Plato on education as improvement or discovery

Building Better Worlds, part 3/3

Final part in my extremely long trilogy on Plato's fictional demi-paradise of Magnesia. I examine Magnesian culture and daily life in much more detail than in the other posts, looking at what the citizens are supposed to enjoy doing rather than what crimes they should be punished for. I also try and look at what we can still learn from Laws today, both from its failures and successes. Which, if I'm doing it right, ought to annoy a lot of people.

While I cover just about everything to some degree, including gender equality, meritocracy, the importance and subtleties of excessive wealth and poverty (Did Plato believe in an UBI ? Sort of but not really; Did he hate the very rich ? Yes but with some extremely important caveats), and the need for everyone over 30 to get drunk regularly (damn straight), I concentrate mainly of the two key themes of freedom and education. How is it that a man who devotes himself to exploring complex and controversial issues should propose a state based on extensive censorship ?

The answer, I suggest, lies in earlier dialogues where Plato considers education. Clearly it's possible to change people's opinions and beliefs, and maybe it's even possible to make them morally better. But in terms of raw abilities, it's vital to understand if education is just a good way of finding who's innately good at learning what, or if it actually does bestow new, fundamental abilities such as wisdom and critical thinking.

For a variety of (not implausible) reasons, Plato seems to have decided it's the former - and his resulting conclusions are therefore not as ironic or hypocritical as they appear. If people cannot be changed by education, and only a small fraction have the combination of skills and virtue necessary for good leadership, then giving everyone an equal say in how things are run makes absolutely no dang sense at all. Plato recognises that they must, however, be given some genuine say in political affairs - and institutes something not too dissimilar to a representative democracy as a result. Had he concluded that education does in fact change people, then a more direct democratic system would be more sensible. But since you can - simplifying - only find philosophers rather than make them, his proposed system allows people to make real choices but attempts to limit the damage they can do. Equally, power among the governing is divided (imperfectly in some ways, but in others to a greater degree than in modern Western countries) to prevent tyranny. Plato seems to see despotism and populist mob rule as equal vices, and in this I think he may be on to something. Any system of government needs to account for both the potential malevolence of the elite and the stupidity of the masses : failing to do so on either count leads to disaster.

The problem with rule by the masses seems to be one of stupidity : they lack the skills necessary to govern, but cannot bring themselves to admit it. Presently the tide of evidence is waxing towards the conclusion that people are indeed extremely vulnerable to various forms of manipulation; doubtless a better education system could be constructed, but the magnitude of the stupidity of the choices of the masses beggars belief. When a world leader habitually talks in word salad, it becomes very difficult indeed to give his electorate much intellectual credit - the finer details of critical thinking do need to be taught, but the absolute basics ought to be obvious just from living in the world. The majority of people are perhaps not innately unethical, but their susceptibility to manipulation leads them to immoral beliefs and ignoble acts.

And on the other side, the problem of the elites is not their intelligence, but their virtue. Experts do indeed make the best liars, as Plato said, and the ruling elites hardly seem to have the interests of the masses at heart. Rather they seem determined to keep the mob down, to provide them with enough to subsist and service their so-called superiors but not enough to ever improve themselves. They seek, not always successfully, the fawning stupidity of the great unwashed, realising that their goals are achievable not by the impossibility of fooling all of the people all of the time but by the far easier method of fooling most of the people most of the time. Their success ends on those occasions when the masses, always rendered sufficiently but not entirely idiotic, find a populist candidate able to persuade them of the misdeeds of their rulers. And now the trap shuts : a bunch of credulous morons, long kept ignorant by a corrupt elite, suddenly believe themselves capable of acts of which they have not the slightest apprehension.

Also I look at how Plato would have reacted to the Lego movie theme song, because why not.