The Disappointing Festival
At the opening to Plato's Republic, Socrates tells us how he and Glaucon went down to watch the opening of a new festival in honor of “the goddess” (which might be the Thracian-originated Bendis, or might be Athena, which was always “the Goddess” in Athens. He proclaims that while he enjoyed the display put on by the citizens, the march of the Thracian contingent was no less excellent . This is said in an alarmed tone, if the Athenians cannot outperform these northern Barbarians, something is truly amiss.
Immediately afterwards he meets Polemarchus, son of the rich resident alien (Meteoikos, metic) arms manufacturer, Cephalus. He is being invited to join the family at their house in the Piraeus (the commercial port town adjacent to Athens) and he acquiesces. Once there, he meets the father, a venerable and pious man. The latter had just finished sacrificing to the goddess. He tells Socrates how much he regrets it being able to visit him in Athens herself (the walk is harder for him these days) and therefore he implores Socrates to come to him. This, he enunciates, is his only regret he have of his age. The thing he loves most about his wealth is that it enables him to be perfectly just – that is to speak truth and pay his obligations. The conversation continues and throughout it, Cephalus is shown to be an admirable, content, wise, learned and moderate. His is clearly the best character of those present .
Now, where did Cephalus learned to be such an excellent man (aristos)? While Athens is a democracy, Cephalus does not fit the mold of any of the principle political schools of his time, since, according to both, a man can’t become excellent but in a city in which he had share, which Cepahlus does not have. How come, without the practice of justice and excellence in the life of the City, Cephalus achieved and preserved both and even passed them down to his sons? Clearly, Athens clearly didn’t have anything to teach him that he didn't already knew. If anything, it's the Athenians who should be learning excellence and justice from the old Sicilian!
In ancient Greece, the Polis was understood to be not merely a functionary State but also a sacred framework by which the citizen's spirit is to be refined and a peculiar kind of excellence is to be achieved. Pericles' famous Funeral oration is a perfect example of the kind of Arete Athens was supposed to foster. Therefore, if Cephalus the Syracusan and even the Thracian mercenaries can achieve excellence of life and piety, that would mean that Athens (and every other polis for that matter) was either unnecessary or woefully inadequate to achieve whatever excellence these Polis-less men didn't grow out of their very nature.
Justice and Knowledge
The discussion then turns to justice- Cephalus claims that his wealth allows him to be just- but is his definition of justice ("to speak truth- and give back what was given to me") correct? After all, both of these actions can be, at certain circumstances, unjust, such as giving back a weapon to a mad owner. Taking care of the mentally ill also requires lying to them. Therefore this definition of Justice is practical, but not Cephalus, a practical man with practical morals, withdraws from the argument and let his son Polemarchus to continue the conversation.
The conversation about Justice continues with several other definitions of Justice suggested ("To Help One's Friends and to Harm One's Enemies" "That which Benefits the Strong" "To Give to each His Due") and declined. It is clear that this is a complex topic that requires much thought. The question arises- since even capable and good rulers more often than not lack the knowledge of justice or interesting the pursuit of this knowledge, does it mean that there are no just poleis in the world?
The Just State
To Plato's Socrates the answer seems obviously yes - how can any polis be just if it is ruled by anyone but those who have the knowledge of justice, namely the philosophers? But how can philosophers become the rulers and make sure the polis continues to be just after their death?
The answer Plato famously gives is a society divided into classes based on the psychological and intellectual capabilities of their respective members: those who have the tendency to reason and justice belong to the "Golden" caste of rulers, the brave and spirited to the "Silver" class of protectors, and those who lack both are assigned to the "Bronze" class of producers.
These classes are based strictly on merit - while Plato expects the children of each class to resemble their parents - he demands of the rulers to not hesitate to assign unworthy children of their own to lower classes and to admit the deserving progeny of the other classes into the "Golden" class.
To allow that he takes extensive measures to make sure that no citizen would be able to tell his children from others'. Marriages are abolished and sex pairing are assigned by lot - with a secret advantage to the ruling class to improve the quality of future citizens.
Plato doesn't say what would be the penalty for if one of the rulers might start abusing his power. The entire project is designed so this may not happen. If it did, that would be a prove that the process of degeneration already strated and, presumably, the experiment had failed.
