I wouldn't take Plato's description of society in the Republic so seriously. The Republic is partially an allegory for the human soul. It's a mental exercise. Plato's more literal political beliefs are expressed in The Laws, wherein he promotes monogamy and private property. Some say that Plato actually did believe in the Republic literally, but became jaded after his attempt to form a revolutionary state in Sicily failed disastrously, and in the aftermath of the 30 tyrants. Plato's views in the Laws are reflected in the more moderate political proposals of Aristotle.
It is clarified in the Republic itself that, were the ideal state actually established, it would experience the same decadence and eventual collapse that any other state does. So it can't be considered utopian in the way that the Marxist project can. Some of Plato's best work comes from late in his life, namely the Timaeus.
I think Plato did think it was worth striving for, as you will end up achieving something special along the way, but he was more alike to the Fascists in this spirit than the Communists. The “Thousand Year Reich” (a reference to the HRE, not a statement of political immortality) and the “New Rome” were doomed to fall eventually, it was known. That’s why they built ruin-architecture.
If fascism had a more aggressive attitude toward established religion, I think your argument would be better. Perhaps fascism would have become much more anti-Christian in an alternative timeline and it would have resembled Platonism more. In our timeline, I think communism is the better approximation for Platonic Praxis between the two attempts. But my argument would be that the third option, liberalism, is more Platonic, because it is more esoteric. I mean the American Revolution was Platonic, the Freemasons were Platonic.
Here I identify two strains of Platonism: Critian Platonism (exoteric) and Socratic Platonism (esoteric).
The Rosicrucians were the true blue Platonists of that time period, and they were staunchly conservative and later associated with Germany's Nationalists. Himmler and the SS were very intrigued by the Rosicrucians (see: das ältere rosenkreuzertum: ein beitrag zur entstehungsgeschichte der freimaurerei hans schick). Plato was mostly a supporter of the religion of his day. Certainly it was favorable to materialistic Communism.
I'm not sure if the American Revolution was platonic. I would like to think it is, but one of its main intellectual inspirations was Locke who was an arch-Nominalist.
This is your best piece yet. Should be even longer!
That said, I am a little confused why your reverence for aesthetics and beauty, so wonderfully displayed here, does not extend to politics, where you are some kind of pragmatist. The thought of clinging to the "lesser evil" also clashes with the uncompromising, individualist ideals you defend.
On a side note, do you actually believe we can achieve transhumanism? Might the death of science not get to us before that?
It's been a while since I last read Republic, but I think something that should be considered when analyzing Plato's scenario of sexual communism is motivation. Plato wrote about the need for this hypothetical state because he was lamenting the death of a noble, virtuous aristocracy. His proposed system was not something he put forward because he believed it was the most naturally apparent way of doing things, but the most necessary, as the traditions of his time had produced a thoroughly decadent class that was obliterating itself in the Peloponnesian War. Nor does Plato believe his hypothetical system would endure eternally due to its superiority, as he then lays out a scenario in which it would degrade into the normal forms of government.
In wishing to use Trotsky as a way to 'reclaim' eugenics from the boorish Nazis, I think one should carefully consider Trotsky's motivation in saying what he said.
"Within a century, out of your melting pot of races there will come a new breed of men – the first worthy of the name of Man."
Trotsky, and many other of his ilk, were motivated by the need to tear down not just history, but a certain type of man as well. The virtuous warrior aristocracy of old was their first enemy; when he was steadily vanquished, it then became the merchant king, the bourgeois millionaires and billionaires who ruled in the absence of princes and lords. In this regard, the melting pot of America would produce something that could conquer both: the brown, unruly slum dweller. This was what eugenics meant to a leftist: the genetic erasing of all distances between men by bringing them down to one level, with that level being located as far down as possible. La Raza Cósmica was this experiment brought to life, and it conquered the merchants and the warriors. In its place, it produced nothing but squalor. One senses that Trotsky would be happy with the results, only lamenting that this sea of brown equality did not also have free healthcare.
Now, in the present day, we have our own leftists promising to spread La Raza Cosmica to as much of the world. Rather than trying to justify it using standard leftist principles, you give a Platonic reasoning for why this is a good thing: maybe, after centuries of population degrowth, only the best and brightest will remain!
But the best and brightest love squalor. They have spent entire generations working to turn the world into filth. That is their motivation. Why give them that trust?
