Plato's Caste System

[Anonymous No.21448841]

Plato's Republic is divided up into castes of philosophers, warriors, and workers. He places great importance on the castes not mixing. But does this not mean that the workers will remain low people forever? Wouldn't it improve society if some of the best men procreated with lower class women so that their children could be of a higher quality?

Also, what should I read to compare Plato's system to other caste systems, especially the Hindu system?

[Anonymous No.21448901]

>>21448841
Plato was trying to optimize for both ability and low time preference among guardians. If you actually think about it from a normal perspective, you wouldn't want to be a guardian, which is why the city employs so much brainwashing to create other means of reward for them, like honor. The deeper problem is that the feverish, prosperous City-in-Speech 2.0 (which, if you recall, was created because the original City-in-Speech was too "boring", being the equivalent of a commune) requires libidinous people to expand. The job of the guardians is to guard the whole endeavor selflessly, allowing the natural impulses of the workers to guide the city's growth while also keeping them in check if they overreach. The regime collapses, however, when temptations (or even random fluctuations in breeding) causes cracks to form in the frame of the guardians, who then begin to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of the city. There's even a class war element here, because in demolishing the nuclear family for guardians, the guardians end up viewing themselves as one giant family. A natural "us versus them" mentality ensues, as the guardians begin to think that they are owed their due by lesser beings. And thus begins the (inevitable) decline of the city from aristocracy to oligarchy, etc.
>But does this not mean that the workers will remain low people forever?
Keep in mind with the myth of the metals that some "gold" people will give birth to "bronze" children and vice versa. Plato allows for merit to shine regardless of origin, even if gold usually begets gold and vice versa. But it's this same randomness that will eventually break the perfect harmony of the City-In-Speech 2.0. You're also making a mistake of assuming that Plato was advocating for the City-In-Speech 2.0 with 100% sincerity. Even if he sympathized with the impulse behind it, Plato recognized that such schemes were foolhardy and would not last the test of time and discussed it in length in later sections of the Republic.

[Anonymous No.21448924]

>>21448841
>Wouldn't it improve society if some of the best men procreated with lower class women so that their children could be of a higher quality?
No, since you will still need wagies who do low tier work. If the wagies are genetically superior they will just get depressed by their situation. A dumb wagie is a happy wagie

[Anonymous No.21448936]

>>21448924
Isn't that just part of the competition of life? There are plenty of people who might have the genetics to do better or higher work but they failed in the competition of life. There will always be people disappointed with their outcome

[Anonymous No.21448943]

>>21448936
I think the general idea is that different niches of society require different skills
If everybody had an IQ of 150 we would still need people to clean and wipe old peoples asses. And the 150iq individuals assigned to those jobs would be completely miserable, so it is good to have 80iq wagies

[Anonymous No.21448952]

>>21448943
Would they be miserable in Plato's scenario though? He specifically says that the upper caste people will be perfectly happy without the low brow pleasures of the masses because they're wise philosophers, and so they think about the good of the city instead of their ego. I can imagine that they could also do low level work without complaint if it were necessary for the good of the people

[Anonymous No.21448964]

>>21448952
But what's the point? They wouldn't be any better at manual work than the low level worker drones, and they wouldn't get the intellectual stimulus from their work that their superior intellect requires

[Anonymous No.21448970]

>>21448901
I agree that Plato probably wasn't sincere about that city. Ridiculous proposals like killing everyone above the age of 10 also suggest sarcasm on Plato/Socrates' part. But I was really just using Plato as a jumping off point on a discussion on mixing classes. I can understand the importance of keeping the best bloodlines pure. But if they are the pure, then couldn't the men "purify" the lesser bloodlines with their seed?

[Anonymous No.21448996]

>>21448964
That's a good point. But I would argue that there would still be plenty of low IQ people. There would simply be a small number of low caste women lucky enough to mate with a higher status man. And as society advances, perhaps there will be a need for even the lowest laborers to have a higher IQ. Also I'm just hesitant to accept the idea that we need to have stupid people. It seems like it would be self-defeating for a nation to purposefully keep part of it's population as deficient people. To me it makes more sense to have a strong nation from top to bottom. Maybe the solution is to use criminals or slaves as laborers?

