Lucie asked:

I have two questions.

2) Both Plato and Confucius emphasize the connection between education and proper governance. Explain the role that education plays for each of them and the similarities/differences between their accounts.

Answer by Caterina Pangallo

Much of Confucius’s teachings focused on the art of government and how a ruler should act. He developed a concept of a moral statecraft in which he advised the ruler how to appear just in order to gain the trust of the people. Plato does not ask the people to trust his governors.

Confucius argued for true justice and compassion on the part of the ruler and the ruled. Only by being a just ruler would the ruler enjoy the continued right to rule.

As with his social teachings, Confucius believed that the key to good governance lay in each man carrying out his duties as prescribed by his position within the hierarchy. He stated:

‘Good government consists in the ruler being a ruler, the minister being a minister, the father being a father, and the son being a son.’ Plato had a similar opinion, although it emphasised a different social issue. He wanted one man, one job to prevail, so that there would be no competition. E.g. if your soul was a baker’s soul, you would be obliged to be a baker. He did not consider that there might be 500 baker’s souls being born in his state!

For Confucius it was essential that the ruler possess virtue. Virtue would enable the ruler to retain the supreme position. ‘He who governs by means of his virtue is, to use an analogy, like the pole-star: it remains in its place while all the lesser stars do homage to it.’

Remarkably Confucius believed that rulers should not have to resort to force or the threat of punishment to maintain power. He said: ‘Your job is to govern, not to kill.’

As in the case of social relationships such as those between parents and children, husbands and wives, Confucius believed that the rulers should observe proper ritual in order to maintain their position and right to rule.

He viewed education as central to achieving proper conduct both within Society and in Government. Confucius believed that people, because of their nature, desire to live in the company of other people, that is, in society. It is only in society that people reach their fullest development. Therefore, it is important for a ruler to know how to provide the opportunities for the people to follow their inclinations towards self-development.

This answer your first questions and half of the second.

Plato differs in being immensely more complicated in his philosophy than Confucius. So to simplify his doctrine is not easy. But you will get by, if you take notice of these two important points:

In Plato’s political philosophy, chiefly The Republic, the governors are a plurality. There is no king or prince or despot. All governors are equal to each other. They can come from any social level at all, e.g. a cobbler’s daughter can become a philosopher king (i.e. governor) if she has such a talent.

Their training is lifelong, and they are secluded from society, in order to prevent that they are corrupted by having personal interests and friendships.

Unlike Confucius’ ruler, they do not intervene in the affairs of the people. Their role is nothing other than to pass laws, to ensure that justice prevails in that society. But they also control foreign affairs of course.

Justice is the most important issue in Plato’s state. He believes that with appropriate education for the governors, they will be able to pass just legislation.

But you need to see this in a different light from Confucius. In a sense, the governors are like the invisible gods. Every so often a law comes down into society, without a name, completely emotionless and quite intellectual in its origin. The police is there to ensure everyone obeys. This is one reason why many of his critics don’t like Plato’s political system.

Sid asked:

Could I prove to a solipsist that I am not a figment of his imagination if he were to just stop imagining that I exist?

Answer by Helier Robinson

Yes, in principle.

First, let’s get the meaning of solipsism clear. If I define an imperceptible, for me, now, as anything not in my consciousness now, then solipsism results from the premise that no such imperceptibles exist. This means that (i) time does not exist because past and future are imperceptible hence (ii) change does not exist and (iii) my experience of passage of time and of change are illusions, and all my memories and expectations are false; also (iv) all my beliefs are false, since a belief is a perception substitute, a belief in the existence of an imperceptible; and (v) all explanations are false, since explanations are descriptions of imperceptible causes. Note that all explanations, beliefs, memories, illusions, etc. are only those that I am conscious of now, since all others are imperceptible and so do not exist. In particular, any explanation of why solipsism should be true is a false explanation.

So how can the you in my imagination prove to me that you are not just a figment of my imagination? (Notice, by the way, that if I am imagining you then I cannot stop doing so, since there is no time.) One way is to prove that the premise that no imperceptibles exist leads to a contradiction, in which case at least one imperceptible exists; and another is to prove in some other way that at least one imperceptible exists, such as by the ontological argument. Neither of these prove that you are more that a figment in my imagination, but they prove that you could be real, and probably are so.

DeLisa Winters asked:

The Budgeting VP for the large publicly traded corporation which I work for was very upset with me. I am a Divisional Manager with the company. After reviewing the midyear budget reports my Budgeting VP was angry because I had not spent all the monies allocated for new equipment purchases, i.e. computers, copiers, etc.

If so, if you were in my place what would you do? and … What changes should my company make to improve our resource allocation within the organization in cases like this?

Answer by Peter Jones

My sympathies. I see you have run foul of a very common problem. When chasing public funds it is often best to do so when budget deadlines are just coming up, since may public institution adopt the same ‘use it as we planned or lose it next year’ approach, including central government, and they can be desperate sometimes to spend up the budget in time.

