C.S. Lewis and Psychology (II)
It is relevant to put Lewis into a philosophic context because, particularly in Pilgrim's Regress, he presents his character as thinking through the main features of several philosophic schools of thought.
In Plato's Republic, Socrates presents the just city--or several cities. As Allan Bloom says in his famous book, The Closing of the American Mind: "The regime of philosopher-kings is usually ridiculed and regarded as totalitarian, but it contains much of what we really want. Practically everyone wants reason to rule, and no one thinks a man like Socrates should be ruled by inferiors or have to adjust what he thinks to them." Then comes what might be called "the bad news from those pesky Straussians": "What the Republic actually teaches is that none of this is possible and that our situation requires both much compromise and much intransigence, great risks and few hopes. The important thing is not speaking one's own mind, but finding a way to have one's own mind." (p. 266)
Roughly speaking, the Republic teaches that if we think of others, or rather of "the city," "the common," "the whole," more than of ourselves, we can achieve justice. This has at least some correspondence to the view of Christians and other believers that in purity of heart lies the way to salvation. At every stage, however, Socrates suggests that the problems are so severe as to require fantastic solutions. If the problems are so severe as to require such solutions, they are also so severe that the solutions won't work.
Citizens (especially the warrior class) are literally expected to have no awareness of their own bodies as anything that deserves to be protected against others. The reason is not really that the soul is higher than the body, but simply because bodily desires, and related personal emotions including love, make it painfully obvious that we do not have exactly the same interests as our fellow citizens.
Plato almost makes his reforms plausible, and they have no doubt influenced many communes over thousands of years. But he also allows anyone who reads and thinks carefully to see problems. Children are to be exposed to war from a young age--since that is to be their main business. To keep them safe, arrangements are to be made to whisk them away on horseback when there is danger. Meanwhile, females are supposed to be fighting side by side with males. (Including sister and brother, who may be married without knowing that they are previously related). The problem is this: if danger to the children threatens the city's future, what about danger to women of child-bearing age? To speak brutally, there are more children where those came from, but if all the women of child-bearing age are killed, the city dies as well.
Why does Socrates (and Plato) let this clumsy error stand? Because for the sake of justice, women must be aware of themselves as women, tied to specific children and families, as little as possible. If they are aware of all those things, they always know there is a sane reason to protect their own children, and run away rather than protect the city. Of course, real people do not always run away; but presumably this is not because of a love of justice but because staying with the group is the best way, all things considered, to get what one (selfishly) wants.
If men are more inclined to leave their families for war, does this mean they are more just? No, once again it seems more a matter of satisfying, not denying, personal desires. Socrates says the most successful warriors should be rewarded by getting their pick of sexual partners(468b-c). This means personal attractiveness, not what the city decides, is very important after all. (It seems that communal living can accept a variety of sexual practices, but not heterosexual monogamy: promiscuity leaves one more open to what the group (or its leader) wants; polygamy establishes a clear hierarchy; and then there is a vow of chastity).
Of course there are real human beings who make noble sacrifices, and Socrates seems in a way to be asking just a bit more than usual of such people. He suggests more and more, as the dialogue goes on, that the guardians can expect to be treated like gods after they die. (See 372b, 416e, 468d-469b. The desire for such treatment is surely "higher" in some way than the mere desire to score with women, but it is still (in a funny way--Achilles decides in the Odyssey that it's not worth it)--a desire for happiness for oneself, not for justice for all.
Much of this can be said without referring to philosopher-kings themselves. The proposal that philosophers should rule re-states all the problems of individual happiness vs. justice in a very straightforward way. Philosophers really want one thing, and they want it erotically, passionately--to philosophize. The good news, one might say, is that they don't want the things for which politicians usually become corrupt, such as money and honour. The bad news, however, is that they don't want to rule. Ruling would take them away from philosophizing. (The philosoper-king proposal violates the "one man/one art" principle which is supposed to be the first rule of justice).
Again, we want to be guided by the wise, and we might be fooled by the philosopher's ascetism into thinking he is somehow pure or even holy. What he is, however, is preoccupied with concerns that have little to do with us. Socrates finally says it is a "coincidence" if a philosopher rules, and that philosophers will probably have to be forced to rule (519d-520d). Socrates admits that in a city not ruled by philosophers, this would be unjust.
To pile another over-simplification on top of others, in the Republic Socrates is constantly trying to banish eros, which is a longing for personal satisfaction. In the Symposium eros is allowed to take centre stage, and it does not appear that there are a lot of people lining up to be self-sacrificing citizens. Even in the Republic, however, we get at least passing glances at a lot of things that people expect to be part of, or the defining feature of, happiness. Certainly giving up lowly or everyday things, sacrificing for something higher or more lasting, is part of human life. It may be an attempt to re-capture those elusive perfect moments of childhood. But Plato's teaching seems to be that philosophy provides the way of life that comes closest to satisfying complex human desires. This way of life is "just," or satisfying to all the desires the good citizen might think of, only in a limited or indirect way.
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