In conclusion, the Just City must be one where philosophical temper and capabilities are the measure by which one is advanced in society, the older generation is the collective parent of the collective younger generation but no particular elder is the parent of any particular youth. Together with collective ownership of wealth, at least at the two higher classes, this removes the two main sources of intergenerational ambition that distract and degenerates States away from Justice. Finally, the ruling class rules alone, but not for its own interest alone. Justice demands that they would see themselves as guardians of the whole.
The Floating Island
In Gulliver's Travels, one of the more curious places Jonathan Swift have his hero visit is the floating philosophers' island of Laputa:
"I turned back, and perceived a vast opaque body between me and the sun moving forwards towards the island: it seemed to be about two miles high, and hid the sun six or seven minutes; but I did not observe the air to be much colder, or the sky more darkened, than if I had stood under the shade of a mountain. As it approached nearer over the place where I was, it appeared to be a firm substance, the bottom flat, smooth, and shining very bright, from the reflection of the sea below. I stood upon a height about two hundred yards from the shore, and saw this vast body descending almost to a parallel with me, at less than an English mile distance. I took out my pocket perspective, and could plainly discover numbers of people moving up and down the sides of it, which appeared to be sloping; but what those people where doing I was not able to distinguish.
This Island of Laputa is full of what is clearly a ruling elite uniquely unsuitable for ruling. Its members are the most impractical lot of idle philosophers, abstract mathematician and music enthusiast imaginable. They are so divorced from reality that they measure their clothes by astronomical calculations, constantly worry that the sun might go out and pitifully oblivious to their wives adulteries.
That's not to say that they are uninterested in ruling- besides mathematics, astronomy, music and ridiculous experiments, this is their chief interest.
(If that description brings a smile to your face I must disappoint you - I was assured by my professor that this is an allegory specifically to the Royal Society and have nothing whatsoever to do with academia in general).
The Island rules over the continent of Balnibarbi by threat of crushing rebellious towns under its weight. In a certain respect it already did so.
As Gulliver descends into Lagado, the ground metropolis of Balnibarbi, he observes that all the new estates are managed poorly, the houses within build without right angles as those of Laputa and no blade of grass or ear of corn to be seen. As he visits a beautifully managed estate of an old-fashioned gentleman (a former governor dismissed for alleged stupidity), the latter tells him:
"That about forty years ago, certain persons went up to Laputa...
"A00fter five months continuance, came back with a very little smattering in mathematics, but full of volatile spirits acquired in that airy region: that these persons, upon their return, began to dislike the management of every thing below, and fell into schemes of putting all arts, sciences, languages, and mechanics, upon a new foot.
"To this end, they procured a royal patent for erecting an academy of projectors in Lagado; and the humour prevailed so strongly among the people, that there is not a town of any consequence in the kingdom without such an academy. In these colleges the professors contrive new rules and methods of agriculture and building, and new instruments, and tools for all trades and manufactures;
"whereby, as they undertake, one man shall do the work of ten; a palace may be built in a week, of materials so durable as to last for ever without repairing... with innumerable other happy proposals.
"The only inconvenience is, that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection; and in the mean time, the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in ruins, and the people without food or clothes. By all which, instead of being discouraged, they are fifty times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and despair:"..
"That some few other persons of quality and gentry had done the same, but were looked on with an eye of contempt and ill–will, as enemies to art, ignorant, and ill common–wealth's men, preferring their own ease and sloth before the general improvement of their country."
The Laputans, it seems, are not only bad rulers, they are also dangerous due to the bad example they are setting to the ruled.
While on Laputa itself a man can be practical and sensible without more serious consequences than some mockery by his peers, on the continent below where people had embraced all the fanaticism a superficial understanding of a philosophy can grant, anger, resentment and denouncement follow the man who refuses to adopt the new visions of the projectors in industry, agriculture and politics. By imitating their airborne lords without truly understanding the principles and sciences that governed their lives, the Balnibarbians had produced for themselves an even worse class of rulers. The Laputans, with all their faults, were neither malicious nor fanatical, the erstwhile Projectors appear to be both.
Swift is aiming all his arrows at Plato's Just City. The education of the Laputans and that of the Rulers of the Platonian Calipolis are the same - heavy emphasis on Mathematics and music and all their applications, in the hope that knowledge of the arts of measure and harmony would qualify them to give everything its appropriate measure and place - the Platonic definition of Justice.
