Glaucon, in Plato’s The Republic, tells Socrates: “the highest reach of injustice is, to be deemed just when you are not. ” 1
If we consider the world today, when we would look at the redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich, Glaucon’s advice would be that it is necessary to make this look like absolute justice. Perhaps we would need to come up with a theory that states the rich are allocated their wealth by a separate independent force which we can call God or the market. This force proves that the allocation was a reward not an act of theft or any other deliberate act.
‘“ Therefore I say that in the perfectly unjust man we must assume the most perfect injustice; there is to be no deduction, but we must allow him, while doing the most unjust acts, to have acquired the greatest reputation for justice.”
If we start a programme to cut waste, most people would assume that we wish to cut waste to spend more on the benefit to the people or at least on the original purpose of the expenditure. If waste were cut and savings given to the rich, that is a different meaning to ‘cutting waste’. Keynes once suggested that it would, under certain circumstances, recesssion for example, be advantageous to give money to one set of workers to dig a hole and another set of workers to fill that hole. In such a situation, cutting waste i.e. stopping the expenditure on digging and filling holes, and replacing it with gifts to the rich would be outright theft. But we have followed Glaucon’s advice and dressed up this theft as doing good, cutting waste, and therefore a just thing to do.
Glaucon describes the perfectly unjust man:
‘“If he have taken a false step he must be able to recover himself; he must be one who can speak with effect, if any of his deeds come to light, and who can force his way where force is required by his courage and strength, and command of money and friends.”
The West overthrows country A in order to introduce democracy. All does not go well. Endless apologetics follow. It then seeks a replay with country B with a similar outcome. As Glaucon states: ‘If he have taken a false step he must be able to recover himself’. The West shows this ability in spades.
However, even this construction of ‘the West’ is itself a manoeuvre of high skill. There is no continuity between ancient Greece and the modern West, but the merger allows a new argument. ‘True, we may have genocided so many people and stolen their wealth, but we did bring you the Greeks etc.’ This pillaged ancestry is of great strategic purpose.
Truly, we have here a formidable person.
This goes deeper than mere incidental issues of today, even though the issues of today are not only of great importance but of fundamental importance to those adversely affected. With the apparent introduction of Christianity to Europe various intellectual devices came to be practiced. As various muslim travellers around Northern Europe observed, many of these people such as the Vikings, were slave trading on a massive scale such that Dublin had become the largest slave market in the world. Also, they engaged in human sacrifice on a major scale as witnessed by Muslim travellers of early Europe.2 Rather than continue to fight the new religion, the existing powers subverted it. Old practices were renewed under new names. Human sacrifice had always been mostly of undesirables, and the new target were non-believers. Of course, nowhere in the Bible is there an invocation to burn non-believers or seek to convert to the faith by main force. Human sacrifice recreated itself in the form of the auto-da fe. All the depravities of old Europe were now renamed. Mass slaughter became an act of faith to be honoured by the Pope. The term non-believer became a loose term. It would now not only include those who did not believe in God, but also those who did not share a particular catechism. Astonishingly, it would include non-whites who were Christians, revealing the utter smokescreen that it always was. A friend told me that the then Pope would agree with me when I stated that the West was not Christian. Later, with the decline in the importance of faith in Europe, ‘Christianity’ was replaced by ‘Democracy’ or ‘Western civilisation’. But the pursuit of democracy did not preclude overthrowing democratically elected governments.
What we have are all these oxymorons: the Christian West, the Democratic West or Western civilisation.
In order for this game to be played well, as Glaucon would put it, we would need academics or rhetoricians or sophists of high order, to argue publicly that good is evil and evil is good. It is good to impoverish your neighbour because that is the result of the invisible hand and all is for the best. It simply cannot be improved, and if you tried the increase in population would quickly bring you back to where you started. It is good to slaughter people en mass because that way you bring them civilisation. It is good to steal their resources because, as Kant would say, it is for a higher purpose.
If we follow Glaucon, “the highest reach of injustice is, to be deemed just when you are not. ” In this task we may have many helpers.
When Glaucon describes the ability of the unjust to accumulate wealth and then provide abundant sacrifices to honour the gods, we can only recall the Sackler family. Out of their wealth from the sale of opiods they were able to donate generously to museums and charitable foundations, the modern day equivalent of providing public sacrifices. Without doubt, the Sackler family appeared generous and honourable. In Glaucon’s words the unjust man
‘“is rich, and out of his gains he can benefit his friends, and harm his enemies;
moreover, he can offer sacrifices, and dedicate gifts to the gods abundantly
and magnificently, and can honour the gods or any man whom he wants to honour
in a far better style than the just,”
Taoists have always recognised that when the world becomes depraved, the good is seen as evil and evil is seen as good:
‘When the world knows beauty as beauty, ugliness arises
When it knows good as good, evil arises’3
All things that move must reverse and in such a world, anyone who seeks to reform will appear to be evil.
We must allow Glaucon his conclusion that the most unjust man will seek the most just reputation and that while doing the most unjust acts, such as genocide and massacres of young children, will dress himself/herself up in higher virtues:
‘ Therefore I say that in the perfectly unjust man we must assume the most perfect injustice; there is to be no deduction, but we must allow him, while doing the most unjust acts, to have acquired the greatest reputation for justice’.
NOTES
1. Platos Republic, Book 2, Jowett
2. ‘Ibn Faldun and the Land of Darkness’ Penguin 2012
3. Tao te ching’ trs Derek Lin, 2006
4. ‘Death of Socrates’ by Jacques-Louis David, the featured image, is symbolic in that the current state of the West represent the death of all the value of Socrates from the pursuit of justice to that of open conversation and dialogue. Socrates valued open dialogue, not the right to shout obscenities at each other. Western philosophy has rephrased matters as ‘freedom of speech’, which, while in itself admirable, is not the fountainhead of the virtue. ‘Freedom of speech’ can exist even if no one is listening either because everyone is shouting or no one cares. Socratic dialogue was engaged. By focussing on ‘freedom speech’ has meant that little notice was taken to the collapse of dialogue . It may or may not be that the collapse of dialogue precedes the loss of freedom speech, but the loss of dialogue is itself of great importance.,