Thank you for bringing up Plato! I think Plato turns up more often here in the Social Sciences section than in the Philosophy section.
First, I’ve never thought of the Myth of Er at the end of book 10 as an example of Plato’s “Noble Lie”. The Myth of Er is a story about the reincarnation of souls. He’s more trying to make a point about how being unjust is damaging to a soul. It’s an interesting point, and it’s possible that Socrates tells it with irony in mind, but it seems like one attribute of a “Noble Lie” is that it is understood at least amongst the ultimate planners (Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus) that it is a lie. (The Guardians don’t have to be in on it.) When it comes to the Myth of Er, Socrates never actually says to his friends Glaucon and Adeimantus that it is a false story.
What we usually mean when we refer to the Noble Lie in Plato’s Republic is found at the end of Book III. Socrates refers to “a Phoenician story”. Socrates suggests his Noble Lie in the context of a discussion about how he is going to get the people in the three classes (producers, auxiliaries, guardians) to perform their roles without corruption (mixing the jobs of each role, i.e. rulers using their status to make business deals). So the point is both about keeping each class within the boundaries of what it does, and also maintaining boundaries in the sense of discouraging voluntary upward mobility.
The Lie about Natural Talent
In the Phoenician story Socrates says we tell everyone that all the training they have been given in youth was “like a dream”. We’ll tell them that all the skills they have learned and resources they have been provided with in life were actually with them in the womb of the earth before they were born, and came with them into the world. These skills and resources are explained as different grades of metals mixed in with you at birth. So, “Gold people” are born to have all the skills and resources of Guardians, Silver likewise for soldiers, and Bronze for producers.
The Lie about Meritocracy
Then we get a kind of ironic joke about meritocracy (how bootstraps are a load of crap). As a part of our Lie we guarantee that if a Gold child is born to Bronze parents (craftsmen and farmers) we will take him away to be trained for Guardian-hood among other Gold souls. Socrates understands after all, noone really has a Gold soul, but this Lie will convince people that the class system is fair, because some people are just born Bronze. If you have a Gold soul, then the state will recognize this when you are still young, and move you up to Guardian training.
The Lie about Preventing Political Corruption
Finally we get a Socrates joke about how this Lie will prevent political corruption (using power for personal gain). Socrates argues that the Guardian class (the rulers) should NEVER own private property or have any more material wealth than is absolutely necessary. It’s sort of like the Janissaries in the Ottoman Empire. The way we convince Guardians not to pursue wealth is we tell them that they “always have gold and silver of a divine sort in their souls as a gift from the gods and so have no further need of human gold. Indeed, we’ll tell them that it’s impious for them to defile this divine Gold by any admixture of such profane gold.”
So that’s my reading of Plato’s Noble Lie. I don’t have anything interesting to say about my personal opinion on telling Noble Lies. When it comes to something like the Little Red Riding Hood story, I can say that if I had daughters I would protect my daughters and help my daughters protect themselves from rape in a more straightforward honest way.
Instead I’d like to point out that Plato via Socrates has instead explained the Noble Lie that we already tell every day. The Noble Lie as Socrates tells it is at the core of the actual narrative about justice. Whether or not Plato thinks the Noble Lie is in fact noble, it’s a fact that we tell it constantly.
