An earlier entry (“The Trouble with Music”) summaraized Plato’s use of music. Because music gives pleasure, its use must be carefully regulated in the education of children in order to inculcate a martial spirit.
But music is only one aspect of Plato’s project of the noble lie, thoroughly presented in Plato’s Republic. In order to control the people comprising a society, a blanket myth or lie must be presented by the authorities in order to convince the masses that certain principles of their control are good, necessary, and true. The lies are noble if they are believed, not so if they must be coerced. The process of control is made subtle and clever, without the need for active intervention or suppression. Authoritarian control is retained without controversy because (goes the lie) things are the way they are by nature — or so the people will believe. (Whether they believe the lie or simply conform defines the “nobility” of the myth.) In the eyes of the leaders, the order of society made noble is preferrable to the order being necessary. It comes to the same thing, though, just easier for the elite.
The noble lie is nicely illustrated in this piece by Existential Comics. The comic (featuring Plato and a hat-wearing Aristotle) goes a step further in identifying one of the mechanisms of the noble lie,namely the creation of “eternals” or “forms” or supposed “universals,” which further project the universe created by the noble lie. At this point, as the comic suggests, anything goes. And recalling the famous quote of philosopher Alfred North Whitehead that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato, the Western world has a desperately long way to go to shake off the intrinsic noble lie that dominates its premises, thinking, institutions, and pursuits.