Philosopher King
By Robert Fritz
Thinking about Plato the other day, I realized how much I
hate his idea of the philosopher kings. In case you haven’t read Book
VII of the Republic recently, Plato thought that only those who had mastered
philosophical wisdom have the right perspective from which to lead.
When I was at the Boston Conservatory, my composition
teacher said that composers Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez could run
Germany and France because of their ability to be organized. This is a
variation of the philosopher king, except this is the artistic king. I
suppose every profession thinks that only those who are in the trade should be
in charge. So we can have the film director kings, or the computer
programmer kings, or the bus driver kings, or the hairdresser kings.
The trouble with the notion of philosopher kings is in
the philosophy bit. Whenever we begin with a philosophy and try to apply
it to practical things, bad things can happen.
I love philosophy as an intellectual discipline and a
creative exploration of ideas. But, since there isn’t a method to prove
or disprove philosophic theories, there isn’t a lot that can be said as to
their validity. Some philosophers use higher mathematics to delve into
higher levels of philosophical thought, but the math doesn’t prove the reality
of the philosophy, only the wonders of mathematics.
Composer Paul Hindermith (1895-1963) wrote his most
inventive music before he wrote a book on music theory (this is the music worlds
version of a philosophy book.) After that, he rewrote many of the pieces
of his earlier period to be consistent with the book, making them less
interesting, less expressive, less dramatic, stiffer, and less fun.
This is the limitation that comes from ideals imposed on
life, on art, on government, on education, on human beings. Consistency to
the ideal thwarts the creative spirit of innovation. It limits the
imagination. It puts the mind in jail. It imposes a synthetic
construct on real life.
In the creative process it is sometimes important to
break all of the rules that have been established by years of traditions or
rulebooks. The reason one would do this is not for revolution itself, but
because, to reach a new and original vision, the confines of traditional thought
makes it harder or impossible to accomplish. You can’t get there from
here. First you need to go somewhere else.
What is the use of having philosophic ideals anyway?
Like any ideal, they are imposed on life. Here is how you should live,
here is what you should think, here is what it means, here is what to like and
what to hate. Ideals try to place order where we are unsure there is
order. Yet, rather than an exploration of pattern recognition, which is
the discipline of discerning order through rigorous observation and
understanding relationships of similarities and differences, ideals come
prepackaged, ready to be force fitted into any situation.
Okay, so my advice is to rid yourself of ideals,
philosophical or otherwise. At least, don’t use them within your own
creative process, and if you are using the creative process to create your life,
then don’t let ideals in the door.
Some people think that they would be lost without ideals.
“How would we know what to think, how to act, what to do?”
By real things, such as aspirations and values.
These are the best organizing principles for creating what you want.
Aspirations and values do not come from an idealistic context. They are
real. For example, ethics and morals are simply ideals of real values.
A value, which refers to measurement, is the ordering of what is more important
and what is less important. If, for example, you value both truth and
kindness, and you attend your sister’s concert debut who loves to sing but is
tone deaf, one of these values will become more important than the other.
If it were kindness you might say, “Sis, you were great.” If it were
truth you might say, “Sis, you were terrible.” And if you tried to
balance these two competing values you might say, “Gee, Sis, for a woman who
can’t carry a tune in a basket, you sure sounded great.”
The most important questions in life cannot be answered
by ideals. These are questions like what do I want to create? What
do I care about? How do I want to live my life? Who do I love?
What matters most to me?
So, while students study Plato’s notions of how
philosophers should run the world, thankfully, they don’t.
©2010 Robert Fritz
Updated: 10/24/10