Noble lie: Difference between revisions

Browse history interactively ← Previous editContent deleted Content addedVisual WikitextInline

Revision as of 01:18, 3 March 2018 editHickoryOughtShirt?4 (talk \| contribs)Autopatrolled, Administrators88,744 edits Reverted good faith edits by 70.59.74.186 (talk): That's not how to place to a tag. (TW)Tag: Undo ← Previous edit		Latest revision as of 23:51, 21 November 2024 edit undoRhymeWrens (talk \| contribs)Extended confirmed users594 edits Added wikilinkTags: Mobile edit Mobile app edit iOS app edit App section source
(94 intermediate revisions by 66 users not shown)
Line 1:		Line 1:
			{{Short description\|Untruth propagated to strengthen social harmony}}]
	In ], a '''noble lie''' is a ] or ], often, but not invariably, of a religious nature, knowingly propagated by an ] to maintain social harmony or to advance an agenda. The noble lie is a concept originated by ] as described in the '']''.

			In ]'s '']'', a '''noble lie''' is a ] or ] knowingly propagated by an ] to maintain social harmony.<ref>{{Citation\|last=Brown\|first=Eric\|title=Plato's Ethics and Politics in The Republic\|date=2017\|url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/plato-ethics-politics/\|encyclopedia=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy\|editor-last=Zalta\|editor-first=Edward N.\|edition=Fall 2017\|publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University\|access-date=2019-11-26}}</ref> Plato presented the noble lie (γενναῖον ψεῦδος, ''gennaion pseudos'')<ref>Translator ] explains, "The word is ''generation'' which is, primarily, 'noble' in the sense of 'nobly born' or 'well bred'..." and refers to Plato's ''Republic'' 375a and 409c for comparison (p. 455 n. 65, ''The Republic of Plato'', 2nd edition, New York: Basic Books, 1991).</ref> in the fictional tale known as the myth or parable of the metals in ]. In it, ] provides the origin of the three ]es who compose the republic proposed by Plato. Socrates proposes and claims that if the people believed "this myth... would have a good effect, making them more inclined to care for the state and one another."<ref>Book 3, 415c–d</ref>
	In ], a '''pious fiction''' is a narrative that is presented as true by the author, but is considered by others to be fictional albeit produced with an altruistic motivation. The term is sometimes used ]ly to suggest that the author of the narrative was deliberately misleading readers for selfish or deceitful reasons. The term is often used in religious contexts, sometimes referring to passages in religious texts.

			==Criticism==
	==Plato's ''Republic''==
			The concept of the noble lie as defined by Plato has sparked controversy among modern interpreters. Although some earlier classical scholars including ] argued that "noble lie" was a mistranslation, ] argued for a literal translation and interpretation of Plato's expression.<ref>pp. xviii-xix, ''The Republic of Plato'', 2nd edition, New York: Basic Books, 1991.</ref>

		⚫	In '']'', ] remarks, "It is hard to understand why those of Plato's commentators who praise him for fighting against the subversive conventionalism of the Sophists, and for establishing a spiritual naturalism ultimately based on religion, fail to censure him for making a convention, or rather an invention, the ultimate basis of religion." Religion for Plato is a noble lie, at least if we assume that Plato meant all of this sincerely, not cynically. Popper finds Plato's conception of religion to have been very influential in subsequent thought.<ref name="popper">{{cite web\|url=http://www.positiveliberty.com/2007/07/open-society-vi-on-religion-as-a-noble-lie.html \|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071209060939/http://www.positiveliberty.com/2007/07/open-society-vi-on-religion-as-a-noble-lie.html \|url-status=dead \|archive-date=2007-12-09 \|title=Positive Liberty » Open Society VI: On Religion as a Noble Lie \|access-date=2019-01-15}}</ref>
	{{main article\|The Republic (Plato)}}
	Plato presented the Noble Lie (γενναῖον ψεῦδος, ''gennaion pseudos'', literally - "a lie or wrong opinion about origin") in the fictional tale known as the myth or parable of the metals. In it, Socrates provides the origin of the three ]es who compose the republic proposed by Plato; Socrates speaks of a ], wherein the populace are told "a sort of Phoenician tale":

