LEO STRAUSS
THE CITY AND MAN
er
The University of Chicago Press Ciicago and London
Preface
This study is an enlarged version of the Page-Barbour Lectures which I delivered at the University of Virginia in the Spring of 1962. I am grateful to the Committee on the Page-Barbour Lectures at the University of Virginia for having given me the opportunity to develop my views on a rather neglected aspect of classical politi- cal thought more fully than I otherwise might have done.
An earlier and shorter version of the lecture on Plato’s Republic was published as a part of the chapter on Plato which I contributed to the History of Political Philosophy, edited by Joseph Cropsey and myseif (Rand McNally, 1963).
LS. July, 1963
III
Table of Contents
Preface
INTRODUCTION
ON ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS ON PLATO’S REPUBLIC
ON THUCYDIDES’ WAR OF THE PELOPONNESIANS AND THE ATHENIANS
Index
139
243
INTRODUCTION
It is not self-forgetting and pain-loving antiquarianism nor self- forgetting and intoxicating romanticism which induces us to turn with passionate interest, with unqualified willingness to learn, to- ward the political thought of classical antiquity. We are impelled to do so by the crisis of our time, the crisis of the West.
It is not sufficient for everyone to obey and to listen to the Divine message of the City of Righteousness, the Faithful City. In order to propagate that message among the heathen, nay, in order to understand it as clearly and as fully as is humanly possible, one must also consider to what extent man could discern the outlines of that City if left to himself, to the proper exercise of his own powers. But in our age it is much less urgent to show that political philoso- phy is the indispensable handmaid of theology than to show that political philosophy is the rightful queen of the social sciences, the sciences of man and of human affairs: even the highest lawcourt in the land is more likely to defer to the contentions of social science than to the Ten Commandments as the words of the living God.
The theme of political philosophy is the City and Man. The City and Man is explicitly the theme of classical political philosophy. Modern political philosophy, while building on classical political philosophy, transforms it and thus no longer deals with that theme in its original terms. But one cannot understand the transformation, however legitimate, if one has not understood the original form.
Modern political philosophy presupposes Nature as understood by modern natural science and History as understood by the mod- ern historical awareness. Eventually these presuppositions prove to be incompatible with modern political philosophy. Thus one seems to be confronted with the choice between abandoning political phi- ' losophy altogether and returning to classical political philosophy. Yet such a return seems to be impossible. For what has brought about the collapse of modern political philosophy seems to have buried classical political philosophy which did not even dream of
1
THE CITY AND MAN
the difficulties caused by what we believe to know of nature and history. Certain it is that a simple-continuation of the tradition of classical political philosophy—of a tradition which was hitherto never entirely interrupted—is no longer possible. As regards modern political philosophy, it has been replaced by ideology: what origi- nally was a political philosophy has turned into an ideology. This fact may be said to form the core of the contemporary crisis of the West.
That crisis was diagnosed at the time of World War I by Speng- ler as the going down (or decline) of the West. Spengler under- stood by the West one culture among a small number of high cultures. But the West was for him more than one high culture among a number of them. It was for him the comprehensive culture. It is the only culture which has conquered the earth. Above all, it is the only culture which is open to all cultures and which does not reject the other cultures as forms of barbarism or which tolerates them condescendingly as “underdeveloped”; it is the only culture which has acquired full consciousness of culture as such. Whereas “culture” originally and naively meant the culture of the mind, the. derivative and reflective notion of “culture” necessarily implies that there is a variety of equally high cultures. But precisely since the West is the culture in which culture reaches full self-consciousness, it is the final culture: the owl of Minerva begins its flight in the dusk; the decline of the West is identical with the exhaustion of the very possibility of high culture; the highest possibilities of man are exhausted. But man’s highest possibilities cannot be exhausted as long as there are still high human tasks—as long as the funda- mental riddles which confront man, have not been solved to the extent to which they can be solved. We may therefore say that Spengler’s analysis and prediction is wrong: our highest authority, natural science, considers itself susceptible of infinite progress, and this claim does not make sense, it seems, if the fundamental riddles are solved. If science is susceptible of infinite progress, there cannot be a meaningful end or completion of history; there can only be a brutal stopping of man’s onward march through natural forces act- ing .by themselves or directed by human brains and hands.
However this may be, in one sense Spengler has proved to be right; some decline of the West has taken place before our eyes. In 1913 the West—in fact this country together with Great Britain and Germany—could have laid down the law for the rest of the earth
2
INTRODUCTION
without firing a shot. Surely for at least a century the West con- trolled the whole globe with ease. Today, so far from ruling the globe, the West's very survival is endangered by the East as it has not been since its beginning. From the Communist Manifesto it would appear that the victory of Communism would be the com- plete victory of the West—of the synthesis, transcending the na- tional boundaries, of British industry, the French Revolution and German philosophy—over the East. We see that the victory of Com- munism would mean indeed the victory of originally Western natural science but surely at the same time the victory of the most extreme form of Eastern despotism.
However much the power of the West may have declined, how- ever great the dangers to the West may be, that decline, that danger, nay, the defeat, even the destruction of the West would not necessarily prove that the West is in a crisis: the West could go down in honor, certain of its purpose. The crisis of the West consists in the West's having become uncertain of its purpose. The West was once certain of its purpose—of a purpose in which all men could be united, and hence it had a clear vision of its future as the future of mankind. We do no longer have that certainty and that clarity. Some among us even despair of the future, and this despair explains many forms of contemporary Western degradation. The foregoing statements are not meant to imply that no society can be healthy unless it is dedicated to a universal purpose, to a purpose in which all men can be united: a society can be tribal and yet healthy. But a society which was accustomed to understand itself in terms of a universal purpose, cannot lose faith in that purpose without becom- ing completely bewildered. We find such a universal purpose ex- pressly stated in our immediate past, for instance in famous official declarations made during the two World Wars. These declarations merely restate the purpose stated originally by the most successful form of modern political philosophy—a kind of that political phi- losophy which aspired to build on the foundation laid by classical political philosophy but in opposition to the structure erected by classical political philosophy, a society superior in truth and justice to the society toward which the classics aspired. According to the modem project, philosophy or science was no longer to be under- stan as essentially contemplative and proud but as active and cbaritable; it was to be in the service of the relief of man’s estate; it was to be cultivated for the sake of human power; it was to
3
THE CITY AND MAN
enable man to become the master and owner of nature through the intellectual conquest of nature. Philosophy or science should make possible progress toward ever greater prosperity; it thus should enable everyone to share in all the advantages of society or life and therewith give full effect to everyone's natural right to comfortable self-preservation and all that that right entails or to everyone's nat- ural right to develop all his faculties fully in concert with everyone else’s doing the same. The progress toward ever greater prosperity would thus become, or render possible, the progress toward ever greater freedom and justice. This progress would necessarily be the progress toward a society embracing equally all human beings: a universal league of free and equal nations, each nation consisting of free and equal men and women. For it had come to be believed that the prosperous, free, and just society in a single country or in only a few countries is not possible in the long run: to make the world safe for the Western democracies, one must make the whole globe democratic, each country in itself as well as the society of nations. Good order in one country presupposes good order in all countries and among all countries. The movement toward the universal so- ciety or the universal state was thought to be guaranteed not only by the rationality, the universal validity, of the goal but also because the movement towards the goal seemed to be the movement of the large majority of men on behalf of the large majority of men: only small groups of men who, however, hold in thrall many millions of their fellow human beings and who defend theix own antiquated interests, resist that movement.
This view of the human situation in general and of the situation in our century in particular retained a certain plausibility, not in spite of Fascism but because of it, until Communism revealed itself even to the meanest capacities as Stalinism and post-Stalinism, for Trotskyism, being a flag without an army and even without a gen- eral, is condemned or refuted by its own principle. For some time it appeared to many teachable Westerners—to say nothing of the unteachable ones—that Communism was only a parallel movement to the Western movement—as it were its somewhat impatient, wild, wayward twin who was bound to become mature, patient, and gentle. But except when in mortal danger, Communism responded to the fraternal greetings only with contempt or at most with mani- festly dissembled signs of friendship; and when in mortal danger, it was as eager to receive Western help as it was determined to give
4
INTRODUCTION
not even sincere words of thanks in return. It was impossible for the Western movement to understand Communism as merely a new version of that eternal reactionism against which it had been fight- ing for centuries. It had to admit that the Western project which had provided in its way against all earlier forms of evil could not provide against the new form in speech or in deed. For some time it seemed sufficient to say that while the Western movement agrees with Communism regarding the goal—the universal prosperous society of free and equal men and women—it disagrees with it regarding the means: for Communism, the end, the common good of the whole human race, being the most sacred thing, justifies any means; whatever contributes to the achievement of the most sacred end partakes of its sacredness and is therefore itself sacred; what- ever hinders the achievement of that end is devilish. The murder of Lumumba was described by a Communist as a reprehensible murder by which he implied that there can be irreprehensible murders, like the murder of Nagy. It came to be seen then that there is not only a difference of degree but of kind between the Western movement and Communism, and this difference was seen to concern morality, the choice of means. In other words, it became clearer than it had been for some time that no bloody or unbloody change of society can eradicate the evil in man: as long as there will be men, there will be malice, envy and hatred, and hence there cannot be a society which does not have to employ coercive restraint. For the same reason it could no longer be denied that Communism will remain, as long as it lasts in fact and not merely in name, the iron rule of a tyrant which is mitigated or aggravated by his fear of palace revolutions. The only restraint in which the West can put some confidence is the tyrant’s fear of the West’s immense military power.
The experience of Communism has provided the Western move- ment with a twofold lesson: a political lesson, a lesson regard- ing what to expect and what to do in the foreseeable future, and a lesson regarding the principles of politics. For the foreseeable future there cannot be a universal state, unitary or federative. Apart from the fact that there does not exist now a universal federation of nations but only of those nations which are called peace-loving, the federation that exists masks the fundamental cleavage. If that fed- eration is taken too seriously, as a milestone on man’s onward march toward the perfect and hence universal society, one is bound
5
THE CITY AND MAN
to take great risks supported by nothing but an inherited and per- haps antiquated hope, and thus to endanger the very progress one endeavors to’bring about. It is imaginable that in the face of the danger of thermonuclear destruction, a federation, however incom- plete, of nations outlaws wars, i.e. wars of aggression; but this means that it acts on the assumption that all present boundaries are just, i.c. in accordance with the self-determination of nations; but this assumption is a pious fraud of which the fraudulence is more evident than the piety. In fact, the only changes of present boundaries for which there is any provision are those not disagree- able to the Communists. One must also not forget the glaring dis- proportion between the legal equality and the factual inequality of the confederates. The factual inequality is recognized in the expres- sion “underdeveloped nations.” The expression implies the resolve to develop them fully, i.e. to make them either Communist or West- ern, and this despite the fact that the West claims to stand for cultural pluralism. Even if one would still contend that the Western purpose is as universal as the Communist, one must rest satisfied for the foreseeable future with a practical particularism. The situa- tion resembles the one which existed during the centuries in which Christianity and Islam each raised its universal claim but had to be satisfied with uneasily coexisting with its antagonist. All this amounts to saying that for the foreseeable future, political society remains what it always has been: a partial or particular society whose most urgent and primary task is its self-preservation and whose highest task is its self-improvement. As for the meaning of self-improvement, we may observe that the same experience which has made the West doubtful of the viability of a world-society has made it doubtful of the belief that affluence is the sufficient and even necessary condition of happiness and justice: affluence does not cure the deepest evils.
The doubt of the modern project is more than merely a strong but vague feeling. It has acquired the status of scientific exactitude. One may wonder whether there is a single social scientist left who would assert that the universal and prosperous society constitutes the rational solution of the human problem. For present-day social science admits and even proclaims its inability to validate any value-judgments proper. The teaching originated by modern political philosophy in favor of the universal and prosperous society has admittedly become an ideology—a teaching not superior in truth
6
INTRODUCTION
and justice to any other among the innumerable ideologies. Social science which studies all ideologies is itself free from all ideological biases, Through this Olympian freedom it overcomes the crisis of our time. That crisis may destroy the conditions of social science: it cannot affect the validity of its findings.
Social science has not always been as skeptical or restrained as it has become during the last two generations. The change in the character of social science is not unconnected with the change in the status of the modern project. The modern project was originated as required by nature (natural right), i.e. it was originated by phi- losophers; the project was meant to satisfy in the most perfect manner the most powerful natural needs of men: nature was to be conquered for the sake of man who himself was supposed to possess a nature, an unchangeable nature; the originators of the project took it for granted that philosophy and science are identical. After some time it appeared that the conquest of nature requires the conquest of human nature and hence in the first place the question- ing of the unchangeability of human nature: an unchangeable human nature might set absolute limits to progress. Accordingly, the natural needs of men could no longer direct the conquest of nature; the direction had to come from reason as distinguished from nature, from the rational Ought as distinguished from the neutral Is. Thus philosophy (logic, ethics, esthetics) as the study of the Ought or the norms became separated from science as the study of the Is. The ensuing depreciation of reason brought it about that while the study of the Is or science succeeded ever more in increas- ing men’s power, one could no longer distinguish between the wise or right and the foolish or wrong use of power. Science cannot teach wisdom. There are still some people who believe that this predicament will disappear when social science and psychology catch up with physics and chemistry. This belief is wholly unreason- able, for social science and psychology, however perfected, being sciences, can only bring about a still further increase of man’s power; they will enable men to manipulate man still better than ever before; they will as little teach man how to use his power over man or non-man as physics and chemistry do. The people who in- dulge this hope have not grasped the bearing of the distinction between facts and values.
The decay of political philosophy into ideology reveals itself most obviously in the fact that in both research and teaching, politi-
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THE. CITY AND MAN
cal philosophy has been replaced by the history of political philoso- phy. This substitution can be excused as a well-meaning attempt to prevent, or at least to delay, the burial of a great tradition. In fact it is not merely a half measure but an absurdity: to replace political philosophy by the history of political philosophy means to replace a doctrine which claims to be true by a survey of more or less brilliant errors. The discipline which takes the place of political philosophy is the one which shows the impossibility of political philosophy. That discipline is logic. What for the time being is still tolerated under the name of history of political philosophy will find its place within a rational scheme of research and teaching in footnotes to ' the chapters in logic textbooks which deal with the distinction between factual judgments and value-judgments; those footnotes will supply slow learners with examples of the faulty transition, by which political philosophy stands or falls, from factual judgments to value-judgments.
