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Spencer Ross
(#0026660)
Political Theory I 160-231A
Essay: Sacrificing the Well-Being of the Individual for the
Greater "Good" of the Community
TA: Christine Straehle
October 2000
In the final scenes of
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Captain Spock risks his own life
in order
to shut down the deadly Genesis project. In his last words to
Captain Kirk before his own death,
Spock states that, "In any case, were I to invoke logic,
logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many
outweigh the needs of the few." The end result of Spock's
actions was the preservation of thousands
of lives. Plato's The Republic draws along the same lines
as Spock's words in illustrating the need for
an individual to sacrifice his own well being for the needs of
the community. Plato's seemingly utopian community is based on a principle of specialization where, in
this community, each person is assigned a
task that is best suited to his own individual abilities. The
protagonist in The Republic, Socrates,
explains that this is, in a sense, what morality is- doing one's
own job (p. 141). In the ideal community,
societal morality is brought forth by the morality of the
individual.
In order to understand the view of morality that Plato assumes
the individual contributes to the
community, we must examine more closely Plato's views on the
self. Plato breaks down the human soul
into three different aspects: reason, passion, and desire . The
reasoning part of the soul is what spurns
us to learn; to think; to reflect. Reason enhances our knowledge
of the world around us and for that
reason, can be regarded as the apex of the individual under
which, the other two parts fall. Foremost of
the reasoning ability of the self is man's passion. Passion may
as well be described as the nature of
man, as it encompasses many of our emotions such as love and
anger. These passions are derivative of
our desires. Plato claims that there are two types of desires.
"The first category consists, in my opinion
of things which have particular qualities and
whose correlates have particular qualities;
the second category consists of things which
are just what they are and whose correlates
are just what they are" (p. 147).
Hunger, thirst, and sex
are all desires that are required to be fulfilled for the
survival of humanity,
but are not in immediate demand. Desire is described in The
Republic as something that the mind longs
for and strives for. While Plato's belief is that reason has the
overwhelming control over the person's
soul, it is more apparent in human nature that tendencies will
lead desire to motivate men.
Socrates' belief that a community in which reason is commanded by
the philosophers, spirit by
the auxiliaries, and desires by the commoners is a moral
community. However, he also states that, "in
respect of the actual type of thing morality is, a moral person
will be no different from a moral
community, but will resemble it. Thus, as the soul of the
individual is broken down into the
aforementioned parts, the soul of the community is as well. This
seemingly follows Plato's principle of
specialization in which the different aspects of the human ego on
the personal level are specially
relegated to those who have the ability to master them on a
communal level. In this respect,
specialization by the individual means that the entire soul of
the individual is sacrificed in order for one
of its aspects to benefit the community at large.
In addition to sacrificing the individual's soul to the good of
the community, Plato hampers a
person's ability to grow and bring a personal diverseness to the
culture. Book V of The Republic
discusses, in depth, the extirpation of true individuality in a non-conformist environment. In this society,
"the children are also to be shared, with no parent knowing
which child is his, or child knowing his
parent" (p. 170). All responsibility and learning is no
longer in control of the parents, but rather the
Guardians of the community. What would have otherwise been a
lifetime of learning in the biological
"nature versus nurture" sense is now the responsibility
of a group that "appreciate[s] that the most
important stage of any enterprise is the beginning, especially
when something young and sensitive is
involved […T]hat's when most of its formation takes place,
and it absorbs every impression that anyone
wants to stamp on it" (p. 71). Plato then goes on to talk
about what information will be fed to the
children. At this point in the book, Plato's "ideal
community" is more dystopic than utopian.
In selecting what knowledge the children will receive, the
children will not have a natural task but rather, a socially imposed task. The words of Plato echo in
the environment which 20th century author Aldous Huxley describes in his novel, Brave New
World. In
Brave New World, children are brainwashed into believing that the caste into
which they are
born is what is best for them. Members of the higher classes were taught to believe their superiority to
lower classes and lower classes were taught
to believe that higher classmen worked too hard for them.
"[…I]f you were an epsilon […] your
conditioning would have made you no less thankful that you
weren't a Beta or an Alpha" . Also similar
between the two texts is the abolition of sex as a means of
pleasure. In the case of Huxley's society, pleasurable sex is removed to create a scientifically
manufactured "ideal society." In the case of Plato's society, sex is a privilege for those who have the most superior
qualities to contribute to the community. Thus, sex, which Plato would consider a desire, is now considered
a taboo in society. Human nature has once again subjected itself to the "greater good"
of the community.
Perhaps the biggest flaw with this community is that the people
are unaware of their self-
subjugation to the supposed so-called "communal good."
Plato specifically drives this point in his
famous Allegory of the Cave. This allegory opens with a man who
is imprisoned with several other
people "since childhood, with their legs and necks tied up
in a way which keeps them in one place and
allows them to look only straight ahead but not to turn their
heads" (p. 240). Like the rest of the
prisoners, the man is only aware of the shadows on the wall, but
miraculously, the man is set free and
forced to partake in the reality that has been surrounding him
the entire time. The man, enlightened by
reality, wants to share his vision with the other prisoners, but
is met with contempt and ridicule when he
tries to do so. In not being allowed this, the man must sacrifice
the ultimate knowledge that he
possesses in order to maintain some order in the imprisoned
community. The tragedy in the Allegory of
the Cave is a result of the human attempt to encourage liberation
towards new philosophies on life . It is
also the result of self-sacrifice for societal good.
Throughout The Republic, this self-sacrifice becomes
increasingly evident as we are made to think that human nature would lend itself to this ideal
community. Plato has tried to break down human nature, but more specifically, morality, into logical components.
However, man is often times illogical, acting on emotion instead, and these parts that would allow
diverse growth in a culture are shut out. Man must give up bettering himself as an individual to follow a
principle that only concentrates on one aspect of the self. This may bring about a "good" and
"moral" community in the eyes of Plato but not
without ceding a lapse of human reason, human passion, and human
desire to strive to better himself and
thus, the community. Indeed, the needs of the many outweigh the
needs of the one in this text, but
perhaps the better community is the one where the needs of the
one outweigh the needs of the many.
1 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Dir. Nicholas Meyer. With
William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.
Paramount Pictures. 1982.
Professor Alan Patten. McGill University. 20 Sep. 2000.
Aldous Huxley. Brave New World. New York. HarperCollins
Publishers, Inc. 1998.
Professor Alan Patten. McGill University. 2 Oct. 2000.
4/19/00
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