I do not see an ethical issue but a management problem. The issue for the company, I would say, is whether it wants to devolve responsibilities or run everything from the centre. The modern trend is towards the the latter since modern communications technology and computer power now allow it to be done very easily. But it is usually highly inefficient at a local level in important respects, and very often for the reasons you give.

What would I do? I would buy myself a fantastic new music workstation, a couple of laptops, a big screen TV, a top of the range photocopier, lots of fancy software, call it miscellaneous equipment and take it home. If there’s anything left I’d ask my staff what they wanted for Christmas.

No. Really. What I would do is spend it in advance. I’d pay my suppliers for some appropriate but notional products and services, stuff you expect to have to pay for next year, get an invoice and if possible a receipt, account for it as spent, and then be in credit with them for next year. I used to do this all the time to get around the problem. It means next year you can make amazing budget savings. It’s standard practice for European Commission funded projects and used to be about the only way to make them work. All big institutions fall foul of this sort of wastage unless they trust their managers to make sensible decisions. Just check out a few government departments, they are masters of this sort of nonsense. Come February/March everybody is desperately trying to waste money all over the place in order to avoid budget cuts in the next year. Better to hide it away for a rainy day. Budget management by dictat from the centre can be globally efficient, but at a local level it’s often just a recipe for wasting money and demotivating managers.

Not sure what this has to do with philosophy but it’s an interesting issue. If you find the solution a lot of people will be interested.

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

The rather brutal answer to your predicament is this: that ethics and business are never happy bedfellows.

The reason is that ethical philosophy seeks a standard of behaviour by which human beings may live in society without hurting each other, and at the same time facilitating the pursuit of happiness for each individual.

Business, on the other hand, resembles politics by being principally concerned with the exercise of power. Business has a target or purpose in which the human being is made happy contingent on accepting the benefits rendered by business. In the context of small business, the two frequently go hand in hand. People in society have a need for shoes, and the cobbler serves that need while serving his own needs at the same time by charging money that enables him to buy food for himself and his family.

Big business, however, although it exists in principle for the same reason, has none of the needs that explain the existence of small business. It does not charge for its services because it needs food etc., but because its investors want a return for their investment. Accordingly the self-perpetuating principle is the escalation of autonomy for money. The success of a business is gauged by the amount of excess of profit over expenses.

One practical outcome of this is that business must exert power on several fronts. In society by advertising to ensure that consumer will buy product X rather than product Y, and telling lies is part of that game. Inside by ensuring that staff minimise costs and maximise income. The staff are accordingly under pressure from the power of the business which affects their life significantly.

Your predicament is, that the exercise of this power is generally enhanced by mechanisation of its procedures — that is, removing the decisions of human beings from the scene, because humans are driven by ethical considerations. For business, ethics are a necessary evil, not a value. One look at the pharmaceutical industry or the weapons industry will tell you this.

Your idea of enhancing the skills of staff is an ethical idea. If this was useful to the company, they would support you. But it costs money; and while equipment costs money too, this disbursal can be rationalised under the ethics-free tenets of mechanisation. Business would always choose machines to do the work that has to be done and dismiss personnel, if it is possible. But if business has to hire staff, they would obviously also prefer staff that arrives, already trained. Why not? Why do we have technical colleges, run by government (i.e. public money)? To make staff training cost-free to business.

What you are doing, therefore, is to infract the power structure of business. You are operating under the assumption that human values play a positive role in business, whereas the opposite is the case in most instances.

It is very sad, for you and for mankind altogether. We Westerners have promoted the idea (based on Locke’s political theories) that freedom of economic agency is the foundation of a liberal society. Poor old Locke had no notion that business would thereby become a political power running in parallel with social political power. Furthermore that this political power can be restrained with only the greatest difficulty under the principles on which democratic societies are structured.

I think I’ve said enough to make the point. I will conclude by noting that Machiavelli is nowadays part of the business curriculum. Machiavellianism has become the philosophical backbone of business; it is being studied more intensively by business leaders than by political leaders. I think that says more than a thousand words in explanation of your ethical worries. I’m sorry to say that your situation is practically hopeless. Philosophy and ethics are each concerned with ‘truth’ and ‘justice’ in the human context. The truth and justice of business is the benefit such concepts render to business.

Sarah asked:

What would Aristotle’s response be to ‘what is the meaning of life?’

Answer by Caterina Pangallo

For Aristotle the meaning of life is eudaimonia. I believe that Aristotle discovered something really fundamental about human beings when he thought about what makes them happy, what they want out of life and how they wish to organise society to achieve it.

Aristotle finds that people pursue many different activities. For example, some want to get married and have children, others want to do business or play sports, or travel to distant lands, or read books, or they like to sit in parliament, or they want to be professional soldiers.

Aristotle asked, is there something in these many activities which they have in common?

Let’s look at a few examples and ask, why does a person do this?

a. Jack likes a game of golf. Of course he likes to win, but that’s not the end of it. In the main his interest is just in a good game.

b. Jacqueline like lots of money in the bank. But it isn’t the money for itself, but because she can buy what she wants with it.

c. Bill is ambitious and wants public recognition for helping poor people. But if he asks himself why he does this, he would answer, it makes me feel good to help others.

d. Mary likes romantic novels. But for her, the interest is not in the novels as such, but because she likes to fantasise about love and foreign countries.

