The themes they identify as Platonic are the very idea of a "superman" - the elite man - and the theme of eugenics, to which there are extensive references in the film, so I'm told. Superman comes from a world - Krypton - where a race of superior beings with super powers have been bred and engineered. The back-story of the movie concerns the break-down of this eugenics system on the doomed world from which our hero has escaped or has been exiled.
I'm inclined to contest the idea that these are Platonic themes. First, the idea of the Superman - ubermensch - is Nietzschean, not Platonic, and owes a lot more to Nazi ideology than anyone is really comfortable with. It is not an accident that the superhero was introduced to the world in 1938. It is clearly a pre-war Americanizing of a Nazi wet-dream. Plato has nothing to do with it. Superman's super power is his strength and might or, as Nietzsche put it, his "will". There is nothing remotely similar to that in Plato's depiction of his philosophical elite in the Republic. Are they endowed with super powers? No. The will to power? No. They are philosophers trained in geometry. Superman has no corresponding intellectual virtues. Clark Kent is as thick as a whale sandwich and Superman himself, while morally virtuous, never displays anything beyond an average IQ. He's strong, not smart. I don't see any parallels with Plato's philosopher kings at all, except for the broad concept of an "elite".
Second, the idea that Plato is the father of eugenics or selective breeding. This is an old furphy, but a persistent one. This is really the matter that I want to clarify here. There have been more misunderstandings about this than almost any other aspect of Plato, I suspect. In the Republic - Socrates' account of the ideal City - we find the extraordinary idea that the ruling class of philosophers are to own children in common. That is, the Republic includes provisions for sexual communism. Moreover, children from various classes can be identified, taken from their parents, and groomed as philosophers from an early age if they show signs of aptitude. Socrates admits that it is an extraordinary and arresting idea, along with an accompanying strange notion, namely that, in the City, men and women are regarded as equals.
This isn't eugenics. And nor does the sexual communism of the City's guardians have sinister motives. On the contrary, Plato's concern in this - as elsewhere in his political thought - is to try to separate self-interest from political power. The reason the Guardians are not permitted to know what children are theirs and the reason children are brought up communally is to prevent that oldest of political diseases, nepotism. The Guardians are powerful, but their power comes at a high price. They are not allowed to own property or children. Why not? To minimize the danger that they will abuse their power and corrupt their decisions out of self-interest. The whole purpose of the Philosopher Kings in Plato is to produce a class of rulers who are objective and who govern in the interests of all. For Plato, the cause of corruption in a polity is that rulers act in self-interest or in the interests of the faction that sponsors them rather than in the interests of the whole City. In the Republic, Plato goes to extraordinary lengths to create a class of rulers who can rule objectively. That is the single greatest theme of the Republic, on my reading of it.
It stands in sharp contrast to our political systems today. Our system consists entirely of competing claims of self-interest. The Labour Party rules in the interests of labour. The conservatives rule in the interests of business and money. Then there are lots of other interest groups: the Shooter & Fisherman's Party, the Farmer's Party and so on. Our political system is a contest between competing concentrations of vested interest. But, as Plato realises, good government invariably involves decisions which are outside or beyond these vested interests. We recognize this. We call a politician who is able to rise above their own interests, and who often defies his own supporters, a "statesman" rather than just a grubby politician. A "statesman" can see the interests of the whole nation and puts those interests ahead of the narrow and sectional interests of any one group.
Plato's solution to the blight of self-interest in a polity is radical, certainly, but the Republic is "an ideal writ in heaven" after all, not a platform for action. The same motive underpins the education system to which the Guardians are subject. They are drilled in objective sciences: maths, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy. Why? To preserve them from the influence of emotional and irrational arguments, once again so that their decisions are as objective as possible.
None of this has anything remotely to do with the stupid Superman comics. Or are they thinking of the section of the Republic called the 'Nuptial Number' which is, arguably, a form of eugenics, but certainly not as modern people imagine it? In the Republic there are carefully timed marriage festivals. The breakdown of the Republic and the on-set of social decay, Socrates tells us, occurs when the Guardians can no longer calculate the right times for such festivals. I have written extensively on this in other places. I point out that in most pre-modern societies there were efforts to regulate child-birth. This was to avoid having a glut of children when there was no food. Among some Australian aborigines, for example, there were times of the year when women-folk would separate from the main tribe. This was to avoid pregnancy at certain times. The health, social cohesion and continued existence of the tribe depended upon it. Socrates' marriage festivals and his 'Nuptial Number' is an extension of that idea. It had nothing - absolutely nothing - to do with breeding a super-race. The Platonic State doesn't control who marries who; it controls when they marry. Moreover, I point out that there is not the slightest hint of racialism in Plato. To lump Plato in with Nazi super-race theory is not just a misreading of Plato's Republic, it is a thoroughly grotesque misreading.
I didn't like Batman either. Or Spiderman. The Hulk gave me nightmares when I was a kid. I did like Lois Lane, and I liked the sexy mermaid in Marine Boy, but otherwise super-heroes are definitely not my thing. I've never understood the whole super-hero phenomenon in popular culture. Every one of them is ridiculous, but not quite as ridiculous as supposing that poor old much maligned Plato is their intellectual progenitor. As I say, I won't be seeing the movie.
- Harper McAlpine Black
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