2
If you have to be told everything, do not read me.
—JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Emile
If, based on the evidence seen so far, the phenomenon of esotericism has, as it were, finally gotten our full attention, it might be helpful to pause here to examine—more closely than we previously had the patience to do—just what esoteric writing is, what it looks like, and how it works. Two brief illustrations will help to make the phenomenon both more intelligible and less forbidding. They will also help to confirm the testimonial evidence we have seen so far with at least a small sampling of textual evidence.
As a rule, philosophical esotericism does not take the form of a secret code or other arcane contrivance that is impenetrable to all except those possessing a special key. On the contrary, esoteric writers tend to employ techniques that are quite intuitively accessible, at least for people who have spent a little time imagining how they themselves might go about hinting at an idea without openly stating it. Everyone knows how to drop a hint. Allusion, metaphor, insinuation, symbolism, riddle, irony—all of these are essential parts of the normal repertoire of civilized human discourse, as the intercultural communication literature powerfully indicates. Esoteric writing should be thought of, not as something wholly alien and artificial, but as a more concentrated and refined use of techniques that are relatively familiar to us from ordinary parlance (even in our “low context” culture).
To illustrate, I will discuss one example of philosophical writing from the classical period—Plato’s Republic—and one from the modern period, Machiavelli’s Discourses and Prince. From the historical evidence just presented, we see that there is considerable historical testimony to the esotericism of Plato. As for Machiavelli: Bacon, Spinoza, Rousseau, and Diderot all explicitly describe him as esoteric.1 And he himself declares in a letter to Guicciardini: “For some time, I never say what I believe and I never believe what I say; and if it sometimes occurs to me that I say the truth, I conceal it among so many lies that it is hard to find it out.”2 I will try to bear out these testimonial claims by giving a short esoteric reading of something in each of their writings.
But a quick caveat. In a short space, it is impossible to marshal the kind of evidence and argumentation that would be needed to make an esoteric interpretation broadly persuasive. It should be understood, then, that these brief examples are meant here as suggestive and illustrative—not demonstrative. (For examples that are more fully elaborated, see the “suggestions for further reading” given in chapter 9.) For present purposes, it will suffice if these short discussions are plausible enough to convince the reader that something esoteric is going on in these texts, even if the precise interpretations suggested are not completely persuasive.
Let me begin on the broadest level by simply listing some of the more commonly employed esoteric techniques. If an author should seek to criticize covertly the reigning government or the dominant religious or philosophical beliefs, one obvious way of doing so would be to write allegorically, directing his criticisms at some other object, distant in time or place (or perhaps an animal of some kind), while hinting at a connection to his true target. Or he might openly report his criticisms, but put them in the mouth of some other character of whom he expresses stern disapproval. Or he might openly report them, but for the necessary purpose of refuting them, which he does in a notably unconvincing manner.
More generally, a thinker can hint at an idea without expressly stating it by presenting it in an obscure manner, or very tersely, or ambiguously. He can break the idea down into its constituent parts and then disperse these parts over a long work. Or he can openly state the whole idea, but only in passing and in some obscure corner of his book, while proclaiming the contrary view a dozen times over in prominent places. He can make use of irony, paradoxes, parables, stories, symbols, and myths. Or he can place stumbling blocks in the reader’s path that compel him to stop and wonder what the writer is really up to, such as unexplained digressions, surprising omissions, unnecessary or slightly altered repetitions, and implausible blunders, such as errors of fact, patent contradictions, and misquotations.
This brief list is obviously not meant to be exhaustive. It is also not universal: different writers employ different techniques. For that reason, writers will sometimes attempt to give the reader some guidance by hinting at—in some cases, even openly stating—some techniques they have employed.
