Saturday, January 15, 2011

Independent Standards

"And suppose that you were going to steer a ship into action, would you only aim at being the best pilot on board? Would you not, while acknowledging that you must possess this degree of excellence, rather look to your antagonists, and not, as you are now doing, to your fellow combatants? You ought to be so far above these latter, that they will not even dare to be your rivals; and, being regarded by you as inferiors, will do battle for you against the enemy; this is the kind of superiority which you must establish over them, if you mean to accomplish any noble action really worthy of yourself and of the state."

I find this segment very interesting. Socrates is advancing upon a point which I have considered crucial in any proper system of ethics. This precept is independence. Although Plato does not fully develop this idea, the direction he is heading is clear. I will flesh out his metaphor to better understand what he appears to be aiming at. If one’s life is a ship, then one’s consciousness would be the pilot—that which decides upon the general course it will take. Now in his question, Socrates asks “would you only aim at being the best pilot on board?” Perhaps no one on board is competent to pilot the ship. Then what does it mean to be the best of them? If all one aims at is to beat others, then one’s mind is subordinated to the minds of others. One is blindly accepting another’s standard of value—one would be a second-hander. At the beginning of the dialogue, Alcibiades is not concerned with being the best he can be. He is not concerned with knowledge or ideas. He is only concerned with other people—how can he control them? How can he be better than them? How can he appear successful to them? I believe that what Plato was encircling, without ever stating explicitly, is that Alcibiades should have been concerned with achieving, and nothing else. Not to beat others, but to live up to his own potential.
Now what Plato does write is that instead of trying to out do those who are on your own team, one should find the greatest individuals who are in opposition to one’s self. Instead of being the best captain on one’s ship, one should be the best captain on the sea. This is perhaps one step away from expelling altogether the notion that’s one’s sense of value, one’s self-esteem can come from how others view you or how one views himself in relation to others. There appears to be an element of the good life which must be self-generated, for one cannot call it “self”-esteem if it does not come from within, but rather from others. The bottom line is that each man must make his own decisions, steer his own ship, and his decisions will be made based on the knowledge which he possesses. Each man must rely on his own thinking, since it is impossible for another to acquire knowledge for him. This is independence: self-sufficience of the mind. Socrates attempts to show Alcibiades that true knowledge must be actively acquired—discovered on one’s own, or learned from another. Socrates attempts to show Alcibiades independence.

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