It would be wrong to believe that in the new dispensation the place once occupied by political philosophy is filled entirely by logic however enlarged. A considerable part of the matter formerly treated by political philosophy is now treated by a non-philosophic political science which forms part of social science. This new politi- cal science is concerned with discovering laws of political behavior and ultimately universal laws of political behavior. Lest it mistake the peculiarities of the politics of the time and the places in which social science is at home for the character of all politics, it must study also the politics of other climes and other ages. The new political science thus becomes dependent on a kind of study which belongs to the comprehensive enterprise called universal history. It is controversial whether history can be modelled on the natural science on which the new political science aspires to be modelled. At any rate, the historical studies in which the new political science must engage must become concerned not only with the working of institutions but with the ideologies informing those institutions as well. Within the context of these studies, the meaning of an ideol- ogy is primarily the meaning in which its adherents understand it. In some cases the ideologies are known to have been originated by outstanding men. In such cases it becomes necessary to consider whether and how the ideology as conceived by the originator was modified by the adherents. For precisely if only the crude under- standing of ideologies can be politically effective, it is necessary to
8
INTEODUCPION
grasp the characteristics of crudity: if the routinization of charisma is a permitted theme, the vulgarization of thought ought to be a permitted theme. One kind of ideology consists of the teachings of the political philosophers. These teachings may have played only a minor political role, but one cannot know this before one knows them solidly. This solid. knowledge consists primarily in understand- ing the teachings of the political philosophers as they themselves meant them. Each of them was undoubtedly mistaken in believing that his teaching is the true and final teaching regarding political things: we know through a reliable tradition that this belief forms part of a rationalization; but the process of rationalization is not so thoroughly understood that it would not be worthwhile to study it in the case of the greatest minds; for all we know there may be various kinds of rationalization. It is then necessary to study the political philosophies as they were understood by their originators in contradistinction to the way in which they were understood by their adherents, and various kinds of their adherents, but also by their adversaries and even by detached or indifferent bystanders or historians. For indifference does not offer a sufficient protection against the danger that one identifies the view of the originator with a compromise between the views of his adherents and those of his adversaries. The genuine understanding of the political philosophies which is then necessary may be said to have been rendered possible by the shaking of all traditions; the crisis of our time may have the accidental advantage of enabling us to understand in an untradi- tional or fresh manner what was hitherto understood only in a tra- ditional or derivative manner. This may apply especially to classical political philosophy which has been seen for a considerable time only through the lenses of modern political philosophy and its various successors,
Social science will then not live up to its claim if it does not concern itself with a genuine understanding of the political philoso- phies proper and therewith primarily of classical political philos- ophy. As has been indicated, such an understanding cannot be presumed to be available. It is frequently asserted today that such an understanding is not possible: aJl historical understanding is relative to the point of view of the historian, in particular to his country and his time; the historian cannot understand a teaching as it was meant by its originator but he necessarily understands it differently than its originator understood it; ordinarily the historian’s
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THE CITY AND MAN understanding is inferior to the originator’s understanding; in the
best case the understanding will be a creative transformation of |
the original understanding. Yet it is hard to see how one can speak of a creative transformation of the original teaching if it is not possible to grasp the original teaching as such. Besides, one may grant that the initial point of view of the historian who studies a
teaching expounded in the past necessarily differs from that of the ,
originator of the teaching or, in other words, that the question which the historian addresses to his author necessarily differs from the question which his author attempted to answer; yet surely the primary duty of the historian consists in suspending his initial ques- tion in favor of the question with which his author is concerned or in learning to look at the subject matter in question from his author's point of view. To the extent to which the social scientist succeeds in this kind of study which is imposed on him by the requirements of social science, he not only enlarges the horizon of present-day social science, he even transcends the limitations of social science, for he learns to look at things in a manner which is as it were forbidden to the social scientist. He will have learned from his logic that his science rests on certain hypotheses, certain- ties or assumptions. He learns now to suspend these assumptions. He is thus compelled to make these assumptions his theme. Far from being merely one of the innumerable themes of social science, history of political philosophy, and not logic, proves to be the pursuit concerned with the presuppositions of social science. Those presuppositions prove to be modifications of the principles of modern political philosophy, and these principles in turn prove to be modifications of the principles of classical political philosophy. One cannot understand the presuppositions of present-day social science without a return to classical political philosophy. Social science claims to be decisively superior to classical political phi- losophy which surely lacked the alleged insight into the radical difference between facts and values. When attempting to under- stand classical political philosophy on its own terms, the social scientist is compelled to wonder whether the distinction is as necessary or as evident as it seems today. He is compelled to wonder whether not present-day social science but classical political phi- losophy is the true science of political things. This suggestion is dismissed out of hand because a return to an earlier position is believed to be impossible. But one must realize that this belief is
10
INTEBEODUCTION
a dogmatic assumption whose hidden basis is the belief in progress or in the rationality of the historical process.
The return to classical political philosophy is both necessary and tentative or experimental. Not in spite but because of its tentative character, it must be carried out seriously, i.e. without squinting at our present predicament. There is no danger that we can ever be- come oblivious of this predicament since it is the incentive to our whole concern with the classics. We cannot reasonably expect that a fresh understanding of classical political philosophy will supply us with recipes for today’s use. For the relative success of modern political philosophy has brought into being a kind of society wholly unknown to the classics, a kind of society to which the classical principles as stated and elaborated by the classics are not imme- diately applicable. Only we living today can possibly find a solution to the problems of today. But an adequate understanding of the principles as elaborated by the classics may be the indispensable starting point for an adequate analysis, to be achieved by us, of present-day society in its peculiar character, and for the wise application, to be achieved by us, of these principles to our tasks.
One can come to doubt the fundamental premise of present-day social science—the distinction between values and facts—by merely considering the reasons advanced in its support as well as the con- sequences following from it. These considerations lead one to see that the issue concerning that distinction is part of a larger issue. The distinction is alien to that understanding of political things which belongs to political life but it becomes necessary, it seems, when the citizens’ understanding of political things is replaced by the scientific understanding. The scientific understanding implies then a break with the pre-scientific understanding, yet at the same time it remains dependent on the pre-scientific understanding. Re- gardless of whether the superiority of the scientific understanding to the pre-scientific understanding can be demonstrated or not, the scientific understanding is secondary or derivative. Hence, social science cannot reach clarity about its doings if it does not possess a coherent and comprehensive understanding of what is frequently called the common sense view of political things, i.e. if it does not primarily understand the political things as they are experienced by the citizen or statesman; only if it possesses such a coherent and comprehensive understanding of its basis or matrix can it possibly show the legitimacy, and make intelligible the character, of that
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THE CITY AND MAN
peculiar modification of the primary understanding of | political things which is their scientific understanding. We contend that that coherent and comprehensive understanding of political things is available to us in Aristotle's Politics precisely because the Politics contains the original form of political science: that form in which political science is nothing other than the fully conscious form of the common sense understanding of political things. Classical politi- cal philosophy is the primary form of political science because the common sense understanding of political things is primary.
Our description of ‘the character of the Politics is manifestly provisional. “Common sense” as used in this description is under- stood in contradistinction to “science,” i.e. primarily modern natural science, and therewith presupposes “science” whereas the Politics itself does not presuppose “science.” We shall first attempt to reach a more adequate understanding of the Politics by considering the objections to which our contention is exposed.
12
ee.
Chapter I
ON ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS
According to the traditional view, it was not Aristotle but Socrates who originated political philosophy or political science. More pre- cisely, according to Cicero, Socrates was the first to cal] philosophy down from heaven, to establish it in the cities, to introduce it also into the households, and to compel it to inquire about men’s life and manners as well as about the good and bad things. In other words, Socrates was the first philosopher who concerned himself chiefly or exclusively, not with the heavenly or divine things, but with the human things. The heavenly or divine things are the things to which man looks up or which are higher than the human things; they are super-human. The human things are the things good or bad for man as good or bad for man and particularly the just and noble things and their opposites. Cicero does not say that Socrates called philosophy down from heaven to earth, for the earth, the mother surely of all earthly things and perhaps the oldest and therefore the highest goddess, is itself super-human. The divine things are higher in rank than the human things. Man manifestly needs the divine things but the divine things do not manifestly need man. In a parallel passage Cicero speaks not of “heaven” but of “nature”: the higher than human things from whose study Socrates turned to the study of the human things, is “the whole nature,” “the Kosmos,” “the nature of all things.” This implies that “the human things” are not “the nature of man”; the study of the nature of man is part of the study of nature.* Cicero draws our attention to the special effort which was required to turn philosophy toward the
*Cicero, Tusc. disput. V 10, and Brutus 31. Cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia I 1.41-12 and 1.15-16, Hiero 7.9, Oeconomicus 7.16 and 7.29-30, as well as Aristotle, Metaphysics 987b]1-2 and Eth. Nic. 1094b7, 14-17; 114]a20-22, b7-8; 1143b21-28; 1177b31-83.
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THE CITY AND MAN
human things: philosophy turns primarily away from the human things toward the divine or natural things; no compulsion is needed or possible to establish philosophy in the cities or to introduce it into the households; but philosophy must be compelled to turn back toward the human things from which it originally departed.
The traditional view regarding the beginnings of political phi- losophy or political science is no longer accepted. Prior to Socrates, we are told, the Greek sophists turned to thé study of the human things. As far as we know, Socrates himself did not speak about his predecessors as such. Let us then see what the man who takes Socrates’ place in Plato’s Laws, the Athenian stranger, says about his predecessors, about all or almost all men who prior to him con- cerned themselves with inquiries about nature. According to him, these men assert that all things which are have come into being ultimately out of and through certain “first things” which are not strictly speaking “things” but which are responsible for the coming into being and perishing of everything that comes into being and perishes; it is the first things and the coming into being attending on the first things which these men mean by “nature”; both the first things and whatever arises through them, as distinguished from human action, are “by nature.” The things which are by nature stand at the opposite pole from the things which are by nomos (ordinarily rendered as “law” or “convention”), i.e. things which are not only not by themselves, nor by human making proper, but only by men holding them to be or positing that they are or agree- ing as to their being. The men whom the Athenian stranger opposes assert above all that the gods are only by law or convention. For our present purpose it is more immediately important to note that according to these men the political art or science has little to do with nature and is therefore not something serious. The reason which they advance is that the just things are radically conventional and the things which are by nature noble differ profoundly from the things which are noble by convention: the way of life which is straight or correct according to nature consists in being superior to others or in lording it over the others whereas the way of life which is straight or correct according to convention consists in serving others. The Athenian stranger disagrees entirely with his prede- cessors. We asserts that there are things which are just by nature. He can also be said to show by deed—by the fact that he teaches
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ON ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS
legislators—that he regards the political art or science as a most serious pursuit.”
In order to be able to act and to speak as he does, the Athenian stranger need not abandon the fundamental distinction from which the men whom he opposes start. Despite the most important differ- ence between him and them, the distinction between nature and convention, between the natural and the positive, remains as funda- mental for him, and for classical political philosophy in genera), as it was for his predecessors.’ Our failure to recognize this is partly due to modern philosophy. We cannot do more than to remind readers of the most obvious points. The distinction mentioned be- came questionable primarily through the reasoning which was meant also to dispose of chance. The “explanation” of a chance event is the realization that it is a chance event: the fortuitous meet- ing of two men does not cease to be fortuitous when we know the whole prehistory of the two men prior to their meeting. There are then events which cannot meaningfully be traced to preceding events. The tracing of something to convention is‘analogous to the tracing of something to chance. However plausible a convention may appear in the light of the conditions in which it arose, it never- theless owes its being, its “validity,” to the fact that it became “held” or “accepted.” Against this view the following reasoning was ad- vanced: the conventions originate in human acts, and these acts are as necessary, as fully determined by preceding causes, as natural as any natural event in the narrow sense of the term; hence the dis- tinction between nature and convention can only be provisional or superficial.* Yet this “universal consideration regarding the concate- nation of the causes” is not helpful as long as one does not show the kind of preceding causes which are relevant for the explanation of conventions, Natural conditions like climate, character of a territory, race, fauna, flora appear to be especially relevant. This means, how- ever, that in each case the “legislator” has prescribed what was best for his people or that all customs are sensible or that all legislators
* Laws 631d1-2; 690b7~c3; 870e1-2; 888e4-6; 889b1-2, 4, c4, d-890a; 891c2-3, 7-9, e5-6; 892a2-8, c2-3; 967a7-d2.
* Consider especially Laws 757c—e.
“Eth, Nic. 1134b19-21,
* Spinoza, Tr. theol.-pol. IV (sect. 1-4 Bruder).
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THE CITY AND MAN
are wise. Since this sanguine assumption cannot be maintained, one is compelled to have recourse aiso to the errors, superstitions, or follies of the legislators. But one can do this only as long as one possesses a natural theology of one kind or another as well as knowl- edge of what constitutes the well-being, the common good, of any people. The difficulties which were encountered along this way of explaining conventions led people to question the very notion of convention as some sort of making; customs and languages, it was asserted, cannot be traced to any positing or other conscious acts but only to growth, to a kind of growth essentially different from the growth of plants and animals but analogous to it; that growth is more important and of higher rank than any making, even the rational making according to nature. We shall not insist on the kin- ship between the classical notion of “nature” and this modern no- tion of “growth.” It is more urgent to point out that partly as a con- sequence of the modern notion of “growth,” the classical distinction between nature and convention, according to which nature is of higher dignity than convention, has been overlaid by the modern distinction between nature and history according to which history (the realm of freedom and of values) is of higher dignity than nature (which lacks purposes or values), not to say, as has been said, that history comprehends nature which is essentially relative to the essentially historical mind.
The Athenian stranger, to return, unlike his predecessors, takes the political art or science seriously because he acknowledges that there are things which are by nature just. He traces his divergence from his predecessors to the fact that the latter admitted as first things only bodies whereas, according to him, the soul is not deriva- tive from the body or inferior in rank to it but by nature the ruler over the body. In other words, his predecessors did not recognize sufficiently the fundamental difference between body and soul.* The status of the just things depends on the status of the soul. Justice is the common good par excellence; if there are to be things which are by nature just there must be things which are by nature com- mon; but the body appears to be by nature each one’s own or private.’ Aristotle goes to the end of this road by asserting that the political association is by nature and that man is by nature political
* Laws 891cl—4, e5-892b1; 896b10-c3. "Laws 739c6-d1 (cf. Republic 464d8-9 and 416d5-6).
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ON ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS
because he is the being characterized by speech or reason and thus capable of the most perfect, the most inti:nate union with his fellows which is possible: the union in pure thoupist.®
The assertion of the Athenian strange: is coufirsed by wow Aristotle says about the sophists’ manner of dealing with the y olitivsi things. He says that the sophists either identify political science with rhetoric or subordinate it to rhetoric. If there are uo things which are by nature just or if there is not by nature a common good, if therefore the only natural good is each man’s own good, it follows that the wise man will not dedicate himself to the community but only use it for his own ends or prevent his being used by the com- munity for its end; but the most important instrument for this pur- pose is the art of persuasion and in the first place forensic rhetoric. Someone might say that the most complete form in which one could use or exploit the political community would be the exercise of po- litical power and especially of tyrannical power and that such exer- cise requires, as Machiavelli showed later on, deep knowledge of political things. According to Aristotle, the sophists denied this conclusion; they believed that it is “easy” to discharge well the non- rhetorical functions of govemment and to acquire the knowledge needed for this purpose: the only political art to be taken seriously is rhetoric.®
Aristotle does not deny however that there was a kind of political philosophy prior to Socrates. For Aristotle, political philosophy is primarily and ultimately the quest for that political order which is best according to nature everywhere and, we may add, always.’ This quest will not come into its own as long as men are entirely immersed in political life, be it even in the founding of a political community, for even the founder is necessarily limited in his vision by what can or must be done “here and now.” The first political philosopher will then be the first man not engaged in political life who attempted to speak about the best political order. That man, Aristotle tells us, was a certain Hippodamus. Before presenting the political order proposed by Hippodamus, Aristotle speaks at some length of Hippodamus’ way of life. Apart from being the first polit-
* Politics 1253a1-18, 1281a2-4.
"Eth, Nic. 1181a12-17. Cf. Isocrates, Antidosis 80-83; Plato, Gorgias 460a3-4 (and context), Protagoras 318e6-319a2 and Theaetetus 167c2-7.
