Hesiod versus Plato

One of Hesiod's central messages is to work very hard, not necessarily because it regulates the mind or is good for the soul, but because it ensures autonomy. Without autonomy, a man can't regulate his own affairs, he can't raise his family. His actions are dependent on others who rule him. He will be petty in his affairs, and appeal to the state to accomplish things for him that, if he were otherwise autonomous, he would do for himself. The only person mentioned in Hesiod's Works and Days is his brother, Persius, who is suing Hesiod for some of Hesiod's assets (the assets comprising his grain farm). Hesiod tells Persius that he wouldn't be having any trouble if he just got to work and managed his farm properly. Instead, Persius is using the local government to force Hesiod to give up his assets, the product of his own hard work. Persius has created, in Hesiod's mind, a false problem, a false dispute, to excuse him from getting to work on his own farm. The local "gift-eaters," the local government, are more than happy to help Persius, as they work for bribes.


Hence much of Hesiod's 'philosophy' is a field manual for farming: when and what to plant, what animals to use, what personnel, how to store grain, how and when to sell grain, etc.. There is also a brilliant account of the gods and the poetry has no comparison.


According to Karl Popper in his Open Society and its Enemies, Plato used a term "banausic" to describe middle-class pursuits of money. Both Plato and Aristotle were patently against such pursuits. They were writing for the land-owning aristocracy, and from this perspective and to this audience, they condemned banausic (technical, money-making) activity. They believed society exists for the purpose of leisure, and men's interacting with other men of leisure class. Leisure exists only for the landed, noble ruling class, which is not to farm the land, but reap the benefits of the slaves who farm the land. Hunting, warfare, and athletics were worthy activities. Philosophy was a worthy activity.



Yet, like Hesiod, who wrote 3 centuries before Plato, Plato also spoke of a more perfect way of being of the nomad or the hunter-gatherer--the golden age of man.


I find it very interesting that Moraline's whole lament about the loss of the hunter-gatherer society is the same damn script as a guy who wrote in 7 B.C  and another guy who wrote in 3 B.C.


I will go further. Moraline has it out for the aristocracy--the billionaire class, the hedge fund managers. His feelings for the hedge fund crowd are similar to Hesiod's feelings for Persius--both Hesiod and Moraline claim that such activity lacks nobility and honor and is self-deceptive and will result in future trouble and misery.


Moraine, like Hesiod, associates physical labor with autonomy. The problems of the state go away when men have the strength to take care of themselves (and their family) and settle their own affairs. Moraline might carry the role of physical labor further, glorifying the activity itself. How seriously this glorification is to be taken seriously is a matter of scholarship and speculation. The glorification can be seen as a taunt to the aristocracy. They believe themselves to be the power holders, they believe themselves to be holding privileged, rarified positions, creating great amounts of what they consider to be 'wealth.' Yet Moraline claims that man can be a heroic god without having to bow to authority, without being forced into one system. A man can create his own adventure, and find glory and satisfaction in what is seemingly mundane and lowly. Moreover, he claims that the rarified and ostensible power the aristocrats believe themselves to possess is in fact illusory. They are slaves in a system, the eventual 'good' to be had a transcendent fantasy. They are unwatched by the gods.


Incidentally, if it is true that the nomads and hunter-gatherers are the gods (as Hesiod may be, at times, claiming), it is interesting to note the gods would not disdain the hedge fund crowd, but would rather ignore them.


I don't know what Plato would say about these hedge fund guys. They are neither middle-class tradesmen, nor landed men of benevolent leisure. They are not intellectual. They are not spiritual. They are not great explorers or conquerors. They are not landed aristocracy, but they do indeed reap the 'benefit' of significant 'assets,' jittering 0s and 1s guarded by nuclear weapons. The question I believe Moraline raises is: what, indeed, is this benefit? What is the asset? The 'product' received by these hedge fund guys is big and powerful, no doubt, but what is it?


Hesiod warned that a man should never lose his autonomy. It will sink man lower than he already is. Hesiod believed the nomads and hunter-gatherers to be no less than gods, immortal men who never suffered, never died, and lived in a manner far elevated and inconceivable to the men of his time. In essence Hesiod was telling men two things: First, that they are wretched compared to what they used to be. Second, to not get worse and far more wretched. If men lost their autonomy, they would create bad habits that would destroy the freedom of all men through the growth of government (gift eaters). Interestingly, to Hesiod it was implicit that the bad behavior resulting from the loss of autonomy or the use of gift-eaters was the default behavior of women. Recall that Pandora's Box, a story first introduced by Hesiod, was a vessel of evil spilled by a woman that decimated the happiness of man and was the origin of man's sorrows. Of course, this raises the critical question. What was the downfall of man for Hesiod, the loss of hunter-gatherers or the spilling of Pandora's Box? Or did one cause the other?


A glaring question then arises: Is Plato no different than Persius? There are certain similarities but also certain crucial differences. The similarities: Plato believes the manual labor of farming to be beneath him. But in place of this labor a man should fill his life with hunting, war, and intellectual pursuits.And of course a man should never use the state to sue another man and take his assets. He does not believe it is noble for one man of land to use the state to rob another man of his grain, land, slaves, or farm implements (that is to say, his wealth). What did Persius do in lieu of farming? Was he a man of leisure?


Initially it may seem that these questions are irrelevant. But if we are asking questions about the growth of surplus (and not the origin of surplus, which we can agree began with the fall of nomadi or hunter-gatherer society), we have to ask how we get from small-scale farms with only a few slaves and at most 1-2 years of stored grain (in other words, almost no credit, which is the modern manifestation of Moraline's concept of surplus) in 700 B.C. Greece to enormous farms, credit, currency, and big government by the time of Plato. (I ignore here civilizations in India, China, Syria, etc. which predeceased but probably didn't influence Greece at the time, and which had reached greater sophistication and size before the time of Plato). Were these large farms and large governments only possible through the organized theft and monopoly of violence of government?


Plato would perhaps imagine he and his culture had advanced a long way since the time of Hesiod. But what if it is the case that Plato's culture was only possible through engaging in the very conduct that Hesiod condemned?


It is only a theory, of course, as it is possible that the large farms and large governments simply grew out of advancing farm technology, that the technology and growth happened without the state and growth of the strength and size of its gift-eaters. But my question is: was this technology advanced through credit growth--Moraline's surplus--that had its genesis in organized petty theft? The implication is that the mystery of surplus arises from a violation of at least two of the ten commandments: coveting thy neighbor, and theft.


Plato's landed aristocracy and their leisure class gave way to immersion of the aristocracy in banausic activity--surplus eventually destroyed the leisure of the landed class--surplus destroyed a bastion of autonomy.


In conclusion, I have noted that Hesiod, Plato, and Moraline have lamented the fall of man from Eden, the golden age of mankind. Hesiod's solution has some similarities with Moraline, insofar as Moraline advocates independent hard work as a solution to some philosophical problems. The similarities end there however as Moraline would look for a way of life more primitive than Hesiod himself.


Here is where we have an interesting similarity between all three strange bedfellows--the small farmer, the aristocratic philosopher, and the blue collar truck driver: all three lament the loss of the nomadic hunter-gatherer and all three agree that man's life worsened, and his problems began, with the fall of the nomadic or hunter-gatherer life. I point this out because there is a common tendency to discredit those who long for some idealic golden age of man. What is fascinating is that there is growing evidence that such a golden age did in fact occur (see Wietzel's Origin of Human Mythology). It is also interesting to understand that Plato--considered one of the pillars of Western civilization, and by no means a lunatic--offers the same lamentation as the farmer and truck-driver.