I'm not reclaiming eugenics, you're misinterpreting my intentions. I'm not a eugenicist:
"Although the Nazis lost WWII, they won the word eugenics. One can pedantically ask, “well, what’s wrong with good genes?” but it is not productive to hopelessly defend semantic etymologies on technical grounds. Whatever eugenics meant prior to 1939, the word is now inexorably connected to compulsory sterilization, antisemitism, racism, and the Holocaust. Eugenics is bad.2
What I propose instead is McGenics: a general anti-natalism via feminism, LGBTQ, and obesity. How does this accord with Plato’s sexual communism? The argument is not difficult, but the morality involved is strange."
That seems like a semantic difference. Eugenics included initiatives to compel undesirable classes to breed less, or not at all. McGenics, as you describe, is a bunch of initiatives to compel undesirable classes to breed less or not at all. Clearly you're concerned with the question of who breeds and who should breed.
Based analysis of Plato taken to his highest. But what I propose is Epicurus taken to his highest, eudaimonia maximized and enshrined above all. What is truly most based is the civilization or post-civilization intelligence that sets out to maximize universal pleasure by ruthlessly converting all matter in the universe into hedonium (whichever state of matter obtains the quality of maximizing pleasure per unit mass). As pleasure is the ultimate good against which all other goods are properly measured (as it is the only good which is inherently known to be good in the direct conscious experience of it), so too is the hedonium-producing civilization the ultimate end of society against which all technological progress is measured. We must ascend beyond Plato and reach out to construct endless pleasure among the infinite sea of stars.
"There's no quicker or easier way for the state to change its laws than to follow the leadership of those in positions of power... [but] it's not simply this that is impossible or difficult to achieve. What is difficult, and a very rare occurrence in the history of the world, is something else; but when it does occur, the state concerned reaps the benefit on a grand scale—indeed, there's no blessing that will pass it by.
A situation in which an inspired passion for the path of restraint and justice guides those who wield great power... they say such a paragon did exist, but he is certainly unheard of today. Still, granted someone like that did in fact exist in the past or is going to in the future, or is alive among us now, blessed is the life of the man of moderation, and blessed they who listen to the words that fall from his lips."
Part of Plato's imagining of the ideal society was an attempt to build a civilization that would resist the apocalyptic floods he imagined regularly (every few thousand years) destroyed civilization. The construction of the Republic (or whatever that ideal truly is) was thus extremely time-limited. Plato's Republic was never realized, and its emulators more recent have just enacted the terror purges you describe.
Is it even a worthwhile vision given the track record? Or is allowing past failures to define our future the same sort of regressive thinking?
In a prior iteration of this comment, I called the author a slur for mixing up heliocentrism/geocentrism. This was funny to me for 5 seconds but unproductive. I replace the invective with something more constructive and also more condescending:
B+
1. Heliocentrism is the earth revolving around the sun
2. Plato categorically does not want you to have an epistemic "blank slate", nor does he think this is at all coherent (cf. the mind of the slave boy in the Meno who comes to understand Pythagoras' theorem by "rediscovering" it in his soul). Plato wants you to have an epistemology that achieves the right balance between rigidity (so it holds on to good information) and malleability (so it can erase bad information and acquire new information) (cf. Theaetetus, the allegory of the wax tablet)
3. Popper also does not demand of you a blank slate; it was the Verificationists who came closest to demanding a blank slate of beliefs initially free of suspicious "metaphysics", the Verificationists who wanted a paradigm of knowledge built from analytic facts plus empirical observations. Popper (and also Quine) teach us that this epistemic paradigm is impossible; you cannot very cleanly separate your physics from your metaphysics and banish the latter while lab-testing the former. You are forced to treat theories as amalgamations of *both* conceptual and empirical claims, which is why falsification is a workable paradigm of knowledge-gathering while Verificationism isn't
4. Broadsides against Heidegger are fine and good, but continental philosophy isn't about taking Heidegger seriously; it's about taking Hegel seriously.
2. "the allegory of the wax tablet" is the tabula rasa. No one (me, Plato) is arguing in favor of "no thoughts whatsoever," if that is what you thought I was implying. Plato argues in favor of myths, so no one here is advocating for some kind of "moment-to-moment reinvention of language without any continuity." Buddhists advocate for that, sure.
