Plato and Aristotle
Politics as an Opera
The personal political philosophy of this author should be of little interest to readers, and in fact, I have to confess I do not have any serious ones. Rather, I just follow politics from gossipy cafe-talk angle, such as certain opposition leader being a sickeningly interesting masochistic version of Baron Scarpia, or that it is tragi-comical to observe rather indecent smile of that famous Playwrite-President who remarried a former topless actress. Naturally, being allowed to be irresponsible, I expect operatic theatrics from politicians.
Oh, you say you are also like this? That is very well. In fact, taking provincial politics too seriously as if you got your own bicycle stolen could make the Samuel Adams in your mug less tasty. However, I suppose we are all interested in the classification of philosophical types manifested in politicians and leaders.
Two Architypes of Political Philosophy
We have talked about two very different types of games, ones with single pure Nash equilibrium, and ones with mixed Nash equilibrium. The latter could be left to the "invisible hand" to sort themselves out. The problem arrises when there is a single pure Nash equilibrium whose outcome is inefficient. Namely, the question is how to "resolve" the prisoner's dilemma situation to a less undesirable outcome.
Wise readers must have figured out, by now, that "resolve" here means effectively turning the prisoner's dilemma into some other game, with the help of additional rule, not expressed in the original game table such as introducing "king" and "referee" to modify the game play.
There are two possible approaches to that end. Are we going to turn the dilemma into a game with "free-market" style mixed Nash equilibrium? Or are we prepared to pay some sacrifice in search of a perfect game whose sole pure Nash equilibrium coincides with social (Pareto) optimality. |
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Probably, this division of attitude is at the heart of the two ancient archytypes of political philosophy; Platonic and Aristotelean. In the modern line of Platonic school, there are such names as Hobbs, Rouseau, Napoleon, Hegel, Marx, Stalin and Hitler, and in Aritotelean school, there are names like Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, J.S. Mill, Dewey that culminate with Russell - that was the classification by Bertrand Russell himself. For proper judgement, of course, we should consider the fact that he was one of the great humourist in all time. Going back to the line of russian rulers, it appears that bold ones tend to be Platonic and hairy ones Aristotelean. Their historical coexistence seems to indicate, in game theoretical view, that a certain mixture of Platon and Aristotle is an evolutionarily stable outcome; a predictable, but non the less plausible conclusion. (As for the hair density, Platon was bold and Aristotle hairy, to conform to the rule.) In reality, all interesting individuals combine Platonic and Aristotelean traits in intriguingly twisted fashion. I tend to think that Platon would be stronger in actual game situation, and Aristotle would be a more refined gourmet. |
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