	{{Quotation\|...the earth, as being their mother, delivered them, and now, as if their land were their mother and their nurse, they ought to take thought for her and defend her against any attack, and regard the other citizens as their brothers and children of the self-same earth...While all of you, in the city, are brothers, we will say in our tale, yet god, in fashioning those of you who are fitted to hold rule, mingled gold in their generation, for which reason they are the most precious — but in the helpers, silver, and iron and brass in the farmers and other craftsmen. And, as you are all akin, though for the most part you will breed after your kinds, it may sometimes happen that a golden father would beget a silver son, and that a golden offspring would come from a silver sire, and that the rest would, in like manner, be born of one another. So that the first and chief injunction that the god lays upon the rulers is that of nothing else are they to be such careful guardians, and so intently observant as of the intermixture of these metals in the souls of their offspring, and if sons are born to them with an infusion of brass or iron they shall by no means give way to pity in their treatment of them, but shall assign to each the status due to his nature and thrust them out among the artisans or the farmers. And again, if from these there is born a son with unexpected gold or silver in his composition they shall honor such and bid them go up higher, some to the office of guardian, some to the assistanceship, alleging that there is an oracle that the city shall then be overthrown when the man of iron or brass is its guardian.<ref>Book 3, 414e–15c</ref>}}

	Socrates proposes and claims that if the people believed "this myth... would have a good effect, making them more inclined to care for the state and one another."<ref>Book 3, 415c–d</ref> This is his ''noble lie'': "a contrivance for one of those falsehoods that come into being in case of need, of which we were just now talking, some noble one..."<ref>414b–c</ref>

	==Modern views==

	===Karl Popper===

	{{main article\|Karl Popper}}
⚫	~~Karl Popper accused Plato of trying to base religion on a noble lie as well.~~ In '']'', Popper remarks, "It is hard to understand why those of Plato's commentators who praise him for fighting against the subversive conventionalism of the Sophists, and for establishing a spiritual naturalism ultimately based on religion, fail to censure him for making a convention, or rather an invention, the ultimate basis of religion." Religion for Plato is a noble lie, at least if we assume that Plato meant all of this sincerely, not cynically. Popper finds Plato's conception of religion to have been very influential in subsequent thought.<ref name="popper"></ref>

	===Leo Strauss===

	{{main article\|Leo Strauss}}
	Strauss noted that thinkers of the first rank, going back to Plato, had raised the problem of whether good and effective politicians could be completely truthful and still achieve the necessary ends of their society. By implication, Strauss asks his readers to consider whether it is true that noble lies have no role at all to play in uniting and guiding the ]. Are myths needed to give people meaning and purpose and to ensure a stable society? Or can men dedicated to relentlessly examining, in ]'s language, those "deadly truths," flourish freely? Thus, is there a limit to the political, and what can be known absolutely? In ''The City and Man,'' Strauss discusses the myths outlined in ] that are required for all governments. These include a belief that the state's land belongs to it even though it was likely acquired illegitimately and that citizenship is rooted in something more than the accidents of birth. Seymour Hersh also claims that Strauss endorsed noble lies: myths used by political leaders seeking to maintain a cohesive society.<ref>], , '']'', May 12, 2003, accessed June 1, 2007.{{Dead link\|date=January 2017}}</ref><ref name="reason">Brian Doherty, {{webarchive\|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080725170209/http://www.reason.com/9707/fe.bailey.shtml \|date=2008-07-25 }}, '']'', July 1997, accessed February 16, 2007.{{Dead link\|date=January 2017}}</ref> In '']'', documentary filmmaker ] opines that "Strauss believed it was for politicians to assert powerful and inspiring myths that everyone could believe in. They might not be true, but they were necessary illusions. One of these was religion; the other was the myth of the nation."<ref>''The Rise of the Politics of Fear''; Episode 1: "Baby It's Cold Outside"</ref>

	===Desmond Lee===

	{{main article\|Desmond Lee}}
	"Plato has been criticized for his Foundation Myth as if it were a calculated lie. That is partly because the phrase here translated 'magnificent myth' (p.414b) has been conventionally mistranslated 'noble lie'; and this has been used to support the charge that Plato countenances manipulation by propaganda. But the myth is accepted by all three classes, Guardians included. It is meant to replace the national traditions which any community has, which are intended to express the kind of community it is, or wishes to be, its ideals, rather than to state matters of fact."<ref name="Plato p177">Plato: The Republic, Penguin Classics, translated by Desmond Lee, p177</ref>

	===Sea of Faith===

	{{main article\|Sea of Faith}}
	The Sea of Faith Network (SoF) aims are "Exploring and promoting religious faith as a human creation..."<ref></ref>

	Although arguably not an organisation ''based'' on the noble lie, many of their members no longer believe, but continue to espouse religious beliefs for positive social control and continue to hold positions in many religious organizations and various church groups.

