Graduate Course

Western Political Thought

Editor:

O.P. Gauba

SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

UNIVERSITY OF DELHI

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Session 2004-05 / 500 Copies

School of Open Learning

Published By : Executive Director, School of Open Learning, 5 Cavelry Lane, Delhi-110007 Printed by: Navprabhat Printing Press, 275, F.I.E., Patparganj, Delhi-110092

LATO ON HIS CONTEMPORARY GREEK SOCIETY

N. D. Arora

Among the early idealists, the name of Plato (born about the year 428 B. C. and died at the age of eighty one, about the year 347 B. C.) finds a prominent place. Plato's idealism is an easy conclusion by way of description. But it is rather difficult to stretch Plato's idealism too far and too long. In fact, it is difficult to conceal the practical bent of mind that Plato possessed. It is essay to describe Plato as an idealist, a Utopian who had attempted to build a republic of no living city and the one who saw the statesman more as a philosopher than only as a law-giver. But it would help much to see in Plato something more than merely a philosopher. In fact, he was, like his great teacher, Socrates, a prophet and a preacher. Plato, it should be remembered, was not merely satisfied with just gathering a circle around him or just sermonizing his views publicly in the Academy (established about the year 386 B. C). He wanted his ideas to be implemented in practice. Plato is believed to have visited Sicily twice for this purpose, although on both the occasions he failed in his mission. At the same time, it is hard to deny the fact that Plato kept on clinging to the practical utility of philosophy.Professor Dunning has rightly pointed out: “the philosophy of Plato involves an interpretation of Greek history and judgement upon existing institutions.”

Of all his writings, the Republic (written over a period of Plato's early life as a writer, though finished by the year he established his Academy in 386 B. C), the Politicus (written about the 360 B. C.) and the Laws (published after his death in 347 B.C.) may be said to have contained his whole political philosophy. And yet some of his other dialogues, minor than these and probably written before the Republic was finished, did contain political theory and matters relating to it. The Apology and the Crito, dealing primarily with the life and death of Socrates, raised significant questions of the relationship of the individual to the State. The Charmides and the Laches dealing mainly with virtue of self-control and of courage, pointed out the conception of the State as the promoter of every virtue, a theme that was also discussed in his Euthydemus. The Minos and the Protagoras, in discussing knowledge and instruction, also discussed political knowledge and the possibility of instruction in politics. In the Gorgias, Plato is concerned with the value of the study of rhetorics as a preparation for the life of politics.

‘It is easy’ Barker holds, “to interpret the Republic as a Utopia, a city in the clouds, a sunset fabric seen for an hour at evening and then fading into the night”;‘The Republic’, he concludes, “is not only a deduction from the first principles it is also an induction from the facts of Greek life”. Plato's Republic, according to Barker, is based on actual conditions. The eighth and nineth books of the Republic give not only the analysis of the actual state of Greece (for example, Sparta, a type both of timocracy and of oligarchy ; Athens, a type of democracy and Syracuse, a type of tyranny) but a serious attempt is also made by Plato to review them all. According to Plato, all these states are diseased states and in all of them knowledge is stunted and ignorance of the art of politics is rife. In all of them, elements other than reason-- i.e., spirit that promotes ambition, appetite that breeds greed and causes social conflicts - are prominent. Plato thus diagnoses the disease and prescribes the cure - the sovereignty of the elements of reason, reason reigning through training by ways of scientific and philosophical education and through a system-of communism. The cure, like disease, is also based on actual facts. The training suggested in the seventh book of the Republic for purposes of promoting the element of the reason was actually imparted in Plato's own Academy and the system of communism, helping to liberate reason from the clutches of appetite, was an extention of something already known to the Greeks of Plato's times.

