He likely knew it was a dumb idea from the beginning. At the end of his life, it looks like he changed his mind, became more practical. Or maybe it was Socrates who was the foolish idealist; maybe it’s the mature Plato we discover in his later writings, certainly a more sensible Plato.
I’m talking about what Socrates is supposed to have said about the family in Plato’s famous Republic, that it should be abolished. Women, Socrates said, should be held in common for all men; children too—they should not know their parents, he said, but should be raised separately. All children should be told the “noble lie” that they were born not of their parents but of the earth—that, so they would be loyal to the state instead of the family. Which, of course, Socrates said, was to be controlled eugenically, much like animal breeding, unwanted pregnancies and births being prevented or dispensed with as needed. All because the state was the highest good, you see—the “beautiful city,” as he called it, had to be controlled. It couldn’t happen naturally, certainly not left up to free individuals.[1]
A dumb idea, as I said, and dangerous too. Karl Popper, the great Jewish Austrian-British philosopher who needed little time to see just what sort of evil the Nazis were, he saw in Plato’s Republic the beginnings of totalitarianism. For Karl Popper, the Republic was “poisonous writing,” a threat to liberty and liberal democracy, the destruction of individual freedom.[2]
But, as I said, Plato seems to have changed his mind. His last work, the Laws, makes room for the family. Men, if not married by the age of thirty-five, should be fined annually until they found a spouse, he wrote. Marriages and families should be secure and stable, all for the sake of the stability of the state.[3] Still, here the idea of the family is a political one, that stable families make for a stable state. It’s just the Plato seems to have realized what Aristotle did, that without the organic bonds of husband and wife and parents and children—that is, if you take those away—then “love will be diluted,” and then the family breaks down and then, eventually, society.[4]
And this is the idea that would last, the basic concept of the good of the family, that would undergird Western civilization both pagan and Christian for millennia, the idea that stable families made for stable societies. In Christian thought the family is considered good insofar as it serves the society of the Church and the kingdom of God. Whereas Plato thought the family was good when it produced good citizens, Christians believed the family was good when it made saints. The fundamental idea, though, is the same, that the good of the family serves a greater social good. It’s why the Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus wrote that “whoever destroys marriage destroys the home, the city, and the whole human race.” It was, to the ancient mind, a law of nature, the reason “the sea is sailed, the land is farmed, philosophy and knowledge of heavenly things exist, as well as laws and governments—in brief, all human things.”[5] In short, the family has been, for a long time, an important human idea, genuinely fundamental, and upon which so many other ideas rest, both Christian and pagan.
Now forgive my historical little sketch, my little lecture, but on this Feast of the Holy Family, this is what comes to mind. Because this, of course, is what we have so much forgotten in this new era of human and family reconfigurations—of various sorts both conventionally “liberal” and conventionally “conservative,” for both sides have done their damage.
When the Church stands up for the “traditional” family, it’s to this ancient wisdom that she points. Of course, the Church’s critics denounce this wisdom as “religious” and therefore properly private and therefore not fit for politics; but, of course, that’s merely a rhetorical defense. To call an argument “religious” is to be able to dismiss it without having to engage it. Which, of course, misses the mark, because when the Church stands up for the “traditional” family, she isn’t really speaking religiously at all; she’s merely siding with the ancients, both pagan and Christian, who would have called the idea of the family not “religious” but rather simply “natural.”
But this isn’t something we can easily talk about, having, as we have done, slipped into an era that has forgotten how to argue. Ours is an era in which we think mostly sentimentally, emotively, an era in which we make rhetorical use of words like “science” and “fact” (just like the word “religion” is often used) but often as cover for societal pressures or for the shallow commercial moral formation that happens when a person does all his or her thinking in front of a screen, borrowing the thoughts of celebrities or corporations or politicians or whoever signs your paycheck. We’re no longer a people able to reason together very easily.
We’re a people that have come to hate history, hating the wisdom of history. Because it might tell us we’re wrong; because it might suggest that we shouldn’t always do what we want to do, that some things aren’t a good idea, that it doesn’t just matter that you’re a good person, without also asking the corresponding question of what the good is. We’re a people cut off from the wisdom of the past, and on top of that, a people that has replaced the syllogism with the hashtag. And so, both Christians and non-believers, really in equal measure, wallow in a sea of emotional and moral incoherence, influenced more by what they’ve streamed on Netflix than by the sacred scriptures they haven’t really ever read or the philosophical traditions of which they are almost completely ignorant. This, when people tell me how they went to Catholic school just before saying something utterly unchristian.
Which is why, as I said, I don’t talk very much about this sort of thing—the family. Because, more than likely, you’d hear me simply as another “religious” voice, unable to tell (as so many are unable) whether I’m liberal or conservative, a bigot perhaps. It’s nearly impossible to talk about, which is why I’ve chosen, for the most part, silence, at least publicly. Because, to be honest, when it comes to this new cultural morality, the train has just left the station, and no one knows where it’s headed, no matter how confident so many are. For me, it’s simply a question of when we will be able to talk about it again, reasonably. I think not for a while.
Again, forgive my little discourse here. Perhaps you can sense my nervous frustration. On this Feast of the Holy Family I want to say something of substance, something you need to hear, something more than trite and sentimental. But to do that is to pick an unwanted fight with a culture that most of you side with—against the Church. It’s uncomfortably to remind you that you may be wrong here, that you may need to think about things again. And it’s to hear, quite possibly, what Jeremiah heard when he was called by God (words few sane people want to hear), and that is, “[t]hey will fight against you.”[6] It’s to become a preacher sent to warn you, all for the sake of a good we’re about to lose.
And so, my plea is simple and humbly offered. And that is, to those of you who are Christians (for those are my concern, Christians; for as Paul said, “why should I be judging outsiders?”[7]), my prayer is that you will become students of the wisdom of the tradition, that you make it your business to study and learn, genuinely, what the Church is trying to teach. I don’t want to berate you or belittle you or manipulate you; I just want you to read, to think, to pray, and to go deeper than you may have before.
But that’ll take work, docility, a quiet mind. I don’t want to shove this teaching down your throat. I don’t want to be just another loud cartoon character, easily ignored. I am your brother, and I speak what I have learned and what I believe to be true. And I simply want to invite you into a habit of being and thinking that for me has been liberating, a Christian habit of thinking. This, because I want to invite you into a conversation that’s been going on since the dawn of time and which has become in these latter days harder to discover. About truth and about beauty and about family.
But we’re not there yet, and I’m afraid we won’t get there for a while. But know that as does love, so does truth: it remains. And it will remain, even then, when all the lesser wisdoms of the world are no more—when all of us will be bathed in light, as the family of God. Amen.
[1] Plato, Republic 449a-471c
[2] Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 41
[3] Plato, Laws 6:773-774
[4] Aristotle, Politics 1262a-b
[5] Cited in John Witte, Jr., From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition, 21-23
[6] Jeremiah 1:19
[7] 1 Corinthians 5:12
© 2019 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield
