Another Neitzche/Plato/You ask: I'm worrying a LOT about anti-intellectualism. So I'm thinking about the philosopher-king idea and the gist I have (don't have a solid grasp as you know) that Neitzche supports the idea of rule by a group of intellectuals. I'm honestly just so disgusted/misanthropic right now I'm torn between my ideal socialist/direct-democracy rule by the people & screaming "JESUS FUCK we're mostly idiots we need the brilliant people fixing the bullshit." Um... comment?
In the wake of the election, there was some discussion among philosophers and political theorists about the advantages and disadvantages of an “epistemocracy,” i.e., government by the knowledgeable/ intelligent/ educated. In principle, I think this is a fabulous idea, but a lot would have to be in place before it could be effectively implemented. The notion of a “literacy test” as a precondition for voting has extremely bad precedent in America, and right now the outcome of such a condition would basically just be government by the relatively wealthy. Even if we were just talking about rigorous examinations as a condition for serving in the government -- something like the system they had in Ming Dynasty China -- the tendency would also be to discriminate against the poor, those who never had access to good primary education in order to matriculate into good secondary education, etc.
This seems to be a problem with our current education system rather than with the idea of an epistemocracy as such. So what if we really could guarantee equal access to good primary education to everyone, regardless of socioeconomic status? Then the remaining issue would be what kind of knowledge about government and current events would be required for voting, and whether this would exclude people who have time-consuming occupations that prevent them from staying properly informed. People like Aristotle thought that the only way to maintain a “democracy” -- in which all property-owning citizens voted and served in government periodically -- was to have a permanent slave class (not to mention women) doing the menial labor to leave time for the gentlemen to give their attention to the affairs of the state. So maybe the bar should be low enough that a lot of leisure time is not a requirement for participation. And if there were truly equitable access to primary education, would a test even be needed? (My inclination is to say yes, because some people are just dumb, but maybe I’m wrong.) Should there only be a test of knowledge and intelligence for people who enter the civil service (who generally do have to go through rigorous training anyway, except for the political appointees at the top) and for people to be permitted to run for office?
The possibilities I’m discussing are still a lot more democratic than anything Plato or Nietzsche had in mind. Plato did think (if we are to believe that what Socrates says in the Republic represents Plato’s own views) that all children should be given the same education to start out with, but only the few who show aptitude for the most advanced subjects should govern the city, while the next tier down serve it as warriors (or “guardians”) and the ones who drop out of the education program earlier are its merchants, craftsmen, etc. Nietzsche never says anything that clear about his ideal system, though he sometimes talked (facetiously?) about “breeding” a ruling class that might end up being hereditary. Plato was also in favor of having the current rulers act as matchmakers for the next batch of rulers in training in order to produce the best offspring, which of course sounds extremely distasteful to us now.