Symposium

Obama: Philosopher-King?

By Jonny Thakkar

 

In hindsight, the Obama campaign was most notable for the passion it excited. After a period in which apathy seemed endemic to prosperous democracies, politics as mass movement was reborn. Volunteers swarmed states not their own; devotees assembled in the thousands. Among them stood the intellectual, proudly.

The politically engaged intellectual tends to consider himself above the cheering, jeering crowd. They are the sheep; he is the shepherd. Yet there he was, losing himself in the flock. Why?

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“The greatest punishment for being unwilling to rule is being ruled by someone worse than oneself,” bemoaned Plato. In his own (scrupulously unbiased) eyes, the intellectual has long suffered this fate. The philosopher-king of Plato’s Republic is the most sophisticated proposal ever made for his relief. What puts a thrill up the intellectual’s leg is the hope that Obama might turn out to be a philosopher-president.