I recently read Plato’s Republic where he describes his ideal society by speaking through Socrates and in a way personal criticism of his beliefs. Based on his metaphorical and fictional society, all learning begins in a cave. This cave prevents people are not allowed to see the outside world, instead they see shadows of figures designed by teachers. These cave dwellers receive basic education such as  physical training, music, and arts. In the cave, there are some that do not pass this base level of training and are forced to stay in the cave. If the individuals successfully complete the training,  then they are allowed to leave the cave. At minimum, these people are now known as ‘auxiliaries’. The people who left the cave are now given mathematical training and obtain a basic understanding of hypothetical reasoning which leads to them gaining an understanding of true reality. After years of seeing shadows and reflections, these people are now able to recognize what is real. Later, the people are taught how to use dialect and are now able to engage in communication. Furthermore, this teaches them to be skilled enough to interact with cities and become rulers. Those who are able to grasp reality and use dialect are worthy of becoming teachers. These people now return to the cave for political training from the previous class or rulers. Furthermore, they become the teachers who educate the cave dwellers on physical training, music, and objects through shadow puppets.  After their return to the cave, these teachers become rulers. They engage in philosophical thought and lead the people. These philosophical rulers return to the cave one last time to educate the next generation of teachers on how to become great political rulers.  Finally, this class of philosophical rulers is free to live on the rest of their day as they seem fit at the age of 50.

I was fascinated by Plato’s description of the cave because it is what influenced so many political philosophical thinkers, government leaders, and literary texts.  It forms the basis of the hierarchical concept in Aristotelian thought. Hitler’s totalitarianism gained some of its basis from Plato’s idea of the guardians and philosophical elites having absolute control. Similarly, he believed the Germans were the superior race, and should have absolute control. Furthermore, one can argue the logic of 1984 and Brave New World were also derived from political thought gained founded in Platonism.

Later in the Republic, Plato destroys his argument throughout the text claiming that the Cave ideology is impossible. This is because eventually greedy, incompetent people will come to power and ruin the whole system. Nepotism will take effect and the wrong people will be given the opportunity to become rulers, which will instill rebellion from the citizens and an overthrow of the system. Some may ask, why Plato spent the majority of the book discussing the logic of cave, if he was just going to conclude with how unrealistic the idea is? Plato wrote this text to show that there is no such thing as a perfect government even if every aspect of their life is controlled. Plato believes that every nation or group of people will naturally go through a cycle from Kallipolis (philosophy reason rulers), Timocracy, Oligarchy, Democracy, and Tyranny.  In any system of government, some will be oppressed, and some will believe they are not being given a chance to maximize their potential. I believe Plato’s work is truly underappreciated as it is not being taught in the modern day curriculum. I asked many of my classmates and the only knowledge known to them was that he was a philosopher. Plato is the base of all political philosophy and is the father of his field. In this sense, I truly believe Plato is undervalued and wish people were encouraged to study someone so vital to political thought throughout time.

Professor Gray is a political philosophy professor at Washington and Lee University. In this post, he briefly explains the significance of water in the writings of Lao Tzu who was the founder of Taoism. Taoism advocates humility and religious piety.

1. Fluidity of Effective (wu-wei) Action (in accord with self-difference and duality): idea
of the inner, self-contained dualities/differences and identity of opposites helps exhibit
the relativity of values (e.g., hard vs. soft), depending on where one stands and how one
approaches things—remember the key difference between knowing that (which is a
matter of believing in linguistic claims with rational justification—one knows that
Annapolis is the capital of Maryland) vs. knowing how (which is a matter of ability—one
knows how to ride a bike).

2. Here, think about water’s duality: it is soft if you approach it slowly and gently with your hand, but it can also be as hard as concrete and exhibit great resistance if someone approaches it quickly and from a distance. Therefore, water’s characteristics change and are themselves fluid, even without water changing its essential nature—what matters is how we approach it. In this sense, it changes without actually changing by being both soft and hard at the same time (think of yin and yang circle—opposites are contained within the same entity). Also, consider the example of a swimmer working with the water vs. non-swimmer who thrashes around and drowns. Analogue to politics: more effective rule is about “flow” and efficient action, not tension and resistance—melding with the natural environment, working with and not over/against. This idea provides an alternative form of “political naturalism” whereby the natural does not revolve around human nature or a human-centrism. The “primitive” and “simple” are not in fact so—look at all the complexities and depth around you everyday that does not require your overt, distinctive, grand projects and involvement…even something as apparently boring and simple as water!
3. Tolerance: Lao Tzu also plays upon the fluidity of water because it is a naturalistic
analogue to the rather unpredictable process of becoming, along with its internal
dualities, differences, and relativity of values. In turn, this supports a Taoist ethic of
tolerance. That is to say, we should refrain from passing immediate, strong judgments on a particular person, situation, etc. as “good/fortunate” or “bad/unfortunate” because the value of our values may change from moment to moment, especially depending on
changing circumstances—most of which we do not and cannot control ourselves. In this regard, Lao Tzu is a “contextualist” when it comes to ethical judgments, not a
“universalist” with pre-determined categorical valuations.

