Let a Philosopher King choose?
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By Michael Hall
Plato believes that we should sacrifice our individual freedom for the happiness that would be gained by having a philosopher king make our decisions for us. Let us see what happens if you follow this advice. You go to the philosopher king and he tells you that you would be happy in some career. You go and start your new career and you become happy in your job. So you are living a good life but another issue arises. Why not go back and ask the philosopher king what to do?
So you go back and ask him what to do because he knows best. Why not? So you continue living your life asking guidance in everything you do. But you are happy. So you never really have to make any important decisions. You also have no worries. It can’t get much better. Well, everyone else is going to the philosopher king too. And he is making everyone happy in their jobs. So we must assume that every job that exists, there must be somebody that takes pleasure in performing that task.
Now everyone continues to go to the philosopher king on every aspect of their lives to make them happy. So we must again assume that every action has a positive effect on all parties concerned. Now that you know that you will always be happy, you don’t need ambition anymore. It’s obsolete and there is no risk in losing your happiness. In truth, there is no longer any point in trying to do anything because you will always be told what to do and that is all that is required.
But if everyone is happy, how can you judge if you truly are happy? You cannot. Would your life not eventually just become normal? Of course it would. And are you not just the same as everyone else? Yes, because everyone is on the same level of happiness. But is there a level higher than happiness? No. Man is a creature that thrives on competition. Because of this, all those people will become unhappy because they ALL are happy.
We judge our happiness in relationship to others. So you must have people who are unhappy with their lives to compare your life with. It works the same with unhappy people. How do they know if they are unhappy with out knowing what happiness is? So unhappiness is equally important to happiness. It is a balance. You cannot have one without having the other.
There has to be people who dislike their jobs. There has to be a negative effect as well as a positive effect to every action. You must have happiness and unhappiness, pleasure and pain, it can go on and on. You must have the extremes of every concept to judge your relationship within that concept. To know the greatest happiness you must know the greatest unhappiness. This alone proves that the concept of the philosopher king making decisions for you is wrong.
Leaving all of that beside, let us say that you led a happy life with a philosopher king making all of your decisions. On your deathbed, will you not think your life was wasted? Whose life were you living? It certainly was not your life. You didn’t make any choices and you never learned from experience. You gave your life away to the philosopher king. So not only do you not have individual freedom, you also become unhappy having the philosopher king make decisions for you.
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