MACHIAVELLI AND THE POLITICAL PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
We find an example of this in Machiavelli’s Discourses. The next to last chapter of this book (3.48) bears the title: “When one sees a great error made by an enemy, one ought to believe that there is deception underneath.”3 This would seem to point to the last technique on our list: implausible errors or blunders. It is true that, on the surface, Machiavelli is speaking here about military tactics, but obviously the same technique can apply in the literary realm. It must also be kept in mind that, as Machiavelli explicitly declares, he is engaged—like all the later, Enlightenment thinkers—in a great struggle aimed at overthrowing prevailing modes of thought and practice. And the primary weapons in this battle are books. Therefore, as I believe a longer analysis could show, Machiavelli often speaks of military strategy as a way of covertly discussing literary strategy.
Some support for this idea can be found in Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism, where we find the exact same conflation of military and literary strategy—as well as the identical warning concerning seeming errors:
A prudent chief not always must display
His pow’rs in equal ranks, and fair array
But with th’occasion and the place comply
Conceal his force, nay seem sometimes to fly,
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.4
Among other things, then, we should be on the lookout for intentional “great errors” as we read Machiavelli.
There turn out to be many such errors, but let us briefly examine two. The first involves a uniquely important quotation. Machiavelli’s works are of course full of quotations, as well as allusions and references to ancient historians, poets, and philosophers. But what about the Bible? Surprisingly, although there are many allusions to biblical stories, in the whole of the Prince and the Discourses, there is just one, single quotation from the Bible. Furthermore, this quotation occurs in a uniquely important chapter, book 1, chapter 26: the single chapter in the whole of the Discourses—a work devoted to the analysis and restoration of republican government—that is expressly dedicated to tyranny, to the greatest enemy of republican liberty. It is fair to say, then, that at least for the careful reader, a double spotlight, as it were, falls on this short quotation.
Machiavelli employs it in the course of explaining that if a man should rise from private life to be the sole ruler of a city or province, especially an unruly one, then the only sure means for holding onto it is to “make everything new.” What this simple-sounding phrase means is something extraordinarily tyrannical:
to make in cities new governments with new names, new authorities, new men; to make the rich poor, the poor rich, as did David when he became king—“who filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty”; besides this to build new cities, to take down those built, to exchange the inhabitants from one place to another.
Machiavelli himself goes on to remark:
These modes are very cruel, and enemies to every way of life, not only Christian but human; and any man whatever should flee them and wish to live in private rather than as king with so much ruin to men.5
In his description, Machiavelli attributes this brutally tyrannical behavior to David, backing up his claim with a quotation—his one and only quotation from the Bible (Luke 1:53). But as almost any annotated edition of the Discourses will inform you, Machiavelli has made a bizarre mistake here. The quotation he recites is not about David at all. It is describing—God!
What are we to make of this? No one is infallible; and surely it is possible that it is an innocent mistake, a random error. But just as surely, that is not the most likely interpretation. For, first, it concerns the sole quotation from the Bible, which occurs in the sole chapter explicitly devoted to tyranny. Second, the consequences of the error are not random, but highly significant. Third, the quotation that Machiavelli mischaracterizes is not some obscure, seldom-quoted line, but one of the best-known passages of the Gospels. It is part of the Magnificat or Song of Mary, a canticle sung or recited in Vespers, the evening prayer service, which Machiavelli would have heard many hundreds of times. And fourth, he has explicitly alerted us (as Pope did after him) to watch out for this very kind of trick. He has committed a “great error,” and therefore, following his own admonition, we ought to “believe that there is deception underneath.” Specifically, through the error in this unique quotation, Machiavelli would seem to be covertly communicating a crucial and dangerous message: that the God of the New Testament is a great tyrant or, more broadly, that the Christian religion is perhaps the true cause of the loss of the ancient republican liberty that he, Machiavelli, is striving in this book to revive.6
What adds to the plausibility of this interpretation is that it is supported by a second example, which uses the exact same technique—and to convey the same lesson. In the Prince, too, Machiavelli discusses the loss of liberty in the postclassical world. In one of his most famous teachings, he asserts that the modern world has become weak and enslaved primarily owing to the reliance on mercenary and auxiliary troops—on outside forces. This military problem—and not Christianity—would seem to be the central cause of the loss of liberty. To remain strong and free, one must always rely on “one’s own arms.” To prove and illustrate this core principle of self-reliance, Machiavelli gives a number of examples, culminating in the famous biblical story of David and Goliath. In Machiavelli’s telling:
Saul, to give [David] spirit, armed him with his own arms—which David, as soon as he had them on, refused, saying that with them he could not give a good account of himself, and so he would rather meet the enemy with his sling and his knife.7
But here again there is a “great error.” As most everyone knows, David did not take a knife or sword with him, but only his sling (hence, when he cut off Goliath’s head, he had to use the latter’s sword). This may seem a small point, but the Bible is quite insistent about it:
So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and struck the Philistine, and killed him; there was no sword in the hand of David.8
This small detail is given such great emphasis because it conveys the core meaning of the story. As the smaller and poorly-armed David explains, standing before Goliath: “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin; but I come to you in the name of the LORD.”9 The whole point of the story—indeed, the whole point of the Bible—is that we should not rely on ourselves or our own arms: we must put our whole faith and trust in the Lord, who alone can deliver us from our enemies as from all evil.
