As faculty, including even philosophy professors, aid and abet student bad behavior on campus, it is worth considering what the most serious thinkers of the Western tradition would have thought about the political opinions and activities of the young. What follows are some relevant passages from Plato and Aristotle in particular. For purposes of the present article, I put to one side the specific subject matter of the recent protests, because it is not relevant to the present point. What is relevant is that the manner in which the protesters’ opinions are formed and expressed is contrary to reason. That would remain true whatever they were protesting. Part of this is because mobs are always irrational. But they are bound to be even more irrational when they are composed of young people.
Don’t trust anyone under thirty
Plato held that even the guardians in his ideal city should not be permitted to study philosophy, and in particular the critical back-and-form of philosophical debate, before the age of thirty. And even then, they could do so only after acquiring practical experience in military service, the acquisition of a large body of general knowledge, and the intellectual discipline afforded by mathematical reasoning. As he says in The Republic, “dialectic” (as he referred to this back-and-forth), when studied prematurely, “does appalling harm” and “fills people with indiscipline” (Book VII, at p. 271 of the Desmond Lee translation). For young and inexperienced people tend to make a game of argument and criticism, a means of tearing down traditional ideas without seriously considering what might be said in favor of them or putting anything better in their place. Describing the young person who pursues such superficial philosophizing, Plato writes:
He is driven to think that there’s no difference between honourable and disgraceful, and so on with all the other values, like right and good, that he used to revere… Then when he’s lost any respect or feeling for his former beliefs but not yet found the truth, where is he likely to turn? Won’t it be to a life which flatters his desires? … And so we shall see him become a rebel instead of a conformer…
You must have noticed how young men, after their first taste of argument, are always contradicting people just for the fun of it; they imitate those whom they hear cross-examining each other, and themselves cross-examine other people like puppies who love to pull and tear at anyone within reach… So when they’ve proved a lot of people wrong and been proved wrong often themselves, they soon slip into the belief that nothing they believed before was true…
But someone who’s a bit older… will refuse to have anything to do with this sort of idiocy; he won’t copy those who contradict just for the fun of the thing, but will be more likely to follow the lead of someone whose arguments are aimed at finding the truth. He’s a more reasonable person and will get philosophy a better reputation. (Book VII, at pp. 272-273)
Similarly, in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that political science (by which he meant, not primarily what is today called by that name, but rather what we would today call political philosophy) is not a suitable area of study for the young. He writes:
A young man is not a fit person to attend lectures on political science, because he is not versed in the practical business of life from which politics draws its premises and subject matter. Besides, he tends to follow his feelings, with the result that he will make no headway and derive no benefit from his course… It makes no difference whether he is young in age or youthful in character; the defect is due not to lack of years but to living, and pursuing one’s various aims, under the sway of feelings. (Book I, pp. 65-66 of the Thomson and Tredennick translation)
This lack of experience and domination by feelings is commented on by Aristotle elsewhere in the Ethics. For example, he observes that “the lives of the young are regulated by their feelings, and their chief interest is in their own pleasure and the opportunity of the moment” (Book VIII, at p. 262). And he notes:
Although the young develop ability in geometry and mathematics and become wise in such matters, they are not thought to develop prudence. The reason for this is that prudence also involves knowledge of particular facts, which become known from experience; and a young man is not experienced, because experience takes some time to acquire. (Book VI, at p. 215)
In the Rhetoric, Aristotle develops these themes in greater detail, writing:
The young are by character appetitive and of a kind to do whatever they should desire. And of the bodily appetites they are especially attentive to that connected with sex and have no control over it… They are irate and hot-tempered and of a kind to harken to anger. And they are inferior to their passions; for through their ambition they do not tolerate disregard but are vexed if they think they are being wronged.
And they are ambitious, but even more keen to win (for youth craves excess and victory is a kind of excess), and they are both of these things rather than money-loving (they are least money-loving of all through never having yet experienced shortage…) and they are not sour-natured but sweet-natured through their not having yet observed much wickedness, and credulous through their not yet having been many times deceived, and optimistic… because they have not frequently met with failure…
And in all things they err rather towards the excessively great or intense… (for they do everything in excess: they love and hate excessively and do all other things in the same way), and they think they know everything and are obstinate (this is also the reason for their doing everything in excess), and they commit their crimes from arrogance rather than mischievousness. (Book II, Part 12, at pp. 173-74 of the Lawson-Tancred translation)
To summarize the points made by Plato and Aristotle, then, young people: are excessively driven by emotion and appetite; lack the experience that is required for prudence or wisdom in practical matters; in particular, are prone to naïve idealism and an exaggerated sense of injustice coupled with arrogant self-confidence; and tend, in their intellectual efforts, toward sophistry and unreasonable skepticism toward established ways. For these reasons, their opinions about matters of ethics and politics are liable to be foolish.
