Plato the Failure of Rationalism:

Plato

The failure of rationalism: A response to Plato and Descartes

In the "Republic," the ancient Greek rationalist Socrates admits that, to a great extent, his vision of an ideal society is just that -- an ideal. The concept of a world governed solely by philosopher kings cannot be perfectly realized, but as a 'Platonic ideal' he states that it is necessary to critically engage with this concept. His theoretical societal 'form' is perfect, he alleges, because it is supremely rational, with every individual perfectly placed in his or her social category, as determined by his or her innate abilities. Nothing is left to chance, in his world governed by philosopher kings, everything is rationally determined.

Plato's ideal begs us to ask a very obvious question: how rational can a society be, if it offers no guidance as to how to negotiate the complexities of lived reality? What of the possibilities of these 'ideal' philosophers becoming tyrants? After all, communists believed that their society was a philosophical 'ideal.' And within the philosophical community, every now and then, an idealist philosopher rears his ugly head (as opposed to an idealistic philosopher) who explains how, for example, eugenics might be morally justified in theory, even though such a policy might lead to genocide and a very clumsily executed form of genocide at that, given that no human being really possesses the wisdom to impartially decide who will live and die. Believing that a rational system of governance or just rationality on an abstract level can exist in an objective fashion, without reference to the irrational, ugly, or biased impulses in human nature is perhaps the most 'irrational' idea of all.

One of the great ironies of the limits of philosophical rationalism is seen in the example of Rene Descartes, who famously resolved that there was 'proof' of human existence, and God, because there must be a 'being' doing his thinking and meditating, a being somehow separate from the body. Descartes could not have known that modern scientific research would yield the stunning finding that it is the body that produces the mind, not vice versa (Descartes believed that somatic or bodily awareness came after the coming into being of consciousness and one's spiritual birth as a human entity). However, damage to the body, such as occurs during a stroke, is a sobering reminder of how easily one's thought patterns can alter our rational deductive capacity because of physical, neurological damage. This is one reason why Charles Darwin's findings were so disturbing to religious individuals, because he highlighted how human consciousness, as well as the human body, did not suddenly generate from nothing, but rather roots in physical, slowly evolving human evolution.

It might be argued that what Darwin discovered with deductive logic could not have been possible, or at least, was supported by the author Francis Bacon's earlier stress on the need to restore the senses to their appropriate place in finding out what was the correct way to apprehend reality. Bacon's belief structures about the best way to experience consciousness formed the foundations of a scientific method based upon empiricism, rather than rational deduction based upon entirely internal logic, as exemplified in Plato or Descartes. For example, a political philosopher in the Platonic tradition might merely as what is 'best' in terms of how to govern society. A Bacon or Darwinian empiricist would instead counsel someone to observe the world around them, and see how individuals have behaved in the past, when placed in positions of leadership and authority. Without some checks upon the governing, the empirical observer might note, rulers tend to be autocratic, and when a good and effective autocrat dies (such as Elizabeth I), there is a danger that an ineffective and tyrannical autocrat might replace him or her, despite the fact that in Platonic theory, Elizabeth is the ideal philosopher-king. and, through the scientific study of modern, cognitive science, the idea that 'I' am doing the thinking in a way that is separate from my body and that this can be rationally deducted, simply by thinking and without scientific experimentation would be confounded.

However, those using empiricism as their main philosophical view of the world have also been able to twist the empiricism to use science's supposed rationalism and objectivity to justify tyranny of 'the best,' as in the case of eugenics, and the notion of 'survival of the fittest,' which suggests that the 'best' (morally, racially, and ethically) thrive and should be allowed to triumph over the 'weak.' In reality, Darwin's actual theory merely supports the idea that those best suited to an environment survive, not that survivors are innately better or superior creatures (a mutated moth that can blend in with a coal-blackened environment is not 'better' than the white moths who are now more apt to die than before, because they are more obvious to predators when before they could be camouflaged by foliage in a pre-industrial society). Both deductive and empirical rationalism are problematic when filtered through emotional and subjective human biases. Humans are invariably influenced by emotions, and often use rationalism or scientific empiricism to justify absolute rule, or prejudices of various kinds. In fact, in a kind of mirror-image of Platonic deductive rationalism, this zealous Social Darwinism suggested that 'the best' would naturally rule, according to the laws of science, not philosophy or religion.

In a climate that celebrated first religious rationalism, then scientific, empiricist rationalism, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in "The Antichrist" celebrated what he called the death of God. He celebrated the inability to know anything 'certainly.' Now that science had shown that, rather than a moral intelligence, there was only a brute intelligence behind what he saw as survival, he believed there would be a return to a kind of wild, Dionysian pagan misrule -- not a Platonic ideal of society or a perfect, rational society. Without the moral glue of Christianity (which Nietzsche characterizes more in terms of myth, rather than Platonic rationalism like Descartes) or Aristotelian rationality, society would begin to devolve into a series of multiple, personal perspectives -- a kind of prediction of the current era of postmodernism, where a singular, uniting cultural ideal seems forever elusive and indeterminate. However, even Nietzsche forecast the development of an eventual 'superman' in a harsh, irrational world, while today it seems that multiplicity, rather than a singular, dominant philosophy or leader is the reality of the postmodern era.