Thus, when Machiavelli incorrectly puts a knife in David’s hands—and in the very context of discussing the need for “one’s own arms”—it is extremely unlikely that this is an innocent mistake, not only because it concerns a very significant and well-known detail, but also because it forms part of a larger, even more striking “error”: the use of this famous biblical story to prove the very opposite of its meaning.
Far more likely is that Machiavelli is being here, well . . . Machiavellian. He introduces the David and Goliath story in order to be able to claim, on the surface, that his new teaching is consistent with the Bible. But he changes—he reverses—the all-important detail of the knife in order covertly to announce the very opposite message: that his central new teaching of military self-reliance—and ultimately of human self-reliance—is diametrically opposed to the central teaching of the Bible. As in the first example, Machiavelli seeks here to proclaim, just a bit beneath the surface, his true, humanistic project, which is to subvert and replace the whole biblical orientation, which is the true cause of our loss of freedom. For the Christian teaching of passivity and trust in the Lord, in his view, has disarmed the world, making it weak and ripe for tyranny. Machiavelli would contribute to the restoration of ancient republican liberty by putting a sword back in human hands.10
It goes without saying that the esoteric interpretation of two isolated passages, even if quite plausible, cannot stand alone. These readings need to be integrated into a careful interpretation of the whole of Machiavelli’s writings. Still, I do believe that at least this much is relatively clear: First, there are manifest difficulties or puzzles on the surface of these texts. Second, Machiavelli has openly alerted us to the character of certain of these difficulties, declaring that there is “deception underneath.” And third, these puzzles can be plausibly resolved in ways that help to make sense of his larger philosophical and literary activity.
PLATO AND THE NATURAL LIMITS OF POLITICS
This reading of Machiavelli, while perhaps controversial, is not so far outside the mainstream of scholarly interpretation as to shock anyone. For an illustration of esoteric reading that yields an interpretation fully opposite to the dominant one, we turn to Plato’s Republic. Here we must rely not on two simple passages, as we did above, but on a lengthy series of dots that need connecting.
For two millennia the Republic has stood as the classic representative of ancient utopianism: the fullest expression and exploration of the idealistic longing for perfect justice on earth. But, on the other hand, it is hard for the reader not to feel some distaste, even horror, with respect to some of the characteristic institutions of this “perfect society,” such as the “noble lie,” the abolition of the family, the use of eugenics, or the proposal that the philosopher-king, on first coming to power, should wipe the cultural slate clean, as it were, by expelling everyone over the age of ten. It is for reasons like these that readers often see the Republic as—contrary to Plato’s intention—an anti-utopia, a classic demonstration of the totalitarian excesses that can grow out of a too great demand for perfect justice.
It is strange and puzzling that a single text—and one so brilliant, artfully written, and long revered—should inspire diametrically opposite reactions of this kind. One is moved to wonder: could it somehow be possible that this twofold reaction represents, not the abject failure of Plato’s art, but its fullest intention? I would suggest that if readers are simply aware of esotericism as a historically common practice, they will be open to noticing what otherwise they will unfailingly overlook: that the Republic actually contains numerous hints, some of them quite open and obvious, suggesting that Plato himself did intend both of these opposite reactions to his book.