“Cf. Eth. Nic. 1185a4-5.
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ical philosopher, Hippodamus was also a famous town planner, he lived, from ambition, in a somewhat overdone manner in other re- spects also (for instance he paid too much attention to his cloth- ing), and he wished to be leamed also regarding the whole nature. It is not Aristotle’s habit to engage in what could even appear to be slightly malicious gossip. The summarized remark is the only one of its kind in his entire work. Shortly before speaking of Hippo- damus, when discussing Plato's political writings, Aristotle describes “Socrates’ speeches” (i.e. particularly the speeches occurring in the Republic and the Laws) by setting forth their high qualities; but he does this in order to legitimate his disagreement with those speeches: since the Socratic speeches, especially those about the simply best political order, exert an unrivaled charm, one must face that charm as such. When speaking of Eudoxus’ hedonistic teach- ing, Aristotle remarks that Eudoxus was reputed to be unusually temperate; he makes this remark in order to explain why Eudoxus’ speeches were regarded as more trustworthy than those of other hedonists.1* We may therefore assume that Aristotle did not make his remark about Hippodamus’ way of life without a good reason. Whereas the first philosopher became ridiculous on a certain occa- sion in the eyes of a barbarian slave woman,’ the first political philosopher was rather ridiculous altogether in the eyes of sensible freemen. This fact indicates that political philosophy is more ques- tionable than philosophy as such. Aristotle thus expresses in a manner somewhat mortifying to political scientists the same thought which Cicero expresses by saying that philosophy had to be com- pelled to become concerned with political things. Aristotle’s sugges- tion was taken up in modern times by Pascal who said that Plato and Aristotle, being not pedants but gentlemen, wrote their political works playfully: “this was the least philosophic and the least serious part of their life . . . they wrote of politics as if they had to bring order into a madhouse.” Pascal goes much beyond Aristotle, for, while admitting that there are things which are by nature just, he denies that they can be known to unassisted man owing to original sin.*s
” Politics 1267b22-30; cf.1265al0-13 and 1263b15-22 as well as Eth. Nic. 1172b15-18.
* Plato, Theaetetus 173e1-174b7; Aristotle, Politics 1259a6-18.
* Pensées (ed. Brunschvicg) frs. 331 and 294. Cf. Plato, Laws 804b3-cl.
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ON ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS
The best political order proposed by Hippodamus is distin- guished by unusual simplicity: the citizen body is to consist of 10,000 men and of 3 parts; the land is to be divided into 3 parts; there are only 3 kinds of laws, for there are only 3 things about which lawsuits take place; regarding verdicts in lawcourts provision must be made for the 3 alternatives. After having considered this scheme which seems to be so clear, Aristotle is forced to note that it involves great confusion: the confusion is caused by the desire for a kind of clarity and simplicity which is alien to the subject matter.’* It looks as if some account of “the whole nature’—an account which used the number 3 as the key to all things—enabled or compelled Hippodamus to go on toward his plan of the best political order as that political order which is entirely according to nature. But he merely arrived at great confusion because he did not pay attention to the peculiar character of political things: he did not see that the political things are in a class by themselves. In spite or because of his ambition, Hippodamus did not succeed in founding political philosophy or political science because he did not begin by raising the question “what is political?” or rather “what is the polis?” This question, and all questions of this kind, were raised by Socrates who for this reason became the founder of political philosophy.
The “what is” questions point to “essences,” to “essential” differ- ences—to the fact that the whole consists of parts which are hetero- geneous, not merely sensibly (like fire, air, water, and earth) but noetically: to understand the whole means to understand the “What” of each of these parts, of these classes of beings, and how they are linked with one another. Such understanding cannot be the reduc- tion of one heterogeneous class to others or to any cause or causes other than the class itself; the class, or the class character, is the cause par excellence. Socrates conceived of his turn to the “what is” questions as a turn, or a return, to sanity, to “common sense”: while the roots of the whole are hidden, the whole manifestly consists of heterogeneous parts. One may say that according to Socrates the things which are “first in themselves” are somehow “first for us”; the things which are “first in themselves” are in a manner, but nec- essarily, revealed in men’s opinions. Those opinions have as opinions a certain order. The highest opinions, the authoritative opinions, are
* Politics 1267b30-1268a6; 1268b8-4, 11; Eth. Nic. 1094b11-27.
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THE CITY AND MAN
the pronouncements of the law. The law makes manifest the just and noble things and it speaks authoritatively about the highest beings, the gods who dwell in heaven. The law is the law of the city; the city looks up to, holds in reverence, “holds” the gods of the city. The gods do not approve of man’s trying to seek out what they did not wish to reveal, the things in heaven and beneath the earth. A pious man will therefore not investigate the divine things but only the human things, the things left to man’s investigation. It is the greatest proof of Socrates’ piety that he limited himself to the study of the human things. His wisdom is knowledge of ignorance be- cause it is pious and it is pious because it is knowledge of ignor- ance.* Yet the opinions however authoritative contradict one an- other. Even if it should happen that a given city orders a matter of importance without contradicting itself, one can be certain that the verdict of that city will be contradicted by the verdicts of other cities.** It becomes then necessary to transcend the authoritative opinions as such in the direction of what is no longer opinion but knowledge. Even Socrates is compelled to go the way from law to nature, to ascend from law to nature. But he must go that way with a new awakeness, caution, and emphasis. He must show the neces- sity of the ascent by a lucid, comprehensive, and sound argument which starts from the “common sense” embodied in the accepted opinions and transcends them; his “method” is “dialectics.” This obviously implies that, however much the considerations referred to may have modified Socrates’ position, he still remains chiefly, if not exclusively, concerned with the human things: with what is by nature right and noble or with the nature of justice and nobility.” In its original form political philosophy broadly understood is the core of philosophy or rather “the first philosophy.” It also remains true that human wisdom is knowledge of ignorance: there is no knowledge of the whole but only knowledge of parts, hence only partial knowledge of parts, hence no unqualified transcending, even by the wisest man as such, of the sphere of opinion. This Socratic or Platonic conclusion differs radically from a typically modern con- clusion according to which the unavailability of knowledge of the
“Xenophon, Mem, I 1.11-16; IV 3.16, 6.1-4 and 7.6. Plato, Apol. Soc. 19b4-c8, 20d7~e8, 23a5-b4; Phaedo 99d4f.; Phaedrus 249e4—5.
* Consider Plato, Laches 190e4-191c6.
* Republic 501b2; cf. ibid. 597b-e and Phaedrus 254b5-6.
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ON ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS
whole demands that the question regarding the whole be abandoned and replaced by questions of another kind, for instance by the questions characteristic cf modern natural and social science. The elusiveness of the whole necessarily affects the knowledge of every part. Because of the elusiveness of the whole, the beginning or the questions retain a greater evidence than the end or the answers; return to the beginning remains a constant necessity. The fact that each part of the whole, ard hence in particular the political sphere, is in a sense open to the whole, obstructs the establishment of polit- ical philosophy or political science as an independent discipline. Not Socrates or Plato but Aristotle is truly the founder of political science: as one discipline, and by no means the most fundamental or the highest discipline, among a number of disciplines. This dif- ference between Plato and Aristotle can be illustrated by the con- trast between the relation of the Republic to the Timaeus on the one hand, and of the Politics to the Physics or On the Heaven on the other. Aristotle's cosmology, as distinguished from Plato's, is un- qualifiedly separable from the quest for the best political order. Aristotelian philosophizing has no longer to the same degree and in the same way as Socratic philosophizing the character of ascent. Whereas the Platonic teaching presents itself necessarily in dia- logues, the Aristotelian teaching presents itself necessarily in treat- ises. As regards the political things, Aristotle acts directly as the teacher of indefinitely many legislators or statesmen whom he addresses collectively and simultaneously, whereas Plato presents his political philosopher as guiding, in a conversation, one or two men who seek the best political order or are about to legislate for a definite community. Nevertheless it is no accident that the most fundamental discussion of the Politics includes what is almost a dialogue between the oligarch and the democrat.* It is equally characteristic however that that dialogue does not occur at the be- ginning of the Politics.
Aristotle is especially concerned with the proposal of Hippo- damus that those who invent something useful to the city should receive honors; his examination of this proposal takes up about a half of his examination of Hippodamus’ whole scheme. He is much less sure than Hippodamus of the virtues of innovation. It seems that Hippodamus had not given thought to the difference between
* See especially 1281a16 and b18.
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THE CITY AND MAN
innovation in the arts and innovation in law, or to the possible ‘tension between the need for political stability and what one might call technological change. On the basis of some observations made _ nearer home, one might suspect a connection between Hippodamus’ unbridled concern with clarity and simplicity and his unbridled concern with technological progress. His scheme as a whole seems _ to lead, not only to confusion, but to permanent confusion or revo- ' Jution. At any rate Aristotle cannot elucidate innovation without bringing out a most important difference between the arts and law. The arts are susceptible of infinite refinement and hence progress and they do not as such in any way suffer from progress. The case of law is different, for law owes its strength, i.e. its power of being obeyed, as Aristotle says here, entirely to custom and custom comes into being only through a long time. Law, in contradistinction to the arts, does not owe its efficacy to reason at all or only to a small degree.’® However evidently reasonable a law may be, its reason- ableness becomes obscured through the passions which it restrains. Those passions support maxims or opinions incompatible with the law. Those passion-bred opinions in their turn must be counteracted by passion-bred and passion-breeding opposite opinions which are not necessarily identical with the reasons of the law. The law, the most important instrument for the moral education of “the many,” must then be supported by ancestral opinions, by myths—for in- stance, by myths which speak of the gods as if they were human beings—or by a “civil theology.” The gods as meant in these myths have no being in and by themselves but only “by law.” Yet given the necessity of law one may say that the principle of the whole both wishes and does not wish to be called Zeus.?° Because the city as a whole is characterized by a specific recalcitrance to reason, it requires for its well-being a rhetoric different from forensic and deliberative rhetoric as a servant to the political art.
“The very nature of public affairs often defeats reason.” One illustration taken from Aristotle’s Politics must suffice. In the first book, Aristotle sets forth the dictate of reason regarding slavery: it is just to enslave men who are by nature slaves; men who are slaves
* Politics 1268b22-1269a24, 1257b25-27. Cf. Isocrates, Antidosis 62 and Thomas Aquinas, S. th. 1 2 q. 97. a. 2. ad 1.
‘** Aristotle, Metaphysics 1074b1-14 (cf. Thomas Aquinas ad loc.). Cf. Heraclitus (Diels, Vorsokratiker, 7th ed.) fr. 32.
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ON ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS
not by nature but only by law and compulsion are unjustly en- slaved; a man is a slave by nature if he is too stupid to guide him- self or can do only a kind of work little superior to the work done by beasts of burden; such a man is better off as a slave than free. But when discussing the best polity, Aristotle takes it for granted that the slave population of that polity consists of men each of whom can safely be rewarded with freedom for his service, i.e. is not a natural slave. After all, a man may have by nature a slavish character, a lack of pride or manliness which disposes him to obey a stronger man, while being intelligent and thus much more useful to his master than a fellow who is as strong and as stupid as an ox.”* Plato who also allows, to Aristotle’s displeasure, that the defenders of the city be savage toward strangers, expresses the same thought ‘more directly by admitting, with Pindar, that superiority in strength is a natural title to rule. From this we understand why the nature of political things defeats to some extent not only reason but per- suasion in any form and one grasps another reason why the sophistic reduction of the political art to rhetoric is absurd. Xenophon’s com- panion Proxenus had been a pupil of Gorgias, the famous rhetori- cian. Thanks to Gorgias’ instruction he was capable of ruling gentle- men by means of praise or abstention from praise. Yet "he was utterly incapable of instilling his soldiers with respect and fear of himself: he was unable to discipline them. Xenophon on the other hand, the pupil of Socrates, possessed the full political art. The very same thought—the insufficiency of persuasion for the guidance of “the many” and the necessity of laws with teeth in them—consti- tutes the transition from Aristotle’s Ethics to his Politics. It is within this context that he denounces the sophists’ reduction of politics to thetoric.?? So far from being “Machiavellians,” the sophists—believ- ing in the omnipotence of speech—were blind to the sternness of politics.
Hitherto we have spoken of the apparent superiority of the arts to laws. But precisely Aristotle’s critique of Hippodamus implies that the arts must be regulated by law and hence are subordinate to law. Law owes this dignity to the facts that it is meant to be a
* Aristotle, Politics 1254b22-1255a3, 1255b4-15, 1285a19-22, 1327b27-29, 1830a25-33. Cicero, Republic 1 57
* Eth. Nic. 1179b4#.; Plato, — 690b; Xenophon, Anabasis H 16-20; Cicero, Republic 1 2-3.
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THE CITY AND MAN
dictate of reason and that the reason effective in the arts is lower than the reason effective in law as law should be.?* Laws are the work of the legislative art, but the legislative art is the highest form of practical wisdom or prudence, the prudence concemed with the common good of a political society, as distinguished from prudence in the primary sense which is concerned with a man’s own good. The difference between arts and law is then founded on the differ- ence between arts and prudence. Prudence is of higher dignity than the arts because every art is concerned with a partial good whereas prudence is concerned with the whole human good, the good life. Prudence alone enables one to distinguish between genuine arts (like medicine) and sham arts (like cosmetics) and to decide which use of an art (for instance, of strategy) is good. The arts point to Right or Law which makes them arts by being their limit and norm.”* The artisan as artisan is concerned with producing the work peculiar to his art (the cobbler with making shoes, the physician with restoring health) but not with his own good; he is concerned with his own good in so far as he is concerned with receiving pay for his work or with practicing the art which accompanies al] arts, the art of money-making; thus the art of money-making could ap- pear to be the universal art, the art of arts; the art of money-making knows no limits: it enables a man to make greater and ever greater gains; yet the view that money-making is an art presupposes that unlimited acquisitiveness is good for a man and this presupppsition can well be questioned; it appears that acquisition is for the sake of use, of the good use of wealth, i.e. of an activity regulated by. prudence.”® The distinction between prudence and the arts implies that there is no art that tells me which partial good supplied by an art I ought to choose here and now in preference to other goods. There is no expert who can decide the prudent man’s vital ques- tions for him as well as he can. To be prudent means to lead a good life, and to lead a good life means that one deserves to be one’s own master or that one makes one’s own decisions well. Prudence is that kind of knowledge which is inseparable from “moral virtue,” i.e. goodness of character or of the habit of choosing, just as moral virtue is inseparable from prudence. The arts as arts do not have this close
* Eth, Nic. 1094a27-b6, 1180a18-22; cf. 1184a34 with Politics 1287a28-30: “Eth. Nic. 1094b7-10, 1140a26-30, 1141b23-29, 1181a23; cf. Sophocles,
Antigone 332-372. * Politics 1257b4ff.; Plato, Republic 341c4-7 and 346.
