Plato’s Republic and the Dark Triad

Plato’s Republic and the Dark Triad



Kelsey Wood






In psychology, the dark triad refers to the personality traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Thanks to serial killers, most people are aware that psychopathy is characterized by lack of emotional warmth, lack of empathy for others, and deceptive and predatory interactions with others. Psychopathy may also be characterized by criminal behavior (with a wide variety in type of crime). Typically, psychopaths are supremely selfish.






The term "psychopath" is often used interchangeably with the term "malignant narcissist," because there are positive correlations between traits of psychopathy and narcissistic personality disorder. In other words, many of the traits overlap. Everyone knows that narcissists crave attention. But narcissists are also deceitful, manipulative, and—like psychopaths—they lack empathy for other people. A glimpse behind his charming mask reveals that the narcissist is really arrogant, dogmatic, condescending, and self-centered.






What about the last dark triad personality trait, Machiavellianism? A Machiavellian is a person who is so focused on his own profit and/or power that he will manipulate, deceive, and exploit others to achieve his goals. Machiavellians believe that the end of power or profit justifies any means whatsoever, even those means that are inhumane and immoral. Machiavellianism is just the all-too-common art of being deceptive and unscrupulous to get ahead.






For the dark triad personality, other persons are just objects which he uses to gain power or profit or enjoyment of some sort. Dark triad personalities are wolves in sheep’s clothing. They are not inhibited by empathy or conscience. They typically want money, power, sex, fame, and special privileges instead of meaningful long-term friendships, partnerships, or love relationships.






Research indicates that characteristics of pathological narcissism are inherited, and also that environmental factors such as childhood abuse, neglect—or even pampering—contribute to the development of narcissistic personality disorder. And the same is true for psychopathy: there is a biological/genetic aspect as well as an environmental/social aspect.






It is worth noting something about the neurobiological aspect of dark triad behavior and thinking. When dark triad traits are exhibited—such as a lack of empathy—brain functioning is impaired in certain key areas of the brain (like the amygdala). A test called a positron emission tomography scan—or PET scan, for short—clearly shows if these impairments exist in your brain. And these traits exist on a spectrum. In other words, it’s not all or nothing: there are degrees of psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism.






But more importantly, the environmental aspect of dark triad traits has political implications. In a social environment that prioritizes individual fulfillment over collective effort, psychopaths or malignant narcissists often rise to the top. An individualistic society becomes a culture of narcissism when pathological narcissism is normalized. In a cultural environment of increasing narcissism, dark triad behaviors are encouraged and rewarded. As a result, even those who lack the genetic predisposition may develop the traits of callousness, manipulativeness, and lack of empathy. In our society today, most people—at some time or another—exhibit dark triad traits, even if we are only imitating bad role models. And even corporate persons exhibit these traits.






Let’s consider corporations as persons. Corporate personhood is the legal notion that a corporation—separately from its associated human beings—has many of the legal rights of a natural person. No nation on earth enshrines in its constitution the right of corporate personhood, including the US. But in spite of this, through a series of legal decisions beginning in the early 1800’s, many corporations in the US have been allowed to gain enormous political influence, and to do enormous harm.






In other countries, there are legal restrictions in the constitutions which rigorously limit how property can be used. In brief, outside the US, capital and property can only be used in a way that is consistent with the public good. But in the US, corporations are bound by law to put profits above all other considerations, including the public good.






And yet the notion that corporations are people is a nineteenth-century lie: a corporation is really just an artificial legal construct. The corporate form is only one of many forms of business ownership, and—given the serious problems facing the world today—it’s safe to say that the corporate form is probably not the best type of business ownership. Consider what happens if we ask what kind of person The Weinstein Company is. What kind of person is Wells Fargo, or Comcast, or Monsanto, or Cigna, or Equifax, or Saudi Aramco?






Joel Bakan is a professor of Constitutional Law, and author of The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. Using the Hare psychopathy checklist, Bakan investigates numerous actual case histories of corporate wrongdoing and shows how many corporations behave like psychopaths.






But let’s turn now to Plato. Given all this it’s not hard to see how Republic provides a useful definition of justice and moral rightness (dikaiosunē). Plato’s Republic is considered by many scholars to be the foundational text of the Western philosophical tradition. The whole work is comprised of a number of shorter conversations between Socrates and various interlocutors. These discourses all revolve around the attempt to define dikaiosunē, which means both moral rightness in the individual and justice in society.