[Anonymous No.21449021]

>>21448996
>And as society advances
I don't think Plato predicted technological progress in modern sense


>Also I'm just hesitant to accept the idea that we need to have stupid people.
There is that idea that back in the stone age, everybody was smart and resourceful. They had to be, to survive everything the nature threw at them. Then, as we became agrarian society, suddenly it was possible to make a living as a water bearer, and a low-iq underclass was born

[Anonymous No.21449054]

>>21448970
>But if they are the pure, then couldn't the men "purify" the lesser bloodlines with their seed?
No, because it would defeat the point of the expanded City-In-Speech. Workers with developed temperance wouldn’t pursue the finer things in life. They’d instead pursue Spartan, otherworldly goods. With this shrunken economic base, the city will eventually regress to its original form, a quaint commune that is unattractive to outsiders and imposes it’s will on nobody, and the need for guardians in the first place disappears,

[Anonymous No.21449066]

>>21449054
An interesting consequence of this would be that in regressing back to the point where the people only really focus on bare life necessities, the leisure for the philosopher disappears, which was the highest production of Glaucon's city.

[Anonymous No.21449228]

>>21448841
>under Plato's caste system, he would be on top
really makes you think

[Anonymous No.21449375]

>>21449054
But is there any chance of some sort of class stratification even in a commune? After all, there will be a natural hierarchy that exists no matter how equitable the society

[Anonymous No.21449392]

>>21448924
>Depressed basement NEET thinks he's the elite running everything else

Many such cases in lit lol

[Anonymous No.21449399]

>>21449392
Hello my friend, did I say anything to offend you? I don't understand why you feel the need to drag the discussion on a personal level

[Anonymous No.21449401]

>>21449399
Topics like these attract pseuds like moths to a flame.

[Anonymous No.21449431]

>>21448841
The Hindu Jati/Varna system isn't about maximizing virtue, but rather about ensuring social stability by making it so that everyone has a place. In short, every single viable social formation gets its own place, and is allowed to have its own, small, patch of land (literal or metaphorical) that it is allowed to act in its own interests in. Because the system is fractal, however, social collapse is paralyzed by virtue of the natural involution of the system. To put it another way, no one can ever have enough "and" to enact, say, racewar, thus everyone is protected by virtue of being too weak to ever rock the boat. The end result is that society can only be unified via abstractions that everyone agrees upon (such as the Vedic rituals), leading to decentralized order-forming (such as Rajas banding together to fight Muslims). It's an evolutionary offshoot of the broader Indo-European tripartite social system which isn't really a caste system, but rather a way of organizing men (internally as well as externally; a man has all three functions within him).

[Anonymous No.21449436]

>We need low iq working class to keep us elites comfortable.

[Anonymous No.21449461]

>>21449375
Maybe? But you nailed it on the head by emphasizing what is left. The hierarchy would be "natural" and largely agreeable to everyone. Only necessities are produced, so anybody who oversteps their boundaries will endanger themselves and the rest of the commune. There's no room for absurd levels of tyranny, enslavement, delusion, etc. Plus, one could always hack it alone. The hierarchy in the City-In-Speech 2.0 is far from "natural." It's wholly constructed and artificially maintained.

[Anonymous No.21449467]

>>21449436
the elites are far from comfortable in Plato's Republic. they're not allowed to have money, private property, family, or really anything that's fun. all they do is get raised from birth to become mathematician-soldiers, and they do it for free like a janny.

[Anonymous No.21449479]

>>21449467
just like the elites weren't allowed to have private property in soviet union

[Anonymous No.21449484]

>>21449467
And post on anime image boards for recreation I guess

[Anonymous No.21449518]

>>21449479
what's your point? the elites in the Soviet Union were part of a devolved regime, which nowhere near resembled Plato's aristocracy.

[Anonymous No.21449533]

>>21449518
My point is that it is very naive to think that people who stand at the top of society wont take advantage of their position to fulfill their needs.
Any societal structure that assumes this amount of self-sacrifice from the elites is bound to fail in real life

[Anonymous No.21449547]

>>21449533
And that's Plato's point too. The aristocracy inevitably fails when the austere guardian class decides it wants a taste of the finer things too. Except here it has nothing to do with needs and everything to do with wants, whether they are material, spiritual, etc.

