Plato’s open secret

Plato’s Myth of Er and the Reconfiguration of Nature

“…As we shall see, the myth’s appeal to the concept of nature also involves a revision in its meaning: from the kind of biologically determined essence evoked by most orthodox readings, to a property defined by the qualities that citizens possess at the end of their early upbringing. In the kallipolis , citizens are selected and sorted on the basis of personal attributes that are discerned through a test following a basic education, which are not necessarily the attributes they have at the beginning of their biological lives (Andrew 1989, 577–8, 581, 589–90; Kasimis 2016, 35; Rowett 2016, 68–9). Accordingly, the years of a preliminary education open up a modest window of social mobility for citizens who distinguish themselves in their early studies.…”

“…The myth still assumes that members of the city’s several classes will “for the most part” produce offspring like themselves, and poor observation of the city’s breeding regulations is to blame for the eventual deterioration of the kallipolis (415a, 546a–7a). The point of the myth, however, is that what can be known about a citizen at the time of her biological birth is inadequate for determining her place in society (Kasimis 2016, 344; Wood and Wood 1978, 145–52). Accordingly, institutions in the city must redefine the measures of a person’s natural aptitude around a more appropriate standard, and reassign, for any child whose makeup deviates from that of her parents, “the proper value to its nature” ( Rep .…”

“…The myth takes the characters of citizens after they have been exposed to—and potentially transformed by—the city’s educational programs, and transfers to these traits the authority, the normative weight and the entrenched quality of givenness that ordinarily accompany everyday notions of what is biologically innate. As Demetra Kasimis (2016) has recently pointed out, this maneuver need not be read merely through the lens of deception and cynicism. On her interpretation, the myth's reconfiguration of the content of nature is not so much intended to deceive as it is an “open secret” that Plato shared with his readers as a way of shedding new light on a topic of deeper theoretical significance—in this case, to hold up a critical mirror to contemporary Athenian practices of regulating citizenship.…”

“…As we shall see, however, the Myth of Metals is not the only place in the Republic where Socrates makes this intervention. Accordingly, we can develop a coherent account of the central narrative interludes in the Republic building on the insight, shared with Kasimis (2016), that the treatment of the concept of nature in the Myth of Metals invites special theoretical interest from Plato’s readers. But rather than take these passages as reflective commentary on specific political institutions in Plato’s Athens, this reading suggests that they are primarily designed to set up a sequence of working concepts of nature that is immediately internal to the text of the Republic .…”

The perpetual immigrant and the limits of Athenian democracy

“…Kasimis' reframing of the Republic's 'metic space' foregrounds unheralded yet cogent readings of at least two of the dialogue's central elements: the noble lie and the characterization of democracy. Drawing on material previously published in Contemporary Political Theory (Kasimis, 2016), Kasimis rereads the noble lie as laying bare the artifice by which regimes like Athens produce membership status as a natural or essential category. By revealing the fictional basis of such status, the argument of the Republic 'makes an open secret' of the mechanism by which nature and culture are secured (p. 87).…”