Plato, Nietzsche, Potsherds...(Kevin)

It might be best to state from the outset that I do not think Plato was wrong in banishing poets from his republic. My grounds for making such an astounding claim are founded on my belief that I do not think any reasonable poet would want anything to do with a society that failed to recognize the importance of her discipline. Moreover, I think Plato’s fault lie not in the fact that he chose to banish poets from the civic sphere of societal regulation, but in his conclusion that poets are invidious because they are unfit to assume positions in government. We Pragmatists view the application of such all-nothing value judgments to participants of certain categories or projects of existence as symptomatic of an antiquated tradition in Western Metaphysics that holds truth to be grounded in an absolute foundation from which are derived certain ideals as “ “timeless virtues,” and “the right way.” Throughout the history of Western thought, philosophers have sought to establish such a right way. Nietzsche claimed to go “beyond good and evil,” but all he actually did was turn Plato on his head by asserting that it is the poets who should be the kings of society and the philosophers who should be banished. He was just as rational as Plato in assuming that certain forms of conduct and thought are always better than others; and by asserting that the creator trumps the thinker, he assumes a foundation upon which such a conjecture can be based. In the end, he remains as much an heir to Plato as all of the other philosophers whom Alfred North Whitehead claimed had merely written footnotes to the broad-headed Athenian. I do not think it is until the twentieth century that we have succeeded in jumping over the long shadow Plato cast.
A bold assertion no doubt. To begin backing it up, I would like refer first to some points made in a brilliant essay by Soren Kierkegaard entitled “Of the Difference between a Genius and an Apostle.” In the essay, Kierkegaard argues that it is inappropriate to apply the categories of a genius to those of a religious prophet, as the former is judged on criteria of cleverness, while the latter defies aesthetic criticism altogether. No one is persuaded of the actuality of a religious truth by evaluating it on its aesthetic merits. And if they are, one has to wonder if it is truly appropriate to call the truth religious in this case, just because it deals with the teachings presented in a the form of a sacred text. It seems to me possible that a person might believe in the religious truth of a poem, as she might the aesthetic truth of a sacred text. This is precisely what William James was getting at in “The Will to Believe,” when he asserted that believing in the Mahdi was not a live-option to most of the audience members attending his lecture in that Cambridge lecture hall. Perhaps the teachings of the Mahdi did appeal to some of his audience members more than those of Christianity on an aesthetic level, but it is very unlikely that the poetry of the Koran could move one of them in the same way that a passage from one of the Gospels could on the transcendent level. Not because the latter is intrinsically truer it terms of its authenticity from divine authority; rather, because the habits and society of a typical 19th century New Englander instilled in him sensibilities that prepared him for transcendental truth through Christ rather than the Mahdi. One cannot compare St. Paul to Shakespeare because the writings of Shakespeare belong to the aesthetic sphere of existence and those of St. Paul to the transcendental sphere. A person may say she does not care for Macbeth because it lacks pathos in comparison with Hamlet, but she cannot say she objects to the teachings of St. Paul because they are not as witty as those of John the Baptist. What we are dealing with in these cases is the word of God, not the wisdom of poets. One can choose to accept or deny the teaching in either case, but not for the same reasons. Kierkegaard argues that we commit a great injustice whenever we apply the criteria of one category of existence to judge the work of another. I agree with him, and I think this is where both Nietzsche and Plato went too far. I think Plato was right to say that poets should not be politicians; not because poets are bad influences on the citizens of a society, but because poets are not trained in the laws and customs of societal regulation. I think Nietzsche was right when he said that it is through poetry, adventure, and creation that we will find our personal truths, not philosophy; not because philosophy is useless, but because pre-conceived systems of thought fail to take into account the unique needs and desires of every individual and the irreducible richness of every moment of her lived experience. So while I may want my friends to be Nietzcheans, I want my civic leaders to be Platonists.
Richard Rorty draws this distinction between public and private philosophies in his book Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Without having read the book, I still find the distinction useful, as I feel it is not until we reach Rorty that we truly break with the whole tradition of the “metaphysics of presence,” not because Rorty presents the best critique, but because he goes beyond criticism by showing his readers how, pragmatically, are ideas may be used as instruments for achieving the goals of our specific, temporal and finite projects. In this respect, we do not shelf Platonism, we merely recognize Plato’s ideas and categories as another instrument in our intellectual toolbox that maybe utilized when a certain problem presents itself to be solved through irony, recollection, allegories, or the theories of cosmology. What does get shelved from Plato for good is the notion that the reason why we are successful in achieving our projects--or campaigns as Rorty liked to refer to them—results from our operational theories and truths corresponding to eternal archetypes. Pragmatists agree with Karl Popper’s claim that absolute truths result in authorities who interpret, dictate and guard their sacred powers. Truths only become corrupt or immoral in comparison with absolute values that are unconditionally just and good. Pragmatists think that much of the non-sensical violence and arbitrary scorn that exists in the world today might be diminished if people stopped looking to justify their truths through the value judgments prescribed by their absolute authorities, and acknowledged the validity of all truths as being just in so far as they provide each person with the tools to live a life rich with meaning, love, and happiness. That is why Pragmatists are in favor of secularization of religion and the separation of church and state. We feel applying divine law to the civic sphere is another instance of misapplying the categories of existence which can only result in the unhappy consequences of prejudice and violence. It is true, we Pragmatists betray ourselves; we do believe in one absolute truth--the right of every human to live a dignified life—but we do not think we need to appeal to any authority to justify its veracity.