It's possible to trace a series of three meta-political disputes in Europe, and then, modern history -- struggles of struggles -- first between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, then the Protestants against the Catholics, then the Left Against the right. In each step the struggle increased in generality -- moving from a crisis of authority (empire/landlords vs. papacy/merchants) within civilization, to a struggle about the nature of that civilization itself, to -- finally -- the struggle about civilizations, in generality.
Because this last struggle is not done, we don't really know the real nature of left vs. right. You want to claim, it seems, a kind of promethean eternal nature to the left, one that would allow us to reinterpret all of human history in this grand light.
The grandeur is good, but perhaps underspecified, as there are romanticisms of the left and right, classicisms, too.
Why not be a bit more specific - acknowledge that the left wanted to get rid of the king, the right wanted to keep the king. The left won, then became king, and used the old leftist language to justify its own kingship, but there were always those who said no to the new kings.
This world is unlikely, but possible to achieve, still, and if you hold to the above interpretation of left as meaning -- against kings --- it is perhaps our best strategy. Certainly the one I've been following (https://theboloist.substack.com/) and invite all others to follow as well. This is not a recruitment call, but a provocation to form your own bolo.
because Plato was dealing with relatively undifferentiated societies, and the Guelph/Ghib struggle involves struggles over structurally differentiated megasocieties --- just like what we got now. Not sure where you see Spengler, as I have a deep and probably irrational distaste for Germanic/Barbarian cultures and a strong preference for Mediterranean clarity. Perhaps this is self-loathing though?
“I’m a leftist because I’m a utopian. I’m a utopian because I do not believe human nature is fixed. If human nature was fixed, then maybe Ted Kaczynski would be right.”
I wouldn't take Plato's description of society in the Republic so seriously. The Republic is partially an allegory for the human soul. It's a mental exercise. Plato's more literal political beliefs are expressed in The Laws, wherein he promotes monogamy and private property. Some say that Plato actually did believe in the Republic literally, but became jaded after his attempt to form a revolutionary state in Sicily failed disastrously, and in the aftermath of the 30 tyrants. Plato's views in the Laws are reflected in the more moderate political proposals of Aristotle.
You have to discard Cioran after he loses the war; same with Plato. This is Platonic leftism.
It is clarified in the Republic itself that, were the ideal state actually established, it would experience the same decadence and eventual collapse that any other state does. So it can't be considered utopian in the way that the Marxist project can. Some of Plato's best work comes from late in his life, namely the Timaeus.
Well clearly Marxism and Platonism are distinct, but I still think Plato's goal is to establish an ideal state, whether or not that state will last.
I think Plato did think it was worth striving for, as you will end up achieving something special along the way, but he was more alike to the Fascists in this spirit than the Communists. The “Thousand Year Reich” (a reference to the HRE, not a statement of political immortality) and the “New Rome” were doomed to fall eventually, it was known. That’s why they built ruin-architecture.
If fascism had a more aggressive attitude toward established religion, I think your argument would be better. Perhaps fascism would have become much more anti-Christian in an alternative timeline and it would have resembled Platonism more. In our timeline, I think communism is the better approximation for Platonic Praxis between the two attempts. But my argument would be that the third option, liberalism, is more Platonic, because it is more esoteric. I mean the American Revolution was Platonic, the Freemasons were Platonic.
Here I identify two strains of Platonism: Critian Platonism (exoteric) and Socratic Platonism (esoteric).
The Rosicrucians were the true blue Platonists of that time period, and they were staunchly conservative and later associated with Germany's Nationalists. Himmler and the SS were very intrigued by the Rosicrucians (see: das ältere rosenkreuzertum: ein beitrag zur entstehungsgeschichte der freimaurerei hans schick). Plato was mostly a supporter of the religion of his day. Certainly it was favorable to materialistic Communism.
I'm not sure if the American Revolution was platonic. I would like to think it is, but one of its main intellectual inspirations was Locke who was an arch-Nominalist.
This is your best piece yet. Should be even longer!
That said, I am a little confused why your reverence for aesthetics and beauty, so wonderfully displayed here, does not extend to politics, where you are some kind of pragmatist. The thought of clinging to the "lesser evil" also clashes with the uncompromising, individualist ideals you defend.
On a side note, do you actually believe we can achieve transhumanism? Might the death of science not get to us before that?
