Blog #54 - Plato's Ideal State - Would it work today?

We've spent a little more time on Plato's ideal society this semester than I have in past semesters; maybe b/c this time around the world seems to be crumbling around us with roiling stock markets and the Big 3 impending collapse. Where better to look than the past when the future looks so bleak, right? Well, maybe we can learn something.

Several criticisms were brought up of this ideal society:

1. Where would the innovation come from if everyone be content? Doesn't innovation come from competition and competition come from peoples' desire to be better?

2. Why do they need soldiers if everyone is content? Is it just for protection from other city-states? Or, did Plato ever intend for this city to exist? If that is the case, why are the soldiers really there?

3. What kind of guarantee is there that the philosophers will rule in everyone's best interests? Is there an impeachment process? Can the peasants overthrow the rulers?

4. In the interests of specialization, what if you get bored with your job? What if you don't want that job? What if that job that you do best is NOT something you love doing? To use an example from 4th hour, I might do math really well, but that doesn't mean I want to be an accountant.

5. Is there no social mobility? What if we don't like the class that we're born into?

This link http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/2g.htm gives a good, brief synopsis of the first four books of the Republic in which this society is described. I have countered many of these arguments in a devil's advocate style by appealing to one of Socrates' universal questions - courage, justice, virtue, wisdom, moderation, beauty.

The question before you is: Can Plato's society be fixed to make it more ideal to fit a 21st century American audience? Why or why not?

Things to ponder while answering this question: Is Plato's society so incompatible with American ideals and tastes and traditions that it cannot be fixed?  Can Plato's society work for people of another country? What would you have to fix in order for it to work in America? Could it work on a national or state level or could it only work on a small scale? If it only works on a small scale, what's the use?

 - Also, are Americans too individualistic to give up some of our freedoms or luxuries for the greater good of society.  This will be a topic - the greater good vs. the desires of the individual - as we go on through the semester.  

250 word minimum response.  Due Thursday, Dec. 13 by class time.

Also, new philosophy books in our school media center:
      
       

     

Enjoy!

Blog #15 - Question for a higher power - ask anything

So I'm sitting in the car and I hear the opening lines of a song by the Fray go like this...

"I found God on the corner of First and Amistad
Where the West was all but won
All alone, smoking his last cigarette
I said, 'Where you been?' He said, 'Ask anything.'"

Since we had been talking a lot about fate and free will and a lot about God's purpose in life lately and about how the empiricists and rationalists viewed it all, I figured that this would be the premise for a great blog question.

Suspend all disbelief, don't try to weasel out of it by looking for a loophole like you did with the trolley experiment; for the purpose of this experiment, please assume that a higher power exists. You don't have to believe in the higher power in order to ask it a question.

Every society and culture tries to answer the burning eternal questions. Every generation tries to find a new interpretation of the same answers and come up with a unique way of asking the same eternal questions in a different way. We see that with The Matrix, Lost, the Golden Compass, Heroes, and now (as I watch) the new Battlestar Galactica. So why would music be any different an expression of this yearning for understanding? It wouldn't, and I'm glad I found a contemporary song that captured one of those questions.

Think long and hard about it, because you only get one question to ask.

So please answer the following:

1. What would it be?

2. Why would you ask that question?

3. And what do you think the answer might be?

Minimum of 250 words total. Due by Thursday 2/12.