You also say in the book that Plato might have looked down on Bush for a display like the flight suit on the aircraft carrier.
Very much so, yes.
Why is that?
The danger he elaborates especially in Book 4 of "The Republic" and other places is the danger represented by the man of "thumos," or spirit. Now this is a military virtue, the kind of strutting warrior-hero. Plato thinks that the artists of his time elevate that figure. They make a cult of that kind of heroism. But in effect, that's worshipping brutality. It's not worshipping the right kind of human virtue, which is lodged in the philosopher, in the man of wisdom, not the man of brutal ability to cow other people. And when you see George Bush strutting about on the aircraft carrier, you've got exactly somebody who's plugging in to the cult of the brute, the cult of the powerful figure, who gets his own way by sticking his elbows out and kicking other people. And you're not likely to see a democratic politician going and consorting with academics. You're much more likely to see them standing on podiums, watching the troops go by. And Plato's against that. He thinks it's a very, very dangerous aspect of human nature and one that he would suppress in his ideal city. And so I always argue that's not a silly idea. We may be so attached to liberty that we don't follow him in suppressing it, but I think we should certainly follow him in recognizing that it's a dangerous kind of diet to feed people.
What's your opinion of Plato?
As I say in the beginning, in the introduction to the book, I've never been a great fan of Plato. I always disliked some aspects of the Socratic figure ... [I]n some respects I found him an uncongenial author. I started in science. I'm a philosopher of science by origin. I'm an empiricist: I like to keep my feet on the ground. And Plato is a kind of inspiration, has been an inspiration, for many theologically minded philosophers -- people who don't keep their feet on the ground -- who take pride in voyaging into the supernatural.
Now, all of that led me to some antecedent worries about taking on the project. But, as I took it on, I did begin to find that there's a magic in the book, in "The Republic," to which I could respond. It's partly that it's so difficult to know exactly what his message is, partly that there's a very profound seriousness about it, which is very attractive, I think. So I began to fall under its spell if you like and look forward to trying to read more Plato before my time is up. I mean, for a professional philosopher who's been in the trade for so long I know rather too little about him and I think it's time I learned more.
So, if Plato is the ancient Greek philosopher du jour for conservative Republicans, who should liberal Democrats sign up as their favorite ancient Greek philosopher?
I'm afraid none of them were what we'd call good liberal Democrats. They all presupposed a slave society in which most of the labor was done by other people. Politics was the pursuit of the leisured male citizen. They all made a very sharp division between "us" and "others." And the [Greek] city-states were almost permanently at war with each other throughout the classical period. So they were in some respects not at all a good model for a universally enfranchised, educated democracy and we have to allow for that, we have to recognize that. I think that if you want to keep your feet on the ground, then Aristotle is the famous antidote to Plato.
The usual story is that Plato was a sort of dreamer and Aristotle was the hard-headed man of science, the empiricist, the person who looked at the world as it is. And to some extent I think that's true. I think from Aristotle's politics and particularly his rhetoric you can learn more about the day-to-day conduct of argument and politics than you probably do from Plato. But there's a cost to that. The benefit is that he's hard-headed and empirical but the cost is that he doesn't give you much of an ideal or a vision. It's not very plain to me what a state conducted by Aristotle would look like, and it's certainly not as entrancing as the kind of rather definite lines that Plato tries to draw. We may not know quite what the overall shape of Plato's state is eventually, but there's something rather magnificent about the energy with which he tries to draw it, whereas Aristotle is much more cautious and much less inspiring, I think.
About the writer
Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon.
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