Have you read McGenics?
https://deepleft.substack.com/p/mcgenics
It's been a while since I last read Republic, but I think something that should be considered when analyzing Plato's scenario of sexual communism is motivation. Plato wrote about the need for this hypothetical state because he was lamenting the death of a noble, virtuous aristocracy. His proposed system was not something he put forward because he believed it was the most naturally apparent way of doing things, but the most necessary, as the traditions of his time had produced a thoroughly decadent class that was obliterating itself in the Peloponnesian War. Nor does Plato believe his hypothetical system would endure eternally due to its superiority, as he then lays out a scenario in which it would degrade into the normal forms of government.
In wishing to use Trotsky as a way to 'reclaim' eugenics from the boorish Nazis, I think one should carefully consider Trotsky's motivation in saying what he said.
"Within a century, out of your melting pot of races there will come a new breed of men – the first worthy of the name of Man."
Trotsky, and many other of his ilk, were motivated by the need to tear down not just history, but a certain type of man as well. The virtuous warrior aristocracy of old was their first enemy; when he was steadily vanquished, it then became the merchant king, the bourgeois millionaires and billionaires who ruled in the absence of princes and lords. In this regard, the melting pot of America would produce something that could conquer both: the brown, unruly slum dweller. This was what eugenics meant to a leftist: the genetic erasing of all distances between men by bringing them down to one level, with that level being located as far down as possible. La Raza Cósmica was this experiment brought to life, and it conquered the merchants and the warriors. In its place, it produced nothing but squalor. One senses that Trotsky would be happy with the results, only lamenting that this sea of brown equality did not also have free healthcare.
Now, in the present day, we have our own leftists promising to spread La Raza Cosmica to as much of the world. Rather than trying to justify it using standard leftist principles, you give a Platonic reasoning for why this is a good thing: maybe, after centuries of population degrowth, only the best and brightest will remain!
But the best and brightest love squalor. They have spent entire generations working to turn the world into filth. That is their motivation. Why give them that trust?
I'm not reclaiming eugenics, you're misinterpreting my intentions. I'm not a eugenicist:
"Although the Nazis lost WWII, they won the word eugenics. One can pedantically ask, “well, what’s wrong with good genes?” but it is not productive to hopelessly defend semantic etymologies on technical grounds. Whatever eugenics meant prior to 1939, the word is now inexorably connected to compulsory sterilization, antisemitism, racism, and the Holocaust. Eugenics is bad.2
What I propose instead is McGenics: a general anti-natalism via feminism, LGBTQ, and obesity. How does this accord with Plato’s sexual communism? The argument is not difficult, but the morality involved is strange."
That seems like a semantic difference. Eugenics included initiatives to compel undesirable classes to breed less, or not at all. McGenics, as you describe, is a bunch of initiatives to compel undesirable classes to breed less or not at all. Clearly you're concerned with the question of who breeds and who should breed.
The author is saddened their preferred depopulation strategy is now out of favor for four years.
Based analysis of Plato taken to his highest. But what I propose is Epicurus taken to his highest, eudaimonia maximized and enshrined above all. What is truly most based is the civilization or post-civilization intelligence that sets out to maximize universal pleasure by ruthlessly converting all matter in the universe into hedonium (whichever state of matter obtains the quality of maximizing pleasure per unit mass). As pleasure is the ultimate good against which all other goods are properly measured (as it is the only good which is inherently known to be good in the direct conscious experience of it), so too is the hedonium-producing civilization the ultimate end of society against which all technological progress is measured. We must ascend beyond Plato and reach out to construct endless pleasure among the infinite sea of stars.
"There's no quicker or easier way for the state to change its laws than to follow the leadership of those in positions of power... [but] it's not simply this that is impossible or difficult to achieve. What is difficult, and a very rare occurrence in the history of the world, is something else; but when it does occur, the state concerned reaps the benefit on a grand scale—indeed, there's no blessing that will pass it by.
A situation in which an inspired passion for the path of restraint and justice guides those who wield great power... they say such a paragon did exist, but he is certainly unheard of today. Still, granted someone like that did in fact exist in the past or is going to in the future, or is alive among us now, blessed is the life of the man of moderation, and blessed they who listen to the words that fall from his lips."
