Ada Palmer on the Absolute Victory of the Enlightenment

Ada Palmer has read too many student papers on Plato's Republic:

“Totalitarianism!” is an accusation that appears in almost every student Plato paper, “Dystopia! Oppression! It would be unendurable! evil! for people to have their jobs dictated to them by the state! Assigned to fixed ranks for their whole lives! With no say in government unless they’re one of these supposed philosopher kings!” It’s a reaction which always makes a wave of awe wash over me at the absolute victory of Enlightenment concepts of equality. Because such students genuinely and reflexively think of equality and self-determination as the human default. People. Are. Equal. And. Free. (is the thought process), and if Plato’s “ideal” city imposes assigned jobs and class differences, those impositions are tyrannical. This gut reaction completely misses the fact that Plato’s city, which extends equal education to all and then assigns tasks and ranks based on exams and personal disposition, is radically more free than the reality Plato lived in. . . . 

Now, the students who write these papers accusing Plato of “totalitarianism” are perfectly aware that the pre-modern world was full of rigid class systems, feudalism, and slavery. They know that Plato lived in a culture with far less self-determination than his Republic, but there are different levels of knowing a fact. You can know perfectly well that the water is off in your apartment for plumbing repairs, but, after unthinkingly turning the tap on five occasions, you still find yourself turning it a sixth time, because instinct hasn’t caught up with intellectual knowledge. The tap makes water come out! Just so, human beings have self-determination, and my students know that on a more basic level than they know that legal and social equality are modern innovations. One level of knowing is engrained, reflexive; the other requires conscious awareness. And this is how my students can know intellectually that Plato’s world was full of unfreedom, but still feel instinctively that a Republic which offers universal, equal education to all children, of all parents, all races, and both sexes, then gives you an exam to determine the job that will make you most happy in life, is a step toward totalitarianism. So, well done, Enlightenment, you made a society of young people who really think with freedom and equality as defaults.