Aristotelian Optimism vs. Platonic Decadence

In Defense of The Intellectual Middle Class

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, Look! This is something new? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

All people by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things. (Aristotle, Metaphysics Book I)

I.

There’s a folk saying that to be middle class is to believe that your kids will have a better life than you.

A healthy middle class is a sign of optimism as well as stability, which is why people on the political spectrum from Francis Fukuyama to Peter Thiel see the middle class as a leading indicator of societal health. Most social movements of unrest from Occupy Wall Street to Arab Spring are the result of an unhappy and/or shrinking middle class. People riot and take to the streets when they stop believing in their future. Nihilism is a lagging indicator of the death of the middle class.

Aristotle himself understood the middle class to be a keystone to social stability. Joseph Schumpeter argued that capitalist liberal democracy could only succeed if it was perceived to be legitimate—to ensure their legitimacy states should seek to mitigate social inequality lest resentment grow too high. Whether you agree with his specific recommendations, his diagnosis was prescient. Nazism took hold in Germany in part as an ideological response to the economic loss incurred at the Treaty of Versailles. Economic blight leads to social pessimism, which makes people turn to desperate solutions or worse, mere expressions of anguish with no circumspection about the consequences.

Whether you blame automation or immigration, stagnation or growing inequality, the “overproduction of elites,” the waning geopolitical power of America relative to China, a bloated administrative state, hyper-privatization, or something else, there is a lot of consensus that Millennials and Zoomers are not as optimistic as Gen X or Boomers about their future. Americans believe less in the American Dream today than they did a generation ago.

II.

Optimism isn’t just a function of economic condition, though. It’s also a philosophical stance. Ecclesiastes is purportedly written by King Solomon—a man who had it all—and yet its mood is despondent. There is nothing to do, no ability or desire to build or dream. Ecclesiastes is a religious text but it’s adjacent to Platonism—the notion that the Forms are fixed and that all expressions of them are just repetition. Novelty is a ruse. Knowledge is recollection, but there is no scientific progress. The best we can do is confirm what we already have in our possession. There is a kind of nihilism to both Platonism and Ecclesiastes, an intellectual rejection of the spirit of the ambitious, striving middle class. Obviously, meritocracy is dumb, since there is no more merit to being wise than foolish.

III.

The philosopher who gets us to optimism is Aristotle, for Aristotle argues that we are able to learn new things using our senses. For Aristotle, we are all, cognitively speaking middle class in that we have ambition to go beyond ourselves. This is how he begins the Metaphysics. To be human is to desire knowledge. We are hardwired against decadence in virtue of our intellectual drive.

For Plato, all knowledge is knowledge of Forms. But for Aristotle, knowledge can be theoretical or practical. Knowing how to (techne) do something is not something you get from contemplation but from taking action. Aristotle elevates having a skill where Plato demeans it. Aristotle grasps the importance of habit formation where Plato thinks of ethics mostly in terms of theory—beholding the good, rather than cultivating it and embodying it through routine.

IV.

Plato was a mystic, Aristotle a scientist. Mystics are basically decadent because truth is otherworldly. Scientists are basically optimistic because truth is just around the corner, but you have to be curious to find it. Mystics are incurious, for truth is eternal and perfect things don’t change. Mystics care about that which has no beginning and no end, optimists care about slope. Mystics care about cracking the code of reality, scientists care about changing reality. Of course, Aristotle didn’t go all the way—it took 2,000 years to get from Aristotle to Francis Bacon and the Scientific Revolution, but the idea that we can progress in learning is something we get from Aristotle, and his integration into the religious thought of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the medieval period is what makes it possible to be both religious and modern.

V.

Platonism may be the favored ideology of those for whom there is no more low-hanging fruit. But it may also be the chief ideological cause of those who have given up on the search for novelty and improvement. Platonism is a retreat from the world of atoms into the world of bits. We can’t and shouldn’t build new buildings, but we can code the idea of a building in the Metaverse. We can’t solve homelessness but we can get everyone a VR headset so they don’t have to see it.

VI.

Christianity seems to be the compromise between Plato and Aristotle, between bits and atoms. God allows that humanity is fundamentally sinful and failed—which is peak pessimism. But then God also leverages this anti-worldly solace and solidarity into an injunction to “be in the world” even if not of it. Platonism is the Trojan Horse that allows Aristotelian optimism to get smuggled in. Or it’s the honey that helps the medicine of agency go down. My Straussian take on Jesus is that he commiserates with sinners not to exonerate them, but to win them over. Faith alone doesn’t save, but it makes for good infotainment. Most people need the TedTalk version of the idea, before the idea can actually get in. Aristotle without Plato is harsh. Plato without Aristotle is resignation.