4. Humility: Water is adaptive and humble, seeking out the lowest places (try to keep this in mind when Lao Tzu talks about the sage ruler and how he rules). Someone following the nature of the Way (and mimicking the nature of water) does not see or approach the “low” as low in a moral or normative sense, which Lao Tzu claims is an arbitrary linguistic distinction anyway. Its adaptivity, from which we can glean humility, is not seen as a weakness but rather a power, as it gradually (note patience!) melts rocks and brings down large mountains—a further example of the Taoist conception of rule: supple and flexible, yet strong. Also, note the humility displayed in the politics of “mimicry” that is found in mimicking the natural world: believing that the natural world/nonhuman things have something to teach us, and that we are not (and should not) seek to be its master. This reverses a traditional western understanding by reversing the “humans over nature” hierarchy and placing ourselves beneath the nonhuman, which Lao Tzu believes will exhibit the political knowledge exhibited or contained in natural elements such as water. Correspondingly, Taoist political thought privileges absence and humility—doubly so by using natural, non-speaking objects as examples instead of human beings and logos-/reason-centered objects like books or grand pieces of art…here one might think of references to things like doorways, windows, and cups.

5. Clarity through Stillness (especially as a precondition for right/efficient action): water
attains clarity through stillness, and the world (along with the “shine” of its physical characteristics), tends to be distracting and takes our attention away from what is closest/within us. Stillness and not conscious, frenetic energy and effort, allows us to achieve this clarity and better understand and watch what is going on within our own minds. Contrast this, for example, with Socratic dialectic and dialogue (which we’ll be
discussing very soon), which constantly stirs things up, especially in his interlocutors partly by displaying his interlocutors’ confusion and incoherent beliefs. This often leads to aporia (lack of a clear path to move forward), perplexity, and/or impasse. Lao Tzu would say that spending more time blunting our physical and mental activity—especially as it is stimulated through complicated linguistic engagements—is an important method for gaining greater clarity, understanding oneself, and understanding one’s own mind.
6. Anti-Hierarchical, Anti-Competitive, Anti-Distinction: Water runs/flows from the
higher to the lower places and refrains (in many, but not all ways) from “competing” with the physical objects it encounters in an combative, agonistic fashion. From one point of view, competition and efforts at distinction actually make one weaker by making one more vulnerable. By standing out, we make ourselves a target and get increasingly caught in the web of resistance and value judgment (think of celebrities and how harangued they are!). One of the best examples of Lao Tzu’s point in the history of western political thought is in the Classical Greek Athenian practice of “ostracism,” which entailed ostracizing members of the democratic polis who had grown too “notable” and influential for a period of 10 years (it was thought that such individuals could potentially upset democratic political equality and become a tyrant). Hence, Lao Tzu suggests that rulers shun hierarchical distinction, which he believes leads to greater weakness and instability over time.

1 This distinction between types of knowing relates to wu-wei, or non-action/efficient action. Generally speaking, wu-wei is action that is non-self-conscious yet perfectly responsive to the situation. Here we might think of various examples in sports, dance, or theatre. Wu-wei is not mere idleness or lazy, disinterested engagement, but rather a powerful, creative quietude in the midst or flow of activity. It is akin to a virtuoso performance in dance or sports, as opposed to sitting listlessly in my chair. That is, when I am brooding in my chair I am focused on myself, but in the case of playing sports or dancing, I am focused on the performance and the game or dance. In other words, I am in the non-self-conscious “throw” of the activity, efficiently lost in the midst of it—“in the flow,” so to speak. To take a dancing example: at first, I am very clumsy and self-conscious, and everything involving “trying” and remembering the steps. But gradually, as I become more skilled, I have to “think” less and become less self-conscious of myself as engaging in this particular act or activity. This is what it means to move in the direction of wu-wei and mimic the nature of the Way. In wu-wei (non-action/efficient action), the strongly demarcated self disappears and there can then be pure responsiveness to the Way of things. Behavior and activity, then, become less atomized and become more like a “flow”—hence, the analogies to water.