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ON ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS
connection with moral virtue. Aristotle goes so far as to suggest that the virtue required of artisans as artisans is less than that required of slaves.** Prudence and moral virtue unsted and as it were fused enable a man to lead a good life or the zoble life which seems to be the natural end of man. The best life is the life devoted to under- standing or contemplation as distinguished from the practical or political life. Therefore practical wisdom is lower in rank than theo- retical. wisdom which is concerned with the divine things or the kosmos, and subservient to it—but in such a way that within its sphere, the sphere of all human things as such, prudence is su- preme.”’ The sphere ruled by prudence is closed since the principles of prudence—the ends in the light of which prudence guides man —are known independently of theoretical science. Because Aristotle held that art is inferior to law or to prudence, that prudence is inferior to theoretical wisdom, and that theoretical wisdom (know!]- edge of the whole, i.e. of that by virtue of which “all things” are a whole) is available, he could found political science as an inde- pendent discipline among a number of disciplines in such a way that political science preserves the perspective of the citizen or states- man or that it is the fully conscious form of the “common sense” understanding of political things.
The Athenian stranger may be said to assert that the men who preceded him conceived of nature as superior to art and of art as superior to law. Aristotle conceives of nature as superior to law— for the good law is the law which is according to nature—and of law as superior to the arts. Aristotle’s view must also be distin- guished from another extreme view by virtue of which nature and law become fused and oppose themselves to the arts which thus appear to defile a sacred order.
According to Aristotle it is moral virtue that supplies the sound principles of action, the just and noble ends, as actually desired; these ends come to sight only to the morally good man; prudence seeks the means to these ends. The morally good man is the prop- erly bred man, the well-bred man. Aristotle’s political science is addressed only to such men.”8 The sphere of prudence is then closed by principles which are fully evident only to gentlemen. In seeking
* Politics 1260a33-41.
7 Eth, Nic. 1141a28-b9, 1145a6-11.
* Eth. Nic. 1095a80-b8, 1103a24-26, 1144a7-9, 1144a20-1145a6, 1178a- 16-19.
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THE CITY AND MAN
for higher principles, one would raise the question “why should one be decent?” but in doing so one would already have ceased to be a gentleman, for decency is meant to be choiceworthy for its own sake. The gentleman is recognized as gentleman not only by other gentlemen but also by people of deficient breeding. Yet among the latter there may be men of great power of persuasion who question the goodness of moral virtue. It is therefore not sufficient to know what justice, magnanimity and the other virtues are and to be moved by their beauty; one must show that they are good.”° One must then transcend the sphere of prudence or of what one may call the moral consciousness. One must show that the practice of the moral virtues is the end of man by nature, i.e. that man is inclined toward such practice by nature. This does not require that man by nature know his natural end without any effort on his part. The natural end of man as well as of any other natural being becomes genuinely known through theoretical science, through the science of the natures.*° More precisely, knowledge of the virtues derives from knowledge of the human soul: each part of the soul has its specific perfection. Plato sketches such a purely theoretical account of the virtues in the Republic. But it is characteristic of Aristotle that he does not even attempt to give such an account. He describes all the moral virtues as they are known to morally virtuous man without trying to deduce them from a higher principle; generally speaking, he leaves it at the fact that a given habit is regarded as praiseworthy without investigating why this is so. One may say that he remains within the limits of an unwritten nomos which is recognized by well-bred people everywhere. This nomos may be in agreement with reason but is not as such dictated by reason. It constitutes the sphere of human or political things by being its limit or its ceiling. By proceeding differently, Aristotle would make political or prac- tical science dependent on theoretical science.
In order to grasp the ground of Aristotle’s procedure, one must start from the facts that according to him the highest end of man by nature is theoretical understanding or philosophy and this per-
_™ Cf. Plato, Republic I end and Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 1101b25-27 (cf. 11382b31-1193a2).
* Aristotle, On the Soul 434a16~21 (cf. 432b27~30). Cf. Averroés, Com- mentary on Plato’s Republic (ed. E.1.J. Rosenthal) I 23.5 and II 8.1; Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics VI lectio 2. (nr. 1131), S. th. 2 2 q. 47. a. 6, ad 8.
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ON ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS
fection does not require moral virtue as moral virtue, i.e. just and noble deeds as choiceworthy for their own sake." It goes without saying that man’s highest end cannot be achieved without actions resembling moral actions proper, but the actions in question are intended by the philosopher as mere means toward his end. That end also calls for prudence, for the philosopher must deliberate about how he can secure the conditions for his philosophizing here and now. The moral virtues are more directly related to man’s sec- ond natural end, his social life; one could therefore think that the moral virtues are intelligible as being essentially in the service of the city. For instance, magnanimity is praiseworthy because the city needs men who are born to command and who know that they are born to command. But it suffices to read Aristotle’s description of magnanimity in order to see that the full phenomenon of magnanim- ity cannot be understood in that way. The moral virtues cannot be understood as being for the sake of the city since the city must be understood as being for the sake of the practice of moral virtue." Moral virtue is then not intelligible as a means for the only two natural ends which could be thought to be its end. Therefore, it seems, it must be regarded as an “absolute.” Yet one cannot dis- regard its relations to those two natural ends. Moral virtue shows that the city points beyond itself but it does not reveal clearly that toward which it points, namely, the life devoted to philosophy. The man of moral virtue, the gentleman, may very well know that his political activity is in the service of noble leisure but his leisurable activity hardly goes beyond the enjoyment of poetry and the other imitative arts.’? Aristotle is the founder of political science because he is the discoverer of moral virtue. For Plato, what Aristotle calls moral virtue is a kind of halfway house between political or vulgar virtue which is in the service of bodily well-being (of self-preserva- tion or peace) and genuine virtue which, to say the least, animates only the philosophers as philosophers. As for the Stoics, who went so far as to assert that only the noble is good, they identified the man of nobility with the wise man who as such possesses the
™ Eth. Nic. 1177b1-8, 1178a28ff.; cf. E.E. 1248b9fF. Cf. Averroés, loc. cit. MI 12 and 16.10; Thomas, S. th. 1 2 q. 58. a. 4-5. and 2 2 q. 45. a. 4.
“Eth. Nic. 1695b30-31, 1099b29-32, 1178b5; Politics 1278b21-24. Cf. Avertots, loc. cit. I 4.7.
* Politics 1337b33--1338b4,
“ Phaedo 68b2-69c3, 82allff., Republic 518d9-e8.
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THE CITY AND MAN
“virtues” called logic and physics.** We must beware of mistaking Aristotle's man of moral virtue or “good man” who is the perfect gentleman for the “good man” who is just and temperate but lacks all other virtues, like the members of the lowest class in Plato's Republic.* The latter notion of “goodness” prepared Machiavelli's and Rousseau’s distinction, or opposition, between “goodness” and “virtue.”
When the philosopher Aristotle addresses his political science to more or less perfect’ gentlemen, he shows them as far as possible that the way of life of the perfect gentleman points toward the philosophic way of life; he removes a screen. He articulates for his addressees the unwritten nomos which was the limit of their vision while he himself stands above that limit. He is thus compelled or enabled to correct their opinions about things which fall within their purview. He must speak of virtues and vices which were “nameless” and hence hitherto unknown. He must deny explicitly or tacitly that habits as highly praised as sense of shame and piety are virtues. The gentleman is by nature able to be affected by phi- losophy; Aristotle’s political science is an attempt to actualize this potentiality. The gentleman affected by philosophy is in the highest case the enlightened statesman, like Pericles who was affected by Anaxagoras.*? The moral-political sphere is then not unqualifiedly closed to theoretical science. One reason why it seemed necessary to make a radical distinction between practical wisdom on the one hand and the sciences and the arts on the other was the fact that every art is concerned with a partial good, whereas prudence is con- cerned with the whole human good. Yet the highest form of pru- dence is the legislative art which is the architectonic art, the art of arts, because it deals with the whole human good in the most com- prehensive manner. It is concerned with the whole human good by being concerned with the highest human good with reference to which all partial human goods are good. It deals with its subject in the most comprehensive manner because it establishes the frame- work within which political prudence proper, the right handling of situations, can take place. Moreover, “legislative art” is an ambig- uous term; it may mean the art practiced “here and now” by a legis-
“ Cicero, De finibus III 11, 17-18, 72-73. Consider, however, ibid. V 36. “Cf. Phaedo 82al1~b2 with Cicero, Offices II 35. " Phaedrus 269d-270a.
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ON ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS
lator acting on behalf of this or that political community; but it may also mean the “practical science” of legislation taught by the teacher of legislators which is superior in dignity to the former since it sup- plies guidance for it. As a practical science it differs from prudence in all its forms because it is free from that involvement the dangers of which cannot be averted except by moral virtue.** Hence pru- dence appears to be ultimately subject to a science. Considerations like these induced Socrates and Plato to assert that virtue is knowl- edge and that quest for prudence is philosophy. Just as the partial human goods cannot be known to be goods except with reference to the highest or the whole human good, the whole human good cannot be known to be good except with reference to the good simply, the idea of the good, which comes to sight only beyond and above all other ideas: the idea of the good, and not the human good or in particular gentlemanship, is the principle of prudence. But since love of wisdom is not wisdom and philosophy as prudence is the never-to-be-completed concern with one’s own good, it seems impossible to know that the philosophic life is the best life. Socrates could not know this if he did not know that the only serious alterna- tive to the philosophic life is the political life and that the political life is subordinate to the philosophic life: political life is life in the cave which is partly closed off by a wall from life in the light of the sun; the city is the only whole within the whole or the only part of the whole whose essence can be wholly known. In spite of their disagreement Plato and Aristotle agree as to this, that the city is both closed to the whole and open to the whole, and they are agreed as to the character of the wall separating the city from the rest of the whole. Given the fact that the only political work proper of Plato is the Laws in which Socrates does not occur, one is tempted to draw this conclusion: the only reason why not Socrates but Aris- totle became the founder of political science is that Socrates who spent his life in the unending ascent to the idea of the good and in awakening others to that ascent, lacked for this reason the leisure not only for political activity but even for founding political sci- ence.—
o
“Eth. Nic. 1094a15-b10, 1099b31, 1104a3-10, 1141b24-27, 1152b1-3, 1181223; Politics 1287a82-b8, 1288b10f., 1325b40f. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, S. th. 1 q. 1. a. 6. ad 3. and q. 14. a. 16. c. as well as Commentary on Ethics VI lectio 7. (nr. 1200-1201).
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THE CITY AND MAN
Our provisional contention according to which Aristotle's polit- ical science is the fully conscious form of the common sense under- standing of political things is open to the objection that the matrix of that science is not common sense simply but the common sense of the Greeks, not to say the common sense of the Greek upper class. This is said to show itself immediately in the theme of Aristotle's Politics, the Greek city-state. It is true that city-states were much more common among the Greeks than among the non-Greeks,** but the fact that Aristotle respects the Carthaginian city-state hardly less than the Spartan and-much more than the Athenian suffices to dispose of the assertion that the city-state is essentially Greek. A more serious difficulty appears when we turn our attention to the expression “city-state.” The city-state is meant to be a particular form of the state, and this thought cannot even be stated in Aris- totle’s language. Furthermore, when we speak today of “state,” we understand “state” in contradistinction to “society,” yet “city” com- prises “state” and “society.” More precisely, “city” antedates the distinction between state and society and cannot therefore be put together out of “state” and “society.” The nearest English equivalent to “the city” is “the country”: one can say “my country right or wrong,” but one cannot say “my society right or wrong” or “my state right or wrong.” “City” can be used synonymously with “father- land.”*° Yet the difference between “city” and “country” must not be neglected. “City” is not the same as “town,” for “city” comprises both “town” and “country,” yet the city as Aristotie understands it is essentially an urban society*’: the core of the city is not the tillers of the soil. The alternative to “city” is not another form of “state” but the “tribe” or “nation” as a lower, not to say barbarian, kind of society which in contradistinction to the city is unable to combine civilization with freedom.
While for the citizen the modern equivalent of the city is the country, for the theoretical man that equivalent is the unity of state and society which transforms itself into “society” simply as well as into “civilization” or “culture.” Through our understanding of “the
* Cf. Aristophanes, Peace 59 and 63.
“Cf. Xenophon, Hiero 4.3-5; Plato, Crito 51cl, Laws 856d5. Consider, above all, Aristotle’s treatment of “the fatherland.”
“ Politics 1276a26-30; 1319a9-10, 29-38; 1321b19, 28. Cf. Plato, Laws 758d-e. :
“ Politics 1284a38~b3, b388-39; 1326b3-5.
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ON ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS
country” we would have a direct access to “the city,” but that access is blocked by the modern equivalents of the “city” which originate in theory. It is therefore necessary to understand the ground of the difference between “city” on the one hand and these modern equiva- lents on the other.
The city is a society which embraces various kinds of smaller and subordinate societies; among these the family or the household is the most important. The city is the most comprehensive and the highest society since it aims at the highest and most comprehensive good at which any society can aim. This highest good is happiness. The highest good of the city is the same as the highest good of the indi- vidual. The core of happiness is the practice of virtue and primarily of moral virtue. Since the theoretical life proves to be the most choiceworthy for the individual, it follows that at least some ana- logue of it is the aim also of the city. However this may be, the chief purpose of the city is the noble life and therefore the chief concern of the city must be the virtue of its members and hence liberal education.** There is a great variety of opinions as to what constitutes happiness but Aristotle is satisfied that there is no serious disagreement on this subject among sufficiently thoughtful people. In modem times it came to be believed that it is wiser to assume that happiness does not have a definite meaning since different men, and even the same man at different times, have entirely different views as to what constitutes happiness. Hence happiness or the highest good could no longer be the common good at which political society aims. Yet however different the notions of happiness may be, the fundamental conditions of happiness, it was believed, are in all cases the same: one cannot be happy without being alive, without being a free man, and without being able to pursue happiness how- ever one understands happiness. Thus it became the purpose of po- litical society to guarantee those conditions of happiness which came to be understood as the natural rights of each, and to refrain from imposing on its members happiness of any sort, for no notion of happiness can be intrinsically superior to any other notion. One may indeed call the security of all members of society in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, public or political happiness, but one thus merely confirms the fact that true happiness is private. Some
“Eth. Nic. 1094a18-28, 1095a14-20, 1098a15-17; Politics 1252al-7, 1278b21~24, 1324a5-8, 1825b14-32.
31
kind of virtue is indispensable even for political society thus under- stood__as a means for peaceably living together and ultimately for each man’s happiness whatever that happiness may be. Hence the purpose of the individual and the purpose of political society are essentially different. Each individual strives for happiness as he understands happiness. This striving, which is partly competitive with and partly cooperative with the strivings of everyone else, pro- duces or constitutes a kind of web; that web is “society” as distin- guished from the “state” which merely secures the conditions for the striving of the individuals. It follows that in one respect the state is superior to society, for the state is based on what all must equally desire because they all equally need it, on the conditions of happi- ness, and that in another respect society is superior to the state, for society is the outcome of each individual’s concern with his end, whereas the state is concerned only with certain means. In other words, the public and the common is in the service of the merely private whatever that private may be, or the highest or ultimate purpose of the individual is merely private. This difficulty cannot be overcome except by transcending the plane on which both society and the state exist.
Aristotle knew and rejected a view of the city which seems to foreshadow the modern view of political society and hence the distinction between state and society. According to that view, the purpose of the city is to enable its members to exchange goods and services by protecting them against violence among themselves and from foreigners, without its being concerned at all with the moral character of its members.** Aristotle does not state the reasons which were adduced for justifying this limitation of the purpose of the city unless his reference in this context to a sophist is taken to be a sufficient indication. The view reported by Aristotle reminds us of the description given in Plato’s Republic of the “city of pigs”* —of a society which is sufficient for satisfying the natural wants of the body, i.e. of the naturally private. We shall say that society as distinguished from the state first comes to sight as the market in which competitors buy and sell and which requires the state as its protector or rather servant. On this basis the “political” comes to be
“ Politics 1280a25-b35. Cf. the kindred criticism of this kind of society by Augustine in De Civitate Dei I 20. - “ Republic 372d4 and e6-7.