The Republic of Plato is by all means, the greatest of all his works. It is not only a treatise on political science, but a treatise dealing with every aspect of human life. The Republic, in fact, deals with metaphysics (the Idea of the Good), moral philosophy (virtue of human soul), and education (the scientific training the rulers

ought to have) political science (the IdealState), the philosophy of history (the process of historical change from the IdealState to Tyranny), economy (communism of property and families) and all that combined in one. In other words, the Republic contains a complete philosophy of man not only in thought but of man in action as well. Plato started on a very simple premise and it was: what is a good man and how is a good man made? The premise, although was a question of moral philosophy, led Plato to analyse man in his peculiar Greek terms. For Plato, a true Greek as he was, man was good in so far as he was a member of the State and as such could be made good only through the membership of the State. This question of moral philosophy led Plato to enter into the domain of political philosophy when he rose to answer the question: what is good State and how is a good State made? The two questions joined in one made possible the existence of a third vital question for Plato and it was: If a man is good only in and through the State and if a good man, as a member of the State, is possessed with knowledge, what is the ultimate knowledge which a good man must possess in order to be good? It was here that Plato attempted to find answer in metaphysics. But other questions still remained to be answered. Plato further asked: By what methods will the good State lead its citizens towards the ultimate knowledge? The answer was provided through a theory of education and through the device of recontructing the social life by providing a new economics, i.e., communism of families and of property. This was, in short, the argument for which the Republic was written.

The argument was based on practical facts. The Republic written not merely by way of an analysis, but rather for warning and for advice. The Republic, it is true, was in many respects a polemic - a polemic directed against the practice of contemporary Greek politics. Plato did a lot against the Sophists. According to Plato, it was they and not his teacher, Socrates, who were the corruptors of the youth. The Sophists, Plato says in the Republic, attempted to introduce a new ethics, or 'justice' of self-satisfaction and a new politics\caring only the self-satisfaction of the rulers. In opposition to these tenets of the Sophists, Plato introduced a conception of Justice as a quality of soul through which men would set aside their irrational desires and could accommodate themselves to the fulfilment of a solitary function for the general benefit. He also introduced a new kind of politics in which a man was in a state as was a part in the body, a kind of system in which the whole state was like an organism where man had his definite and assigned role. Contrary to what the Sophists held about the relationship between the individual and the State, Plato restored the old harmony of the interests of the State and the individuals in his Republic, a characteristic feature of the pre-Sophist Greek life in which the individual and the State were so much one in their purpose that each exercised an influence over the other. Contrary, again, to what the Sophists held about the State as a creation of the individual. Plato conceived of the state as a communism of souls rationally and necessarily united for the pursuit of a moral end and guided only by those who knew men on the one hand and the purpose of the world on the other.

Plato's main grievance against the contemporary Greek States was precisely that all of them lacked the true character and true aim required for a true State. The States of the then Greece seemed to Plato to have lost their true character and to have forgotten their true aim. In opposition to their actual character and to the aims they actually pursued, Plato addressed his monumental Republic. The Republic in general, and its eights and ninth books, in particular, dealt with Plato's views and criticism of his contemporary Greek States.

The State of Sparta, to Plato, was both an example of timocracy and oligarchy. Timocracy, according to Plato, was the rule of the spirit and as such was opposed to the rule of the element of reason. The timocratic States merged out of division in the community, thus disturbing the classes required for an ideal State. The men of iron and brass took places meant for the men of gold, first mixing with them and later replacing them. The timocratic State, in fact, according to Plato, was not the complete replacement of the better ranks of the community by the lower ranks. It was a mixed State where the system of private property and the lust for economic acquisition raised their heads and yet in such a state, honour still prevailed. The State of Sparta in its early and glorious days was, Plato says, timocratic, retaining still some features of the ideal State: retaining the system of common meals and a system of common education; its rulers

refraining from occupations like agriculture, trade, etc. The timocratic State of early Sparta also, Plato feels, contained feature of common to oligarchy in so far as the system of education in Sparta over-emphasized the share of body over the soul and its citizens were allowed to have their private households and private property. The timocratic State, thus, stood in between the IdealState and the oligarchic State. It was based neither on complete reason nor on complete appetite; it rested essentially on spirit where the motive force was honour and honour alone and whose ways were the ways of ambition and of war. The timocratic State was, thus, a military State, a state where the soldier usurped the place of philosopher of the IdealState.