And so we can go through a long list of activities people do. They are entertained, challenged, moved, satisfied, interested — in a word, they do these things with some particular end in view. What is this end they are seeking?

Aristotle says that all these activities are designed to achieve something other than the apparent purpose for which we do them. I might build a house, but the house is for living in. So the house again has another purpose behind it. I might go to war and my purpose is victory, but the victory points to another end beyond it.

In other words, when we finish one activity, we look to another. Therefore it is the activity in itself that is common to all these many pursuits. And why activity? Because it makes us happy to pursue something which we think is good for us:

Therefore if there is an end for all that we do, this will be the good achievable by action, and if there are more than one, this will be the goods achievable by action.

Therefore the end we strive to achieve is feeling good, feeling happy: ‘Happiness, then, is something final and self-sufficient, and is the end of action.’ And when we do these things, we always try to do the best we can. This trying the best we can he calls arete = excellence.

In sum, what’s common to the activities of all human beings is this: We look for the good (agathon) in what we do, and we pursue this good for the happiness (eudaimonia) it brings. And in pursuit of these things, we tend to find the greatest satisfaction in doing them really well (arete). So: the good life is the pursuit of happiness. And happiness is not in the things done and the end achieved, but in the doing it; and furthermore, happiness is the ‘end product’ so to speak.

Bobby asked:

Does education undermine the authenticity of students and thus undermine the concept of a free will?

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

Your question has three prejudices for which you give neither an explanation nor a definition.

Therefore the question cannot be answered.

Prejudice No. 1 is education. Unless you say what it is and what it’s for, I can’t answer except that I give you my explanation and definition. Which is not altogether fair, because you are asking a question for which you seem to want a clear answer that involves also the question of values.

Independently of the other two issues: Education is a means by which the human young creature is equipped with knowledge and skills that are necessary for survival. The people who do this are parents, school teachers, instructors at work and others. They are people who have also been taught, and additionally gained some experience that enables them to judge what is good and bad in the context of surviving. If you picture for yourself a small human society in the desert, or the jungle, or on the North Pole, you can see at once that without education the young child would miss out on essential know-how. The child would have self-educate and this is almost impossible because the dangers of ignorance in such an environment are likely to be fatal very quickly.

In advanced societies, education is additionally concerned with giving the child an education to enable it to live among other people, so behaviour is part of it, as well as technology, institutions, politics etc.

No need to go on. The need for education, however you define it, is indispensable for a human being that is new to the world.

The second prejudice, the authenticity of the student, I do not understand. I have not the faintest idea what it means. But I suspect there is no such thing, because no human being is formed without absorbing some influences from his or her social environment. So an ‘authentic student’ is a self-contradictory assumption.

The third prejudice, free will, is also impossible without looking at a social environment. You cannot have free will without an education that helps you with identifying what other people mean by free will. So the idea of education impairing free will sounds like nonsense to me.

Steven asked:

Thomas Hobbes theory of knowledge is not altogether original. What has given him a name in history is his exaltation of brute force among men and in the state, what do you think of this?

Answer by Caterina Pangallo

The answer to your first sentence is partly yes and partly no. Because Hobbes attempted to analyze primitive human instincts and appetites in a scientific manner similar to Galileo and Descartes. But his solution was that he tried to overcome the scientific problem by introducing the Social Contract Theory. And this theory of the state is his original concept.

Which means that your claim about him exalting brute force is totally off the mark. He needs this kind of concept only to show that man, as a rational animal, has ways and means of overcoming it.

In Hobbes’ philosophy, the rational state grows out of this state of nature where brute force reigns. The way this happens is by people forming communities with the view to protecting each other against brute force by individuals.

So they form a social contract, which spells out the freedom and obligations of each member of the community.

Eventually he develops the point of view that large states need an absolute central authority. Therefore the term ‘sovereign definer’ embodies the concept of sovereign authority.

This is the opposite of despotism, because the ultimate power still remains with the community. In the social contract and law, Hobbes says that the obligation can only be based on the freely given consent of each man to give up some portion of his personal freedom. It becomes communal freedom and defines the concept of justice.

Accordingly there must be an ‘impartial instance’, e.g. a judge, to arbitrate disputes. Hobbes’ king is bound to the social contract together with his subjects. He is the first servant of the state and only entitled to so much wealth and honour as befit his authority as the head of the state. Indeed Hobbes makes it clear that the social contract requires the king to be faithful to the state in the performance of his duties. If he fails or refuses, the subjects have cause for rebellion and should seek to depose their king.

This also includes the separation of justice, over which the monarch has no power.

Historically Hobbes was opposed by royalists because he took away the absolute power of the monarch. Democrats resented him because he reinstated monarchical authority. That made him the meat in the sandwich.

However, when the English parliament decided to execute their king (Charles I), the intellectual and political foundation for this was none other than Hobbes’ social contract.