Genetic Engineering & Plato?

Question:Do any parts of Plato's Republic address the ethics of genetic engineering?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Do any parts of Plato's Republic address the ethics of genetic engineering?

Well, for obvious reasons, no, because it wasn't a science issue then, but he does talk about producing peolpe who are the same, of certain kinds. You can find this in myth of the metals, or maybe just look here for summaries of all the themes and their references:

http://depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/classi...

Secondly, you can always find something interesting in books 1,3,4,6,7, and after that it has less to do with what you're talking about. It's a shame I don't have my copy of the republic with me or I could just look it up...

Anyways, I can't remember the exact passage number, but the passage you will be looking for, is the one where the state takes care of all the children, along with the myth of the metals, which basically states that people who are from a good stock, usually produce people of a similar type, and therefore a class society is necessary and useful. In comparison to genetics, there is also a line somewhere in the myth about how people with bronze souls might rarely produce someone with a silver soul, etc. Therefore there is sort of an idea of dominant and non-dominant gene types, if you like. Anything else, e-mail me!

No, because such a concept was really unknown twenty-five hundred years ago. Even once Mendel described genetics in the mid 1800s, you couldn't say that genetic engineering was an applicable result. Although in one sense, humans have been engaging in genetic engineering for millennium (see the genesis of maize, what we now call corn), it really hasn't been a systematic discipline until the last fifty years, until Crick, Watson and Wilkins described Dioxy Ribonucleic Acid . I would say the parts of the Republic that slightly smack of genetic engineering are closer to Naziesque (although they were hardly unique in this) ideas of eugenics. There were a great many adherents to ideas about eugenics here in the U.S. in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Basically it called for breeding humans for desirable traits the same way farmers had been breeding horses and other domestic animals for thousands of years. Also, I'm not certain that within the context of the dialog in the Republic, the marriage lottery was really something he expected could be practically put into practice.

As I'm sure you know, they don't do so directly, owing to the time in which Plato lived.

However, in Plato's ideal society, there were three classes of people which mirrored the tripartate division of the soul.

The merchant class mirrored the appetitive part of the soul--the part that wants to eat, drink, etc.

The military class mirrored the spirited part of the sould--the part that can fight not only for itself but for family and all that is good.

The philosophers who would rule Plato's republic would mirror human reason, the part of the soul which should rule the other two in Plato's view.

Plato knew that Nature did not make everyone ideally suited to belong to one class or another. So he proposed promulgating a myth that different people were related to different metals, thereby suiting them to membership to their different classes.

HERE'S WHERE GENETIC ENGINEERING COMES IN: Genetic engineering could be used to create children whose traits would suit them to membership in one of Plato's three castes. My bet: Plato would probably approve of this.

If the right genes could help us raise children who were a little more charming and a little more greedy than the rest, we'd have our merchant class.

If the right genes could help us raise children with
greater strength, speed, stamina, aggression, and discipline than the rest, we'd have our military class.

If the right genes could help us raise children with strong intelligence, especially mathematical aptitude, we'd have our philosopher kings.

Rainchild