Without doubt, on the surface level of the text, the Republic is an idealistic quest for the perfectly just society, which it reaches gradually in three ascending stages. At no point does it openly renounce this quest or declare it a failure. When the final element of the proposed society—the rule of philosopher-kings—is put in place in book 6, Socrates still states that this is necessary for the city to “become perfect” (499b).
But it is almost equally undeniable, I think, that, throughout the book, in a kind of contrary, downward movement, Socrates quietly introduces institutions and descriptions that—if the reader connects the dots—increasingly point to the very grave and inescapable imperfections of this “perfect” city and thus of political life as such. On this level, the book is about, not the utopian possibilities, but the strict natural limits of politics. Among the many instances of this countermovement, let me cite three that are particularly explicit.
In book 3, after some initial reluctance, Socrates openly declares that their utopia in the making will require a “noble lie,” a grand justifying myth (414b–15d). The city, even the best city, it now suddenly appears, cannot rest on rationality and truth. Politics somehow requires illusion and deception. Then later, in book 5, when Socrates is arguing for the communal possession of spouses and children, he openly acknowledges that this institution—truly just, but profoundly disliked—will require the rulers to employ a “throng of lies and deceptions” (459a–460d). The ideal city, it seems, requires, not just a grounding myth, but the daily use of deception and manipulation by the rulers. The culmination of this contrary, downward trend is reached in book 7 in the famous image of the cave. In the context of explaining the true character of philosophy, Socrates compares the city, even the best city, to a cave, a subterranean pit of ignorance and illusion, where the citizens, imprisoned and enchained, spend their lives as if in a dream, taking shadows for reality (514aff.). In view of these three plain examples—all of them making the same point: the inescapable opposition between the city and truth—it seems to me extremely difficult to deny that the Republic’s dominant utopian narrative is repeatedly subverted by critical, even anti-utopian reflections.
On this interpretation, then, the Republic is, on one level, an attempt to arouse and specify with precision our utopian political longings, so as, on another, to confront all the ways in which human nature renders these longings ultimately impossible. And it conveys this lesson not only in order to tame and moderate the political realm but also to redirect our thwarted idealistic energies, using them as a springboard into the philosophical realm where they may find their true and proper satisfaction.
Let me try to give a somewhat fuller, more substantive account of this second, critical message of the Republic, while also supplying a wider range of examples of how Plato communicates it between the lines.
To begin with, how does Socrates ever get started on his famous utopian mission in the Republic? It is not his own idea but his response to the request of Glaucon and Adeimantus, Plato’s brothers, who beg him to explain the true nature of justice and to demonstrate that it alone is the supreme good of life. Readers naturally assume that, in the lengthy discussion that follows, Socrates surely means to satisfy that request. However, this assumption is not at all supported, it is openly contradicted, by Socrates’s immediate reply to the brothers’ plea:
On the one hand, I can’t help out. For in my opinion I’m not capable of it . . . On the other hand, I can’t not help out. For I’m afraid it might be impious. . . . So the best thing is to succor her [justice] as I am able.11
This is Socrates’s rather hedged characterization of how he will approach the whole discussion of justice to follow. Most readers pass over it without pause, dismissing it as a bit of self-deprecating Socratic irony. But one of the advantages of Socrates’s reputation for irony is that it allows him occasionally to state shocking things quite openly without being taken seriously. In this case, I believe that Socrates states very accurately here just what he will be doing in the whole remainder of the Republic: defending the brothers’ utopian longings for justice as best he is able, while knowing that it is not ultimately possible to succeed. Some further evidence of this can be found in the action, the dramatic dimension of the dialogue, Throughout the whole conversation, what is Socrates’s dominant attitude? He is depicted not—as one might expect—as a moral idealist eager to describe his perfect society, but rather as a most reluctant participant, eager to get away with saying as little as possible (327c, 357a, 449a–450b). In other words, not only does he explicitly say that he is somehow dubious about this whole pursuit of utopia, but he is repeatedly shown to actthat way too.