Democracy dumbs down
This should sound like common sense, because it is. And notice that so far, Plato and Aristotle are describing the tendencies of the young as such, even in the best kinds of social and political arrangements. But things are even worse when those arrangements are bad. In The Laws, Plato warns that the young become soft when pampered and affluent. “Luxury,” he says, “makes a child bad-tempered, irritable and apt to react violently to trivial things” (Book VII, at p. 231 of the Saunders translation). And again: “Suppose you do your level best during these years to shelter him from distress and fright and any kind of pain at all… That’s the best way to ruin a child, because the corruption invariably sets in at the very earliest stages of his education” (ibid.).
In The Republic, Plato argues that music and entertainments that celebrate what is ignoble and encourage the indulgence of desire corrupt the moral character of the young in a way that cannot fail to have social and political repercussions:
The music and literature of a country cannot be altered without major political and social changes… The amusements in which our children take part must be better regulated; because once they and the children become disorderly, it becomes impossible to produce serious citizens with a respect for order. (Book IV, at pp. 125-26)
Similarly, in the Politics, Aristotle cautions:
Unseemly talk… results in conduct of a like kind. Especially, therefore, must it be kept away from youth… And since we exclude all unseemly talk, we must also forbid gazing at debased paintings or stories… It should be laid down that younger persons shall not be spectators at comedies or recitals of iambics, not, that is to say, until they have reached the age at which they come to recline at banquets with others and share in the drinking; by this time their education will have rendered them completely immune to any harm that might come from such spectacles… We must keep all that is of inferior quality unfamiliar to the young, particularly things with an ingredient of wickedness or hostility. (Book VII, at pp. 446-47 of the Sinclair and Saunders translation)
Plato’s Republic also famously argues that oligarchies, or societies dominated by the desire for wealth, are disordered, and tend to degenerate into egalitarian democracies, which are even more disordered. I have discussed elsewhere Plato’s account of the decay of oligarchy into democracy, and of democracy, in turn, into tyranny. Among the passages relevant to the subject at hand are the following, from Book VIII:
The oligarchs reduce their subjects to the state we have described, while as for themselves and their dependents – their young men live in luxury and idleness, physical and mental, become idle, and lose their ability to resist pain or pleasure. (p. 291)
The young man’s mind is filled instead by an invasion of pretentious fallacies and opinions… [He] call[s] insolence good breeding, license liberty, extravagance generosity, and shamelessness courage… [He] comes to throw off all inhibitions and indulge[s] desires that are unnecessary and useless…
If anyone tells him that some pleasures, because they spring from good desires, are to be encouraged and approved and others, springing from evil desires, to be disciplined and repressed, he won’t listen or open his citadel’s doors to the truth, but shakes his head and says all pleasures are equal and should have equal rights. (pp. 297-98)
A democratic society… goes on to abuse as servile and contemptible those who obey the authorities and reserves its approval, in private life as well as public, for rulers who behave like subjects and subjects who behave like rulers…
It becomes the thing for father and son to change places, the father standing in awe of his son, and the son neither respecting nor fearing his parents, in order to assert what he calls his independence…
The teacher fears and panders to his pupils… and the young as a whole imitate their elders, argue with them and set themselves up against them, while their elders try to avoid the reputation of being disagreeable or strict by aping the young and mixing with them on terms of easy good fellowship. (pp. 299-300)
In short, the affluence and egalitarian spirit of a wealth-oriented society that has decayed into a democracy (in Plato’s sense of that term, which has more to do with ethos than the mechanics of governance) greatly exacerbate the failings to which the young are already prone. In particular, it makes them even softer and thus unable to deal maturely with challenges and setbacks, even more prone to sophistry and excessive skepticism, even more contemptuous of authority and established customs, and more vulgar and addicted to vice. Even worse, the egalitarian spirit of democracy makes adults more prone to acquiesce in this bad behavior, or even to ape it themselves. A general spirit of license and irrationality sets in and undermines the social order, greasing the skids for tyranny (in a way that, again, I describe in the article linked to earlier).
What then, would Plato and Aristotle think of the mobs of shrieking student protesters we see on campuses today (or for that matter, the student mobs of the 1960s and of every decade between then and now)? To ask the question is to answer it. Nor is it a mystery what they would think of the professors who egg on this foolishness. They are the heirs, not of Plato and Aristotle, but of the sophists to whom Plato and Aristotle sharply contrasted the true philosopher.
(Editor’s note: This essay originally appeared on Dr. Feser’s blog in a slightly different form and is reprinted here with the author’s kind permission.)