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ON ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS
understood eventually as derivative from the “economic.” The ac- tions of the market are as such voluntary whereas the state coerces. Yet voluntariness is not a preserve of the market; it is above all cf the essence of genuine, as distinguished ixon\ merely utilitarin,, virtue. From this it was inferred in modera times that since virtue cannot be brought about by coercion, the promotion of virtue can- not be the purpose of the state; not because virtue is unimportant but because it is lofty and sublime, the state must be indifferent to virtue and vice as such, as distinguished from transgressions of the state’s laws which have no other function than the protection of the life, liberty, and property of each citizen. We note in passing that this reasoning does not pay sufficient attention to the importance of habituation or education for the acquisition of virtue. This rea- soning leads to the consequence that virtue, and religion, must become private, or else that society, as distinguished from the state, is the sphere less of the private than of the voluntary. Society em- braces then not only the sub-political but the supra-political (morality, art, science) as well. Society thus understood is no longer properly called society, nor even civilization, but culture. On this basis the political must be understood as derivative from the cul- tural: culture is the matrix of the state. “Culture” as susceptible of being used in the plural is the highest modern equivalent of “city.” In its original form “culture” in the sense indicated was thought to have its originating core in religion: “it is in religion that a nation [Volk] gives itself the definition of what it regards as the truth.” According to Aristotle too, the concern with the divine occupies somehow the first place among the concems of the city but this is not true according to him in the last analysis. His reason is that that concern with the divine which occupies the place of honor among the concerns of the city is the activity of the priesthood,
“Hegel, Die Vernunft in der Geschichte (ed. Hoffmeister) 125. In his “Wissenschaftliche Behandlungsarten des Naturrechts” (Schriften zur Politik und Rechtsphilosophie [ed. Lasson}] 383 and 393) Hegel renders Plato’s and Aris- totle’s polis by “Volk.” Hegel does not speak of cultures but of Volksgeister and Weltanschauungen. Cf. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Works [Behn Standard Library} II 851 and 362) and Letters on a Regicide Peace I (ed. cit, V 214-215). The kinship between trade, “society,” and “cul- ture” as the spontaneous or non-coercive (in contradistinction to the state as well as to religion) appears in Jakob Burckhardt’s Weltgeschichtliche Betracht- ungen (Gesamtausgabe, VII [Basel, 1929] 20, 42-43 and 47-48).
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THE CITY AND MAN
whereas the true concern with the divine is the knowledge of the divine, i.e. transpolitical wisdom which is devoted to the cosmic gods as distinguished from the Olympian gods. In the words of Thomas Aquinas, reason informed by faith, not natural reason simply, to say nothing of corrupted reason, teaches that God is to be loved and worshipped.’ Natural reason cannot decide which of the various forms of divine worship is the true one, although it is able to show the falsity of those which are plainly immoral; each of the various forms of divine worship appears to natural reason to owe its validity to political establishment and therefore to be subject to the city. Aristotle’s view is less opposed to the Biblical view than it might seem: he too is concerned above all with the truth of reli- gion. But to return to the relation between “city” and “culture,” “culture” as commonly used now differs from the original notion decisively because it no longer implies the recognition of an order of rank among the various elements of culture. From this point of view Aristotle’s assertion that the political element is the highest or most authoritative element in human society must appear to be arbitrary or at best the expression of one culture among many.
The view according to which all elements of culture are of equal rank, is meant to be adequate for the description or analysis of all human societies present or past. Yet it appears to be the product of one particular culture, modern Western culture, and it is not certain that its use for the understanding of other cultures does not do violence to them: these cultures must be understood as they are in themselves. It. would seem that each culture must be understood in the light of what it looks up to; that to which it looks up may appear to it to become reflected in a particular kind of human being, and that kind of human being may rule the society in ques- tion in broad daylight; it is this special case of rule which Aristotle regarded as the normal case. But is it merely a special case? The view according to which all elements of a culture are of equal rank, which we may call the egalitarian view of culture, reflects an egali- tarian society—a society which derives its character from its looking up to equality (and ultimately to a universe not consisting of essen- tially different parts) and which therefore looks up to such uncom-
“ Politics 1828b11-13 and 1322b12-87. Thomas, S. th. 1 2 q. 104. a. 1. ad 3.; cf. 22q. 85. a. 1. ad 1.
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ON ABRISTOTLE’S POLITICS
mon men as devote themselves to the service of the common man. The present interest in the variety of cultures was foreshadowed by the interest of certain Greek travellers in the variety of nations. Herodotus may be said to have studied the various nations with a view to the nature of the land and of its inhabitants, their arts or crafts, their laws written or unwritten, and their stories or accounts; in this scheme the political element was not manifestly the highest or the most authoritative. In contradistinction to this descriptive approach, Aristotle's approach is practical; he sees the various so- cieties as they appear when one is guided by the question of the good society or of the good life; those societies themselves come to sight then as attempting to answer that question, given the condi- tions imposed on them; in this perspective the nature of the land and of its inhabitants, to some extent even the arts and the accounts, ap- pear as conditions and the political order alone as the intended.—
We must now say a few words about Aristotle’s alleged anti- democratic prejudice. The democracy with which he takes issue is the democracy of the city, not modern democracy or the kind of democracy which presupposes the distinction between state and society. The democracy of the city is characterized by the presence of slavery: citizenship was a privilege not a right. That democracy did not allow the claim to freedom of man as man but of freeman as freeman and in the last analysis of men who are by nature free- men, not to say of people descended on both sides from citizens. The freeman is distinguished from the slave by the fact that he lives as he likes; the claim to live as he likes is raised for every freeman equally. He refuses to take orders from anyone or to be subject to anyone. But since government is necessary, the freeman demands that he not be subject to anyone who is not in turn subject to him: everyone must have as much access to magistracies as everyone else, merely because he is a freeman. The only way in which this can be guaranteed is election by lot, as distinguished from voting for candidates where considerations other than whether the candidate is a free man—especially merit—inevitably enter; voting for candidates is aristocratic rather than democratic. Hence modern democracy would have to be described with a view to its intention from. Aristotle’s point of view as a mixture of democracy and aristocracy. Since freedom as claimed by the democracy of the city means to live as one likes, that democracy permits only the
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THE CITY AND MAN
minimum of restraint on its members; it is “permissive” to the ex- treme.‘* One may find it strange that Aristotle does not allow for the possibility ot an austere, stern, “Puritan” democracy; but this kind of regime would be theocratic rather than democratic. We must note, however, that Aristotle does not suggest a connection between the democracy of the city and the city which limits itself to enabling its members to exchange goods and services by protecting them against violence without its being concerned with the moral char- acter of its members. Democracy as he understands it is no less passionately and comprehensively political than any other regime.
It could seem that democracy is not merely one form of the city among many but its normal form, or that the city tends to be demo- cratic. The city is, or tends to be, a society of free and equal men. As city it is the people or belongs to the people and this would seem to require that it be ruled by the people. It is no accident that Aristotle introduces the fundamental reflections of the third book of the Politics by an argument of democratic origin and that the first definition of the citizen which suggests itself to him is that of the citizen in a democracy. In contradistinction to oligarchy and aristocracy, democracy is the rule of all and not the rule of a part; oligarchy and aristocracy exclude the common people from partici- nation in government whereas democracy does not exclude the wealtby and the gentlemen.‘* Nevertheless, according to Aristotle, the apparent rule of all in democracy is in fact the rule of a part. Among equals, the fair, nay, the only possible way compatible with deliberation, of deciding issues where unanimity is lacking is to abide by the will of the majority, but it so happens that the majority of freemen in practically every city is the poor; hence democracy is the rule of the poor.*° Democracy presents itself as the rule of all or it bases its claim on freedom and not on poverty, because titles to rule are more credible if based on an excellence rather than on a defect or a need. But if democracy is rule of the poor, of those who lack leisure, it is the rule of the uneducated and there- fore undesirable. Since it is not safe to exclude the demos where it
* Politics 1273b40-41, 1275b22-25, 1317a40-b21, 1323a3~6. Cf. Plato, Republic 557a9f. and 562b9-c2, Statesman 303a4-7.
® Politics 1255b20, 1259b4-6, 1274b32-36, 1275b5-7, 1280a5, 1281b34~ 38, 1282a16-17, 1295b25-26. Cf. Cicero, Republic I 39-43. Consider Plato, Republic 557d4-9.
” Politics 1294a9-14, 1817b5-10.
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ON ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS
exists from participation in rule, Aristotle devised as his best polity a city without a demos, a city consisting only of gentlemen on the one hand and metics and slaves on the other.*! This perfect solution is however possible only under the most favorable conditions. Aris- totle considered therefore a variety of less extreme solutions—of regimes in which the common people participate without being pre- dominant. He comes closest to accepting democracy—at least in the case when the common people is not too depraved—in the funda- mental reflections of the third book. After having laid the broadest possible foundations, he states first the case for democracy and then for the absolute rule of one outstanding man.°? He acts as if he agreed with the suggestion made in Plato’s Laws according to which there are two “mothers” of all other regimes, namely, democracy and monarchy.** The argument in favor of a certain kind of democ- racy appears to be conclusive on the political level. Why then is Aristotle not wholly satisfied with it? What induces him to tum from democracy to a certain kind of absolute monarchy? Who is that Zeus-like man who has the highest natural title to rule, a much higher title than any multitude? He is the man of the highest self- sufficiency who therefore cannot be a part of the city: is he not, if not the philosopher, at least the highest political reflection of the philosopher? He is not likely to be the philosopher himself, for kingship in the highest sense belongs to the dawn of the city, whereas philosophy belongs to a later stage and the completion of philosophy—Aristotle’s own philosophy—belongs rather to its dusk: the peak of the city and the peak of philosophy belong to entirely different times.** However this may be, we suggest that the ultimate reason why Aristotle has reservations against even the best kind of democracy is his certainty that the demos is by nature opposed to philosophy.*> Only the gentlemen can be open to philosophy, i.e. listen to the philosopher. Modern democracy on the other hand presupposes a fundamental harmony between philosophy and the people, a harmony brought about by universal enlightenment, or by
" Politics 1274a17-18, 1281b28-30, 1328b24~1929a2, 1329a19-26.
“ Compare the argument in favor of democracy from 1281a39 to 1283b35 with 1282b36; 1283b16-23; 1284a3-8, b18, 28-33. Cf. 1282a15-16.
* Laws 693d2—e8.
*“ Politics 1253a27~29, 1267a10-12, 1284b25-34, 1286b20-22, 1288a26- 28, 1313a4-5; Eth Nic. 1160b8-6, 1177a27~bl.
“ Cf. Gorgias 481d3-5 and Republic 4944-7.
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THE CITY AND MAN
philosophy (science) relieving man’s estate through inventions and discoveries recognizable as salutary by all, or by both means. On the basis of the break with Aristotle, one could come to believe in the possibility of the simply rational society, i.e. of a society each mem- ber of which would be of necessity perfectly rational so that all would be united by fraternal friendship, and government of men, as distinguished from administration of things, would wither away. It also became possible to integrate philosophy into the city or rather into its modern equivalent, “culture,” and thus to achieve the replacement of the distinction between nature and convention by the distinction between nature and history.
For Aristotle political inequality is ultimately justified by the natural inequality among men. The fact that some men are by nature rulers and others by nature ruled points in its turn to the inequality which pervades nature as a whole: the whole as an or- dered whole consists of beings of different rank. In man the soul is by nature the ruler of the body and the mind is the ruling part of the soul. It is on the basis of this that thoughtful men are said to be the natural rulers of the thoughtless ones.** It is obvious that an egalitarianism which appeals from the inequality regarding the mind to the equality regarding breathing and digestion does not meet the issue. Entirely different is the case of an egalitarianism which starts from morality and its implications. In passing moral judgments—in praising good men or good actions and in blaming bad men or bad actions—we presuppose that a man’s actions, and hence also his being a good or a bad man, are in his power.*7 We presuppose therefore that prior to the exercise of their wills, or by nature, all men are equal with respect to the possibility of becoming good or bad men, i.e. in what seems to be the highest respect. Yet a man’s upbringing or the conditions in which he lives would seem to affect greatly, if not decisively, his potentiality of becoming or being good or bad. To maintain a man’s moral responsibility in the face of the unfavorable conditions which moulded him, one seems to be compelled to make him responsible for those conditions: he himself must have willed the conditions which as it were compel him to act badly. More generally, the apparent inequality among men in respect of the possibility of being good must be due to
* Politics 1254a28-b16. Eth. Nic. 1113b6f.
38
cary
ON ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS
human fault.** Moral judgment seems then to lead up to the postu- late that a God concerned with justice has created all men equal as - regards their possibility of becoming good or bad. Yet “matter” might counteract this intention of the just God. One must therefore postulate creation ex nihilo by an omnipotent God who as such must’ be omniscient, by the absolutely sovereign God of the Bible who will be what He will be, i.e. who will be gracious to whom He wil be gracious; for, to say nothing of other considerations, the assump-. tion that His grace is a function of human merit necessarily leads men into pride. In agreement with this, Thomas Aquinas teaches that even in the state of innocence, if it had lasted, men would have been unequal regarding justice and there would have been government by the superior man over men inferior to him. God is not unjust in creating beings of unequal rank and in particular men of unequal rank, since the equality of justice has its place in retri- bution, but not in creation which is an act, not of justice, but of liberality and is therefore perfectly compatible with the inequality of gifts; God does not owe anything to His creatures.** Considering the connection between intelligence and prudence on the one hand, and between prudence and moral virtue on the other, one must admit a natural inequality among men regarding morality; that inequality is perfectly compatible with the possibility that all men possess by nature equally the capability to comply with the prohibi- tion against murder, for example, as distinguished from the capa- bility of becoming morally virtuous in the complete sense or of becoming perfect gentlemen. One reaches the same conclusion even if one grants that the creatures have claims against God—claims which appeal to God’s goodness or liberality, provided one under- stands by justice not a firm will to give everyone his due, but good- ness tempered by wisdom; for given these assumptions, even such claims of some creatures as are justified on the ground of God's goodness might have to be denied on grounds of His wisdom, i. of His concern with the common good of the universe.®° Equivalent considerations led Plato to trace vice to ignorance and to make
*CE£. Plato, Timaeus 41e8-4 and 90e6ff. Cf. Gorgias 526e1-4, Republic 379c5-7, 380a7-b8, 617e1-5.
*S. th. L q. 21. a.1, q. 23. a. 5., q. 65. a. 2., gq. 96. a. 3-4.; 8S. c. G. 1 44.
© Leibniz, Principes de la Nature et de la Grdce sect. 7, Monadologie sect. 50-51, 54, Théodicée sect. 151, 215.
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THE CITY AND MAN
knowledge the preserve of men endowed with particularly good natures. As for Aristotle, it may suffice, here to say that moral virtue as he understands it is not possible without “equipment” and that for this reason alone, to say nothing of natural inequality, moral virtue in the full sense is not within the reach of all men.
