8 - The sufficiency of reason

Summary

REASON AND SELF-DETERMINATION

Let us return, first of all, to the Politicus. The judgement of lives suggested that philosophy, the inquiring sort, is, at least in the conditions of the golden age, sufficient for happiness; and possibly necessary as well. Astonishingly, Young Socrates makes a similar point (indeed, this is his only point). The Stranger argues that the best state is one where the statesman is present to exercise the judgement which is his alone. Failing that, a state will have fixed laws, protected by fierce legislation. But in this state (from which the experts have departed) there would be no experts and no investigation into new knowledge, for fear of the overthrow of the fixed laws. Young Socrates is horrified:

It is clear that all kinds of expertise should be destroyed for us, and they would never be recovered if there were an embargo on inquiry. As a result life, which is hard enough as it is, would become at that time completely unliveable.

(299e)

If the cosmological myth makes inquiry sufficient for happiness in the golden age, Young Socrates supposes it to be necessary in this one. And yet this is in sharp contrast to the dramatisation of the dialogue itself, which makes it hard to see how the process of philosophy could be vital for a life that is worth living (would you want to be Young Socrates?). Why might men in the golden age fail to do philosophy? And why should they be worse off if they do? And why should the life of the ordinary citizen be utterly diminished by an embargo on inquiry?