As I was recently browsing through the literary journal Ploughshares, I stumbled across a story called “Ten Thousand Knocks” about a young man named Kei. His first job in the ‘real world’ is to ensure tenants pay their rent on time. As an insurance enforcer, he is at liberty to encourage punctual payment with threats of violence (Ploughshares Vol 43 No. 2, 103). He has threatened a countless number of people, and asks one struggling resident, “Do you have any idea how many doors I’ve knocked on, Miss Tamura? Dozens and Dozens. Hundreds, probably. So many that I’ve lost count. I’ve spent the last two years going to every corner of Ibaraki prefecture. I must have knocked ten thousand times” (Ploughshares Vol 43 No. 2, 106). Kei is suited to the job and finds it lucrative, but as events unfold he faces a moral dilemma. Should he continue to do the job for the profits or should he quit because he is profiting off the pain of others? Finally, one day Kei steals himself to pound down the door of yet another deficient tenant. He “pulses himself into a batting stance…but no matter how hard he tries to, he can’t force his muscles into a swing” (Ploughshares Vol 43 No. 2, 110).

I was struck by how strongly I identified with the character of Kei after finishing the story. As a young man poised to enter the work force, I found his story truly relatable. Kei saw limited opportunities before him and chose the career that was most lucrative, without looking at the moral consequences. He did not enjoy being an enforcer; he did not want to hurt other people. When he finally makes what is portrayed as the moral choice at the end of the tale, he must acknowledge he will most likely be fired and must search for a new profession.

The subject of employment is foremost in my mind and the minds of 450 of my peers as we look forward to graduation later this academic year. We know competition is steep. It is very tough to get a job in the working world. It is even tougher to get a job you want, with the pay you desire, in the field of your choosing. Students have to make many tough decisions about what their first job will be. Should they take a job with the best work/life balance? Should they take a job that leads to the most money despite what it may entail? I think the answer lies within each individual. Some people are willing to sell their souls for a job. Others, need a balance. Some prefer a more altruistic career to feel accomplished from day to day.

“Ten Thousand Knocks” truly showcases the external struggle between Kei and the outside world. The author depicts in detail how strongly Kei fights to embrace his role as an enforcer. Kei progresses from a child-like view of the world to mature outlook. In one vivid scene he stands in a batting cage, missing how he used to play baseball, and wishes that life was still as simple as it used to be.

Should Kei have never taken the job? Was he wrong to choose the most lucrative career available to him? It may seem easy to judge his actions from a distance, but an in-depth understanding of his motivations reveal how similar, perhaps, they may be to our own. Kei mentions in the text how he always thought about other people leading happy lives (Ploughshares Vol 43 No. 2, 104). He knew they had jobs, money, and were able to provide for the people they cared about. Kei knew he had to do something in his life in order to put food on the table. He got desperate and leapt at the first career opportunity presented.

If you ask me, Kei made the right decision in the end to quit his job as an enforcer. However, I still cannot blame him for taking the job to begin with. He was simply doing what he thought necessary to survive in the scary realities of a modern world.

The fig is a vibrant ingredient of my private mythology.  Both sets of my grandparents had thriving trees in Griffin, Georgia, and when I moved to Opelika in Alabama my new yard was blessed with a pair that eventually reached thirty five-feet high, but of course the shade they offered was hardly their greatest gift.  Kin to the mulberry, the shrub/trees can grow luscious, delicate fruit, companionable to rocky, free-draining soil, but hard to cultivate here in the Blue Ridge, where they are not only not native, but seem reviled by the weather.  But not always, for our generous neighbor Lori out on Timber Ridge seems to have the touch and industry to help them thrive, and from her bumper crop this year she has brought some bowls to savor.

My earliest or strongest association with figs is not a comforting one.  Under the fig tree by the well house at my Grandmother Thaxton’s house, I once discovered a very dark copperhead coiled, thick as my adult wrist, less coppery than brown and shadowy mud, no mistaking the viper wedge head but with a sheen of the purplish hue on his head akin to the figs ripening above.  How old was I – eight, nine?  It was no great leap from the camouflaging  fig leaves of Genesis, Adam and Eve and their dangerously serpent-haunted apple tree to a fig tree with a venomous snake flicking his split tongue andflexing his loops.  I yelled for granddaddy, but to my amazement, he did not smite or shoot or stone the reptile but lifted him by a garden rake and carried him beyond the trash pit, whispering something about God’s creatures.  His wife was of a different mind and never failed to introduce any visible snake not a good luck black snake to the sharp edge of a gooseneck hoe.?