For a better understanding of the classical view, one does well to cast a glance at that kind of egalitarianism which is most char- acteristically modern. According to Rousseau, through the founda- tion of society, natural inequality is replaced by conventional equal- ity; the social contract which creates society is the basis of morality, of moral freedom or autonomy; but the practice of moral virtue, the fulfillment of our duties to our fellow men is the one thing needful.** A closer analysis shows that the core of morality is the good will as distinguished from the fulfillment of all duties; the former is equally within the reach of all men, whereas as regards the latter natural inequality necessarily asserts itself. But it cannot be a duty to re- spect that natural inequality, for morality means autonomy, i.e. not to bow to any law which a man has not imposed upon himself. Accordingly, man’s duty may be said to consist in subjugating the natural within him and outside of him to that in him to which alone he owes his dignity, to the moral law. The moral law demands from each virtuous activity, i.e. the full and uniform development of all his faculties and their exercise jointly with others. Such a development is not possible as long as everyone is crippled as a consequence of the division of labor or of social inequality. It is therefore a moral duty to contribute to the establishment of a so- ciety which is radically egalitarian and at the same time on the highest level of the development of man. In such a society, which is rational precisely because it is not natural, i.e. because it has won the decisive battle against nature, everyone is of necessity happy if happiness is indeed unobstructed virtuous activity; it is a society which therefore does no longer have any need for coercion.*? There may be some relics of natural inequality which are transmitted by
“ Cf. Contrat Social 1 8-9 with the thesis of the First Discourse.
“ Cf. Fichte, Ueber die Bestimmung des Gelchrten I-III on the one hand, Marx-Engels, Die Deutsche Ideologie (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1953) 27-30, 68- 69, 74, 221, 414-415, 449, and Marx, Die Fruehschriften (ed. Landshut) 233 and 290-295 on the other. Cf. the treatment of natural inequality by Hegel in his Rechtsphilosophie sect. 200.
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ON ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS
the natural process of procreation, but they will gradually disappear since, as one can hope, the acquired faculties can also b2come in- herited, to say nothing of human measures which may have to be taken during the transition period in whicn coercion cannot yet he dispensed with.—
For Aristotle, natural inequality is a sufficient justification for the non-egalitarian character of the city and is as it were part of the proof that the city is the natural association par excellence. The city is by nature, fe. the city is natural to man; in founding cities men only execute what their nature inclines them to do. Men are by nature inclined to the city because they are by nature inclined to happiness, to living together in a manner which satisfies the needs of their nature in proportion to the natural rank of these needs; the city, one is tempted to say, is the only association which is capable of being dedicated to the life of excellence. Man is the only earthly being inclined toward happiness and he is capable of happiness. This is due to the fact that he is the only animal which possesses reason or speech, or which strives for seeing or knowing for its own sake, or whose soul is somehow “all things”: man is the microcosm. There is a natural harmony between the whole and the human mind. Man would not be capable of happiness if the whole of which he is a part were not friendly to him. Man could not live if nature did not supply him with food and his other wants: nature has made, if not all animals, at least most of them for the sake of man, al- though not necessarily exclusively for this purpose, so that man acts according to nature if he captures or kills the animals useful to him.®? One may describe this view of the relation of man to the whole as “optimism” in the original sense of the term: the world is the best possible world; we have no right to assume that the evils with which it abounds, and especially the evils which do not origi- nate in human folly, could have been absent without bringing about still greater evils; man has no right to complain and to rebel. This is not to deny but to assert that the nature of man is enslaved in many ways so that only very few, and even these not always, can achieve happiness or the highest freedom of which man is by nature capable, so that the city actually dedicated to human excellence is,
© Politics 1252b27-1253a2, 1253a9-10, 1256b7~24, 1280b33-1281a2; Eth. Nic. 1178b24-28; On the Soul 431b21~28.
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5,
THE CITY AND MAN
to say the least, very rare, and so that chance rather than human reason seems to be responsible for the various laws laid down by men."
Aristotle was compelled to defend his view of happiness or of the end of man against the poets’ assertion that the divine is envious of man's happiness or bears malice to man.** He did not take seriously this assertion. It was taken un after his time in a considerably modi- fied form: the whole as we know it is the work of an evil god or demon, as distinguished from the good or highest god; hence, the end toward which man is inclined as part of the visible whole or by nature, cannot be good. This view presupposes that man possesses knowledge of true goodness as distinguished from natural goodness; he cannot know true goodness by his natural powers, for otherwise the visible whole would not be simply bad; but for this reason the alleged knowledge of true goodness lacks cogency. Let us then turn to the modem criticism of Aristotle’s principle. It does not suffice to say that the new, anti-Aristotelian science of the seventeenth cen- tury rejected final causes, for the classical “materialists” had done the same and yet not denied, as the modern anti-Aristotelians did, that the good life is the life according to nature and that “Nature has made the necessary things easy to supply.” If one ponders over the facts which Aristotle summarizes by saying that our nature is enslaved in many ways, one easily arrives at the conclusion that nature is not a kind mother but a harsh stepmother to man, i.e. that the true mother of man is not nature. What is peculiar to mod- ern thought is not this conclusion by itself but the consequent resolve to liberate man from that enslavement by his own sustained effort. This resolve finds its telling expression in the demand for the “conquest” of nature: nature is understood and treated as an enemy who must be subjugated. Accordingly, science ceases to be proud contemplation and becomes the humble and charitable handmaid devoted to the relief of man’s estate. Science is for the sake of power, i.e. for putting at our disposal the means for achieving our natural ends. Those ends can no longer include knowledge for its own sake; they are reduced to comfortable self-preservation. Man as the potential conqueror of nature stands outside of nature. This
“ Metaphysics 982b29 (cf. Plato, Phaedo 66d1-2 and context); Eth. Nic. 1154b7; Politics 1831b39-1332a3, 1832229-S1; Plato, Laws 709a-b. ~ LA “ Metaphysics 982b32-983a4.
vo
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ON ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS
presupposes that there is no natural harmony between the human mind and the whole. The belief in such harmony appears now as a wishful or good-natured assumption. We must reckon with the possibility that the world is the work of an evil demon bent on deceiving us about himself, the world, and ourselves by means of the faculties with which he has supplied us or, which amounts to the same thing, that the world is the work of a blind necessity which is utterly indifferent as to whether it'end its product ever becomes known. Surely we have no right to trust in our natural faculties; extreme skepticism is required. I can trust only in what is entirely within my control: the concepts which I consciously make and of which I do not claim more than that they are my con- _ structs, and the naked data as they impress themselves upon me and of which I do not claim more than that I am conscious of them without having made them. The knowledge which we need for the conquest of nature must indeed be dogmatic, but its dogmatism must be based on extreme skepticism; the synthesis of dogmatism and skepticism eventually takes the form of an infinitely progressive science as a system or agglomeration of confirmed hypotheses which remain exposed to revision in infinitum. The break with the primary or natural understanding of the whole which is presupposed by the new dogmatism based on extreme skepticism leads to the transfor- mation and eventually to the abandonment of the questions which on the basis of the primary understanding reveal themselves as the most important questions; the place of the primary issues is taken by derivative issues. This shift may be illustrated by the substitution of “culture” for “city.” .
From what has been said it follows that the modern posture both demands and cannot admit natural ends. The difficulty is indi- cated by the term “state of nature” which means no longer a com- pleted or perfected but the initial state of man. This state is, be- cause it is entirely natural, not only imperfect but bad: the war of everybody against everybody. Man is not by nature social, ie. Nature dissociates men. This however means that nature compels man to make himself social; only because nature compels man to avoid death as the greatest evil can man compel himself to become and to be a citizen. The end is not something towards which man is by nature inglined but something towards which he is by nature compelled; more precisely, the end does not beckon man but it must be invented by man so that he can escape from his natural misery.
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THE CITY AND MAN
Nature supplies men with an end only negatively: because the state of nature is intolerable This would seem to be the root of what Nietzsche discerned as the essentially ascetic character of modern morality. Man conquers nature (universal compulsion) because nature compels him to do so. The result is freedom. It looks as if freedom were the end towards which nature tends. But this is surely not what is meant. The end is not natural but only devised by man against nature and only in this sense devised on the basis of nature.
According to Aristotle, man is by nature meant for the life of human excellence; this end is universal in the sense that no man’s life can be understood, or seen as what it is, except in the light of that end. That end however is very rarely achieved. Must there not then be a natural obstacle to the life of human excellence as Aristotle understood it? Can that life be the life according to na- ture? To discover a truly universal end of man as man, one must seek primarily not for the kind of natural laws for which a certain Aristotelian tradition sought, i.e. “normative” laws, laws which can be transgressed and which perhaps are more frequently transgressed than observed, but for natural laws as laws which no one can transgress because everyone is compelled to act according to them. Laws of the latter kind, it was hoped, would be the solid basis of a new kind of “normative” laws which as such can indeed be trans- gressed but are much less likely to be transgressed than the norma- tive laws preached up by the tradition. The new kind of normative laws did no longer claim to be natural laws proper; they were rational laws in contradistinction to natural laws; they eventually become “ideals.”** The ideal “exists” only by virtue of human reason- ing or “figuring out”; it exists only “in speech.” It has then an en- tirely different status from the end or perfection of. man in classical political philosophy; it has however the same status as the best political order (the best regime) in classical political philosophy. One must keep this in mind if one wishes to understand the politi- cization of philosophic thought in modern times or in other words the obsolescence in moder thought of the distinction between na- ture and convention.
The fundamental change which we are trying to describe shows
“ Hobbes, De Cive I 2, Leviathan ch. 13 and ch. 15 (see both versions); Spinoza, Tr. theol.-pol. IV sect. 1-5 (Bruder), Ethics IV praef.; Locke, Essay YW 11.15.
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ON ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS
itself in the substitution of “the rights of man” for “the natural law”: “law” which prescribes duties ha; been replaced by “rights,” and “nature” has been replaced by “man.” The rights of man are the moral equivalent of the Ege cogitans. The Ego cogitans has emanci- pated itself entirely from “the tutelage of nature” and eventually refuses to obey any law which it has not originated in its entirety or to dedicate itself to any “value! of which it does not know that it is its own creation.—
It is not sufficient to say nen the theme of the Politics is not the Greek city-state but the polis (the city): the theme of the Politics is the politeia (the regime), the “form” of a city. This appears im- mediately from the beginnings of each book of the Politics except the first.” At the beginning of the first book, Aristotle deals with the city without raising the question of the regime because his first task is to establish the dignity of the city as such: he must show that the city as city is by nature, ie. that the city as essentially different from the household and other natural associations is by nature, for some men had denied that there is an essential difference between the city and the household, to say nothing of those who had denied that there are any natural associations. One may say that at the beginning of the Politics, Aristotle presents the city as consisting of certain associations as its parts. However this may be, at the begin- ning of the third book, he presents as parts of the city not other associations, not even human individuals, but the citizens.® It ap- pears that “citizen” is relative to “regime,” to the political order: a man who would be a citizen in a democracy would not necessarily be a citizen in an oligarchy, and so on. Whereas the consideration of those “parts” of the city which are the natural associations re- mains on the whole politically neutral, the consideration of those parts of the city which are the citizens necessarily becomes involved in a divisive, a political issue: by raising the question of what the citizen is, Aristotle approaches the core of ‘the political question par excellence. What is true of the citizen is true of the good citizen, since the activity or the work of the citizen belongs to the same genus as that of the good citizen:®° “good citizen,” in contradistinc- tion to “good man,” too is relative to “regime”; obviously a good
* Cf. also Eth. Nic. 1181b12-23 * Politics 1252a7-23, 1253a8-10, 1274b38-41. *@ Eth. Nic. 1098a8-11.
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Communist cannot but be a bad citizen in a liberal democracy and vice versa. The regime is the “form” of the city in contradistinction to its “matter,” that matter consisting above all of the human beings who inhabit the city in so far as they are considered as not formed by any regime. The citizen as citizen does not belong to the matter, for who is or is not a citizen depends already on the form.’ The form is higher in dignity than the matter because of its direct con- nection with the “end”: the character of a given city becomes clear to us only if we know of what kind of men its preponderant part consists, i.e. to what end these men are dedicated.
Aristotle apparently draws the conclusion that a change of regime transforms a given city into another city. This conclusion seems to be paradoxical, not to say absurd: it seems to deny the obvious continuity of a city in spite of all changes of regime. For is it not obviously better to say that the same France which was first an absolute monarchy became thereafter a democracy than to say that democratic France is a different country from monarchic France? Or, generally stated, is it not better to say that the same “substance” takes on successively different “forms” which, compared with the “substance,” are “mere” forms? It goes without saying that Aristotle was not blind to the continuity of the “matter” as distinguished from the discontinuity of the “forms”; he did not say that the same- ness of a city depends exclusively on the sameness of the regime, for in that case there could not be, for instance, more than one demo- cratic city; he says that the sameness of a city depends above all on the sameness of the regime.”? Nevertheless what he said runs counter to our notions. It does not run counter to our experience. In order to see this, one must follow his presentation more closely than is usually done. He starts from an experience. Immediately after a city has become democratic, the democrats sometimes say of a certain action (say, of a certain contractual obligation) that it is the action not of the city but of the deposed oligarchs or tyrant, The democrat, the partisan of democracy, implies that when there is not democ- racy, there is no city. It is no accident that Aristotle refers to a statement made by democrats as distinguished from oligarchs; per- haps the oligarchs will only say, after the transformation of the oli- garchy into a democracy, that the city is going to pieces, leaving us
" Politics 1274638, 127547-8. "4 Politics 1276b3-11.
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ON ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS
wondering whether a city which is going to pieces can still be said simply to be. Let us sav then that for the partisan of any regime the city “is” only if it is informed by the regime which he favors. There are other people, the moderate and sober people, who reject this extreme view and therefore say that the change of regime is a surface event which does not affect the being of the city at all. Those people will say that, however relative the citizen may be to the regime, the good citizen is a man who serves his city well under any regime. Let us call these men the patriots. The partisans will call them turncoats.’? Aristotle disagrees with both the partisans and the patriots. He says that a change of regime is much more radical than the patriots admit but less radical than the partisans contend: through a change of regime, the city does not cease to be but be- comes another city—in a certain respect, indeed in the most impor- tant respect; for through a change of regime the political community becomes dedicated to an end radically different from its earlier end. In making his apparently strange assertion, Aristotle thinks of the highest end to which a city can be dedicated, namely, human ex- cellence: is any change which a city can undergo comparable in importance to its turning from nobility to baseness or vice versa? We may say that his point of view i8 not that of the patriot or the ordinary partisan, but that of the partisan of excellence. He does not say that through a change of regime a city becomes another city in every respect. For instance, it will remain the same city in regard to obligations which the preceding regime has undertaken. He fails to answer the question regarding such obligations, not be- cause he cannot answer it, but because it is not a political question strictly speaking, but rather a legal question.’* It is easy to discern the principle which he would have followed in answering this legal question because he was a sensible man: if the deposed tyrant undertook obligations which are beneficial to the city, the city ought to honor them; but if he undertook the obligations merely in order to feather his own nest, the city is not obliged to honor them.
In order to understand Aristotle’s thesis asserting the supremacy of the regime, one has only to consider the phenomenon now known as loyalty. The loyalty demanded from every citizen is not mere loyalty to the bare country, to the country irrespective of the regime,
Aristotle, Resp. Ath. 28.5; cf. Xenophon, Hellenica It $.80-S1. ™ Politics 1276b10-15; cf. 1286a2-4.
