The Intelligent Troglodyte’s Guide to Plato’s Republic, 2016a

34 The Myth of the Metals
See 414b-415d. Socrates had considered at 389b-c (see also 382a-d) the
possibility of rulers making justified use of falsehoods for the benefit of the
citizens. Here he proposes one such use, a myth for the city. In the first part of
the myth, the land itself is said to have given birth to the city’s inhabitants. This is
to promote loyalty and solidarity – to encourage citizens to love the land in which
they live as “their mother and nurse” and to be willing to “deliberate on its behalf,
defend it if anyone attacks it, and regard the other citizens as their earthborn
brothers.” In the second part of the myth, every person is said to have a certain
amount of metal in their soul – bronze, iron, silver, or gold – each metal indicating
a different kind of soul with a different set of strengths and weaknesses. Souls that
have gold in them do best as rulers. Souls that are silver do best as auxiliaries.
And souls that are chiefly bronze or iron do best as farmers or in one of the other
crafts. Because parents with one type of soul can give birth to children with a
different type of soul, however, “the first and most important command from the
god to the rulers is that there is nothing that they must guard better or watch more
carefully than the mixture of metals in the souls of their offspring.” Every citizen
should have the job “appropriate to his nature,” and it shouldn’t matter what
family one is born into when it comes to finding one’s proper place.
Are people innately different in important ways? Are some people better
suited by nature to serve as leaders for the rest of us?
Suppose “silver” parents were to have an “iron” child, or “bronze” parents a
“gold” child. How might this be discovered?
Can you think of beneficial falsehoods that you believed at one time?
Might some of the things you believe at present be beneficial falsehoods?
Is promoting myths like these ever advisable?
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