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 murder 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. 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. 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.