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“When it comes to fundamental human issues – said Dietrich von Hildebrand – often the difference between the ideas of two contemporaries can be much greater than that between two men from different epochs. The difference between Socrates and Callicrates as described in Plato’s Gorgias is much greater than that between Callicrates and Nietzsche,” or the atmosphere of youth, I might add, of Hegel, Schelling, and Hölderlin or the Sixties: not the cold climate of positivism, but that of warm, passionate, enlightened, German reason, which, passing through revolution, becomes the eschatology of revolution. It is a reason that awaits the establishment of the regnum libertatis, finally realized in history. An unprecedented experiment that, however, has no parallels in all past history.
It is therefore a Manichaean, apocalyptic, gnostic conception, we could say “messianic.” In this, the character of the global gnostic elites is similar to that of the “third Rome”: they indeed have a common enemy, the Catholic Church, just as Pharisees (religious messianism) and Herodians (secular messianism), enemies to each other, allied themselves against the common enemy, Christ, in their time.
Excellent essay by Feser, offering insight elicited from the Wisdom of the greats, relevant especially to this present day dilemma. “And so we shall see him become a rebel instead of a conformer” (Plato cited by Feser).
If the instructor, parent or professor have become corrupt enablers, what will save our society if not a moral conversion.
Interesting article, although my opinion is more direct about today’s college kids, in that I would call them morons and pampered brats. In particular this applies to those that attend elite schools. However there is also something to said about the college presidents and faculty who tacitly and some who directly support the anti Israel chaos. Unfortunately todays wealth and abundance, combined with the secular culture feeds or promotes the ongoing idiocy and underlying evil.
Think one possible solution is to send all college kids to China, Russia, Iran or similar places for a year or two of study, let them protest there and see what happens.
Mark Bauerlein (author of “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes our Future,” 2008) was asked by Atlantic Magazine to explain himself on his blunt writing.
To which he responded, “Millennials in America today are the most socially conscious, hard-working, knowledgeable, skilled and savvy, globally aware, workforce-ready, and downright interesting generation in human history. Just ask them.”
Well, Peter Beaulieu, at least it can be said they have a positive image of themselves. As had the chief of staff at a medical center assured me, image is everything. Who then can dismiss success when it’s brimming with confidence in front of you? Where does that leave the moral idealist? A great sage recently said they’re committing suicide boxing themselves in from the world. To be or not to be for many is complex.
“young people: are excessively driven by emotion and appetite; lack the experience that is required for prudence or wisdom in practical matters; in particular, are prone to naïve idealism and an exaggerated sense of injustice coupled with arrogant self-confidence; and tend, in their intellectual efforts, toward sophistry and unreasonable skepticism toward established ways.”
Undoubtedly true. This is the natural result of ignorance and inexperience. Not to mention ignorance of and inexperience with one’s own ignorance and inexperience.
It’s also true of older people who have gained years without gaining wisdom, by dint of living their lives without examining them, and often enough by never having accepted a rational framework for life to start with. They often acquire confidence without competence, dispensing advice that makes those who take it worse off (e.g. “don’t worry about school loans, follow your heart!”) You can find them supporting, encouraging, and often participating in the protests. Pro-lifers on college campuses frequently have problems with over-30 professors.
If I remember right, classical education tends to use the teen years (and sometimes pre-teen years) when young people have that natural urge to ask why and how and wherefore, to question and challenge society’s institutions and practices, to enjoy arguing… to teach them why and how and wherefore, and what the institutions and practices are for, and how to argue sociably, while they are under the supervision of their parents. This seems more wise, to me, than squelching those questions until they are 30, living independently, and possibly raising children of their own without this knowledge, or, by this stage, the inclination to get it. It is when parents do not engage in these questions, that you are most likely to get college students who behave irrationally, and not merely with a surplus of enthusiasm and a deficit of experience.
Thanks Dr. Feser!
I’d riff on Plato and say no one under thirty has enough experience of life to be allowed to vote.
I agree with the classical greats’ assessment of the tendencies of youth, but would they also cancel the Debate Society at Thomas More College? Youth are for forming. As “rational animals” we have neglected our “animal” part which as in the animal kingdom should expect discipline in its social structure in the early years. If youthfulness goes astray, so does parenting and education. I had an ethics professor in college who said that one should not do ethics until the age of forty. Yet, at the age of 20 I had a better understanding of moral values through my family upbringing than did the few students in the class over 40 who had more life experience. Observation (and failure) in life can also turn people into moral subjectivists. The non-hypocritical, practicing-Christian, mother and father are the best formers of youth. But against these, and especially in a corrupt society, the children will still often rebel.