December 14, 1967

Plato

“Then does not democracy set itself an objective, and is not excessive desire for this its downfall?”

“And what is this objective?”

“ Liberty,” I said. “You must have heard it said that this is the greatest merit of a democratic society, and that for that reason it’s the only society fit for a free man to live in.”

“It’s certainly what they often say.”

“Then, as I was just saying, an excessive desire for liberty at the expense of everything else is what undermines democracy and leads to the demand for tyranny.”

“Explain.”

“A democratic society in its thirst for liberty may fall under the influence of bad leaders, who intoxicate it with the neat spirit; and then, unless the authorities are very mild and give it a lot of liberty, it will curse them for oligarchs and punish them.”

“That is just what a democracy does.”

“It goes on to abuse as servile and contemptible those who obey the authorities; and reserves its approval, in private life as well as public, for rulers who behave like subjects and subjects who behave like rulers. In such a society the principle of liberty is bound to go to extremes - it will permeate private life in the end, and infect even the domestic animals with anarchy.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well,” I said, “it becomes the thing for father and son to change places, the father standing in awe of his son, and the son neither respecting nor fearing his parents, in order to assert his independence; and there’s no distinction between citizen and alien and foreigner.”

“And there are more trivial things. The teacher fears and panders to his pupils, who in turn despise their teachers and attendants; and the young as a whole imitate their elders, argue with them and set themselves up against them, while their elders try to avoid the reputation of being disagreeable or strict by aping the young and mixing with them on terms of easy good fellowship.”

What it all comes to is this,” I said,” “that the minds of the citizens become so sensitive that the least vestige of restraint is resented as intolerable, till finally, as you know, in their determination to have no master they disregard all laws, written or unwritten.”

“Yes, that is so.”

“So from an extreme of liberty one is likely to get, in the individual and in society, a reaction to an extreme of subjection. And if that is so, we should expect tyranny to result from democracy, the most savage subjection from an excess of liberty.”

* * *

Now, class, who wrote the above paragraphs?

• Barry Goldwater
• Franklin Roosevelt
• Abraham Lincoln
• Alexander Hamilton
• Plato

If you marked the Greek philosopher who wrote and taught about 400 B.C. you may go to the head of the class.

Our theme for this week was taken from the chapter: “Imperfect Societies” in Plato’s “The Republic.”

Except for an archaic phrase here and there, it might have been written by any thinker of any age.

It strikes me as being worthy of thought today because of its application to current world events. If nothing else, it teaches us that our problems are not unique-others before us have sought the answer vainly.

Surely - after two thousand years of earnest effort - we must be closer to truth and justice, which Plato counted the noblest aspirations of man.

I discovered the words of Plato last month during the course of the first assignment of a Great Books Program.

In form, his book is a discourse between Socrates and a brother of Plato - though it is impossible to sort out how much is the former and how much the latter.

No matter. The thoughts are provoking.

Plato (or Socrates?) contended there were three principal elements of human life-mind, soul and body, represented by the head, heart and stomach.

He attempted to prove the relative value of these elements by comparing them to a “perfect state” which he sets up from scratch in “The Republic.”

The significant thing about Plato’s conclusions is that it is the foundation of almost all Western thought. After 20 centuries of civilization we have come up with only two or three basically new ideas about how to govern ourselves and get along with our fellow man.

In Plato’s way of thinking, education was the key to survival. It was the main ingredient of organized society and the only salvation from the extremes of government, whether democracy or tyranny.

Educating the masses to the ideals of a philosopher is a slow and agonizing process - but one which Plato implored us to undertake. Previous democracies by the Greeks, Romans, French and Russians succumbed to the frailties of human nature, which education hopes to overcome.

We certainly have made some progress, but the question remains - which is winning the race, the follies of government or the wisdom of education?

By Lindsey Wilger Williams, retired newspaper publisher and syndicated columnist