality enabled the Spartans to defeat Athens in war; the myth influenced Plato’s political theory…and had a great part in framing the doctrines of Rousseau, Nietzsche, and National Socialism” (Russell, “Chapter XII: The Influence of Sparta” History of Western Philosophy).
In a radical departure from Athenian democracy, Plato removed all political power from the people and gave it to the State. Plato thought that human society could be engineered to be just, and would therefore force men to act justly. In order to do this, the individual free farmer cannot be the voice of the polis, but the Republic must be run by a small, select group of experts who project their ideal society onto the people. By making the state, rather than the individual, the arbiter of truth and falsehood, Plato’s Republic becomes the worship of power.
Later Enlightenment philosophers would recognize the power that Plato had given to the state. In the 18th century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that sovereignty does not lie with an individual king, but lies within the collective people of the state. This is not putting justice within the choices of the individual, but in the collective “spirit” of the people. Thus, the job of the government becomes one of divining the general spirit of the people in order to rule. (Popper 251). In the next generation, Hegel went further to say that the very constitution of a state is made up of the “Spirit of the People,” and that the state is more real than the individuals who make it up (Popper 310). Hegel elevated to the state to the only entity that mattered, “It must be further be understood that all the worth which the human being possesses—all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State” (Hegel ??). This is ultimately why many communist countries call themselves a “Democratic Republic.” Unlike a western democracy where individuals are elected and become rulers, these nations say they rule by the collective spirit of the people. This notion was taken up by Karl Marx in the 19th century. The entire purpose of Communism is to create a society that is rationally organized according to the scientific method, and ruled by “the people.” If Plato is correct, and society should be run in an entirely rational manner, and if science is the embodiment of rationalism, then a society that was a self-conscious attempt to be fully based in the scientific method would be the ideal society.
Karl Popper used the totalitarian characteristics in Plato’s Republic to craft a foundational distinction between two major types of societies: the closed society and the open society. In a closed society, the physical laws of nature and civil law are indistinguishable, while they are separated in an open society. For example, in a closed society, whether chieftains, kings, or dictators, the leaders believe that they are in touch with the whims of the gods, and are able to craft civil law in order to keep them appeased. There can be no open questions concerning natural phenomena, because to question natural law is to question the leader’s authority. Plato’s Republic is the ideal closed society, run by expert philosopher-kings who rule over the “human sheep,” as Plato called the populace.
We may now be prone to speaking poorly of “individualism,” because now we think that individualists are those who only look out for themselves. However, originally an individualistic society was considered healthy because it was a society where people took personal responsibility for their actions. Individualism outside of community is truly terrifying, but a community that honors personal responsibility will be one where people are free to succeed or fail. In a closed society, the citizens have no personal responsibility, because everything becomes the responsibility of the State, which is the essence of totalitarianism. Plato’s idea was to create justice by engineering a society that forced people to act justly, but in the end the State only exists for itself. Whether it is Plato’s Republic or North Korea, a closed society is not characterized by individual selfishness, but by a collective selfishness. The individual becomes unimportant and is expected to forfeit all rights and responsibilities for the good of the State. Ultimately, this inverts the moral code, only defining good and evil based on what is good for the State (Popper 102). “One has first to be disturbed by the similarity between the Platonic theory of justice and the theory and practice of modern totalitarianism before one can feel how urgent it is to interpret these matters” (Popper xlv).
More to the point, because of the connection between the physical laws of the universe and civil law in a closed society, independent scientific exploration is strictly outlawed. Empirical evidence could be a direct challenge to the ruler’s authority, so only scientific study that upholds the State is allowed. Galileo ran into this problem when the college of cardinals accused him of threatening their position because he discovered that moons were orbiting Jupiter. The very fact that an object in the universe was orbiting something other than the Earth was a direct challenge to geocentrism, which at the time, also happened to be Roman Catholic doctrine. Since the church had integrated the fallible theories of men into the infallible revelation of God, then any observation that challenged the theory had to be punished by God. Even after 400 years of Western democracy, aspects of a closed society are very much alive. Much of the climate change paranoia over the past 30 years is a perfect example of government claiming ownership of both normative and physical laws. Any dissenter to the climate change narrative becomes excommunicated from the academy, and in Thomas Kuhn’s words, has “ipso facto ceased to be a scientist.” This is also why government regulators tend to be so against private industry finding solutions to climate change problems, because their personal choices threaten the entire collective.
Conversely, an open society is one where there is a separation between the physical natural laws and civil laws. Rather than self-centered, the individualism of an open society loves its neighbor. Because an open society is directly dependent on individuals taking responsibility for their actions, it values individual choice. Even human rights in an open society are centered on loving your neighbor. For example, I might personally give up my right to life in order to save the life of another, but it would be wrong for the anyone else to take my right to life away from me. I might give up my own liberty to serve another, such as in the bonds of marriage or parenting. However, it would be wrong for someone to take liberty away from me. As Karl Popper said, “Individualism, united with altruism, has become the basis of Western Civilization. It is the central doctrine of Christianity (‘love your neighbor,’ say the Scriptures, not ‘love your tribe’)” (Popper 98).
An open society will also be one where scientific research can be conducted freely. Since natural laws are separated from normative laws, they are all created by God. Some natural law is explicitly revealed in Scripture, like the Ten Commandments, while others are hidden in Creation, like the Law of Mass Conservation. Natural laws were given by God at Creation and can never be altered, while civil laws can and should be changed by man. For example, God stated at Mt. Sinai that theft is wrong. As a result, an open society will have the responsibility to craft civil laws that discourage theft and encourage hard work. These laws may need to change over time, just like scientist’s description of natural laws may change over time, getting closer and closer to the truth. The freedom of humans to reason and figure truth out amongst one another creates a civic duty to be personally responsible for one’s actions. The belief that that humans are capable of discovering the best civil and natural laws presumes that all men have the ability to be rational, and consequently will also have faith in the rational decisions of others. This is the great achievement of Western Civilization, as opposed to Plato; that justice can only be understood in terms of relationship.
“Thus rationalism in our sense is diametrically opposed to all those modern Platonic dreams of brave new worlds in which the growth of reason would be controlled or ‘planned’ by some superior reason. Reason, like science, grows by way of mutual criticism; the only possible way of ‘planning’ its growth is to develop those institutions that safeguard the freedom of this criticism, that is to say, the freedom of thought” (Popper 432-33).
Interestingly, the natural philosopher Karl Popper declared himself a Marxist at a young age and became involved in riots against the bourgeoisie. In one of these riots, he was arrested for breaking a storefront window, and became thoughtful while sitting in prison. He realized that he was not actually speaking up for the common man that he claimed to represent, according to his Marxist ideas. In fact, he had actually ended up harming the common man by breaking shop windows. He realized that Marxism did not live up to its goals of overturning society by being kind to the working class, and he devoted his career to defining what is true scientific study, and how true scientific study actually breeds free and open societies, the very opposite of the totalitarian Marxism that he once claimed to live by. Although Marxism claimed to be on the side of the common worker, that claim was quickly falsified by the evidence of what Marxists did. Although the Marxists claimed to be “progressive,” in that they were leading humanity into a brave, new world of freedom, they were actually leading society back to the closed society of the tribe. Instead of a workers’ utopia, Marxists had returned to the worship of power, which was not marching toward the future, but to he dark past of tribalism and totalitarianism. This was the history of world governments for thousands of years until the liberal democracies of Europe in the post-Reformation era. As Popper noted, “There is no return to a harmonious state of nature. If we turn back, then we must go the whole way—we must return to the beasts” (Popper 189).