Less than four pages later, this reading receives some strong confirmation. Socrates and the two brothers have set out to describe—to construct in speech—a society that is “perfectly good” (427e, 499b), which they do in three stages or three stabs. In the first, they describe the fundamental principle of social union—the division of labor—and the most basic society built upon it. People are not all the same, Socrates explains, but some are best at one art, others at another. So let the naturally best farmer devote himself to nothing but farming (thereby also perfecting his art), and the best shoemaker to shoemaking, and so on for all the necessary arts—“one man, one job.” After they have exchanged goods with one another, all their needs will be met and in the best possible way: each individual will profit as if he himself possessed the perfected talents of all. The common good and the good of each individual will both be maximized.
After they are done constructing this elementary society, Socrates, seeking to clarify the precise nature of its justice, asks: “Where in it, then, would justice be?” Or rather, that is what we expect him to ask. Instead he asks: “Where in it, then, would justice and injustice be?” (371e; see 427d). A surprising question. Their whole effort has been to construct a purely good and just society. And since they are constructing it “in speech,” they can make whatever arrangements they like. They are totally in control. And yet Socrates very quietly but clearly signals that their city—the most basic city possible—already contains injustice. Somehow, four pages into the project, the hope for perfect justice has already failed—just as Socrates had implied it would.
Where, then, is the injustice? Socrates does not tell us: he quickly changes the subject. But Plato, having planted this question in our minds, does not leave it wholly unaddressed. He indicates an answer between the lines.
In the whole discussion of the first city, Adeimantus is Socrates’s sole interlocutor, and he is a man of few words. “Certainly.” “Most certainly.” “Of course.” “That’s so.” In this section, he speaks over thirty times, but rarely with more than three words and never with more than a line—except once, when he delivers himself of a major address: six lines! It would seem that something is suddenly bothering Adeimantus about this city. What is it?
Shopkeepers. Society is built on the division of labor, and the division of labor requires exchange, and exchange requires markets, and markets require shopkeepers—so that the producers do not have to wait around for the arrival of buyers, neglecting their craft, but can sell to the shopkeeper who sells to the buyers. So Socrates simply asks Adeimantus whether their city will need shopkeepers—just as he asked him before about shepherds and carpenters—when suddenly Adeimantus launches into his long speech. He acknowledges the timing problem and the need for shopkeepers, saying:
There are men who see this situation and set themselves to this service; in rightly governed cities, they are usually those whose bodies are weakest and useless for doing any other job. They must stay there in the market and exchange things for money with those who need to sell something and exchange, for money again, with all those who need to buy something. (371c–d)
What appears to be on Adeimantus’s mind—though he refrains from expressing it openly—is that he (like most members of traditional, noncommercial societies) regards this as a demeaning job: shopkeepers must sit around all day in the market, doing nothing, producing nothing, moving money around, profiting from the work of others.
And this unstated problem, which drives Adeimantus to speak—call it the problem of “bad jobs”—is also the one responsible for the surprising presence of injustice in this seemingly well-ordered city. The division of labor, through which each spends his whole day and his whole life at a single task, is perfectly just and advantageous for all so long as all the jobs that society requires are reasonably good ones—at least as good as or better than what one would be doing if there were no specialization. But in fact there are bad jobs—shopkeepers or, if you like, garbage men, coal miners, infantrymen, ditchdiggers, etc.—and still it is necessary for society that someone do these jobs. These unlucky people are condemned by the system of specialization to pass their whole lives engaged in a stunting, unhealthy, slavish, or dangerous activity. In this way, the common good of the whole is inseparable from the systematic exploitation of some of its members.
Adeimantus delivers his long speech because he is attempting to reply to or minimize this unstated difficulty. His reply is: “in rightly governed cities, they [shopkeepers] are usually those whose bodies are weakest and useless for doing any other job.” If this is really the case across the board, if they are incapable of doing any better job, then there is no injustice in constraining them to do this one. But his use of the word “usually” shows that he knows this will not always be the case.
