PLATO

Plato (427–347 B.C.), an Athenian aristocrat by birth, was the student of one great philosopher (Socrates) and the teacher of another (Aristotle). His legacy of more than two dozen dialogues — imaginary discussions between Socrates and one or more other speakers, usually young Athenians — has been of such influence that the whole of Western philosophy can be characterized, A. N. Whitehead wrote, as “a series of footnotes to Plato.” Plato’s interests encompassed the full range of topics in philosophy: ethics, politics, logic, metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, psychology, and education.

This selection from Plato’s Republic, one of his best-known and longest dialogues, is about the education suitable for the rulers of an ideal society. The Republic begins, typically, with an investigation into the nature of justice. Socrates (who speaks for Plato) convincingly explains to Glaucon that we cannot reasonably expect to achieve a just society unless we devote careful attention to the moral education of the young men who are scheduled in later life to become the rulers. (Here as elsewhere, Plato’s elitism and aristocratic bias shows itself; as readers of The Republic soon learn, Plato is no admirer of democracy or of a classless society.) Plato cares as much about what the educational curriculum should exclude as what it should include. His special target was the common practice in his day of using for pedagogy the Homeric tales and other stories about the gods. He readily embraces the principle of censorship, as the excerpt explains, because he thinks it is a necessary means to achieve the ideal society.

405

“The Greater Part of the Stories Current Today We Shall Have to Reject”

“What kind of education shall we give them then? We shall find it difficult to improve on the time-honored distinction between the physical training we give to the body and the education we give to the mind and character.”

“True.”

“And we shall begin by educating mind and character, shall we not?”

“Of course.”

5 “In this education you would include stories, would you not?”

“Yes.”

“These are of two kinds, true stories and fiction.¹ Our education must use both, and start with fiction.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“But you know that we begin by telling children stories. These are, in general, fiction, though they contain some truth. And we tell children stories before we start them on physical training.”

10 “That is so.”

“That is what I meant by saying that we must start to educate the mind before training the body.”

“You are right,” he said.

“And the first step, as you know, is always what matters most, particularly when we are dealing with those who are young and tender. That is the time when they are easily molded and when any impression we choose to make leaves a permanent mark.”

“That is certainly true.”

15 “Shall we therefore readily allow our children to listen to any stories made up by anyone, and to form opinions that are for the most part the opposite of those we think they should have when they grow up?”

“We certainly shall not.”

“Then it seems that our first business is to supervise the production of stories, and choose only those we think suitable, and reject the rest. We shall persuade mothers and nurses to tell our chosen stories to their children, and by means of them to mold their minds and characters which are more important than their bodies. The greater part of the stories current today we shall have to reject.”

“Which are you thinking of?”

“We can take some of the major legends as typical. For all, whether major or minor, should be cast in the same mold and have the same effect. Do you agree?”

20 “Yes: but I’m not sure which you refer to as major.”

“The stories in Homer and Hesiod and the poets. For it is the poets who have always made up fictions and stories to tell to men.”

“What sort of stories do you mean and what fault do you find in them?”

“The worst fault possible,” I replied, “especially if the fiction is an ugly one.”

“And what is that?”

25 “Misrepresenting the nature of gods and heroes, like a portrait painter whose portraits bear no resemblance to their originals.”

“That is a fault which certainly deserves censure. But give me more details.”

“Well, on the most important of subjects, there is first and foremost the foul story about Ouranos² and the things Hesiod says he did, and the revenge Cronos took on him. While the story of what Cronos did, and what he suffered at the hands of his son, is not fit as it is to be lightly repeated to the young and foolish, even if it were true; it would be best to say nothing about it, or if it must be told, tell it to a select few under oath of secrecy, at a rite which required, to restrict it still further, the sacrifice not of a mere pig but of something large and difficult to get.”

406

“These certainly are awkward stories.”

“And they shall not be repeated in our state, Adeimantus,” I said. “Nor shall any young audience be told that anyone who commits horrible crimes, or punishes his father unmercifully, is doing nothing out of the ordinary but merely what the first and greatest of the gods have done before.”