	==Pious fiction==

	===Examples===

	====Religious context====
	* ] of the ] (i.e. the ] or the ] ]) often consider much of the Tanakh/Jewish Bible to be a pious fiction, such as the conquests of Joshua,<ref>Borras, Judit, ''Jewish Studies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century'', BRILL, 1999, p 117: ".. the overwhelming consensus of modern scholarship is that the conquest tradition of ] is a pious fiction composed by the deuteronomistic school …"</ref> and the histories of the ].<ref>https://peteenns.com/3-things-i-would-like-to-see-evangelical-leaders-stop-saying-about-biblical-scholarship/</ref><ref>Stanley, Christopher, The Hebrew Bible: A Comparative Approach'', Fortress Press, 2009, p 123: "Minimalists begin with the fact that the ] did not reach its present form until well after the ] … most the that the story was formulated by a group of elites who wanted to justify their claims to dominate … In other words, the narrative is a pious fiction that bears little relation to the actual history of Palestine during the period it purports to narrate."</ref> The ] has also been described as a pious fiction, with the purpose of providing encouragement to Jews.<ref>Carson, D. A. For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word'', Good News Publishers, 2006, p 19: "Many critics doubt that the account of ] is anything more than pious fiction to encourage the Jews."</ref>
	* The ], one of the ] of the ], has been described as a ] or pious fiction, and it is not accepted as containing ] by those outside the Latter Day Saint movement.<ref>Skousen, Royal, ''The Book of Mormon: the earliest text'', Yale University Press, 2009, p x: "Outsiders generally consider this book a nineteenth-century hoax or pious fiction …"</ref>
	* The ], the sacred text of ], has been described as a pious fiction by several authors.<ref>{{cite book\|last=Berkey\|first=Jonathan P.\|title=The formation of Islam : religion and society in the Near East, 600-1800\|year=2008\|publisher=Cambridge University Press\|location=New York\|isbn=978-0-521-58813-3\|page=286\|edition=}}</ref><ref name="Crone and Cook 1980 277">{{cite book\|last=Crone and Cook\|first=Patricia and Michael\|title=Hagarism: the Making of the Islamic World\|year=1980\|publisher=Cambridge University Press\|location=Cambridge, UK\|isbn=978-0-521-29754-7\|pages=277}}</ref><ref>{{cite book\|last=Luxenberg\|first=Christoph\|title=The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran: a Contribution to the Decoding of the Language of the Koran\|year=2007 (English edition)\|publisher=Verlag Hans Schiler\|isbn=978-3-89930-088-8\|pages=349}}</ref> The ], likewise, have been described as a collection of various pious fictions by several authors.<ref name="Crone and Cook 1980 277"/><ref>{{cite book\|last=Brown\|first=Jonathan\|title=The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim: the Formation and Function of the Sunni Hadith Canon\|year=2011\|publisher=Brill Academic Publishers\|isbn=978-90-04-21152-0\|pages=431}}</ref>
	* Dale Eickelman writes that ] ] employ a pious fiction when they assert that ] is invariant, when in fact it is subject to change.<ref>Eickelman, Dale, ''Muslim politics'', Princeton University Press, 2004, p 26: "Emendations and additions to purportedly invariant and complete Islamic law (sharia) have occurred throughout Islamic history…. Muslim jurists have rigorously maintained the pious fiction that there can be no change in divinely revealed law, even as they have exercised their independent judgment (ijtihad) to create a kind of de facto legislation."</ref>
	* The relationship between the modern celebration of ] and the ] ] has also been described as such.<ref>{{cite book\|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kJIhXqNwIIUC&lpg=PA476&dq=christmas%20pious%20fiction&pg=PA476#v=onepage&q=christmas%20pious%20fiction&f=false \|title=Scripting Jesus: The Gospels in Rewrite - L. Michael White - Google Books \|publisher=Books.google.com \|date= \|accessdate=2011-09-27}}</ref><ref>{{cite news\|author=Top 20 football chants \|url=http://www.independent.ie/unsorted/features/how-december-25-became-christmas-day-65604.html \|title=How December 25 became Christmas Day... - Features, Unsorted \|publisher=Independent.ie \|date= 2006-12-21\|accessdate=2011-09-27}}</ref><ref>http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article405481.ece{{dead link\|date=September 2011}}</ref>

	====Other contexts====
	*Fredrick Pike describes some morale-boosting efforts during the ] as pious fictions.<ref>Pike, Fredrick, ''FDR's Good Neighbor Policy: sixty years of generally gentle chaos'', University of Texas Press, 1995, p 79:
	:"In the Depression era, a great many Americans, north and south of the border, succumbed to the pious fiction that underlay the Krausist-Areilist-Marxist nonmaterial rewards aspect of good neighborliness… Without the occasional seasoning of pious fictions, concocted by intellectuals who in their delusions of grandeur try to introduce elements of dream live into crude reality, might not the real world be a far more vicious jungle than it is?"</ref>

	==See also==		==See also==
			{{col div\|colwidth=30em}}
	* ]
	* ]		* {{annotated link\|Big lie}}
	* ]		* ]
	* ]
	* ]
	* ]		* ]
	* ]		* ]
	* ]
	* ]		* ]
	* ]		* ]
			* ]
			* ]
			* ]
			{{colend}}