Part of Plato's imagining of the ideal society was an attempt to build a civilization that would resist the apocalyptic floods he imagined regularly (every few thousand years) destroyed civilization. The construction of the Republic (or whatever that ideal truly is) was thus extremely time-limited. Plato's Republic was never realized, and its emulators more recent have just enacted the terror purges you describe.
Is it even a worthwhile vision given the track record? Or is allowing past failures to define our future the same sort of regressive thinking?
the Founders were Platonists, so I reject your characterizations regarding purges.
In a prior iteration of this comment, I called the author a slur for mixing up heliocentrism/geocentrism. This was funny to me for 5 seconds but unproductive. I replace the invective with something more constructive and also more condescending:
B+
1. Heliocentrism is the earth revolving around the sun
2. Plato categorically does not want you to have an epistemic "blank slate", nor does he think this is at all coherent (cf. the mind of the slave boy in the Meno who comes to understand Pythagoras' theorem by "rediscovering" it in his soul). Plato wants you to have an epistemology that achieves the right balance between rigidity (so it holds on to good information) and malleability (so it can erase bad information and acquire new information) (cf. Theaetetus, the allegory of the wax tablet)
3. Popper also does not demand of you a blank slate; it was the Verificationists who came closest to demanding a blank slate of beliefs initially free of suspicious "metaphysics", the Verificationists who wanted a paradigm of knowledge built from analytic facts plus empirical observations. Popper (and also Quine) teach us that this epistemic paradigm is impossible; you cannot very cleanly separate your physics from your metaphysics and banish the latter while lab-testing the former. You are forced to treat theories as amalgamations of *both* conceptual and empirical claims, which is why falsification is a workable paradigm of knowledge-gathering while Verificationism isn't
4. Broadsides against Heidegger are fine and good, but continental philosophy isn't about taking Heidegger seriously; it's about taking Hegel seriously.
5. Otherwise, enjoyable (and enjoyably disagreeable) reading
1. that was a stupid mistake on my part
2. "the allegory of the wax tablet" is the tabula rasa. No one (me, Plato) is arguing in favor of "no thoughts whatsoever," if that is what you thought I was implying. Plato argues in favor of myths, so no one here is advocating for some kind of "moment-to-moment reinvention of language without any continuity." Buddhists advocate for that, sure.
It's possible to trace a series of three meta-political disputes in Europe, and then, modern history -- struggles of struggles -- first between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, then the Protestants against the Catholics, then the Left Against the right. In each step the struggle increased in generality -- moving from a crisis of authority (empire/landlords vs. papacy/merchants) within civilization, to a struggle about the nature of that civilization itself, to -- finally -- the struggle about civilizations, in generality.
Because this last struggle is not done, we don't really know the real nature of left vs. right. You want to claim, it seems, a kind of promethean eternal nature to the left, one that would allow us to reinterpret all of human history in this grand light.
The grandeur is good, but perhaps underspecified, as there are romanticisms of the left and right, classicisms, too.
Why not be a bit more specific - acknowledge that the left wanted to get rid of the king, the right wanted to keep the king. The left won, then became king, and used the old leftist language to justify its own kingship, but there were always those who said no to the new kings.
One of these was an anonymous utopian who wrote a book, in 1984, that proposed a world order without any kings at all. (https://files.libcom.org/files/bolo'bolo%20(30th%20Anniversary%20Edition).pdf)
This world is unlikely, but possible to achieve, still, and if you hold to the above interpretation of left as meaning -- against kings --- it is perhaps our best strategy. Certainly the one I've been following (https://theboloist.substack.com/) and invite all others to follow as well. This is not a recruitment call, but a provocation to form your own bolo.
Why start with the Investiture Controversy and not Plato? Are you centering this on Germanic-Faustian culture via Spengler?
because Plato was dealing with relatively undifferentiated societies, and the Guelph/Ghib struggle involves struggles over structurally differentiated megasocieties --- just like what we got now. Not sure where you see Spengler, as I have a deep and probably irrational distaste for Germanic/Barbarian cultures and a strong preference for Mediterranean clarity. Perhaps this is self-loathing though?
“I’m a leftist because I’m a utopian. I’m a utopian because I do not believe human nature is fixed. If human nature was fixed, then maybe Ted Kaczynski would be right.”
I thought you were a race realist.
You don't read me:
https://deepleft.substack.com/p/is-race-realism-dangerous
Average people don’t have moral agency? Bruh
Thank you