The Noble Lie: How Reality Becomes Subjective

The Noble Lie is an educational tactic which Socrates theorizes on as the basis for creating cohesion in the ideal society. The premise is that those of the ruling class, or the Guardians, must be incentivized to work unselfishly in the interest of the city, rather than given unchecked power and that the most effective way to do this is through a lie which affirms in them a sense of inherent superiority. When hearing of this, the tendency for most is to resist the idea of the government having license to lie. To hear any lie described as noble or morally valid flies in the face of the things most people believe about democratic and fair governance. However, most people are, on a daily basis, deeply affected by lies presented to them by the authorities to who they defer. From the simplest omitted detail to the most elaborate misinformation campaign, the expectation for governments to deceive regularly has become almost a given. This is not necessarily a bad thing, nor something which is especially new or unacknowledged. To induce continuous cooperation in a civil society of conflicting interests, certain details have always needed to be smoothed over, and the rise of broadly democratic principles worldwide has only given governments significantly more incentive to use deception. In order to get people to believe the small, everyday lies which allow for the daily machinations of a society, it is best to make them swallow the big one first and rationalize the details based on the framework provided by the larger. The Noble Lie is, in this respect, the platform of a society’s lies; a foundational deception which allows for the planting of other narratives. While it may not sound particularly honorable, Socrates’ concept is an ever-present factor in civil life, from ancient autocracies to modern democracies. In this paper, I will be exploring the proliferation of Noble Lies in Plato’s conceptualized Republic, as well as two example societies, America and North Korea, and analyzing the reasons why Socrates places so much confidence in this method, as well as why it has been successful to the point of near-ubiquity.

Socrates first invokes the concept in name when discussing the education that they will give to their upper ruling class of Guardians. Socrates, in his dialectic with Glaucon, is theorizing of a social structure in which the most worthy, qualified people run the government ethically and efficiently, while lower-class workers and soldiers provide the labor and security, prior to the choosing of any formation of government. He has already theorized an optimal social environment for the Guardians to be bred into characteristics that would provide them the most ability to run a stable government while also not having the inclination to abuse their power to incite tyranny. In order to do this, Socrates places several restrictions on the types of relationships, familial and romantic, that Guardians can have, restricting their mating group significantly to create a sort of ancient-era eugenic program. To compound the “specialness” of these Guardians and disincline them from lording it over others, Socrates then plants the lie. The Noble Lie as Socrates describes it is the idea that the members of the nation are all related by a distant, sacred ancestry which is separate from that of other nations, and that within the society some members are born possessing more of the positive traits of this ancestral force. In this context, Socrates uses the metaphor of people being imbued with bronze, silver, and gold as an innate determinant of their role within their society, with the lower quality metals needing to work while the higher quality guardians rule the city. This is perpetuated through the education of the guardians, who would rule over the city and impart those values to other citizens, and eventually the next generation. The lie provides an essentially bulletproof affirmation of the justness of the societal status quo, that hierarchies that exist within society are naturally enforced by the qualities into which any individual member is born. This can be expressed in many forms, such as innate internal value as in the gold, silver and bronze metaphor Socrates uses, or genetic superiority on grounds of perceived intelligence, or degree of relation to the deified ancestor. Socrates’ gold, silver, and bronze metaphor is specifically used in order to grant the Guardians the sense of moral worthiness to continue the running of the city, but other forms of this Noble Lie have existed in perpetuity.

When framed in the context of Socrates’ theoretical, ancient society, this Noble Lie can come across as a particularly strange idea of how to enforce a cultural hierarchy. Nonetheless, it is actually a very common thread in the cultural bedrock of nations, coming to be more contemporarily known as “National Myth”. The National Myth is the meta-narrative which characterizes the founding and the beliefs of a nation, most especially as a spiritually imbued continuation of previous national values. While the National Myth is not exclusively the same as the Noble Lie as Socrates theorized it, the concepts mirror one another in their shared interest in the creation of both hierarchies within society and out-groups to separate from it. Mythology is typically thought of as a concept used exclusively to replace reason in questions that were not contemporaneously explicable, but it is better viewed as a type of framework of understanding which provides its own internal logic in the mind of its observer, as a type of deductive reason. This framework can be used as a platform for theorizing about observations, but also as a means of extrapolating new information by following the myth’s inherent conclusions. The creation myth, for example, was used in numerous societies to theorize about the unknowable aspects of the universe, but many of these myths were detailed specifically to the amount and extent of technical knowledge those civilizations had about the universe. As an expansion of technical knowledge grew, so would the mythology, allowing for deductive conjectures which form the many stories and tales of any given mythos. In this way, ancient mythology acted almost as a precursor of scientific inquiry.

