Read Online The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler - Free Book Online
Authors: Arthur Koestler
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of great creative power in such varied fields as metaphysics, biology, logics, epistemology and physics. They both founded "schools" of a new kind: the first Academy and the first Lyceum, which survived for centuries as organized institutions, and transformed the founders' once fluid ideas into rigid ideologies, Aristotle's hypotheses into dogmas, Plato's visions into theology. Then again, they were truly twin-stars, born to complement each other; Plato the mystic, Aristotle the logician; Plato the belittler of natural science, Aristotle the observer of dolphins and whales; Plato, the spinner of allegorical yarns, Aristotle the dialectician and casuist; Plato, vague and ambiguous, Aristotle precise and pedantic. Lastly – for this catalogue could be continued forever – they evolved systems of philosophy which, though different and even opposed in detail, taken jointly seemed to provide a complete answer to the predicament of their time.
The predicament was the political, economic and moral bankruptcy of classical Greece prior to the Macedonian conquest. A century of constant war and civil strife had bled the country of men and money; venality and corruption were poisoning public life; hordes of political exiles, reduced to the existence of homeless adventurers, were roaming the countryside; legalized abortion and infanticide were further thinning out the rank of citizens. The history of the fourth century, wrote a modern authority, "is in some of its aspects that of the greatest failure in history... Plato and Aristotle ... each in his different way tries (by suggesting forms of constitution other than those under which the race had fallen into political decadence) to rescue that Greek world which was so much to him, from the political and social disaster to which it is rushing. But the Greek world was past saving." 4
The political reforms suggested by them concern us only insofar as they indicate the unconscious bias which permeates their cosmology; but in this context, they are relevant. Plato's Utopia is more terrifying than Orwell's 1984 because Plato desires to happen what Orwell fears might happen. "That Plato's Republic should have been admired, on its political side, by decent people, is perhaps the most astonishing example of literary snobbery in all history," remarked Bertrand Russell. 5 In Plato's Republic , the aristocracy rules by means of the "noble lie", that is, by pretending that God has created three kinds of men, made respectively of gold: the rulers, silver: the soldiers, and base metals: the common man. Another pious lie will help to improve the race: when marriage is abolished, people will be made to draw mating-lots, but the lots will be secretly manipulated by the rulers according to the principles of eugenics. There will be rigid censorship; no young person must be allowed to read Homer because he spreads disrespect of the gods, unseemly merriment, and the fear of death, thus discouraging people from dying in battle.
Aristotle's politics move along less extreme, but essentially similar lines. He criticizes some of Plato's most provocative formulations, but not only does he regard slavery as the natural basis of the social order – "the slave is totally devoid of any faculty of reasoning" 6 ; he also deplores the existence of a "middle" class of free artisans and professional men, because their superficial resemblance to the rulers brings discredit on the latter. Accordingly, all professionals are to be deprived of the rights of citizenship in the Model State. It is important to understand the source of this contempt of Aristotle for artisans, craftsmen architects, engineers and the like – by contrast, say, to the high esteem in which an Eupalinos, the tunnel-builder, had been held in Samos. The point is that Aristotle believed them no longer to be necessary, because applied science and technology had already completed their task . Nothing further need, or could, be invented to make life more
The predicament was the political, economic and moral bankruptcy of classical Greece prior to the Macedonian conquest. A century of constant war and civil strife had bled the country of men and money; venality and corruption were poisoning public life; hordes of political exiles, reduced to the existence of homeless adventurers, were roaming the countryside; legalized abortion and infanticide were further thinning out the rank of citizens. The history of the fourth century, wrote a modern authority, "is in some of its aspects that of the greatest failure in history... Plato and Aristotle ... each in his different way tries (by suggesting forms of constitution other than those under which the race had fallen into political decadence) to rescue that Greek world which was so much to him, from the political and social disaster to which it is rushing. But the Greek world was past saving." 4
The political reforms suggested by them concern us only insofar as they indicate the unconscious bias which permeates their cosmology; but in this context, they are relevant. Plato's Utopia is more terrifying than Orwell's 1984 because Plato desires to happen what Orwell fears might happen. "That Plato's Republic should have been admired, on its political side, by decent people, is perhaps the most astonishing example of literary snobbery in all history," remarked Bertrand Russell. 5 In Plato's Republic , the aristocracy rules by means of the "noble lie", that is, by pretending that God has created three kinds of men, made respectively of gold: the rulers, silver: the soldiers, and base metals: the common man. Another pious lie will help to improve the race: when marriage is abolished, people will be made to draw mating-lots, but the lots will be secretly manipulated by the rulers according to the principles of eugenics. There will be rigid censorship; no young person must be allowed to read Homer because he spreads disrespect of the gods, unseemly merriment, and the fear of death, thus discouraging people from dying in battle.
Aristotle's politics move along less extreme, but essentially similar lines. He criticizes some of Plato's most provocative formulations, but not only does he regard slavery as the natural basis of the social order – "the slave is totally devoid of any faculty of reasoning" 6 ; he also deplores the existence of a "middle" class of free artisans and professional men, because their superficial resemblance to the rulers brings discredit on the latter. Accordingly, all professionals are to be deprived of the rights of citizenship in the Model State. It is important to understand the source of this contempt of Aristotle for artisans, craftsmen architects, engineers and the like – by contrast, say, to the high esteem in which an Eupalinos, the tunnel-builder, had been held in Samos. The point is that Aristotle believed them no longer to be necessary, because applied science and technology had already completed their task . Nothing further need, or could, be invented to make life more
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