That hot new neoconservative philosopher named Plato
The author of a new book about Plato's "Republic" explains how ancient Greek philosophy became dangerous in the hands of the Bush administration.
By Alex Koppelman
Read more: George W. Bush, Politics, News, Alex Koppelman
June 25, 2007 | Sometimes, even the newest ideas have ancient roots. Take, for example, neoconservatism, the radical philosophy that supposedly guided the Bush administration's ill-fated foreign policy decisions. Who would have thought the classical Greek philosopher Plato had anything to do with the invasion of Iraq?
Twenty-four hundred years ago, Plato wrote a book called "The Republic," in which the famed teacher Socrates and his pupils discuss the ingredients of an ideal government. They decide that there is a higher realm than mere physical reality, that it is the duty of a small cadre of enlightened, elite citizens called "guardians" to become philosopher kings, and that only these rulers can grasp what is truly real and Good. Over the years, "The Republic" has been invoked to justify everything from authoritarian elitism to liberalism, but during the 20th century, neoconservative godfather Leo Strauss reinterpreted it to his own political philosophy, with its controversial assertion that it's OK for the enlightened elite to tell "noble lies" in the service of the Good. Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz actually took courses on Plato from Strauss at the University of Chicago; other neoconservative hawks with Straussian genes include Richard Perle, Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq and current ambassador to the U.N.; and Bill Kristol, neocon pundit and co-founder of the Weekly Standard.
In his new book,"Plato's Republic," Simon Blackburn re-explores the seminal work. The professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge in England (yes, the professor of philosophy -- in England, Blackburn explains, professor really means head of the department), Blackburn was from 1990 until 2001 the Edna J. Koury distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina. He's also written for the New Republic and the New York Times Book Review; this is his ninth book. Salon spoke with Blackburn to get his perspective on why Plato is a hit with modern American conservatives, and what the ancient Greek philosopher might think of George W. Bush's flight suit.
What's the relevance of Plato and "The Republic," especially for someone who is philosophically illiterate -- like me?
It's the first great text on political theory and moral theory, relating them, in the Western tradition. What Plato does is confront a variety of skeptics, people like Thrasymachus who say that morality is bunkum, that it's all power, it's a dog-eat-dog world, the weak go to the wall, the strong survive. Glaucon is another skeptic who says that, "Look, people are only moral because it costs them too much to be otherwise and if we could get away with it we'd all behave badly."
Socrates seeks to show that these views are wrong, and he does this by drawing an elaborate analogy between the state of your soul and the state of the body politic, the city -- the "polis," as [the Greeks] called it. [He] says that a disordered soul is as bad for you as a disordered polis, a disordered city, and the kind of disorder represented by Thrasymachus or Glaucon would eventually lead to catastrophe. So there's [a] utilitarian argument for virtue. And that's the sort of overall thrust of the book. So it's a connection between the health of the city and the health of the individual, but the health here includes, as it were, behaving well, good behavior.
What about in terms of his influence on contemporary politics?
I think Plato [has been] picked up and distorted in a couple of different ways. There were people who took what are undoubtedly fairly absolutist or totalitarian aspects of the state that he describes in "The Republic" and said, "Look, he's nothing more than an apologist for the totalitarian state." This is a famous attack, most vigorously and very ably prosecuted by Karl Popper in his famous book just after the Second World War, "The Open Society and Its Enemies." Plato was No. 1 of all [Popper's] enemies of the open society.
Another reading of him, which is I think even worse, is due to the American political theorist Leo Strauss, who saw him as in some sense endorsing the idea that it's a dog-eat-dog world. This was kind of a covert message, Strauss thought, of [Plato's] text. Strauss thought that this covert message or esoteric message was supposed to be perceived only by a number of people of special illumination, amongst which he included himself, of course. And that was the ideology that eventually became American neoconservatism, the view that the servants of the state are entitled to do anything -- to lie, to manipulate, to foment war, to destabilize neighboring states, to disguise their actions under a hypocritical cloak of goodness. So it's an extreme example of realpolitik, which I think is just a 180 degree misreading of what Plato is about. But it just shows that you can put down the clearest words on the page and it will be read saying the opposite.
I think that [Strauss's reading] is very perverse. You have to ignore what seems to me the very obvious thrust of ["The Republic"]. The book is largely given over to Socrates, and Socrates was largely arguing against the kind of things that Strauss represents. So you have to really pick up little bits and corners and say, "Ah, that's where Plato's speaking in his own voice or that's the message he wants us to take away." I always find that kind of reading very perverse. You know, it's not much better than finding the name of the beast in the order of the letters in the Talmud or something.