Plato and Progress
Socrates glanced around the group. The discussion began with the question of happiness—will a just man always be happier than an unjust one? Socrates answered this question to Glaucon's satisfaction, but Adeimantus broadened the question: What is justice? Socrates argues in the Apology that the state is greater than the individual. Before he came to trial for subverting the youth of Athens, he took the same path.
"I will tell you," I said: "there is a justice of one man, we say, and, I suppose, also of an entire city?" "Assuredly," said he. "Is not the city larger a than the man?" "It is larger," he said. "Then, perhaps, there would be more justice in the larger object and more easy to apprehend. If it please you, then, [369] let us first look for its quality in states, and then only examine it also in the individual, looking for the likeness of the greater in the form of the less."
Plato, The Republic: English Text, ed. T. E. Page et al., trans. Paul Shorey, vol. 1 of The Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann Ltd., 1937–1942), 147–149. Plato, Republic, Book II [368d]
Happiness seems trivial in our world, but it was a serious endeavor in Plato's. The word Plato used for happiness (εὐδαιμονίας) means something more like prosperity or good fortune. A better word in our modern context might be flourishing (although this word is also being corrupted through trivialization).
In Plato's telling, Socrates builds a state out of four or five men to show how the division of labor begins and how this division provides for the greater good of everyone bound together in community. This division of labor develops into classes, with each man assigned to a class, a set of duties towards the city, and a set of pleasures.
Along with those who farm the land, trade for goods, and protect the city (the guardians), there is the ruling class. Drawn from the guardians, these men will live communally, sharing everything (including their wives and children).
Each class has a separate pleasure or honor. Farmers gain the pleasure of working with the ground and a simplicity of life. Merchants gain the pleasure of fine goods. Guardians gain the pleasure of military honor and strength. The rules gain the pleasure of caring for the entire community.
Socrates argues this city will flourish when every person fulfills their duties—farmers produce food, guardian protect the farmers, rulers create wise laws and judge fairly, etc.
Just as a city will flourish when it is the most just, the person flourishes when fulfilling their duties. When Crito urges Socrates to escape death by fleeing Athens, Socrates answers that if he does, people would right disregard Socrates' teaching, saying:
And what will you say to them? What you say here about virtue and justice and institutions and laws being the best things among men? Would that be decent of you? Surely not. But if you go away from well-governed states to Crito's friends in Thessaly . . . will there be no one to remind you that in your old age you were not ashamed to violate the most sacred laws from a miserable desire of a little more life?
Not following the justice decreed by Athen's leaders will lead to misery. Life outside the properly ordered life of Athens might be enjoyable, but it would be unhappy. When faced with the question of happiness, Plato argues flourishing comes through perfect justice within a perfectly ordered society.
Connecting the ordering of society to justice and through justice to flourishing is the first urge of the progressive.
This progressive urge is naïve. The entire Tanakh seems tailor-made to refute the idea a perfectly constructed society will flourish.
God made Adam and Eve perfect, and placed them in the perfect place, and yet they still failed to follow him.
God rescued Israel from Egypt through miraculous signs (Exodus 6–13), made a way for them to escape the Egyptian army (Exodus 14), and gave them bread and water in the wilderness (Exodus 16). The Lord gave Israel a set of laws to live by, a traveling Temple, sacrifices to cover their sins, a priesthood to guide them, and military leaders to lead them in self-protection. And yet, Israel rebelled against God multiple times in the wilderness.
God brought Israel into the Promised Land through miracles (the book of Joshua), gave them farms and vineyards they had not planted (Deuteronomy 11:10), and protected them from their enemies. And yet Israel rebelled, asking for a king (1 Samuel 8:6).
God gave Israel a righteous king in David, eventually giving them peace against all their enemies and wealth. And yet Israel rebelled.
These instances of rebellion are not just something that happen in the Tanakh—the church is no better than Israel in this regard. God gives us Scriptures, and we twist them to justify our desires. God gives us gifts, and we use them to "fill the pews" rather than to create disciples. God gives us truth, but we seek acceptance and power.
Plato backed off the ordering of society he proposes through Socrates in The Law, where he argues the law must be supreme rather than men if a society is to be just. Perhaps this is a sign of Plato's increasing realism about human nature—found through trying to teach real rulers how to rule real people.
Progressivism's Primal Urge
The primal urge of progressivism is creating a perfectly flourishing society by building the perfectly administered perfect government.
Improving people's environment can lead to a higher level of flourishing—if the people are virtuous. Building a perfect government to create a perfectly flourishing society assumes forces outside us cause social ills. The Scriptures teach us that the problem is not outside us but in us.
This first urge leads to other, more dangerous urges—what I call the totalitarian trap. To reach its more dangerous heights, however, this initial progressive urge must be combined with a philosophy that disconnects the world of words from the world of real things.
That disconnect is a topic for another dispatch.