When a storm begins, it is only a little cloud on the horizon.--Ursula Le Guin, in The Farthest Shore, Earthsea, III.
Regular readers know (recall) that I am an admirer of Ursula K. Le Guin. (I have blogged about Earthsea, here and here.) The Farthest Shore is, in addition to a thrilling adventure and buddy story, a meditation on the natural limits of epistemocracy (the rule by the knowledgeable) and the embrace of inductive risk ("Having choice, we must not act without responsibility"). For in Earthsea, there is (despite local kingdoms) no central authority in the continental archipelago, but -- not unlike New Atlantis -- behind the scenes the Masters of Roke maintain balance in the world. They use their carefully calibrated powers (recall the metaphysics), especially, to facilitate agriculture, navigation, and medicine. I speak of powers (and not technology), because the paradoxical effect of their knowledge is to retard the growth of technology. (I speculate is due to the fact that Le Guin recognizes that a paternalist, well-intention-ed caste creates a kind of tutelage.)+
A whole book could be written on the internal organization of the meritocratic Masters of Roke;++ they are ruled by a kind of politburo or, if that sounds too negative, a deliberative council, with a primes inter pares, the Archmage. This council operates, I think, by cooptation and consensus. The council represents the very best of all the specializations to be found among the Masters--true masters of knowledge are teachers; the Archmage is both the most powerful and the one true generalist (and the one permitted to deviate from the too-status-quo-friendly-consensus). The series is successful in casting doubt on, without fully undermining, the Archmage's practical wisdom. The Masters are hierarchically organized, and lesser wizards are found all over the archipelago generally (but not always) facilitating order and harmony locally.
The Masters do not meddle much with politics (but some of their local disciples do). And absent a central political power, the merchant classes run things on broadly republican grounds in the political center. They have done so successfully for many centuries, but the present Book III suggests that a commercial republic is fundamentally unbalanced. The reason for this is that in a commercial republic, the general interest is not properly cultivated and attended to. It falls on the The Masters of Roke to look after, somewhat imperfectly, the general interest.
One may wonder why the Masters do not become (benevolent) tyrants. In part this is due to the fact that there is an external threat (represented by dragons confined to the edge of Earthsea).* The significance of external threats is emphasized by the fact that the delicate political balance of Earthsea is undermined by the present Archmage (in Book II), when he had helped destroyed the symbols of power of Earthsea's sole militaristic society (the Kargs on the other edge of Earthsea),which has a sacred kingship and a clerical religion. (Le Guin is no friend of clerical religion; but she recognizes that emancipation can have costs.)
But the more significant fact is that the Masters are governed by an esprit de corps and religiosity which emphasizes moderation, prudence, and balance indoctrinated by a long apprenticeship.** Not all the great Masters think this sufficient; one of the greatest, Ogion has withdrawn himself to an insignificant corner committed to extremer forms of moderation and self-mastery. But even Ogion is willing to teach his arts to the elect.
Books III-IV, chronicle the necessary undoing of the equilibrium maintained by this epistemocracy. These are produced by two natural defects common, in principle, to all epistemic orders: first, hubris (prompted by competitive emulation among them), or expert overconfidence, and, second, desire for immortality. The first is a natural, even an inevitable response to a history of continued success; while the second is itself the new desire generated by knowledge of natural powers. On this point Le Guin (echoes Bacon and) disagrees with Plato, who clearly thinks that it is uncontrollable sexual desire among the elite which undermines kallipolis (Republic 546b).*** By contrast Le Guin thinks sexual desire is controllable if the alternative rewards (in power, status, etc.) are sufficient and if (and, perhaps, only if), women are not deemed part of this elite. In Book IV, it is suggested, in fact, that power over nature is made possible by sexual abstinence--something foreshadowed in Book III, by the Archmage's claim that he desires "nothing beyond" his "art."
The disagreement between the Le Guin of Earthsea and Plato's Socrates is not about underlying natural ability of women. Le Guin shows us the existence of women with the powers of would be Mages. But these are kept away from the Masters who, on the whole, believe their own ideology. Ogion is shown to be the (cautious) exception. That is, Platonic feminism, which (recall) rejects natural equality of all, but asserts that the best women are just as capable of ruling as the best men if they are properly educated/cultivated, is always a possibility on Earthsea, but it only comes into being in the closing page(s) of Book IV.
+The key sentence, early in Volume III, which signals the transition to come of the individual and the polity he will rule, is the "first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind, without caution, and nothing held in reserve."
++A goatherd "becomes Archmage" the "same way a prince would! By coming to Roke and outdoing all the masters..."
*In Book IV, we learn than men and dragons were once -- shades of Aristophanes's myth in Plato's Symposium -- one.
**To best of my knowledge they do not breed their own (cf. Socrates in the Republic); but in Earthsea there clearly are families in which assortative mating takes place -- the young hero of III, Arren (and future king) is one such offspring [albeit without the powers] -- in order to preserve powers in their own lineage. But knowledge of genetics is largely absent in Earthsea.
***The quest of The Farthest Shore (and this echoes Book I, The Wizard of Earthsea), is explicitly cast in terms of Meno's paradox (see here).
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