Socrates, of course, knows exactly what is bothering Adeimantus and, in his reply, goes on himself to make use of this justifying argument that the latter has just introduced. Socrates now adds to the city one final category of citizens that it seems he was hesitating to mention or at least saving for last, the worst of the jobs: servants or menial laborers.
There are, I suppose, still some other servants who, in terms of their minds, wouldn’t be quite up to the level of partnership, but whose bodies are strong enough for labor. (371e)
Like Adeimantus, Socrates tries to resolve or mitigate the problem of bad jobs—without ever openly describing it. These jobs can be justified by virtue of the natural defectiveness of certain individuals, some in body (shopkeepers), some in mind (laborers), which makes them incapable of any better job. But obviously nothing guarantees that such individuals will be supplied in the right kind and number required. In actuality, a certain level of systematic injustice or exploitation would seem to be inseparable from even the most basic city.
Moving on to the second city, we find further evidence of the Republic’s anti-utopian substratum. Here, we come across the noble lie. But while Socrates is open, as we have seen, in calling for the use of this lie, he never really makes clear why this radical expedient is so necessary. He thus leaves hidden the most troubling aspect of the lie: the fundamental defects of the city that the lie is needed and designed to cover over. In describing the myth, he tells us the “solution,” while leaving it to us to figure out the problem.
According to the myth, the citizens are “autochthonous”: they have all been born together from the land, which is their common mother. Furthermore, they come in three different races: golden, silver, and iron or bronze, which correspond to the three classes needed by the city—rulers, guardians, and artisans/farmers. Also, each is born together with the tools of one of the particular jobs required by the city.
As I will argue at greater length in chapter 6, this elaborate lie is constructed to hide from view four essential defects afflicting the city—every city. The first part of the lie, concerning autochthony, gives a mythical reply to two otherwise unanswerable questions: what legitimizes the city’s occupation of the land on which it sits and what justifies its inclusion of just these particular human beings to the exclusion of all others? These problems point to the inescapable arbitrariness and injustice of any city that falls short of a world state (as all must). These are significant new difficulties quietly pointing to the impossibility of perfect justice.
But what most concerns us here are the other two defects—those concerning the internal division of the citizens into distinct classes and jobs—since these connect with the problem of the division of labor that we have been discussing. Let me try to place all these interconnected issues in a somewhat larger context.
By justice we mean two distinct things: serving the common good and giving to each individual what he is owed or what is good for him. A just society must combine the two. A society is not just if it achieves the common good but only through the oppression of some individuals, nor if it scrupulously protects the good or rights of individuals but at the sacrifice of the common good. A just society is one in which there is a complete harmony between the communal and the individual good, with neither being sacrificed to the other. In Marx’s phrase (to quote a genuine utopian), it is “an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”12 This means that the activity that perfects and fulfills me as an individual happens to be the exact same thing as what the community needs for me to do and be for the perfection of the common good. My personal calling as an individual coincides with my duty or role as a citizen. In Aristotle’s formula, in such a society the good man and the good citizen are the same. Here the socialization of the individual, through which he is molded to the needs of society, constitutes a process not of alienation or indoctrination but of self-actualization. My social role corresponds to my true natural self. That is a just social order in the strict and full sense.
The crucial question—which is the true subject of the Republic—is whether human beings are so constituted by nature as to make such a social order possible. Now, the common good requires that the city contain certain “parts” adapted for the performance of the essential social tasks—economic production, military defense, and wise political leadership—just as the good functioning of a beehive requires the presence of different kinds of bees specializing in the performance of the various necessary functions. But is there any reason to believe that human individuals are, like bees, born to be one of these social parts? With respect to their abilities, are all individuals naturally gifted at one of these necessary tasks, so that they are either natural workers, natural fighters, or natural rulers? And psychologically, are they so constituted by nature that their true fulfillment as individuals coincides with one of these socially necessary functions?
