168

Despite believing that poets corrupted society because poets did not seek the truth, Plato himself was quite open to philosophers telling lies to an uneducated society. The Myth of Er is a sort of proto Christian Hell idea, which would keep people behaving well because they thought they would be punished in the afterlife. Plato actually thought we should behave well because a virtuous life was genuinely the best life on Earth, but presumably not everyone was going to go along with that.

Despite believing that poets corrupted society because poets did not seek the truth, Plato himself was quite open to philosophers telling lies to an uneducated society. The Myth of Er is a sort of proto Christian Hell idea, which would keep people behaving well because they thought they would be punished in the afterlife. Plato actually thought we should behave well because a virtuous life was genuinely the best life on Earth, but presumably not everyone was going to go along with that.