In politics, a noble lie is a myth or untruth, often, but not invariably, of a religious nature, knowingly propagated by an elite to maintain social harmony or to advance an agenda. The noble lie is a concept originated by Plato as described in the Republic. In religion, a pious fiction is a narrative that is presented as true by the author, but is considered by others to be fictional albeit produced with an altruistic motivation. The term is sometimes used pejoratively to suggest that the author of the narrative was deliberately misleading readers for selfish or deceitful reasons. The term is often used in religious contexts, sometimes referring to passages in religious texts.
Plato's ''Republic''
Plato presented the Noble Lie in the fictional tale known as the myth or parable of the metals. In it, Socrates provides the origin of the three social classes who compose the republic proposed by Plato; Socrates speaks of a socially stratified society, wherein the populace are told "a sort of Phoenician tale": Socrates proposes and claims that if the people believed "this myth... would have a good effect, making them more inclined to care for the state and one another." This is his noble lie: "a contrivance for one of those falsehoods that come into being in case of need, of which we were just now talking, some noble one..."
Modern views
Karl Popper
Karl Popper accused Plato of trying to base religion on a noble lie as well. In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper remarks, "It is hard to understand why those of Plato's commentators who praise him for fighting against the subversive conventionalism of the Sophists, and for establishing a spiritual naturalism ultimately based on religion, fail to censure him for making a convention, or rather an invention, the ultimate basis of religion." Religion for Plato is a noble lie, at least if we assume that Plato meant all of this sincerely, not cynically. Popper finds Plato's conception of religion to have been very influential in subsequent thought.
Leo Strauss
Strauss noted that thinkers of the first rank, going back to Plato, had raised the problem of whether good and effective politicians could be completely truthful and still achieve the necessary ends of their society. By implication, Strauss asks his readers to consider whether it is true that noble lies have no role at all to play in uniting and guiding the polis. Are myths needed to give people meaning and purpose and to ensure a stable society? Or can men dedicated to relentlessly examining, in Nietzsche's language, those "deadly truths," flourish freely? Thus, is there a limit to the political, and what can be known absolutely? In The City and Man, Strauss discusses the myths outlined in Plato's Republic that are required for all governments. These include a belief that the state's land belongs to it even though it was likely acquired illegitimately and that citizenship is rooted in something more than the accidents of birth. Seymour Hersh also claims that Strauss endorsed noble lies: myths used by political leaders seeking to maintain a cohesive society. In The Power of Nightmares, documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis opines that "Strauss believed it was for politicians to assert powerful and inspiring myths that everyone could believe in. They might not be true, but they were necessary illusions. One of these was religion; the other was the myth of the nation."
Desmond Lee
"Plato has been criticized for his Foundation Myth as if it were a calculated lie. That is partly because the phrase here translated 'magnificent myth' has been conventionally mistranslated 'noble lie'; and this has been used to support the charge that Plato countenances manipulation by propaganda. But the myth is accepted by all three classes, Guardians included. It is meant to replace the national traditions which any community has, which are intended to express the kind of community it is, or wishes to be, its ideals, rather than to state matters of fact."
Allan Bloom
Translator Allan Bloom argued for a literal translation and interpretation of Plato's expression:
Pious fiction
Examples
Religious context
Mainstream historical interpretations of the Hebrew Bible often consider much of the Tanakh/Jewish Bible to be a pious fiction, such as the conquests of Joshua, and the histories of the Pentateuch. The Book of Daniel has also been described as a pious fiction, with the purpose of providing encouragement to Jews.
The Quran, the sacred text of Islam, has been described as a pious fiction by several authors. The hadith, likewise, have been described as a collection of various pious fictions by several authors.. However,
Dale Eickelman writes that Muslim jurists employ a pious fiction when they assert that Islamic law is invariant, when in fact it is subject to change.