But such an education, argues Swift, does not prepare men to govern for the benefit of the whole. On the contrary, by assigning all practical work away to the lower classes, the Rulers lose sight of and regard for Common Sense. Their knowledge of the pronciples of measure and harmony have little to be applied unto and the ability to do so is eventually lost altogether. Then comes the worst- the lower classes mimics their better, as lower classes always do, but its not the desire and pursuit of knowledge and virtue that is being imitated, but the folly and pretense.
Monastics and Scolastics
While academies, religious and otherwise, existed during Antiquity, these were not universities. The students and instructors alike made their livelihoods outside the academy. In many cases, such as the Jewish Academies of Judea and Mesopotamia, such practices as tuition, scholarships and tenure were outright banned.
The ancestry of the Western University can't be traced, therefore, to the ancient academies of Athens or Jerusalem. Their true parent was the Western monastery, in particular those descending from the Rule of St. Benedict.
The Regular Western Monastic movement(that is, the one with a fixed "Rule" and division of duties between the monks) can claim as his father the 4th century hermit Martin de Tours. A hermit at the beginning, he reluctantly accepted disciples who wished to share his ascetic life and teachings:
"There were altogether eighty disciples, who were being disciplined after the example of the saintly master.
No one there had anything which was called his own; all things were possessed in common.
It was not allowed either to buy or to sell anything, as is the custom among most monks.
No art was practiced there, except that of transcribers, and even this was assigned to the brethren of younger years, while the elders spent their time in prayer. Rarely did any one of them go beyond the cell, unless when they assembled at the place of prayer.
They all took their food together, after the hour of fasting was past. No one used wine, except when illness compelled them to do so.
Most of them were clothed in garments of camels’ hair. Any dress approaching to softness was there deemed criminal, and this must be thought the more remarkable, because many among them were such as are deemed of noble rank. These, though far differently brought up, had forced themselves down to this degree of humility and patient endurance, and we have seen numbers of these afterwards made bishops. For what city or church would there be that would not desire to have its priests from among those in the monastery of Martin?"
If Plato's Calipolis is dedicated to the study and application of Justice as a societal good, the monastery was meant as a place for the study of living in a godly manner.
There are no divisions yet as for the duties of the bretheren, since "no art is practiced". There is no structure for governance, apart from the authority of the abbott, which is almost purely professorial and stems from the request of the other monks asked to be allowed unto his hermitage and his reluctant consent.
By the 6th century, however, Bendict of Nuresia establishes a monastery with a much stricter division of authority and tasks. For example:
"If the community be large, let some of good character and holy life be chosen from among the brethren and made deans: and let them exercise careful guardianship over their deaneries in all things, in accordance with God’s commandments and their abbot’s precepts. And let such be chosen as deans upon whom the abbot may safely lay a share of his burdens; and let them not be chosen by seniority, but for meritorious life and soundness of wisdom. And these deans if any one among them by any chance puffed up by pride be found worthy of blame, if he will not amend though corrected once and again and a third time, let him be degraded from his deanship and let another who is worthy be put into his place. And we establish the same procedure as regards the provost."
In the Monastery described by the Rule, all monks are equal in value, but not in function. Some are deans, some labor, some study, all pray. There is a measure for the correction of boys given to the monastery for education, for the election and function of a cellarer (who must defend the resources of the Monastery) and more.
What is created here have all the traits we found in Plato's Republic: the members of the community are divided into rulers (abbot and deans) defenders (cellarer and other functionaries) and workers (the ordinary monks who labor and pray) but the difference in rank and function does not create masters and slaves, but the superiors rule for the benefit of the inferiors. The adults of the community have no claim of particular parentage over the young generation (since the novices are brought into the community from outside) but the old generation is the collective parent of the young. The entire community is organised for the attainment of knowledge neccesary for the Good Life, in this case, the Knowledge of God and yhat which is good in His eyes.
Charlemagne and his successors utilized the Benedictine monasteries to spread knowledge in their empire, and thus were the first universities in the West established
In regard to longevity and success we can therefore claim that the Monastic movement and its daughter, the University, are the most successful iterations of Plato's Republic. The former is still alove and well, and the modern State all but demands that every official at least attend the latter for some years as a prerequisite for hiring.
The last practice raises the Swiftian question: is it a good practice to send the future lawnakers and officers into an institution of high learning, in which they might not fully understand the liberal sciences tought but merely the arrogance of the superficially learned?
This is a question that is yet to be answered.
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