Plato’s
famous work the Republic is an effort to create a good government based
on abstract ideas, something very distasteful to Southerners, who value
historical continuity and experience over private philosophizing. However, that does not mean it has nothing at
all within it that we can learn from and apply to our own political situation
today here in the Southland and in the rest of the union, for quite a bit of
that work is based on Plato’s observations of mankind’s actual behavior in
history rather than simple speculations.
First
we must note something that Niccolo Machiavelli says
in his Discourses, mainly that revolutions in government usually lead to an
overreaction to the problem that caused them rather than to a balanced, stable
solution. This is what has happened here
in the States. The British colonists,
unhappy with certain policies of King and Parliament, instead of working to
reform the system from within, threw off their authority and set up governments
with weak executives and judges and strong legislatures. Some of the new governments (Virginia and the
Articles of Confederation, to name two) even had their legislatures choose
their chief executive magistrates.
Although some of these peculiarities are no longer with us, the mindset
that gave rise to them continues today in giving to voters in general and the
representatives they elect in particular the bulk of the governing power.
It
is here that Plato has something to say to us.
In his description of government, he uses the analogy of the human
soul:
In mapping out the
constitution for his utopian society or state, Plato starts out with a
schematic description of the human soul. Every soul, according to him, is
composed of three parts: bodily desires and appetites, “spirited emotions”
like ambition and courage, and finally the faculty of knowledge and
reason. In a healthy individual all three parts fulfill their proper function.
Bodily desires and appetites secure the physical survival of a person, the
spirited emotions inspire his more far-reaching plans and projects, and the
intellectual faculties make sure that all enterprises remain reasonable and
under rational control. Plato lays great stress on the disciplining function of
reason. Without the self-discipline imposed by reason a person may easily turn
into something like a self-destructive glutton, or into a person carried away
by foolish emotions and thoughtless ambitions. Informed reason, according
to Plato, is the faculty best suited to make all the right and necessary
decisions in a person’s life.
The utopian society
described in the Republic has
a similar tripartite structure as the human soul. Corresponding to the bodily
desires and appetites of the soul is the class of people who are involved in
the economy of a state. This class constitutes the vast majority of the people,
and it comprises such diverse groups as craftsmen, farmers, merchants, manufacturers,
and money changers or bankers. Plato classifies all of them as “lovers of
money.”
Corresponding to the
spirited emotions in the soul is the much smaller class of the armed forces,
the class of professional warriors that is responsible for the safety of the
community. Plato calls them “lovers of honor.” Their main desire is to gain
fame and admiration by serving their fellow citizens—for whom, in extreme
situations, they are willing to sacrifice their lives as well as their material
possessions.
Corresponding to the
faculty of reason is the smallest class of people—scientists, scholars,
high-level experts, and similar sophisticates. Plato calls them “lovers of
wisdom,” i. e., “philosophers.” Their most passionate interests are
understanding and knowledge, and their greatest pleasure a lively life of the
mind.
Out
of fear of oppression by a monarchy and/or oligarchy, the peoples of the States
have placed the greatest governing powers in the hands, according to Plato’s
reasoning, of those most ill-equipped to use them well: the working class, the ‘lovers of
money’. This is not to say that this
class should have no power in government at all. On the contrary, as Edmund Burke, G. K.
Chesterton, and others have noted, this class can act as a powerful check on a
wayward elite because of the common sense and tradition deeply ingrained within
many of them. But it is nonetheless true
that they can be led astray all too often by demagogues, especially today when
propaganda techniques have been honed to a level of perfection unknown in the
past by years of careful studying and by new technology:
If people did
not naturally have
the disposition they display in a dysfunctional democracy, other people would
not be able to exploit and mislead them the way they do. Ruling elites do
not create popular
ignorance and apathy, a defender of Plato might say, they only use it for their own
purposes--in the same way in which a seller of dubious merchandise does
not create lack
of buyer discretion, but simply exploits that deficiency.
--Ibid.
So
it is not unreasonable to say that the current distribution of powers in the
constitutions of the States and of the union is tilted in the wrong
direction. More must be done to restore
the powers of the other two classes of society, the warrior/service aristocracy
and the philosophers.
The
South at one time excelled in making men fit for the first of those two, the
aristocracy. All she must do to regain
that excellence is to reincorporate the necessary elements from her past that
made it possible. Charles Sydnor elaborates
well enough on that,
without any comment from us, so we will go on to the second class mentioned,
the philosophers.
The
philosopher-kings of Plato share a pretty fair resemblance to hereditary
Christian kings. The traits of the two
are identical:
For Plato, philosophers
make the ideal rulers for two main reasons. First, they know what is good.
Second, they do not want to rule (esp. 520e–521b).
The
hereditary Christian king, by virtue of the education he receives in his royal
upbringing, and especially because of the Grace bestowed upon him by the Holy
Ghost when he is anointed as king, has a firm grasp of what is good. And by virtue of the ‘accident of birth’
(which is another way of saying the ‘Providence of God’), he is not of the
class of men who lust after power. In
other words, power has sought him out, not the other way around.
The
element of kingship has been missing from the union since the colonial era
ended. The judiciary has attempted to
fill this void, clothing its behavior in a sort of regal air (which makes
sense, for judges have often been considered an extension of the king’s
justice), but since judicial appointments in the current system are the
offspring of elected politicians (and others are elected directly nowadays),
they are unable to do so adequately. The
judges are not quite independent enough from the passions of the working-class
people to comprise a political class separate from them.
The
written constitution itself is also an attempted replacement for the king, a
way to protect the integrity of the laws from corruption by favoring various
interest groups. However, this involves
a contradiction that cannot be overcome.
If the people are the writers of their own fundamental law, of their own
restraints, then they can simply rewrite it whenever it pleases them in order
to remove some obstacle it has placed in their path. The great barricades of the written
constitution are easily breached.
It
is the same as an alcoholic who goes into a bar with a piece of paper in his
pocket on which he has written, ‘I will not get drunk.’ That paper is nearly meaningless; it might
prick the conscience, but it is powerless in itself to prevent the evil act of
drunkenness, even though it is written by his own will and by his own hand. It has no power in itself to restrain. What he needs is a friend to turn him away
from the bar. The king is one of those
friends for the political body.
The
aforementioned Sir Edmund Burke, in his Reflections on the Revolution in
France, says that one of the real rights of
man is to be told ‘No’ when it is necessary:
Government is not made in
virtue of natural rights, which may and do exist in total independence of it,
and exist in much greater clearness and in a much greater degree of abstract
perfection; but their abstract perfection is their practical defect. By having
a right to everything they want everything. Government is a contrivance of human
wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be
provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out
of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society
requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but
that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations
of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions
brought into subjection. This can only be done by a power out of themselves,
and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that will and to those
passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the
restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their
rights.
Since
the peoples of the States and their governments have had no ‘power out of
themselves’ (i.e., an hereditary king and/or an hereditary aristocracy) to
check their passions, there is now trillions in debt, non-stop wars, corporate
welfare, boondoggles galore, and so on.
This is where a king can be extremely valuable, able to step in at some
point in the political process and stop abuses (through executive veto powers
or as a court of final appeal, e.g.):
. . .
The
rest is at https://www.geopolitica.ru/en/article/plato-and-our-constitutions .
***
The
links that were embedded in the essay all got broken when it was formatted for
publication at Geopolitica.
Therefore, we are including them below:
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England,
South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð,
unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
No comments:
Post a Comment