Ship Of Fools And Democracy
Hello everyone, today I'm going to talk to you about Plato's Ship of Fools allegory found in his Republic. Precisely because I had an exam yesterday and couldn't find any short videos on youtube on this because I wanted to check on something. However, later I went and found under the name 'ship of the state' which is another title given to this allegory. I learned it as the ship of fools and will refer to it as such.
However, you can find it under than name. So this is an allegory found in the sixth book of the republic in part seven, in my translation at least, it's by penguin classics. First let me read it to you and then I'll try to explain it to you after. This is section 488b to 489a. 'Suppose the following to be the state of affairs on board a ship or ships. The captain is larger and stronger than any of the crew, but a bit deaf and short-sighted, and similarly limited in seamanship. The crew are all quarrelling with each other about how to navigate the ship, each thinking that he ought to be at the helm; they have never learned the art of navigation and cannot say that anyone ever taught it them, or that they spent any time studying it; indeed they say it can't be taught and are ready to.
The Obama Administration is plainly subverting democracy in America, wildly careening our previous 230-year history of democracy so dangerously Leftward that after a mere nine months we are in. Jan 25, 2013 - A short video, hopefully explaining the ship of fools allegory. So sorry about the low sound! After I realized it was too late. I did test before but.
anyone who says it can. They spend all their time milling round the captain and doing all they can to get him to give them the helm. If one faction is more successful than another, their rivals may kill them and throw them overboard, lay out the honest captain with drugs or drink or in some other way, take control of the ship, help themselves to what's on board, and turn the voyage into the sort of drunken pleasure-cruise you would expect.
Finally, they reserve their admiration for the man who knows how to lend a hand in controlling the captain by force or fraud; they praise his seamanship and navigation and knowledge of the sea and condemn everyone else as useless. They have no idea that the true navigator must study the seasons of the year, the sky, the stars, the winds and all the other subjects appropriate to his profession if he is to be really fit to control a ship; and they think that it's quite impossible to acquire the professional skill needed for such control (whether or not they want it exercised) and that there's no such thing as an art of navigation. With all this going on aboard aren't the sailors on any ship bound to regard the true navigator as a word-spinner and a star-gazer, or no use to them at all?'
So this is the allegory. Well first of all, this is done to showcase why you need philosophers in his state as well as I think it also shows what he thought of Athenian democracy at his time. There are the crew who know no art of navigation, they only know how to fraud, how to drink, how to generally be happy, but be happy in his state is not enough to have a good state.
These usually are sophists, considered as sophists. Probably politicians as well. There's the captain, now the captain is not the politician, at least in my interpretation. It's the people. Who usually would have strength in numbers but they have limited knowledge because they don't have real knowledge, they only have opinion. This is another theme in Plato. And so he is a good man, but he doesn't know how to really navigate and he is misled by his crew and he's drugged and given to drink until he's inebriated.
Now the crew doesn't believe that there is such an art as navigation, meaning there is not art of politics for them. Only the ones that can manage to get control, while in fact there is an art of navigation. I think that yeah, that's it? I wanted to add that he uses this allegory to show the prejudice that there is, especially in his society, against philosophers. And to reaffirm that there is the need of someone that actually knows the art of politics or in this case the art of navigation.
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Plato's Ship Analogy
Ship Of Fools Lyrics
You don't learn by experience how to do politics, it's innate. And also maybe I will do another video on this. There are some other metaphors used in the Republic, famous ones.
Ship Of Fools Website
The allegory of the cave is the most famous, the divided line, large animal metaphor and the sun metaphor. Maybe I will do another video someday. Let me know if this video helped you and if you need anything else maybe I can help you. If I don't know what I'm going to answer if you ask me something I will research and hopefully learn something.
That's it for now, see you another time.