30 “I entirely agree,” said Adeimantus, “that these stories are unsuitable.”

“Nor can we permit stories of wars and plots and battles among the gods; they are quite untrue, and if we want our prospective guardians to believe that quarrelsomeness is one of the worst of evils, we must certainly not let them be told the story of the Battle of the Giants or embroider it on robes, or tell them other tales about many and various quarrels between gods and heroes and their friends and relations. On the contrary, if we are to persuade them that no citizen has ever quarreled with any other, because it is sinful, our old men and women must tell children stories with this end in view from the first, and we must compel our poets to tell them similar stories when they grow up. But we can admit to our state no stories about Hera being tied up by her son, or Hephaestus being flung out of Heaven by his father for trying to help his mother when she was getting a beating, nor any of Homer’s Battles of the Gods, whether their intention is allegorical or not. Children cannot distinguish between what is allegory and what isn’t, and opinions formed at that age are usually difficult to eradicate or change; we should therefore surely regard it as of the utmost importance that the first stories they hear shall aim at encouraging the highest excellence of character.”

“Your case is a good one,” he agreed, “but if someone wanted details, and asked what stories we were thinking of, what should we say?”

To which I replied, “My dear Adeimantus, you and I are not engaged on writing stories but on founding a state. And the founders of a state, though they must know the type of story the poet must produce, and reject any that do not conform to that type, need not write them themselves.”

“True: but what are the lines on which our poets must work when they deal with the gods?”

35 “Roughly as follows,” I said. “God must surely always be represented as he really is, whether the poet is writing epic, lyric, or tragedy.”

“He must.”

“And in reality of course god is good, and he must be so described.”

“Certainly.”

“But nothing good is harmful, is it?”³

40 “I think not.”

“Then can anything that is not harmful do harm?”

“No.”

“And can what does no harm do evil?”

“No again.”

45 “And can what does no evil be the cause of any evil?”

“How could it?”

“Well then; is the good beneficial?”

407

“Yes.”

“So it must be the cause of well-being.”

50 “Yes.”

“So the good is not the cause of everything, but only of states of well-being and not of evil.”

“Most certainly,” he agreed.

“Then god, being good, cannot be responsible for everything, as is commonly said, but only for a small part of human life, for the greater part of which he has no responsibility. For we have a far smaller share of good than of evil, and while god must be held to be the sole cause of good, we must look for some factors other than god as cause of the evil.”

“I think that’s very true,” he said.

55 “So we cannot allow Homer or any other poet to make such a stupid mistake about the gods, as when he says that

Zeus has two jars standing on the floor of his palace, full of fates, good in one and evil in the other

and that the man to whom Zeus allots a mixture of both has ‘varying fortunes sometimes good and sometimes bad,’ while the man to whom he allots unmixed evil is ‘chased by ravening despair over the face of the earth.’⁴ Nor can we allow references to Zeus as ‘dispenser of good and evil.’ And we cannot approve if it is said that Athene and Zeus prompted the breach of solemn treaty and oath by Pandarus, or that the strife and contentions of the gods were due to Themis and Zeus. Nor again can we let our children hear from Aeschylus that

God implants a fault in man, when he wishes to destroy a house utterly.

No: We must forbid anyone who writes a play about the sufferings of Niobe (the subject of the play from which these last lines are quoted), or the house of Pelops, or the Trojan war, or any similar topic, to say they are acts of god; or if he does he must produce the sort of interpretation we are now demanding, and say that god’s acts were good and just, and that the sufferers were benefited by being punished. What the poet must not be allowed to say is that those who were punished were made wretched through god’s action. He may refer to the wicked as wretched because they needed punishment, provided he makes it clear that in punishing them god did them good. But if a state is to be run on the right lines, every possible step must be taken to prevent anyone, young or old, either saying or being told, whether in poetry or prose, that god, being good, can cause harm or evil to any man. To say so would be sinful, inexpedient, and inconsistent.”

“I should approve of a law for this purpose and you have my vote for it,” he said.

“Then of our laws laying down the principles which those who write or speak about the gods must follow, one would be this: God is the cause, not of all things, but only of good.”

“I am quite content with that,” he said.