Siriel

Because I was asked to Blog it.

1. Plato’s ideal society

In Plato’s ideal society, justice is present when all citizens have their own place and are happy in their place, respecting those who are above them in the hierarchy and content to fulfil their duties. We’ll go over this in more details if it becomes required, but for now I’ll simply briefly present the hierarchy that Plato suggests for such a city.

The first, most populous, class is the working class. It is comprised of the majority of the population and is responsible for all production and economic class. Notable is that Plato looks down upon the working class, deeming its members as lacking in courage and integrity, and as a result unable to obtain knowledge and wisdom. The sole virtue that can be possessed by the working class according to Plato is temperance (or Moderation); the ability to recognize, respect and obey their rulers who know better than themselves.

The second social class are the guardians, who defend the city against outside threats and maintain order. However, being a guardian is not a job in the modern sense; one does not choose to be a guardian. Children who have the potential to become guardians (typically the children of guardians, though gifted youths from the working class can be handpicked) are taken away from their family before they can develop familial bonds, and are stripped of all possession and ranks. The reason for this is to avoid them developing any sort of attachment toward something other than the city itself; since if the guardians were to revolt against the order of the city, they would have the military might to overthrow the just rulers. A guardian must be ferocious against the enemies of the city, and loving toward the city itself. Guardians must possess not only the virtue of temperance, shared with the populace, but also Courage so that they might face the trials that they must. A guardian, unlike the common populace, has the capacity to acquire wisdom and knowledge, but is too inexperienced to have done so and therefore must rely on the example of the gods. For that reason, Plato deems that the gods must never be shown as human or flawed, as that would restrain the guardians’ expectations of their own abilities.

The third class, the ruling class, are the philosopher-kings, the guardians who have completed their service as guardians. Possessing the virtue of wisdom, they are able to contemplate what is good, and therefore are the only ones able to lead the city justly. Naturally, they also possess the lesser virtues of temperance and courage. Unlike the guardians, they know what is good, and therefore will act toward good, for no man would willingly do something that is bad while knowing what is good. Notably, according to Plato’s ideal the philosopher-kings have no need to answer to the population, but rather only to what is good, and it may even sometimes be necessary for them to act in a harsh or seemingly unfair manner in order to maintain the harmony that allows the city to prosper.

Justice, deems Plato, is the harmony created between those three classes, when every man knows his role and fulfills his role without seeking to intrude on the authority of another or rebelling against the established order. With the achievement of that justice, the common good is achieved thanks to the rule of the philosopher-kings. It is a rigid, disciplined society.

Instinctively it might seem that a society as outlined by Plato is incompatible with Nasu’s portrayal of Gilgamesh, but there are a number of interesting parallels that can be drawn between Plato’s ideal and Gilgamesh’s life and rule, particularly when it comes to his growth. Naturally, there is a fair amount of difference, not the least of which being that Gilgamesh ruled from a young age, but I will here take the point of view that Gilgamesh, though technically serving the same role of a ruler, transitioned from his youth as a guardian to his adulthood as a philosopher-king.

2. Gilgamesh, guardian

The first element that Plato’s society has in common with Gilgamesh is a certain form of determinism; people possess a natural predilection toward a task, and it is only natural talent that can allow one to be a guardian. This, as should be obvious, is the case with Gilgamesh’s life.

Gilgamesh was a hero granted many privileges from the start.

Two-third god, with abilities that far outstrip the common man, there’s no denying that Gilgamesh couldn’t, shouldn’t, have been an ordinary person.

Indeed, Gilgamesh himself deems that he was molded to be such a guardian.

Why would he then worry about the people?

“It’s only natural. I was born as a guardian of humanity.

And if he had any familial attachment, they sure are never mentioned anywhere.

More interesting than the obvious, however, is the interaction between the youthful (naïve, so says himself) Gilgamesh and the people.

In his childhood he had kingly aptitude superior to all.

Tolerant, sage, fair, and moral.
All praised and lauded him, infatuated.
He was the epitome of the ideal boy king.

Initially, Gilgamesh was loved by all, and lauded as the greatest king by the common people. However, it is interesting to note, according to Plato the common people cannot discern truth. The Gilgamesh that they praised they did not praise out of knowledge of good, but out of appreciation for the things he did for them; like those who in times of war praise the soldiers who bring back the spoils of war without ever wondering what the cost was.

Gilgamesh’s opinion of the gods, too, mirrored Plato’s path for the guardians. As a youth, he adored the gods, but as he grew he began to be able to discern truth, and accordingly moved away from their flawed teachings. (Indeed, the gods of the Nasuverse are not the perfection that Plato idealized, but rather individuals possessing flaws; more on this below.)

As a completely different life form, embodying the two.

As the ultimate neutral party, discerning their respective failings, adjudicating from their respective positions.
Initially, he loved the gods rather than humanity.
Eventually, he loathed the gods rather than humanity.
Ultimately, he determined to observe everything of humanity.

In Plato’s terms, Gilgamesh as a youth did not yet possess wisdom, and thus relied upon the gods for guidance. However, as his own awareness grew, as he gained experience, he understood a truth beyond the gods and rejected them in turn.

However, he did not agree to that role.

He prioritized his own pursuits, ruled the kingdom as a human,
and spurned the gods’ existences as artifacts of the previous age.
“I shall obey the gods. And I shall respect the gods. But perish.
You have all surrendered your own place the moment you created me.”