However, mythology can also take on a propagandistic form, with the purpose of moral justification for the operation of its native society, and this is the form of both the mythos of the Noble Lie and of National Myths. A contemporary example of this effect can be seen in America. The American folktale of George Washington’s chopping of a cherry tree as a young boy, his being confronted and immediate confession as he “could not tell a lie”, serves to point the listener to a conclusion about the honest moral character of Washington and hence, the political actions he took. In another example, Benjamin Franklin’s discovery of electricity through the experiment of flying a kite, showcasing American ingenuity and innovative thought. Often, this and other folktales are used to paint a broader picture of the founding fathers as avatars of the principles held dear to Americans, which were enshrined in their constitution. American exceptionalism, or the belief in the inherent superiority of American institutions, culture and practices, arises out of this inherent trust for the moral legitimacy of the constitution. Typically, a neutral observer may hear this story of Washington and think it ridiculous on its face; however, if you have already been indoctrinated into the assumptive position of America’s exceptional moral character as a nation, these sorts of smaller narratives become less difficult to consume uncritically. This serves to engender a sense of veneration for the current operating hierarchy as well, as people are likely to view their current leaders as the successors of the same principles and characteristics as the previous leadership. While these types of folklore myths alone are not enough to fundamentally support the entire structure of society, they lend it legitimacy through the same process of deductive reasoning as other mythological frameworks. This is the role of propaganda, to spin a supportive narrative which enforces a wider culturally established modality, creating a positive feedback loop between the two.

This can take on more abstract forms, with the “gold and silver” being often being replaced with heavily abstracted moral axioms like “good” or “holy” or “great”. These vague descriptors allow for a wide-range of political behaviors to be justified as not only moral, but superior to that of other nations which do not garner the same praise. The ultimate goal for a National Myth of this variety is not actually to live up to these principles with any degree of consistency, but to quell criticism and justify the workings of society as run by those in charge. In North Korea, this myth comes in the form of Juche, the cult of personality surrounding the “great leader”. This greatness is considered to be genetic to the Kim-Jong line, and grants them complete autocratic authority. It began with the elevation of founder of the DPRK, Kim Il-Sung, the original great leader, to deified status through the constitution, enshrining his legacy as the sole architect of the culture and society of the North Korean people. This leads to all the smaller forms of propaganda, which, similar to American folktales, often seem ridiculous to outside observers. One such example is the lawful inability to write Il-Sung’s name as anything less than an uninterrupted “Kim Il-Sung’’ as a show of veneration. These smaller forms of propaganda can only make sense and be pushed by government when the larger national myth has already been bought into, forming that same positive feedback loop of admiration. In North Korea, this has the effect of stymying the public desire for democratic elections, allowing for a perpetual state of control amongst the people and a strong national sense of identity around the exploits of the leader.

The lie’s strength as a means of control, of course, is heavily dependent on the people who believe it and propagate it. For this reason, early education is very important to the perpetuation of the lie As the lie grows in prevalence, and the society it is sprung from grows and solidifies, an almost bizarre contradiction can occur. Though the lie may have been objectively untrue, through the continued machinations of a society striving to make it seem real, it becomes a subjective reality for the people living under it. Everything they know, experience, and understand about the world is filtered through the lens society has provided them through education and social conditioning, limiting the scope of their potential for observation. In this way, the lie has become something like a shadow of the truth, a state of being so immutable that it seems almost ridiculous for the world to be another way. For the average citizen, the information needed to reassess their worldview is, in many cases unobtainable within that nation, leaving only propaganda to inform them. This is beneficial for the control and coercion aspect of society, as it tends to inspire deep-seated admiration for the actions of the state and a tendency to outright reject conflicting or negative information about it. You can this in America or North Korea, from the freest nations to the most totalitarian, all states build themselves this legitimacy, and as a result cultivate a base of unflinching support within the state which is willing to dismiss the negative aspects of their society as a failure to abide by their system, rather than a failing of the system itself. While citizens of democratic nations generally have more access to a wider variety of viewpoints, their education in the state will always impact the way they process this information, and the conclusions they draw from it.

Learning all of this is unlikely to inspire much confidence in the government, in fact it may lead one to more anarchic conclusions. One may object to the validity of this platform as a means of building a society by insisting that the government has no right to lie to its citizens and that by choosing doing so, it makes itself unjust. By utilizing this deception to create in-groups and outsiders amongst society, government necessarily does a significant amount of harm to those who will be marginalized by that descriptor. To this, it would be important to acknowledge that Socrates actually outlines two types of lying, a lie in the soul and a lie in words, or the useful lie (382c). The main difference between these two types of lies is the possible presence of the truth. For a lie in the soul to take place, one must tell it to themselves without knowledge of the truth, whereas a lie in words is meant to obscure a known truth, for a variety of purposes. Socrates places the second type of lie as far more just than the other, as it is meant in this context to reflect the truth of the situation in which the Noble Lie would take place. While the specifics of gold, silver, and bronze may not be true, they illustrate a larger point about the true workings of society, that it is enforced through a naturalized hierarchy. The lie only serves to justify this hierarchy, not instill it, as can be evidenced by Socrates’ establishment of the guardian class being prior to any mention of the lie. In order for one to move away from the lie, one would necessarily need to label the ordering of hierarchies in society in-and-of-itself as unjust, which is a separate issue entirely.

The Noble Lie, as Socrates details it, is a foundational concept in the management of nearly all governments, regardless of structure. The need for society to be organized in a way which benefits the hierarchy necessitates a modicum of deception, in order to run at maximum efficiency. It is important to note that the lie is not a conspiracy of those in power, as the lie is specifically to be told and believed by the most powerful members of a society, who then shape society in the way they have been taught it is supposed to be. Whether it be contemporary like in America, North Korea, or any number of ancient societies such as Rome, Israel, or even the hypothetical Athens Socrates describes, the lie functions as a guideline of societal cohesion. So long as society is founded on the idea of hierarchy, the Noble Lie will continue to be employed by those in power, and brought into reality for those who are not.