The Noble Lie

by Plato , Translated by Benjamin Jowett (1901), Orignal date of work: 360 BCE

Excerpts from The Republic, Books II and III

Summary

In Plato's Republic, Socrates struggles to determine how to set up the best and most just city.  In this excerpt from Books II and III, Socrates talks with his friend Glaucon about the ethics of using a 'needful falsehood' to set up this city.  Socrates wants the citizens of this city to be completely dedicated to the preservation of the city, and he wants to ensure that the citizens have every reason to maintain peace in the city.  He describes a falsehood that could be told to the citizens, to strengthen their emotional ties to the city.  This would ensure that they will defend the city when necessary with all due strength, and that they will have no reason to create unrest within the city.  Socrates struggles with the fact that this falsehood would have to be told to the citizens, in order to create a just city.

This passage raises many interesting philosophical questions about ethics, truth, and justice.  It forces us to ask questions about things that we might take for granted and assume that we already know.  The ability to ask big questions is key to the Socratic method, and key for the strategic mindset.

The Noble Lie

(Book II)

[Socrates:] The true lie is hated not only by the gods, but also by men?

[Glaucon:]Yes.

Whereas the lie in words is in certain cases useful and not hateful; in dealing with enemies --that would be an instance; or again, when those whom we call our friends in a fit of madness or illusion are going to do some harm, then it is useful and is a sort of medicine or preventive; also in the tales of mythology, of which we were just now speaking --because we do not know the truth about ancient times, we make falsehood as much like truth as we can, and so turn it to account.

Very true, he said.

(Book III)

And perhaps the word 'guardian' in the fullest sense ought to be applied to this higher class only who preserve us against foreign enemies and maintain peace among our citizens at home, that the one may not have the will, or the others the power, to harm us. The young men whom we before called guardians may be more properly designated auxiliaries and supporters of the principles of the rulers.

I agree with you, he said.

How then may we devise one of those needful falsehoods of which we lately spoke--just one royal lie which may deceive the rulers, if that be possible, and at any rate the rest of the city?

What sort of lie? he said.

Nothing new, I replied; only an old Phoenician tale of what has often occurred before now in other places, (as the poets say, and have made the world believe,) though not in our time, and I do not know whether such an event could ever happen again, or could now even be made probable, if it did.

How your words seem to hesitate on your lips!

You will not wonder, I replied, at my hesitation when you have heard.

Speak, he said, and fear not.

Well then, I will speak, although I really know not how to look you in the face, or in what words to utter the audacious fiction, which I propose to communicate gradually, first to the rulers, then to the soldiers, and lastly to the people.  They are to be told that their youth was a dream, and the education and training which they received from us, an appearance only; in reality during all that time they were being formed and fed in the womb of the earth, where they themselves and their arms and appurtenances were manufactured; when they were completed, the earth, their mother, sent them up; and so, their country being their mother and also their nurse, they are bound to advise for her good, and to defend her against attacks, and her citizens they are to regard as children of the earth and their own brothers.

You had good reason, he said, to be ashamed of the lie which you were going to tell.

...Such is the tale; is there any possibility of making our citizens believe in it?

Not in the present generation, he replied; there is no way of accomplishing this; but their sons may be made to believe in the tale, and their sons' sons, and posterity after them.

I see the difficulty, I replied; yet the fostering of such a belief will make them care more for the city and for one another.

--- This article is copyright protected. All rights reserved. This article is for personal use only. Other use, especially reproduction, storage in data bases, publication and transmission to third parties – also in parts or in edited form – without BCG´s prior written permission is not permitted. ---

565 words

Keywords:
Lie, narrative, truth, inspiration, ethics, justice, organization, myth, invention, goals, advantage