Comment Dialogue of the Day: : Crooked Timber as Its Best Possible Self: "So Plato was great because he was trying to be Confucius? Why not dump him and go with the real thing?"
Maynard Handley: "Uhh, because Confucius' solution to all problems is 'perform the rites properly'?...
...I've little patience with Plato [and especially with the claim that everything great in Western Civ derives from him], but at least his viewpoint is infinitely more fruitful than the ossified conservatism of Confucius.
C Trombley: "As Prof. Palmer's students tried to tell her, Plato's plans are also just perform the rites...
...What do you think the content of those oh-so-meritocratic exams is? Hint: they won't be like the exams Prof. Palmer gives.
Plato is a little better at disguising his ossified conservatism because he has the language and metaphysics of a religious rebel. Not enough to fool the students, but a little better. Confucius is more honest - and he was therefore far more influential.
So, I stand on my original answer, The Republic was an attempt to give a Confucian or Legalist state an Orphic gloss. I think Plato's goals are incoherent (his ideas of hidden eugenics, etc. require bizarre conspiracies - hidden Orphic cults dedicated to ... Plato's idea of welfare), unlike those of the Confucians which don't require a lot of secret double motivations.
Obviously I think the Confucians/Platonists ideas of eugenics is wrong and that their presumption that meritocracy (which Plato called aristocracy) was as easy as exam rites naive. The Confucian state is more inherently interesting because it became a model for reality. My claim is that the Platonic state could not have been, the opaque double motivations are just too high a price.
Maynard Handley: "We appear to be arguing different things...
...I am not saying that I want Plato and The Republic in any form, or that I prefer it over Confucius. I'm saying that there are small fragments of what Plato says that allow the potential for change, unlike Confucius. One grounds everything in the past and the ancestors, the other, because it does not insist on this grounding, (the foundation is [supposedly] rationality, not the wisdom of the ancestors) offers at least the potential for change.
You may not think this is significant, but I, seeing a world in which every civilization but one fell before the might of the one that didn't insist that EVERYTHING was better in the past, see it as of immense importance.
To put it another way, the theory behind The Republic (ie 'this is the 'smart' way to run a society) gives impetus for all manner of subsequent writers, from Roger Bacon and Thomas Moore to Rousseau to Jefferson et al to Marx to Hitler to William Pene Du Bois to imagine 'I can do that, only smarter and better'. The theory behind Confucius does not allow for that sort of growth --- the rites are what they are, sanctified by tradition, and they don't come with an amendment mechanism.
I think your parallels with Confucius are very interesting and worth pointing out but, as I've said, I think there's one massive difference that's even more important.
C Trombley: "No, no, no - you understand me perfectly...
...but that is the complete opposite of what Plato is arguing for! His enemies - the Democrats & the Sophists - are the ones who are for a flexible, amendable state. The future generations were not inspired by The Republic (at least, not in a 'Yay Amendability' way), they were inspired by the historical Athenian & Roman Republics.
Plato explicitly does not believe human beings are rational! He believes that men are like the organs of the body, they simply do what they must. The soldier is like the fists and not the kidneys - a soldier must defend the body/state and cannot be asked to flush out toxins. The judge is like the kidneys and not the fists - the judge must flush out the toxins and cannot be asked to defend the body/state. The assignment process is static, because the liver may not become the lungs. People are born one way and when they die they will be reincarnated that way. People can fool the world and even the gods, but in the end they will not achieve happiness until they are eternally in their correct role.
Only the select - The Philosophers - correspond to the head and are therefore 'rational'. Only the philosophers are allowed to see beyond the shadows on the wall - that is, understand the true workings of the body/state. They are allowed to know that the sexual lottery is (must be) rigged and the total equality of opportunity is (must be) a sham. A soldier's soul must become a soldier, whatever his marks be. It is an understanding these Orphic/Pythagorean mysteries that underlies the 'meritocratic' exam system of Plato. A soldier-king, judge-king, farmer-king can never be happy or permanent, because they inherently are a soldier/farmer/worker and they will be reincarnated as one. Only a Philosopher-King can both know the inner workings of the state and be reborn as someone who knows the inner workings of the state. A philosopher, and only a philosopher, may direct the state, just as only your mind may coordinate your hands.
Incidentally, this is why the argument with Thrasymachus is such a failure. Thrasymachus believes in power (and to a lesser extent rationality), like Thucydides or (much later) Machiavelli. Plato simply cannot comprehend this point of view because it is so far from Plato's own assumptions. From Plato's view, Thrasymachus is not wrong but incoherent and vice versa. Most of Socrates's arguments are irrelevancies. Thrasymachus allows that being a thief is a just profession if successful, meanwhile punishing them is also just according to his definition. Thrasymachus implies, but has difficulty saying, that the result will be an equilibrium (not necessarily a pleasant one, to be sure), with different strengths and interests balancing against each other. To Plato, this is like saying you can have a little bit of bowel in your lungs. Plato simply cannot see into the mind of an atheist like Thucydides.
Confucius, unlike Plato, actually does leave room for escaping society - one may go mad and become a Daoshi. As to Confucius and reform, recall that the 108 Outlaws of Mount Liang believed that their rebellion was a form of Confucian loyalty. Gao Qiu, despite being an appointee of the Emperor himself (for being a good soccer player), does not have the Mandate Of Heaven, the decide. Confucianism was a lot more flexible in practice than in theory. Still, Confucius himself was certainly as anti-democratic as you say.
If you want to understand the politics of Plato, Confucius or Philip K Dick, I'd recommend Gershom Scholem's 'Religious Authority And Mysticism', available in On The Kabbalah And Its Symbolism.
This is a long reply, but I still want to say that The 21 Balloons was my favorite book as a child!
