The lie, because it is a lie, points up the problems it is designed to
solve. Perhaps no rational investigation of them could yield a basis for
political legitimacy. In any event, the character of men's desires would
make it impossible for a rational teaching to be the public teaching.
Today it is generally admitted that every society is based on myths,
myths which render acceptable the particular form of justice in-
corporated in the system. Socrates speaks more directly: the myths are
lies. As such, they are unacceptable to a rational man. But he does not
hold that because all civil societies need myths about justice, there is no
rational basis to be found for justice. His teaching cannot serve as an
excuse for accepting whatever a society asserts is justice. The noble lie
is precisely an attempt to rationalize the justice of civil society; it is an
essential part of an attempt to elaborate a regime which most embodies
the principles of natural justice and hence transcends the false justice of
other regimes. The thoughtful observer will find that the noble lie is a
political expression of truths which it itself leads him to consider. In
other words, there are good reasons for every part of this lie, and that is
why a rational man would be willing to tell it.
The Socratic teaching that a good society requires a fundamental
falsehood is the direct opposite of that of the Enlightenment which
argued that civil society could dispense with lies and count on selfish
calculation to make men loyal to it. The difference between the two
views can be reduced to a difference concerning the importance of
moderation, both for the preservation of civil society and for the full
development of individual men's natures. The noble lie is designed to
give men grounds for resisting, in the name of the common good, their
powerful desires. The great thinkers of the Enlightenment did not deny
that such lies are necessary to induce men to sacrifice their desires and
to care for the common good. They were no more hopeful than Soc-
rates concerning most men's natural capacity to overcome their
inclinations and devote themselves to the public welfare. What they in-
sisted was that it was possible to build a civil society in which men did
not have to care for the common good, in which desire would be chan-
neled rather than controlled. A civil society which provided security
and some prospect of each man's acquiring those possessions he most
wishes would be both a more simple and more .sure solution than any
Utopian attempt to make men abandon their selfish wishes. Such a civil
society could count on men's rational adhesion, for it would be an in-
strument in procuring their own good as they see it. Therefore modera-
tion of the appetites would be not only unnecessary but undesirable, for
it would render a man more independent of the regime whose purpose
it is to satisfy the appetites.
The Socratic response to this argument would be twofold. First,
he would simply deny the possibility of a regime which would never be
compelled to call for real sacrifices from its citizens. This is particularly
true in time of war. A man cannot reasonably calculate that dying in
battle will serve the long-range satisfaction of his desires. Therefore
every civil society will require myths which can make citizens of
private men. But in the case of such a selfish society it will be both very
difficult to provide such myths, and they will be a distasteful parody of
the reason on which the society prides itself; what pretends to be
philosophy will have to be propaganda.
Second, such a civil society can be founded only by changing the
meaning of rationality. For this society, rationality consists in the
discovery of the best means of satisfying desires. The irrationality of
those desires must be neglected; in particular, men must neglect the ir-
rationality of their unwillingness to face the fact that they must
die, of their constant search for the means of self-preservation as if they
could live forever. Socrates teaches that only a man who masters the
desires of the body can see the true human situation and come to terms
with it. Such mastery is the precondition of living a rational and satisfy-
ing life, but it is very difficult to attain, and men need all the help they
can get if they are to succeed in attaining it. The civil society proposed
[ 368 ]
Interpretive Essay
by the men of the Enlightenment, far from encouraging such modera-
tion, positively discourages it. It also ridicules those sometimes simple
beliefs which would help to support a man's self-restraint and remind
him of his mortality. Such a society would produce a race of self-
forgetting, philistine men who would demand as their rulers men like
themselves. According to Socrates, a noble lie is the only way to insure
that men who love the truth will exist and rule in a society. The noble lie
was intended to make both warriors and artisans love the city, to assure
that the ruled would be obedient to the rulers, and, particularly, to pre-
vent the rulers from abusing their charge. Apparently, though, it is not
completely successful in overcoming the warriors' temptations. Socrates
goes yet further: they are deprived of all private property, of everything
which they might call their own to which they might become privately at-
tached, particularly money, which admits of infinite increase and extends
the possibility of private desire. And they are also deprived of privacy;
they have no place where they might store illegally acquired things or
enjoy forbidden pleasures. They are always seen by men, if not by gods,
so that the secrecy needed for successful lawbreaking and the gaining of
an unfounded good reputation are lacking. Injustice cannot be profit-
able for them. They are now completely political, the realization of Soc-
rates' perfect artisan who cares only for what he rules and not at all for
himself. They can have no concern other than the common good.