Sparta, in its earlier and glorious days, seemed to Plato a model of timocracy; the Sparta of his own days, an example of oligarchy. Timocracy, as a type of mixed constitution, according to Plato, had much in common with oligarchy but while the former, he asserted, was based on spirit, the latter was dominated by the elements of appetite; while the aim of the former was war and honour that of the latter was trade and wealth. The element of injustice prevailed in both. In the timocratic State, the rule of justice, Plato says, could be found in partial recognition in so far as the functions of the government were assigned to a capacity of some-sort, may be to military capacity. But in oligarchy, there was no justice because the functions of the government were assigned merely to those who had the property. And then, the oligarchic State, more than any timocratic State, according to Plato, was divided into two States in one -- a State of the rich and a State of the poor. There was always, he says, a danger to the oligarchic State from within, by the poor on the one hand and on the other by the fellow rich in the spirit of competition for the acquisition of wealth. The oligarchic State lacked both knowledge and justice. The gap between the rich and the poor and the struggle between the conflicting appetites among the rich themselves led to instability and ultimately to revolution. Plato suggested two methods to save oligarchy from its inevitable end : one was the restriction of the use of property as capital and of the lending of such capital on mortgage at heavy rates and another that the voluntary contracts between the lender and the borrower be enforced not by the State but at the lender's own risk.

It was when the poor had conquered their rich enemies that oligarchy changed into democracy and Athens of Plato's own days provided a model of democracy that he depicted in the Republic. The basis of democracy was appetite in all its forms with liberty for each and with absolute equality for all. Drill and discipline of the oligarchic State disappeared in democracy. The place of drill was taken over by the liberty for everyone to order his own life the way one liked and the place of discipline endangered’ because the social hierarchy was replaced by a universal equality. Democracy, according to Plato, was both anarchy and polyarchy: it was anarchy because there was no one element that dominated and it was polyarchy because there were so many elements that dominated together. In it, Plato says, there was no one constitution, but a bazaar of constitutions. As Barker says while expressing Plato's view of democracy; "If oligarchy means two States in one, democracy means as many States ; within the States as there are individuals ; for it means as many types of character, and as many corresponding polities or schemes of life....law is more honoured in the breach than the observance (in a democracy): social training is of no account: democracy never inquires if its statement are uneducated, and only asks whether they are friends of the people."

Democracy, before it had to change into tyranny, took the shape of extreme democracy, Plato tells us so. In the State of extreme democracy, all distinctions between rulers and the ruled were abolished ; subjects became like rulers and rulers like subjects. All distinctions in the family, in the school, and, Plato ironically adds, in the animals were abolished. “Above all”. Plato says, "and as the result of all, men cease to pay any heed to the laws, written or unwritten in order that they may have no master of any sort."

Plato's conception of democracy in the Republic is more of condemnation than of an appreciation. Democracy, Plato says in the words of Barker, "in its life is not lovely; and in its death, it prepares the way for tyranny." In discussing tyranny, Plato had in mind the history of Syracuse, the government of Dionysius I. The basis of tyranny, according to Plato, as with oligarchy and democracy, was the appetite-- the brutal and lawless appetite, i.e., the lust of the flesh and the pride of power, much that was common in the beasts, It was a type where justice had no place. Since justice meant for Plato the discharge of function in a common scheme and since tyranny possessed anything except the common scheme; justice and tyranny were, thus, opposed to each other.

Whether it was the earlier timocratic or the later oligarchic Sparta or the democratic Athens or the tyrannical Syracuse, Plato found in none of them the elements of a true or what he called the ideal State. All of them, according to Plato, were diseased states wanting one thing or the other. The element of reason was lacking in all of them. The ubiquity of ignorance masquerading in the guise of knowledge existed everywhere. Political selfishness prevailed in all these states. The Republic provided not only a commentary on the states, it also suggested a theory of justice leading to efficiency instead of amateur incompetence on the one hand and to harmony replacing selfishness and civil discord on the other. The Republic, in fact was addressed to achieve the solitary aim of justice leading to the attainment of specialization and to unification in the long run. If in this attempt, Plato advocated a community of wives, he was, to a great extent, justified although at the cost o being irrelevant.

The Politicus (or the Statesman) of Plato was written closer to the days of the Laws than those of the Republic, probably arouned the days of his association with DionysiousII (367-361 B. C.) of Syracuse. The Politicus, thus, was closer to what had existed in the Greek society of his days than the Republic which was condemned because of its idealistic tendencies. That was why Plato's attitude to democracy is less hostile in the Politicus. There was in it a new attitude towards the law. Although the belief in absolutism (of the Republic), exhibited in thephilosopher-king, was still a partof the Politicus, yet Plato admitted the need for and importance of mixed constitution.

Graduate Course

Graduate Course

Western Political Thought

Contents:

Editor:

LATO ON HIS CONTEMPORARY GREEK SOCIETY

N. D. Arora