Socrates clearly, but tacitly, indicates that the answer to this necessary question is no. He does so by asserting that we must make use of a myth, an elaborate lie in order to affirm that the answer is yes. The myth of the metals (that we are born for one of the classes) and the myth of the tools (that we are born for one of the jobs) are needed precisely to cover over the problematic truth, the fundamental defect of human political life, that there is no such complete harmony between the needs of society and the good of each individual (although there is certainly a partial harmony). There is an unavoidable mismatch between the whole and its parts. That is the crucial, unstated problem to which these elements of the noble lie are the “solution.”
The first and clearest manifestation of this mismatch is the problem we encountered in the first city: while most jobs are good, there are certain jobs absolutely necessary for the common good that are bad for the individual. (And Adeimantus’s long speech addressing this problem amounts to a first, crude statement of the noble lie.) If there were time to work our way carefully through the rest of the Republic, we would find that other manifestations of the mismatch repeatedly crop up.
I will just quickly describe—without trying to elaborate on or substantiate—the two most obvious. At the beginning of book 5, the interlocutors “arrest” Socrates again and compel him to explain the best city’s arrangements with respect to love, family, and children, which they accuse him—correctly—of having tried to ignore. We soon see why.
Love and family life, Socrates now claims, are forms of injustice, because these powerful private attachments diminish and conflict with our dedication to the common good. Indeed, the whole principle of family life—blood, kinship—conflicts with the principle of justice, which is merit. It systematically resists the effort to place each person born into society in the job and class to which he naturally belongs. Perfect justice, then, requires the abolition of love and family, the communal possession of spouses and children, and the regulation of mating through a state-run eugenics program. In utopia “neither will a parent know his own offspring, nor a child his parent” (457d). Now, as mentioned above, this is where many readers turn against Plato, for this institution seems horrible and inhuman. I can only assert here, however, that beneath the surface (and not that far beneath), Plato indicates in various ways that he himself understands and embraces this objection. The private family, although indeed unjust, is nevertheless natural to us and necessary to the happiness of most people. There is a natural incompatibility between the genuine needs of the communal order and those of its individual human parts.
The ultimate expression of this incompatibility, however, is to be found in the crowning institution of the third city and of the whole Republic: the rule of philosopher-kings. The highest need of the community is for the philosopher to return to the “cave,” the city, and rule it with his great wisdom; but the highest need of the philosopher is to detach himself from the city as from all mortal things and to contemplate the eternal. The last thing he would want is to entangle himself in ruling the sunless, shadow-world of the cave. For philosophers, it is the ultimate “bad job”—and not justified, as with the shopkeepers and menial laborers of the first city, by some natural defect that makes them incapable of anything better. Thus, the fullest perfection of the community is possible only through arresting and exploiting the fully perfected individual—a conclusion adumbrated in the very opening lines of the dialogue, where Polemarchus and the others playfully arrest Socrates and force him to stay down with them in the Piraeus when he intended to go back up (327a–328b; see 449a–450a).
In sum, we are not bees. A genuine whole cannot be formed of these parts. The practical lesson is that while the political world is certainly capable of a better and a worse, it is both futile and dangerous to try to give to it a perfection that it is not capable of receiving. Still, our strong desire to do so is not simply a mistake. It stems from important and admirable qualities. But these can find their true satisfaction only when—embraced and worked through to their end—they are steered into a different realm altogether, into the transpolitical life of philosophy.
This quick race through the Republic, a long work of extraordinary complexity, naturally stands in need of a hundred clarifications, qualifications, and replies to potential objections—none of which can be supplied here. But my purpose has not been to establish this interpretation as the demonstratively correct one. Let it be incorrect. Here, as with the Machiavelli interpretation, I have simply sought to provide the reader with a concrete and reasonably plausible illustration of what sorts of things are meant by reading between the lines. In particular, I wanted to show that it is not anything so terribly arcane or out of reach.
Beyond that, I have tried to exhibit enough specific cases of genuine puzzles on the surface of the text to provide some textual evidence for what we have found constantly repeated in the historical evidence: that something is going on beneath the surface of these works, that they stand in need of an esoteric interpretation of some kind, even if the precise one offered here should be found wanting.