	==References==		==References==
	{{Reflist\|2}}		{{Reflist}}

			{{Political philosophy}}
	==External links==
	*

	{{DEFAULTSORT:Noble Lie}}		{{DEFAULTSORT:Noble Lie}}
			]
	]		]
	]		]
	]		]
	]		]
			]

			]
	]
			]

Latest revision as of 23:51, 21 November 2024

Untruth propagated to strengthen social harmony

In Plato's The Republic, a noble lie is a myth or a lie knowingly propagated by an elite to maintain social harmony. Plato presented the noble lie (γενναῖον ψεῦδος, gennaion pseudos) in the fictional tale known as the myth or parable of the metals in Book III. In it, Socrates provides the origin of the three social classes who compose the republic proposed by Plato. Socrates proposes and claims that if the people believed "this myth... would have a good effect, making them more inclined to care for the state and one another."

Criticism

The concept of the noble lie as defined by Plato has sparked controversy among modern interpreters. Although some earlier classical scholars including Francis Cornford argued that "noble lie" was a mistranslation, Allan Bloom argued for a literal translation and interpretation of Plato's expression.

In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper remarks, "It is hard to understand why those of Plato's commentators who praise him for fighting against the subversive conventionalism of the Sophists, and for establishing a spiritual naturalism ultimately based on religion, fail to censure him for making a convention, or rather an invention, the ultimate basis of religion." Religion for Plato is a noble lie, at least if we assume that Plato meant all of this sincerely, not cynically. Popper finds Plato's conception of religion to have been very influential in subsequent thought.

References

Brown, Eric (2017), "Plato's Ethics and Politics in The Republic", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2019-11-26
Translator Allan Bloom explains, "The word is generation which is, primarily, 'noble' in the sense of 'nobly born' or 'well bred'..." and refers to Plato's Republic 375a and 409c for comparison (p. 455 n. 65, The Republic of Plato, 2nd edition, New York: Basic Books, 1991).
Book 3, 415c–d
pp. xviii-xix, The Republic of Plato, 2nd edition, New York: Basic Books, 1991.
"Positive Liberty » Open Society VI: On Religion as a Noble Lie". Archived from the original on 2007-12-09. Retrieved 2019-01-15.

Political philosophy

Terms

Government

Ideologies

Concepts

Philosophers

Antiquity	Aristotle Chanakya Cicero Confucius Han Fei Lactantius Mencius Mozi Plato political philosophy Polybius Shang Sun Tzu Thucydides Xenophon
Middle Ages	Alpharabius Aquinas Averroes Bruni Dante Gelasius al-Ghazali Ibn Khaldun Marsilius Muhammad Nizam al-Mulk Ockham Plethon Wang
Early modern period	Boétie Bodin Bossuet Calvin Campanella Filmer Grotius Guicciardini Hobbes political philosophy James Leibniz Locke Luther Machiavelli Milton More Müntzer Pufendorf Spinoza Suárez
18th and 19th centuries	Bakunin Bastiat Beccaria Bentham Bolingbroke Bonald Burke Carlyle Comte Condorcet Constant Cortés Engels Fichte Fourier Franklin Godwin Haller Hegel Herder Hume Iqbal political philosophy Jefferson Kant political philosophy Le Bon Le Play Madison Maistre Marx Mazzini Mill Montesquieu Nietzsche Owen Paine Renan Rousseau Sade Saint-Simon Smith Spencer de Staël Stirner Taine Thoreau Tocqueville Tucker Voltaire
20th and 21st centuries	Agamben Ambedkar Arendt Aron Badiou Bauman Benoist Berlin Bernstein Burnham Chomsky Dmowski Du Bois Dugin Dworkin Evola Foucault Fromm Fukuyama Gandhi Gentile Gramsci Guénon Habermas Hayek Hoppe Huntington Kautsky Kirk Kropotkin Laclau Lenin Luxemburg Mansfield Mao Marcuse Maurras Michels Mises Mosca Mouffe Negri Nozick Nussbaum Oakeshott Ortega Pareto Popper Qutb Rand Rawls Röpke Rothbard Russell Sartre Schmitt Scruton Shariati Sorel Spann Spengler Strauss Sun Taylor Voegelin Walzer Weber

Works

Republic (c. 375 BC)
Politics (c. 350 BC)
De re publica (51 BC)
Treatise on Law (c. 1274)
Monarchia (1313)
The Prince (1532)
Leviathan (1651)
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
The Spirit of Law (1748)
The Social Contract (1762)
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
Rights of Man (1791)
Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820)
Democracy in America (1835–1840)
The Communist Manifesto (1848)
On Liberty (1859)
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)
The Road to Serfdom (1944)
The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
A Theory of Justice (1971)
The End of History and the Last Man (1992)

Category:Political philosophy

Categories:

Latest revision as of 23:51, 21 November 2024

Criticism

See also

References