[Anonymous No.21449549]

>>21448841
The Tristan and Iseult romance reflects in many ways the life-ideology of an ancient, tribal celtic-germanic warrior-aristocracy. You can detect in it a tangible distaste for the life of the peasant. It is viewed as ignoble, debased and alltogether not worthwhile living, as opposed to the aristocratic life of serving in the retinues of various lieges, war and hunting. Yet there is no sense that the peasant life must be destroyed, that it is some sort of offense to nature that men live like that. This is profoundly unmodern attitude. The aristocracic view represented in the story simply does not care for the mean lives of the masses, because it is necessary to sustain the lifestyle of the elite.

For Plato, great men can dedicate their lives to the noble disciplines of philosophy and excercise, but to allow them to do this, a greater amount of mediocre men who engage in crafts and trade and farming is necessary to provide the state the resources to sustain this higher stratum. In the same way the mentality present in the romance doesn't care for the peasants, Plato doesn't care for the workers. There is neither the need to elevate them to the levels of the elite, nor to depopulate them from the Earth like defective offspring.

[Anonymous No.21449556]

>>21449547
I am not exactly sure what you are suggesting. Do you think the philosopher class wont succumb to the same corruption as aristocrates, once they are in power?

[Anonymous No.21449567]

The highest ideal is self-renunciation and/or asceticism.
Not a single positive thing has come from math, science, or etc.
Not a single positive thing has come from reason or logical analysis. All that matters is non-attachment and enlightenment.

[Anonymous No.21449590]

>>21449556
Have you read the Republic? Even if philosophers come to rule, their regime will eventually be corrupted by chance.

[Anonymous No.21449628]

>>21448841
Aren't Kshatriya landowners ?

[Anonymous No.21449737]

>>21449567
>All that matters is non-attachment
attached to non-attachment lol

[Anonymous No.21450213]

>>21449567
Says you
What is it about this board that attracts so many pseuds

[Anonymous No.21450228]

>>21450213
You are an icchantuka, plain and simple, and will suffer for bilions of kotis of kalpas.

[Anonymous No.21450276]

>>21450228
nigger, you're not a sage or a hermit
so stop larping as one

also in case you don't know, buddhism does not preach or encourage asceticism

[Anonymous No.21450395]

>>21450276
Middle Way would be like asceticism in modern times, icchantika.
>nigger, you're not a sage or a hermit
Because I am no one, I am, in fact, the greatest of sages that is truth no sage; smaller than the tiniest of seeds but larger than the biggest of trees.
>so stop larping as one
Sometimes the quivering strings of puppets overpower the puppeteer, so then the division between puppet and puppeteer becomes indeterminate. In much the same way, who is LARPing who? The strings of the Buddha are always near.

[Anonymous No.21450447]

>>21448841
Where'd you get this?

[Anonymous No.21450461]

you could keep reading philosophy instead of this

[Anonymous No.21450492]

>>21450395
nigger, in the time of Buddha the sages would've laughed their asses off at you, for saying cringe shit like "Not a single positive thing has come from reason or logical analysis"
and even the fools themselves would've stoned you to death for your ridiculous larping
you're trying way too hard
go have a poop, a cup of juice and then read some Calvin and Hobbes before going to bed

[Anonymous No.21450529]

>>21450492
I mean, Klages was right about the failure of reason and logical analysis, which has culminated in the devastating impact of industrialization. Everyone should go back to believing in dragons again. It's far more sensible than modern dogmatic empirical science.
Math is like black magic. Not a single good thing has come from it. It's best to just abandon all abstractions and focus single-mindedly on the Buddha way.
Also, I probably have a better Goodreads then you.
Also, I'd rather a wholesome book about birds than uninspired crap like Calvin and Hobbes when I want to simmer down. I've been getting into tits a lot lately.

[Anonymous No.21450539]

>>21449590
Nigga are u retarded ? He is saying that philosopher class are people too, they are gonna have secret sex parties with lower caste women, because men wants dopamine, not because they are degenerate or corrupted.