First some background. Hesiod’s Works and Days (700 B.C.E.) is the canonical text for Ancient Greek moral and political thought, and it provides a baseline for Socrates’ discussion of dikaiosunē (justice/moral rightness) in Plato’s Republic. Hesiod defines unjust actions as those actions that are motivated by greed. The unjust person is motivated by the desire to have more: more than he has, more than he needs, and more than he is entitled to. But how does Hesiod’s association of injustice with greed relate to Plato’s Republic?






Well, this is where we come to Thrasymachus. Socrates versus Thrasymachus is kind of like Greta Thunberg versus Ayn Rand. Socrates urges that society is interconnected like the various parts of a human being. If the little finger is hurt, the whole person feels the pain. In society, if one minority group suffers, the whole society is unjust. Socrates also argues that if we harm anyone, we make them worse. Since in society we are all interdependent in various ways, if we make other people worse, then we are harming ourselves. So even a supremely selfish person should live without harming anyone.






At this point (336c), Thrasymachus interrupts and aggressively insists that what is called “justice” is actually a system of domination intended to serve the interests of powerful and unscrupulous rulers. The powerful few, the rulers in any society, do not themselves abide by the rules they impose on the gullible majority. Instead, the rulers practice wholesale robbery and violence, and manipulate public opinion so successfully that they are believed to be acting in the public welfare.






One of the ways Socrates refutes Thrasymachus involves the distinction between an art or science and the money-earning skills associated with that discipline: for example, to be a good physician is not the same as simply being a wealthy or successful doctor. One is a good physician if the health of the patient is one's primary concern, rather than becoming rich. Similarly, governing well must be grounded in concern for the welfare of the whole society. The ruler is simply not a ruler in the precise sense unless she or he strives to achieve the greatest good for the public.






Socrates, in effect, defines dikaiosunē as a form of social order and a form of social interaction which is not characterized by the dark triad of narcissism, Machiavellianism, or psychopathy. In brief, justice and moral rightness (diakaiosunē means both) is not behaving like a psychopath or antisocial narcissist. This is a negative definition, like many of Plato’s definitions. In other words, Republic indicates what dikaiosunē is not.






By the way, how do we know that someone does not have dark triad traits? Dr. Jeremy Nicholson has identified the two traits to look for if we want to know whether or not a person can be trusted. To be sure you are not dealing with a wolf in sheep’s clothing, look for the two traits of self-control and conscientiousness. The character of Socrates exhibits these traits throughout the Platonic corpus. At the opposite extreme is Thrasymachus, who—in Plato’s Republic—argues for tyranny. Thrasymachus aggressively promotes greed, callousness, manipulativeness, and lack of empathy: ‘might makes right,’ according to Thrasymachus. Against this, Socrates promotes self-control, conscientiousness, and a society that would have no slavery, no inequality between men and women, would start no wars, and would keep money out of politics.






Socrates argues that a life of injustice makes everyone miserable, including the tyrant who does unjust things. For Socrates, developing an unjust psyche is the worst thing that can happen to a person. If you do wrong, it’s better to be caught, to be punished, and to reform. Getting away with it only makes you worse, and your pathology becomes more and more entrenched. By contrast, a life according to justice leads to moral rightness in the individual and justice in society as the collective of individuals. Socrates shows that personal desires for money, power, and enjoyment are antagonistic to the interpersonal desire for the welfare of the community. The responsibilities of governing are incompatible with a life of excessive enjoyment and luxury. Anyone who lusts for political power is not competent to have it. Only those who are capable of doing without excessive enjoyment in order to make themselves wiser and better should be burdened with political duties, because only such individuals will not abuse power. True education, then, involves the transformation of desire, and the reorientation of one’s psyche toward a shared and public, interpersonal good.






This is why Socrates criticizes the rule of the wealthy. Aristos in Greek means “best,” and the best people, according to Plato, are the morally excellent citizens, not the wealthiest. In Republic Socrates argues that greed causes wars and leads finally to the corruption and degeneration of both the psyche and the society. And if the guardians of the society are corrupted by greed, the culture is in decline, and on the road to tyranny, the worst form of government. Moreover, it is in a plutocracy, ruled by the wealthy, that one encounters the “ultimate evil” of utter poverty and homelessness. In sum, the ungoverned pursuit of wealth, power, and enjoyment paves the way for tyranny and constant war (567a).






Socrates teaches that one becomes a philosophical citizen only to the extent that the desire for personal benefits is transformed into desire for the good of the whole society. Obviously, it would take a specialized system of education to produce such citizens, people who are willing to risk personal fulfillment in order to serve the public good. But we all know that intelligence is more than just the calculation of personal profit. However, in order to actualize this “more,” we have to rein in our culture of narcissism. If we do this, then we might achieve and sustain both social fairness and environmental justice. In the meantime, we can try to get the malignant narcissists and their money out of politics.