> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://mereorthodoxy.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# The Platonic Background to 'Epistemic Closure'
- URL: https://mereorthodoxy.com/the-platonic-background-to-epistemic-closure/
- Published: 2010-04-30T02:31:30.000Z
- Updated: 2026-04-20T21:08:11.000Z
- Description: The Platonic Background to 'Epistemic Closure'
- Author: Mere Orthodoxy
- Tags: Matthew Lee Anderson, Politics

I haven't stayed up on the latest hand-wringing over contemporary conservatism's woes as well as I would have liked, but Rufus' [examination of it in light of Plato is well worth your time](http://www.ordinary-gentlemen.com/2010/04/plato-gorgias-epistemic-closure/?ref=mereorthodoxy.com), especially if you think that old books have nothing to do with contemporary problems:

> I don’t think that Mark Levin is a psychopath, or even that he’s lying, just that it’s beside the point if he is. His job isn’t truth- it’s persuasion. The problem is the cross-odds: the Expert uses debate as a means of arriving at truth, but the Orator uses debate to persuade others of their position, regardless of its truth. When political movements start to treat Orators as Experts- or really as their superiors since that they get ‘better numbers’- it’s because they see persuasion- that is,*power*\- as being roughly interchangeable with truth. ‘Epistemic closure’, I think, is really this problem of scale- an inability to tell the higher from the lower.  
>  
> What conservatism needs, then, is probably more elitism. There really is a scale of value, after all. There are higher things and lower things, which can be measured in the soul. A hint: the higher things are the ones worth ‘conserving’. Otherwise, “conservatism” just becomes a knee-jerk defense of privilege and power.

Rufus takes a different route toward Ross Douthat's [conclusion that Levin et al. are best understood as entertainers](http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/thats-entertainment/?ref=mereorthodoxy.com). But the expansion toward Plato is a significant, as their position as entertainers within the polis does not remove them from responsibility. If anything, their broad appeal and ability to persuade entails a greater obligation, for they are truly (in Plato's world) members of the polis in a way that the philosopher cannot be.