Plato's Noble Lie
Platonic Idealism is the system of symbolic reality created by what Lukacs called 'reifications'
Relevant passages:
If I were a lawgiver, I would exercise a censorship over the poets, and I would punish them if they said that it is possible to do injustice and be happy, or that injustice is profitable.
[…]
But you cannot make men like what is not pleasant, and therefore you must make them believe that the just is pleasant.
The business of the legislator is to clear up this confusion. He will show that the just and the unjust are identical with the pleasurable and the painful, from the point of view of the just man, of the unjust the reverse. And which is the *truer* judgment? Surely that of the better soul.
For if something is not the truth, it must be the best and most moral of fictions; and the legislator who desires to propagate this useful lie, may be encouraged by remarking that mankind have believed the story of Cadmus and the dragon's teeth, and therefore he may be assured that he can make them believe anything, and need only consider what fiction will do the greatest good.
What is the greatest of all the holy lies? That the happiest is also the holiest, this shall be our strain, which shall be sung by all three choruses alike.
Do you not recall how children believe fantastical things as if real when one tells them stories when they sit in father's lap and inquire about the world? Use this childish gullibility to impart in them virtue, even if I had not demonstrated to you just now that a virtuous life is synonymous with a happy life - they must be made to believe that God has ordained that the greatest shall be the man who does justice.
- Plato “The Laws” Book II c 626
“How, then,” said I, “might we contrive one of those opportune falsehoods of which we were just now speaking, so as by one noble lie to persuade if possible the rulers themselves, but failing that the rest of the city?” “What kind of a fiction do you mean?” said he. “Nothing unprecedented,” said I, “but a sort of Phoenician tale, something that has happened ere now in many parts of the world, as the poets aver and have induced men to believe, but that has not happened and perhaps would not be likely to happen in our day and demanding no little persuasion to make it believable.”
[...]
Do you see any way of getting them to believe this tale?”
“No, not these themselves,” he said, “but I do, their sons and successors and the rest of mankind who come after.” “Well,” said I, “even that would have a good effect making them more inclined to care for the state and one another. For I think I apprehend your meaning. And this shall fall out as tradition guides.”
- Plato, The Republic, c 414