Philosopher King

In his awesome book, The Story of Philosophy, Will Durant describes Plato’s concept of the “philosopher king”:
1)      First learn the Doctrine of Ideas, the “art of perceiving significant forms and causal sequences and ideal potentialities amid the welter and hazard of sensation”;
2)     Then follows “five years of training in the application of this principle to the behavior of men and the conduct of states”;
3)     Next come the practicals because “generalizations and abstractions are worthless except they be tested by this concrete world”;
4)     And finally, “shorn of scholastic vanity by the merciless friction of life, and armed now with all the wisdom that tradition and experience, culture and conflict”, he is ready to the ruler of the state.

Now you know why Arvind Kejriwal has failed so miserably: all theory, no practical experience. I am guessing Plato would approve of Narendra Modi’s rise to PM: he is the perfect example of the philosopher king!

In his book, Antifragile, Nassim Taleb suggested the order be reversed:
“To become a successful philosopher king, it is much better to start as a king than as a philosopher.”
That sounds very opportunistic and reminds me of how coalition governments work do whatever it is that they do. Ruling well is definitely not what they do. So I don’t agree with Taleb’s view. Not entirely anyway. But if we dial Taleb back a notch, he does have a point: changing one’s approach philosophy if things aren’t working out is a good idea for a ruler. As Scott Adams says, this is the mantra of Silicon Valley in recent times:
“A pivot is when a start-up quickly changes from one product to another or from one business model to another. The valley is full of stories about companies that started with a lame idea and hit it big after a pivot.”

Regardless of whichever order you prefer (philosopher, then king or the other way round), I am sure we can agree that not having any philosophy is not ok for a ruler. That just reminded me of Rahul Gandhi (shudder).

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarDecember 18, 2015 at 10:03 AM

    Good to find that your admiration for Modi is sustaining (possibly growing). Acceptance of someone or something has some positive effect on our minds. In that sense I am happy for you.

    As far me, I am unable to avoid being a skeptic, uniformly in that of course not partially, as far as politics goes. However, comparisons are valid and I have no difficulty with them up to a reasonable point. Modi scores better in comparison in many ways, with many others.

    Now an out-of-the-boundary point: These days, world politics is also pretty different from what it was in olden times I think. The way Trump speaks I am very curious to know how he would speak and act, were he to become the US President. Actually I nourish a desire for him to win and become the US President. Nothing like knowing through direct observations as in Material sciences, like physics, no?

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