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but to the country informed by the regime, by the Constitution. A Facist or Communist might claim that he undermines the Constitu- tion of the United States out of loyalty to the United States, for in his opinion the Constitution is bad for the people of the United States; but his claim to be a loyal citizen would not be recognized. Someone might say that the Constitution could be constitutionally changed so that the regime would cease to be a liberal democracy and become either Fascist or Communist and that every citizen of the United States would then be expected to be goyal\to Fascism or Communism; but no one loyal to liberal democracy who knows what he is doing would teach this doctrine precisely because it is apt to undermine loyalty to liberal democracy. Only when a regime is in a state of decay can its transformation into another regime become publicly defensible—We have come to distinguish be- tween legality and legitimacy: whatever is legal in a given society derives its ultimate legitimation from something which is the source of all law ordinary or constitutional, from the legitimating principle, be it the sovereignty of the people, the divine right of kings, or whatever else. The legitimating principle is not simply justice, for there is a variety of principles of legitimacy. The legitimating prin- ciple is not natural law, for natural law is as such neutral as between democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy. The principle of legitimacy is in each case a specific notion of justice: justice demo- cratically understood, justice oligarchically understood, justice aris- tocratically understood, and so on. This is to say, every political society derives its character from a specific public or political morality, from what it regards as publicly defensible, and this means from what the preponderant part of society (not necessarily the majority ) regards as just. A given society may be characterized by extreme permissiveness, but this very permissiveness is in need of being established and defended, and it necessarily has its limits: a permissive society which permits to its members also every sort of non-permissiveness will soon cease to be permissive; it will vanish from the face of the earth. Not to see the city in the light of the variety of regimes means not to look at the city as a political man does, i.€. as a man concerned with a specific public morality does. The variety of specific public moralities or of regimes necessarily gives rise to the question of the best regime, for every kind of regime claims to be the best. Therefore the guiding question of
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Aristotle’s Politics is the question of the best regime. But this subject is better discussed on another occasion.
We conclude with a remark about a seeming self-contradicg;o), of Aristotle's regarding the highest theme of his Politics. He bag. his thematic discussion of the best regime on the principle that the highest end of man, happiness, is the same for the individual ang the city. As he makes clear, this principle would be accepteg as such by everyone. The difficulty arises from the fact that the highest end of the individual is contemplation. He seems to solve the qigp_ culty by asserting that the city is as capable of the contemplative life as the individual. Yet it is obvious that the city is capable at best only of an analogue of the contemplative life. Aristotle reaches his apparent result only by an explicit abstraction, appropriate to a political inquiry strictly and narrowly conceived, from the fy} meaning of the best life of the individual;* in such an inquiry the trans-political, the supra-political—the life of the mind in contig. distinction to political life—comes to sight only as the limit of ihe political. Man is more than the citizen or the city. Man transcends the city only by what is best in him. This is reflected in the fact that there are examples of men of the highest excellence whereas there are no examples of cities of the highest excellence, i.e. of the best regime—that men of the highest excellence (Plato and Aristotle) are known to have lived in deed, whereas of the best regime it ;, known only that it necessarily “lives” in speech. In asserting that man transcends the city, Aristotle agrees with the liberalism of the modern age. Yet he differs from that liberalism by limiting ¢4;, transcendence only to the highest in man. Man transcends the g; only by pursuing true happiness, not by pursuing happiness how. ever understood.
* Politics 1823b40-1825b32; see particularly 1324a19-23. Consider, how. ever, [Thomas’] Commentary on Politics VII, lectio 2.
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Chapter II
ON PLATO'S REPUBLIC
Generally speaking, we can know the thought of a man only through his speeches oral or written. We can know Aristotle’s political phi- losophy through his Politics. Plato’s Republic on the other hand, in contradistinction to the Politics, is not a treatise but a dialogue among people other than Plato. Whereas in reading the Politics we hear Aristotle all the time, in reading the Republic we hear Plato never. In none of his dialogues does Plato ever say anything. Hence we cannot know from them what Plato thought. If someone quotes a passage from the dialogues in order to prove that Plato held such and such a view, he acts about as reasonably as if he were to assert that according to Shakespeare life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. But this is a silly remark: everyone knows that Plato speaks through the mouth not indeed of his Protagoras, his Callicles, his Menon, his Hippias, and his Thrasymachus, but of his Socrates, his Eleatic stranger, his Timaeus and his Athenian stranger. Plato speaks through the mouths of his spokesmen. But why does he use a variety of spokesmen? Why does he make his Socrates a silent listener to his Timaeus’ and his Eleatic stranger’s speeches? He does not tell us; no one knows the reason; those who claim to know mistake guesses for knowledge. As long as we do not know that reason, we do not know what it means tc be a spokesman for Plato; we do not even know whether there is such a thing as a spokesman for Plato. But this is still sillier: every child knows that the spokesman par excellence of Plato is his revered teacher or friend Socrates to whom he entrusted his own teaching fully or in part. We do not wish to appear more ignorant than every child and shall therefore repeat with childlike docility that the spokesman par excellence for Plato is Socrates. But it is one of Socrates’ peculiarities that he was a master of irony. We are back where we started: to speak through the mouth of a man who is
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ON PLATO’S REPUBLIC
notorious for his irony seems to be tantamount to not asserting any- thing. Could it be true that Plato, like his Socrates, the master of the ‘knowledge of ignorance, did not assert anything, i.e. did not have a teaching?
Let us then assume that the Platonic dialogues do not convey a teaching, but, being a monument to Socrates, present the Socratic way of life as a model. Yet they cannot tell us: live as Socrates lived. For Socrates’ life was rendered possible by his possession of a “demonic” gift and we do not possess such a gift. The dialogues must then tell us: live as Socrates tells you to live; live as Socrates teaches you to live. The assumption that the Platonic dialogues do not convey a teaching is absurd.
Very much, not to say everything, seems to depend on what Socratic irony is. Irony is a kind of dissimulation, or of untruthful- ness. Aristotle therefore treats the habit of irony primarily as a vice. Yet irony is the dissembling, not of evil actions or of vices, but rather of good actions or of virtues; the ironic man, in opposition to the boaster, understates his worth. If irony is a vice, it is a graceful vice. Properly used, it is not a vice at all: the magnanimous man—the man who regards himself as worthy of great things while in fact being worthy of them—is truthful and frank because he is in the habit of looking down and yet he is ironical in his intercourse with the many. Irony is then the noble dissimulation of one’s worth, of one’s superiority. We may say, it is the humanity peculiar to the superior man: he spares the feelings of his inferiors by not display- ing his superiority. The highest form of superiority is the superiority in wisdom. Irony in the highest sense will then be the dissimulation of one’s wisdom, i.e. the dissimulation of one’s wise thoughts. This can take two forms: either expressing on a “wise” subject such thoughts (e.g. generally accepted thoughts) as are less wise than one’s own thoughts or refraining from expressing any thoughts regarding a “wise” subject on the ground that one does not have knowledge regarding it and therefore can only raise questions but cannot give any answers. If irony is essentially related to the fact that thére is a natural order of rank among men, it follows that irony consists in speaking differently to different kinds of people.’
While there can be no doubt that Socrates was notorious for his
* Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 1108219-22; 1124b29-31; 1127a20~-26, b22-31. * Plato, Rivals 183d8-el; cf. 184ci-6.
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THE CITY AND MAN
irony, it is not muct: of an exaggeration to say that irony and kindred words “are only used of Socrates by his opponents and have always an unfavorable meaning.” To this one could reply that where there was so much smoke there must have been some fire or rather that avowed irony would be absurd. But be this as it may, we certainly must return to the beginning. One cannot understand Plato’s teaching as he meant it if one does not know what the Platonic -dialogue is. One cannot separate the understanding of Plato’s teaching from the understanding of the form in which it is presented. One must pay as much attention to the How as to the What. At any rate to begin with one must even pay greater atten- tion to the “form” than to the “substance,” since the meaning of the “substance” depends on the “form.” One must postpone one’s concern with the most serious questions (the philosophic questions) in order to become engrossed in the study of a merely literary question. Still, there is a connection between the literary question and the philo- sophic question. The literary question, the question of presentation, is concerned with a kind of communication. Communication may be a means for living together; in its highest form, communication is living together. The study of the literary question is therefore an important part of the study of society. Furthermore, the quest for truth is necessarily, if not in every respect, a common quest, a quest taking place through communication. The study of the literary ques- tion is therefore an important part of the study of what philosophy is. The literary question properly understood is the question of the relation between society and philosophy.
Plato’s Socrates discusses the literary question—the question concerning writings—in the Phaedrus. He says that writing is an invention of doubtful value. He thus makes us understand why he abstained from writing speeches or books. But Plato wrote dia- logues. We may assume that the Platonic dialogue is a kind of writing which is free from the essential defect of writings. Writings are essentially defective because they are equally accessible to all who can read or because they do not know to whom to talk and to whom to be silent or because they say the same things to every- one. We may conclude that the Platonic dialogue says different things to different people—not accidentally, as every writing does,
* Burnet on Plato, Apology of Socrates 38a1. Cf, Symposion 218d6-7 and Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 1127b25-26.
if
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ON PLATO’S REPUBLIC
but that it is so contrived as to say different things to different people, or that it is radically ironical. The Platonic dialogue, if properly read, reveals itself to possess the flexibility or adaptability of oral communication. What it means to read a good writing prop- erly is intimated by Socrates in the Phaedrus when he describes the character of a good writing. A writing is good if it complies with “logographic necessity,” with the necessity which ought to govern the writing of speeches: every part of the written speech must be necessary for the whole; the place where each part occurs is the place where it is necessary that it should occur; in a word, the good writing must resemble the healthy animal which can do its proper work well. The proper work of a writing is to talk to some readers and to be silent to others. But does not every writing admittedly talk to all readers?
Since Plato’s Socrates does not solve this difficulty for us, let us have recourse to Xenophon’s Socrates. According to Xenophon, Socrates’ art of conversation was twofold. When someone contra- dicted him on any point, he went back to the assumption underlying the whole dispute by raising the question “what is . . .” regarding the subject matter of the dispute and by answering it step by step; in this way the truth became manifest to the very contradictors. But when he discussed a subject on his own initiative, i.e. when he talked to people who merely listened, he proceeded through gener- ally accepted opinions and thus produced agreement to an ex- traordinary degree. This latter kind of the art of conversation which leads to agreement, as distinguished from evident truth, is the art which Homer ascribed to the wily Odysseus by calling him “a safe speaker.” It may seem strange that Socrates treated the contradictors better than the docile people. The strangeness is removed by an- other report of Xenophon. Socrates, we are told, did not approach all men in the same manner. He approached differently the men possessing good natures by whom he was naturally attracted on the one hand, and the various types of men lacking good natures on the other. The men possessing good natures are the gifted ones: those who are quick to learn, have a good memory and are desirous for all worthwhile subjects of learning. It would not be strange if Soc- rates had tried to lead those who are able to think toward the truth and to lead the others toward agreement in salutary opinions or to
* Phaedrus 275d4-276a7 and 264b7—c5.
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confirm them in such opinions. Xenophon’s Socrates engaged in his most blissful work only with his friends or rather his “good friends.” For, as Plato’s Socrates says, it is safe to say the truth among sensi- ble friends.* If we connect this information with the information de- rived from the Phaedrus, we reach this conclusion: the proper work of a writing is truly to talk, or to reveal the truth, to some while leading others to salutary opinions; the proper work of a writing is to arouse to thinking those who are by nature fit for it; the good writing achieves its end if the reader considers carefully the “logo- graphic necessity” of every part, however small or seemingly insig- nificant, of the writing.
But “good writing” is only the genus of which the Platonic dia- logue is a species. The model for the good writing is the good con- versation. But there is this essential difference between any book and any conversation: in a book the author addresses many men wholly unknown to him, whereas in a conversation the speaker ad- dresses one or more men whom he knows more or less well. If the good writing must imitate the good conversation, it would seem that it must be addressed primarily to one or more men known to the author; the primary addressee would then act as a representative of that type of reader whom the author wishes to reach above all. It is not necessary that that type should consist of the men possessing the best natures. The Platonic dialogue presents a conversation in which a man converses with one or more men more or less well known to him and in which he can therefore adapt what he says to the abilities, the characters, and even the moods of his interlocutors. But the Platonic dialogue is distinguished from the conversation which it presents by the fact that it makes accessible that conversa- tion to a multitude wholly unknown to Plato and never addressed by Plato himself. On the other hand the Platonic dialogue shows us much more clearly than an Epistle Dedicatory could, in what man- ner the teaching conveyed through the work is adapted by the main speaker to his particular audience and therewith how that teaching would have to be restated in order to be valid beyond the particular situation of the conversation in question. For in no Platonic dialogue do the men who converse with the main speaker possess the per- fection of the best nature. This is one reason why Plato employs a
* Memorabilia 1 6.14, IV 1.2-2.1; cf. IV 6.18-15 with Symposion 4.56-60; Plato, Republic 450d10~el.
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ON PLATO’S REPUBLIC
variety of spokesmen: by failing to present a conversation between Socrates and the Eleatic stranger or Timaeus, he indicates that there is no Platonic dialogue among men who are, or could be thought to be, equals.
One could reject the preceding observations on the ground that they too are based chiefly and at best on what Platonic characters say and not on what Plato himself says. Let us then return once more to the surface. Let us abandon every pretense to know. Let us admit that the Platonic dialogue is an enigma—something perplex- ing and to be wondered at. The Platonic dialogue is one big ques- tion mark. A question mark in white chalk on a blackboard is wholly unrevealing. Two such question marks would tell us something; they would draw our attention to the number 2. The number of dialogues which has come down to us as Platonic is 35. Some of them are at present generally regarded as spurious; but the atheteses ultimately rest on the belief that we know what Plato taught or thought or what he could possibly have written or that we have ex- hausted his possibilities. At any rate, we are confronted with many individuals of the same kind: we can compare; we can note simi- larities and dissimilarities; we can divide the genus “Platonic dia- logue” into species; we can reason. Let us regard the 35 dialogues as individuals of one species of strange things, of strange animals. Let us proceed like zoologists. Let us start by classifying those indi- viduals and see whether we do not hear Plato himself, as distin- guished from his characters, speak through the surface of the sur- face of his work. Even if we make the most unintelligent assumption which, as it happens, is the most cautious assumption, that for all we know the Platonic dialogues might be verbatim reports of con- versations, the selection of these particular 35 conversations would still be the work of Plato; for Socrates must have had more conver- sations known to Plato than there are Platonic dialogues presenting Socratic conversations: Socrates must have had some conversations with Plato himself, and there is no Platonic dialogue in which Soc- rates converses with Plato.®
While everything said in the Platonic dialogues is said by Plato's characters, Plato himself takes full responsibility for the titles of the dialogues. There are only four dialogues whose titles designate the subject matter: the Republic, the Laws, the Sophist, and the States-
* Consider Republic 505a2-3.
