28 May The levelling effect of popular opinion (PLATO – JULIA ANNAS)
Plato’s distrust of the effects of popular culture in stifling individual thought comes out vividly in this passage from the Republic (492a–c).
SOCRATES: The nature of the person who loves wisdom, as we laid it down, will necessarily arrive as it grows at every virtue, if, that is, it gets appropriate teaching. But if it is sown, and nurtured as it grows, in one that is inappropriate, then, unless some god happens to rescue it, it must turn out quite the opposite. Or do you too think what most people do, namely that some young people are corrupted by sophists, and that it’s some sophists, private people, who do the corrupting to any great extent? Don’t you think that it’s the very people who say this who are the greatest sophists of all, and who do the most complete educating, producing people to be the way they want them, young and old, men and women?
When? he said.
When many of them are sitting together in an assembly, the lawcourts, the theatre, the camp or some other general meeting of a lot of people; they make a huge uproar as they criticize some things said or done and praise others excessively in both cases-by yelling and banging, and as well as them, the rocks and the surrounding place echo the uproar of praise and blame and return it doubled. When things are like this, what heart will a young man have, as the saying goes? What kind of individual education of his will hold out and not be swept away by criticism and praise of this sort, being carried off by the flood wherever it goes, so that he agrees with them about fine and base things, practices what they do, and becomes just like them?
PLATO
A Very Short Introduction
Julia Annas
