Why the Philosopher Kings will Believe the Noble Lie

Abstract

At the end of Republic Book 3, when he has just finished describing the education that would produce fine young citizens suited to be Guardians of his ideal state, Socrates famously proposes that all the citizens should be taught a myth or story. They are to identify the earth as their mother, and to believe that, during their gestation within the womb of the earth, different kinds of metals accumulated in their souls, and that these metals are definitive of their future career and place in society. 1 We call this story "the Noble Lie". "Noble" translates γενναῖον, meaning "well-born"perhaps because it is about nobility of birth, since all the citizens are nobly born, of the same mother, according to this story, but we shall also find reasons for seeing it is as noble in another sense. "Lie" is translating ψεῦδος, meaning 'false'. Perhaps "lie" is an over-translation, since, as many have noted, not all falsehoods are lies. We could substitute "fiction" or "pretence" in place of "lie". But regardless of which terms we use, the fact remains that Socrates suggests using falsehood and asks how we might get the citizens to believe a myth which, in some sense at least, is acknowledged to be untrue. Two puzzles arise from the claim that the story is false. First, if it is obviously untrue, and everyone knows that, how can anyone come to believe it? And second, why should Socrates want his citizens to believe a falsehood, and run the state on that basis, instead of teaching them the truth? The provision of a founding lie, and the requirement that the people be deceived about their own birth, has generated hostility among a wide spectrum of readers. Many readers have jumped to the conclusion that Plato's aim was to conceal the natural equality of the people, so that they could be allotted roles of unequal worth in the community. This makes the story a rather ignoble lie, designed to oppress rather than liberate the people of the ideal state. Noble Lie de-anonymised 5th version (September).docx 2 August 2015 My task in this paper is to show that Plato meant exactly the opposite. I shall argue that the Noble Lie is designed to ensure that the city and its citizens are lucidly aware of something that is important and true, and that it is designed to deliver greater fairness and equality of opportunity, to prevent prejudice or privilege due to noble birth or wealth or any other unfair advantages, and to facilitate social mobility. By juxtaposing the myth of the metals (Noble Lie) with another myth (the "Cave") from later in the same work, I hope to make the point of the Noble Lie more evident. We shall also find that the puzzles about whether it is false, whether it is compatible with justice, and why the rulers would believe it, fall away. By taking a tour through the underground caverns of the Republic we shall emerge at the end with our eyes opened to the truth. I Birth and rebirth The Noble Lie comes in two parts. The first is about autochthony (414d-e): it claims that people are gestated under the earth, and that the ear...

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.…”