[Anonymous No.21450564]

>>21450539
Have you read the book?

[Anonymous No.21450565]

>>21450529
>I'd rather a wholesome book about birds
So, like Calvin & Hobbes

[Anonymous No.21450596]

>>21450565
It is overly didactic. You need to "leave much unsaid" in order to make effective art. You can't just write out everything like a pontificating pseud.

[Anonymous No.21451377]

>>21449461
Well should someone high up in the natural hierarchy ever trade down then? Or is it imperative for everyone to stay in their own bracket, even in Plato's idealistic commune?

[Anonymous No.21451431]

>>21449431
>but rather about ensuring social stability by making it so that everyone has a place. In short, every single viable social formation gets its own place
According to Plato, this is the same thing as maximizing political virtue. Justice according to Plato is everything being where it naturally would be, so to speak, ie conforming to its own nature in reality. Do yourself a favor and read Politeia.
>It's an evolutionary offshoot of the broader Indo-European tripartite
It's not specifically Indo-European either, because the same structure existed in non-IE Asia and pre-Columbian America. It's a basic principle of social organization, Plato was able to find the divine principle for it, as opposed to the contingent historic one (or the so-called reasons for it, which all suffer from contingency).

[Anonymous No.21451471]

>>21448901
Awful reading of Plato. I'd almost be tempted to say first post worst post if it were not at least attempting to be serious.

[Anonymous No.21451492]

>>21448970
>then couldn't the men "purify" the lesser bloodlines with their seed?
One drop rule

[Anonymous No.21452060]

>>21451471
What’s wrong with it? It’s a reading that’s strongly supported by the text.

[Anonymous No.21452285]

>>21448841
Rome had a system of enfranchisement. They didn't follow it to a t.

[Anonymous No.21452431]

>>21451492
Everybody has one drop of something or other, nobody is 100 percent pure

[Anonymous No.21452445]

>>21448841
No because you get incels that way, which if they grow in numbers, end up becoming a huge problem

[Anonymous No.21452452]

>>21448841
> But does this not mean that the workers will remain low people forever?

The greeks valued a system of stability, innovation and change were seen as threatening forces.

[Anonymous No.21452453]

>>21452445
How does that make incels? Incels are the lowest of the low

[Anonymous No.21453475]

>>21452285
Why not?

[Anonymous No.21454041]

>>21451431
Plato seems to be fairly deterministic in his view of most of humanity then, since as said in the OP, most of humanity is lowly and unfit to improve, and Plato wants them to stay in their natural place. In Meno too, he says virtue can't be taught and that it's a gift from God. But then again, he says philosopher kings must go back in the cave to save others so he does call for the refinement of the masses to some extent.

[Anonymous No.21454053]

>>21454041
>Plato seems to be fairly deterministic in his view of most of humanity then
Plato thought that no one had free will (specifically, "could undertake voluntary action") unless they had wisdom of the Good in any given situation. So yes, that is partway correct.

[Anonymous No.21454071]

>>21454053
That is also my own personal view, that determinism exists but also that we are capable of breaking out of the law of causation and making our own causes. But in which dialogues does Plato talk more about free will and determinism?

[Anonymous No.21454114]

>>21454071
It's around books VII-VIII-IX of Laws

[Anonymous No.21454502]

>>21449021
>Then, as we became agrarian society, suddenly it was possible to make a living as a water bearer, and a low-iq underclass was born
Any books talking about this idea?

[Anonymous No.21454672]

>>21454041
>But then again, he says philosopher kings must go back in the cave to save others so he does call for the refinement of the masses to some extent.
No, if anything, the experience of discovering how vast the difference is between what's presented on the cave walls and what's outside the cave seems to drive the philosopher to discover a friend they can talk about it with in the cave. By inference, this involves very few people, because the cave passage is explicit that most people, being told of what's outside, will kill the philosopher if they can get their hands on him. Additionally, "enlightenment" here is less teaching someone in the sense of filling their minds with good or correct ideas, and more turning someone's head just enough for them to start digesting that experience and pursue a set of experiences from which they educate themselves.