But I overcame my dread, if not the association, mostly due to the syrupy fig preserves she put up in Ball jars, the dark amber syrup with skins suspended, honey on the tongue, the golden seeds popping between my teeth,  I slathered fresh cat head biscuits with the delicacy and gobbled them down.  No regrets, as the commercial world appears to have judged that fig jelly is an adequate substitute for the sinful treacle, and less messy.

Griffin, Georgia, as I said, right down McIntosh Road from Calvary Baptist, so I was pretty soon getting figs in my religion.  Mostly they came to us from Spain, then the Golden State,  back eastward and south, but with different ethnic migration patterns, they might have come from Palestine, where they are native and necessary, among the seven sacred plants of Canaan.  Jesus seemed to have mixed feelings about them and not a lot of expertise, but he was a carpenter, fishing guide and otherwise occupied with his Father’s business.

 

Still, the Bible has a bit to say about ficus carica  Mysterious enough to invite much primal imagination, they became more than sweet food.  Isaiah wrote that they could, boiled, render a plaster to cure, well, boils.  Jeremiah identified two kind of figs, good and naughty, and if you sent the latter to wicked people, pestilence would visit them.  It’s tempting to imagine that he saw the barren trees as the wicked ones, but it takes two kinds of fig trees to render a harvest – the ones the fig wasp has taken pollen to and those it has taken pollen from.

In Judges 9, Jotham told a story to the men of Shechem, in which the parliament of the trees invited the olive to be their king but were refused, as the olive was quite content to be used by men to honor their god.  So then they turned to the fig, who declined saying he would not abandon his sweetness just to be promoted over the trees. The bramble was another matter, but he had conditions.  I pondered this one and asked hither and yon but received no satisfactory answer.  I was beginning to see figs at the heart of an enigma, and they were personified and inscrutable.  They occupied a text and were resonant, so I knew I had to weasel out the implications for myself.  Not that I ever succeeded.

Jesus asked if you could get figs from thistles, making agricultural wit, but I knew this was not merely farm business.  He also cursed a fig tree he saw from afar and desired fruit from.  Up close, it proved to be the barren sort.  He was in parable mode and declared the empty tree a symbol of Israel’s unbelievers.  He was in a mood anyway, on his way to scourge the money lenders and goose peddlers from the temple.  Maybe the tree was a rehearsal.

For a while, those old puzzles were part of my cloud-gathering repertoire, but they faded from sight and savored the preserves.  In college, however, I read D. H. Lawrence’s poem “Figs,” which explains both “the proper way to eat a fig in society” and the “vulgar way.”  Even the history major I was (that day) could see that the latter was clearly sexual, and Lawrence’s speaker, like Jesus, was talking about two things at once.  Besides, I’d already encountered Prufrock’s reluctance to eat a peach and suspected the perils and attractions of sensuality.  Texts again, but that poem didn’t really sink into me until Ken Russell’s film of Lawrence’s Women in Love with Rupert and Gerald disputing over fig manners.  Then I knew it was about even more than sexuality but about embracing life or trying to rule it.

The fig lends itself to metaphor and indulgence, even in language.  “A fig to you,” “I don’t give a fig.” It once meant “trifle” because they were so common but has also in the Mediterranean come to imply femininity.  During the Punic Wars, Cato wishing to goad his fellow Romans into attacking Carthage, placed a bowl of figs on the map to represent Carthage – feminine, vulnerable.  An aside: Cleopatra ordered her suicide serpent brought to her in a basket of figs.  Her way of presiding over her own fate.

Many cultures believe the fig is a talisman against the evil eye.  The hole in its blossom end is called the eye, though it radiates to become a star.  The seeds inside are golden, the pith pink.  No one has ever found a way to safely ship them ripe, but even the dried versions are tasty in their packaged spirals.  More like fig Newmans.

In Opelika, I found the starlings, grackles and blackbirds, as well as other pillagers of convenience delighted in my figs, but the bounty was sufficient to allow me to net and harvest the lower halves of the trees and leave the rest to the greedy beaks.

Cato identified over thirty varieties of fig in De Argi Cultura, but from all I can determine, the white sap of all the green parts are an irritant to human skin.  Especially mine.  Goggled, watch- capped and poncho-draped on the step ladder with my wicker basket in Opelika (“swampy place” to the Creeks) I would often (August through early October) ascend and descend, itching like a poison ivy picker, collecting the just exactly ripe figs, gently, my mouth already watering and my mind jangled by Lawrence, Jesus, Cato, Cleo and the question of English holiday “figgy pudding” drenched in brandy and served flambé.

Itchy skin and eyes, bird competition, copperheads and occasional vertigo.  Complications aside, I’d still love to have my own fig tree. Go figure.

— RTS (September, 2017)