This passage, from the perspective of Gilgamesh as growing according to Plato’s path for a guardian, would be the moment where he obtains his own awareness of good. The gods exist only as an example to guide those who have not yet attained wisdom; once wisdom, the knowledge of good, is obtained, there is no longer a need for the gods.

But can Gilgamesh truly be called a guardian as defined by Plato? Did he love Uruk, and strike down its enemies mercilessly? Did he possess courage?
The first is simple and easy to answer.

I ruled Uruk because it was something of worth. I cared not for the machinations of the gods.

By acknowledging the worth of the city, Gilgamesh devoted himself to its protection not because of any ulterior motives, but simply because things of worth must be protected. In that way, he was indeed an ideal guardian.

Did he then possess courage, and the determination to strike the city’s enemies? The answer lies in his explanation for striking down Humbaba.

“But it was to protect Uruk, no?

If the evils of the earth are not purged, the people will perish from starvation.”

Indeed he did. However, it is here that the incompletion of the adolescent Gilgamesh, who had seen further than the gods but was not yet wise, can be seen; though he possessed courage, he did not have the perception to know what course of action to take. That is why, according to Plato’s terms, he would still be a guardian (albeit a knowledgeable one, and one who ruled in addition to protecting) rather than a philosopher-king; taken into the slaying of Uruk’s enemies, he eventually erred and caused the sequence of events that led to Enkidu’s death.

The final question would be if Gilgamesh possessed the sense of duty that Plato would attribute to the guardians. Here too, the answer is rather self-evident; Gilgamesh did not abandon his position even when he grew to hate what should be his motivation for doing so.

He had been born with his conclusion already drawn.

He existed independent of all as a being that was neither divine nor human.
As one who had acquired the characteristics of both, his field of vision reached so far and wide that not even the gods were able to comprehend what he fixed his gaze upon.
Overwhelming power bred overwhelming isolation.
Even then he did not abandon his kingship.
He did not flee from the mission imposed upon him.
…..What strength of self.

In earnest he had revered the gods and loved humanity.
He had simply followed that path to its conclusion, choosing to depose the gods and loathe humanity.

However one could argue that Gilgamesh did abandon his position when he began to act harshly and punish his citizen; clearly he could not have been acting as a guardian then. However, Gilgamesh himself gives an answer to this,

“There are types to guardianship.

Sheltering is not all; there are times when the north wind too is necessary.”

That is to say Gilgamesh considers harm to be a valid method of guardianship, as long as it’s a controlled. While one's opinion on the matter might vary wildly, the question for this post is then if Plato would also consider such a thing acceptable.

Plato’s ideal society isn’t an Utopia in the conventional sense, and Plato himself (through Socrates) noted that it was sometimes necessary, and acceptable, for the philosopher-kings to deceive the people, since by nature the people do not themselves fathom good. Therefore, for Gilgamesh who has the duties of both king and guardian, it does not appear to be much of a stretch that it is sometimes necessary for him to do things that the people judge harmful or unwise, because as the only one who possesses wisdom he is the only one who can truly know what is good.

Nasu says as much in his own way;

“So in the end it has nothing to do with rules or conditions and just depends on what he feels like that day?!”

This kind of reaction is understandable, but that is what a king is.
Whether astute judgment synonymous to the truth of the universe, or misrule during a drunken stupor, if he is the one to implement it, it would become the indisputable adjudication of the king.
Such is the absolute sovereign.

Since Gilgamesh is an absolute king, by his very nature it’s impossible for him to err as a ruler. Therefore, the acts of tyranny deplored by the people aren’t unjust; it’s simply that the people themselves don’t understand them.

3. Gilgamesh and the gods

Rather obvious from Plato’s works is that he felt that man should approach the gods (indeed, he considered it the duty of the wise man to become as close to the divine as possible), whereas Gilgamesh came to rebel against and despise the gods. However, I would affirm that there is no contradiction between these two opinions, simply because the divine that Gilgamesh rebelled against is not the divine that Plato admired.

The divine, according to Plato, was always Good, and as such could not cause or otherwise be blamed for bad, and could not suffer from human weaknesses such as war or conflict, as those were merely human weaknesses. Additionally, he affirmed that the gods, being perfect, had no need for human rites or support, and rather that the gods were the ones who assisted and guided men, who would in turn show piety by acting in the good rather than through rituals. He also criticized the portrayal of Zeus as raining down good and bad fates on people equally, and condemned the notion that the gods would choose who to help based on who made the greatest sacrifice to honor them, as he felt that the divine would naturally only assist those who were in the good regardless of how they were honored. Such was Plato’s beliefs in the perfection of the divine that he affirmed that a fair amount of famous portrayals of the gods, such as Homer’s Iliad, were blasphemy and should be censored so that the people would not be left with a misguided interpretation of the gods.

From there, it is easy to see where Gilgamesh’s rebellion might be justified, The gods of his time were not the personifications of good envisioned by Plato, but rather the fickle, wrathful, personified beings envisioned by Homer and other poets. They caused ills and calamities, fought among each other, and though they sometimes helped the people, they didn’t even only helped the just above the unjust. Most tellingly of all, they were dependant on humans to achieve sentience, rather than existing as extensions of Good, and could be charmed by prayers and sacrifices.

That last part especially is important, as Plato identified three core heresy; a) Denying the existence of the gods, b) affirming the existence of the gods, but denying that they assist us and c) affirming the existence of the gods and that their judgment can be influenced by offerings and gifts from mortals. By their very way of existence, the gods of Gilgamesh’s time are guilty of the third failing, so how could it be just to worship them?