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).
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.
ReplyDeleteAs 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?