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man. There is no Platonic Nature or Truth. The subject matter of the dialogues as it is revealed by the titles is preponderantly polit- ical. This suggestion is strengthened by the observation that accord- ing to Plato's Socrates the greatest sophist is the political multitude.’ There are 25 dialogues whose titles designate the name of a human being who in one way or another participates in the conversation recorded in the dialogue in question; that human being is invariably a male contemporary of Socrates; in these cases the titles are as un- revealing or almost as unrevealing as regards the subject matter of the dialogues in question as the titles of Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary. Only in three cases (Timaeus, Critias, Parmenides) does the title clearly designate the chief character of the dialogue con- cerned. In two cases (Hipparchus and Minos) the title consists of the name, not of a participant, but of a man of the past who is only spoken about in the dialogue; these titles remind of the titles of tragedies. The name of Socrates occurs only in the title Apology of Socrates. One may say that seven titles indicate the theme of the dialogues concerned: Republic, Laws, Sophist, Statesman, Hippar- chus, Minos, and Apology of Socrates; the theme of the dialogues, in so far as it is revealed by the titles, is preponderantly political.
The fact that the name of Socrates occurs in no title except that of the Apology of Socrates is hardly an accident. Xenophon devoted four writings to Socrates; he too mentions the name of Socrates in no title except that of his Apology of Socrates; his most extensive writing devoted to Socrates is called Recollections and not, as one would expect from its content, Recollections of Socrates; Xenophon, just as Plato, deliberately refrained from mentioning Socrates in a title except when conjoined with “apology.” Plato’s Apology of Soc- rates presents Socrates’ official and solemn account of his way of life, the account which he gave to the city of Athens when he was com- pelled to defend himself against the accusation of having committed a capital crime. Socrates calls this account a conversation.® It is his only conversation with the city of Athens, and it is not more than an incipient conversation: it is rather one-sided. In this official ac- count Socrates speaks at some length of the kind of people with whom he was in the habit of having conversations. It appears that he conversed with many Athenian citizens in public, in the market
* Renublic 492a8-494a6, *37a6-7; cf. 89e1-5 and Gorgias 455a2-6.
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at the tables of the money-changers. His peculiar “business” which made him suspect to his fellow citizens consisted in examining them with regard to their claim to be wise. He examined all who were supposed to possess some knowledge. But he mentions in his de- tailed statement only three kinds of such men: the politicians, the poets, and the craftsmen. It is true that in a brief repetition he adds the orators to the three classes mentioned before and shortly before the repetition he says that he examined whichever Athenian or stranger he believed to be wise.® But it cannot be denied that ac- cording to the suggestions of the Apology of Socrates one would expect to find more Platonic dialogues presenting Socratic conversa- tions with Athenian common men and in particular with Athenian politicians, craftsmen, and poets than Platonic dialogues presenting Socratic conversations with foreign sophists, rhetoricians, and the like. The Platonic Socrates is famous or ridiculed for speaking about shoemakers and the like; but we never see or hear him speak to shoemakers or the like. He converses in deed (as distinguished from his self-presentation in his sole public speech) only with people who are not common people—who belong in one way or the other to an elite, although never, or almost never, to the elite in the highest sense. Xenophon devotes a whole chapter of the Memorabilia, al- though only one chapter, to showing how useful Socrates was to craftsmen when he happened to converse with such people. In the chapter following, Xenophon records a conversation between Soc- rates and a beautiful woman of easy manners who was visiting Athens.*° In the Platonic dialogues we find two Socratic reports about conversations which he had with famous women (Diotima and Aspasia) but on the stage we see and hear only one woman, and her only once: his wife Xanthippe. Above all, Plato presents no Socratic conversation between Socrates and men of the demos, and in particular craftsmen; he presents only one Socratic conversation with poets and very few with Athenian citizens who were actual or retired politicians at the time of the conversation, as distinguished from young men of promise. It is above all through this selection of conversations, apart from the titles, that we hear Plato himself as distinguished from his characters.
° Cf. 17c8-9, 19d2-8, 21e6-22a1 (and context) with 23b5-6 and 23e3-— 24a.
“ {iT 10-11.
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The division of the Platonic dialogues which comes next in obvi- ousness is that between performed dialogues of which there are 26, and narrated dialogues of which there are 9. The narrated dialogues are narrated either by Socrates (6) or by someone else mentioned by name (3) and they are narrated either to a named man (2) or to a nameless companion (2) or to an indeterminate audience (5). Plato is mentioned as present in the Apology of Socrates which is a performed dialogue and as absent in the Phaedo which is a narrated dialogue. One cannot infer from this that Plato must be thought to _ have been present at all performed dialogues and absent from all narrated dialogues. One must rather say that Plato speaks to us directly, without the intermediacy of his characters, also by the fact that he presented most of the dialogues as performed and the others as narrated. Each of these two forms has its peculiar advantages. The performed dialogue is not encumbered by the innumerable repetitions of “he said” and “I said.” In the narrated dialogue on the other hand a participant in the conversation gives an account di- rectly or indirectly to nonparticipants and hence also to us, while in the performed dialogue there is no bridge between the char- acters of the dialogue and the reader; in a narrated dialogue Soc- rates may tell us things which he could not tell with propriety to his interlocutors, for instance why he made a certain move in the conversation or what he thought of his interlocutors; he thus can reveal to us some of his secrets. Plato himself does not tell us what he means by his division of his dialogues into performed and nar- rated ones and why any particular dialogue is either narrated or per- formed. But he permits us a glimpse into his workshop by making us the witnesses of the transformation of a narrated dialogue into a performed one. Socrates had narrated his conversation with Theae- tetus to the Megarian Euclides; Euclides, who apparently did not have as good a memory as some other Platonic characters, had writ- ten down what he had heard from Socrates, not indeed verbatim as Socrates had narrated it, but “omitting . . . the narratives between the speeches” like Socrates’ saying “I said” and “Theaetetus agreed”; Euclides had transformed a narrated dialogue into a performed dia- logue. The expressions used by Euclides are used by Socrates in the Republic. As he makes clear there at great length, if a writer speaks only as if he were one or the other of his characters, i.e. if he “omits”
” Theaetetus 142c8-143c5.
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“what is between the speeches” of the characters (the “a said”’s and “b replied” ’s), the writer conceals himself completely, and his writings are dramas.’* It is clear that the writer conceals
completely also when he does not “omit what is between the speeches” but entrusts the narrative to one of his characters. Accord- ing to Plato’s Socrates, we would then have to say that Plato con- ceals himself completely in his dialogues. This does not mean that Plato conceals his name; it was always known that Plato was the author of the Platonic dialogues. It means that Plato conceals his opinions. We may draw the further conclusion that the Platonic dia- logues are dramas, if dramas in prose. They must then be read like dramas. We cannot ascribe to Plato any utterance of any of his characters without having taken great precautions. To illustrate this by our example, in order to know what Shakespeare, in contradis- tinction to his Macbeth, thinks about life, one must consider Mac- beth’s utterance in the light of the play as a whole; we might thus find that according to the play as a whole, life is not senseless simply, but becomes senseless for him who violates the sacred law of life, or the sacred order restores itself, or the violation of the law of life is self-destructive; but since that self-destruction is exhibited in the case of Macbeth, a human being of a particular kind, one would have to wonder whether the apparent lesson of the play is true of all men or universally; one would have to consider whether what appears to be a natural law is in fact a natural law, given the fact that Macbeth’s violation of the law of life is at least partly originated by preternatural beings. In the same way we must under-. stand the “speeches” of all Platonic characters in the light of the “deeds.” The “deeds” are in the first place the setting and the action of the individual] dialogue: on what kind of men does Socrates act with his speeches? what is the age, the character, the abilities, the position in society, and the appearance of each? when and where does the action take place? does Socrates achieve what he intends? is his action voluntary or imposed on him? Perhaps Socrates does not primarily intend to teach a doctrine but rather to educate hu- man beings—to make them better, more just or gentle, more aware of their limitations. For before men can genuinely listen to a teach- ing, they must be willing to do so; they must have become aware of their need to listen; they must be liberated from the charms
* Republic 392c1-394c6.
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which make them obtuse; this liberation is achieved less by speech _ than by silence and deed—by the silent action of Socrates which is — not identical with his speech. But the “deeds” also include the rele- vant “facts” which are not mentioned in the “speeches” and yet were known to Socrates or to Plato; a given Socratic speech which per- suades his audience entirely may not be in accordance with the “facts” known to Socrates. We are guided to those “facts” partly by, the unthematic details and partly by seemingly casual remarks. It is relatively easy to understand the speeches of the characters: every- one who listens or reads perceives them. But to perceive what in a sense is not said, to perceive how what is said is said, is more diffi- cult. The speeches deal with something general or universal (e.g. with justice), but they are made in a particular or individual set- ting: these and those human beings converse there and then about the universal subject; to understand the speeches in the light of the deeds means to see how the philosophic treatment of the philosophic theme is modified by the particular or individual or transformed into a rhetorical or poetic treatment or to recover the implicit philo- sophic treatment from the explicit rhetorical or poetic treatment. Differently stated, by understanding the speeches in the light of the deeds, one transforms the two-dimensional] into something three- dimensional or rather one restores the original three-dimensionality. In a word, one cannot take seriously enough the law of logographic necessity. Nothing is accidental in a Platonic dialogue; everything is necessary at the place where it occurs. Everything which would be accidental outside of the dialogue becomes meaningful within the dialogue. In all actual conversations chance plays a considerable role: all Platonic dialogues are radically fictitious. The Platonic dialogue is based on a fundamental falsehood, a beautiful or beauti- fying falsehood, viz. on the denial of chance.
When Socrates explains in the Republic what a drama in contra- distinction to other poetry is, the austere Adeimantus thinks only of tragedy. In the same way the austere reader of the Platonic dia- logues—and the first thing which Plato does to his readers is to make them austere—understands the Platonic dialogue as a new kind of tragedy, perhaps as the finest and best kind. Yet Socrates adds to Adeimantus’ mention of tragedy the words “and comedy.”!* At this point we are compelled to have recourse, not only to an author other
* Republic 394b8-c2.
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than Plato but to an author whom Plato could not have known since he lived many centuries after Plato’s death. The reason is this. We have access to Plato primarily only through the Platonic tradition, for it is that tradition to which we owe the interpretations, transla- tions, and editions. The Platonic tradition has been for many cen- turies a tradition of Christian Platonism. The blessings which we owe to that tradition must not blind us however to the fact that there is a difference between Christian and primitive Platonism. It is not surprising that perhaps the greatest helper in the effort to see that difference should be a Christian saint. I have in mind Sir Thomas More. His Utopia is a free imitation of Plato’s Republic. More’s perfect commonwealth is much less austere than Plato's. Since More understood very well the relation between speeches and deeds, he expressed the difference between his perfect common- wealth and Plato’s by having his perfect commonwealth expounded after dinner, whereas the exposition of Plato’s commonwealth takes the place of a dinner. In the thirteenth chapter of his Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation More says: “And for to prove that this life is no laughing time, but rather the time of weeping, we find that our saviour himself wept twice or thrice, but never find we that he laughed so much as once. I will not swear that he never did, but at the least wise he left us no example of it. But, on the other side, he left us example of weeping.” More must have known that exactly the opposite is true of Plato’s—or Xenophon’s—Socrates: Socrates left us no example of weeping, but, on the other side, he left us example of laughing."* The relation of weeping and laughing is similar to that of tragedy and comedy. We may therefore say that the Socrat- ic conversation and hence the Platonic dialogue is slightly more akin to comedy than to tragedy. This kinship is noticeable also in Plato’s Republic which is manifestly akin to Aristophanes’ Assembly of Women.5
Plato's work consists of many dialogues because it imitates the manyness, the variety, the heterogeneity of being. The many dia-
“ Phaedo 115c5; Xenophon, Apology of Socrates 28.
* Cf. Assembly of Women 558-567, 590-591, 594-598, 606, 611-614, 635-643, 655-661, 673-674, and 1029 with Republic 442d10-443a7, 416d3-5, 417a6-7, 464b8-c3, 872b-c, 420a4—-5, 457c10-d3, 461c8-d2, 465b1-4, 464d7- e7, 41Gd6-7, 493d6. Cf. Republic 451c2 with Thesmophoriazusae 151, 452b6- c2 with Lysistrata 676-678, and 473d5 with Lysistrata 772. Consider also 420e1—421b3. ,
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logues form a kosmos which mysteriously imitates the mysterious kosmos. The Platonic kosmos imitates or reproduces its model in order to awaken us to the mystery of the model and to assist us in articulating that mystery. There are many dialogues because the whole consists of many parts. But the individual dialogue is not a chapter from an encyclopaedia of the philosophic sciences or from a system of philosophy, and still less a relic of a stage of Plato's development. Each dialogue deals with one part; it reveals the truth about that part. But the truth about a part is a partial truth, a half truth. Each dialogue, we venture to say, abstracts from some- thing that is most important to the subject matter of the dialogue. If this is so, the subject matter as presented in the dialogue is strictly speaking impossible. But the impossible—or a certain kind of the impossible—if treated as possible is in the highest sense ridic- ulous or, as we are in the habit of saying, comical. The core of every Aristophanean comedy is something impossible of the kind indicated. The Platonic dialogue brings to its completion what could be thought to have been completed by Aristophanes.— The Republic, the most famous political work of Plato, the most famous political work of all times, is a narrated dialogue whose theme is justice. While the place of the conversation is made quite clear to us, the time, i.e. the year, is not. We lack therefore certain knowledge of the political circumstances in which the conversation about the political principle took place. Yet we are not left entirely in the dark on this point. In the Republic Socrates tells the story of a descent. The day before, he had gone down from Athens in the company of Glaucon to the Piraeus, the seat of Athenian naval and commercial power, the stronghold of the democracy. He had not gone down to the Piraeus in order to have a conversation there about justice but in order to pray to the goddess—perhaps a god- dess new and strange to Athens—and at the same time because he was desirous to look at a novel festival which included not only an indigenous but also a foreign procession. When hurrying back to town he and his companion are detained by some acquaintances who induce them to go with them to the house of one of them, a wealthy metic, from which they are supposed to go, after dining, to look at a novel torchrace in honor of the goddess as well as at a night festival. In that house they meet some other men. The synontes (those who are together with Socrates on the occasion and are mentioned by name) are altogether ten, only five of
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whom are Athenians whereas four are metics and one a famous foreign teacher of rhetoric. (Only six of the ten participate in the conversation.) We are clearly at the opposite pole from Old Athens, from the ancestral polity, the Athens of the Marathon- fighters. We breathe the air of the new and the strange—of decay. At any rate Socrates and his chief interlocutors, Glaucon and Adeimantus, prove to be greatly concerned with that decay and to think of the restoration of political health. The harshest possible in- dictment of the reigning democracy, the novel polity favoring novelty, which was ever uttered is uttered in the Republic without a voice being raised in its defense. Besides, Socrates makes very radical proposals of reform without encountering serious resistance. Some years after the conversation, men linked to Socrates and Plato by kinship or friendship attempted a political restoration, putting down the democracy and restoring an aristocratic regime dedicated to virtue and justice. Among other things they established an authority called the Ten in the Piraeus. Yet the characters of the Republic are different from these statesmen. Some of the characters of the Republic (Polemarchus, Lysias, and Niceratus) were mere victims of the latter, of the so-called Thirty Tyrants. The situation resembles that in the Laches where Socrates discusses courage with generals defeated or about to be defeated and in the Charmides where he discusses moderation with future tyrants; in the Republic he discusses justice in the presence of victims of an abortive attempt made by most unjust men to restore justice.?° We are thus prepared for the possibility that the restoration attempted in the Republic will not take place on the political plane.
The character of the Socratic restoration begins to reveal itself by the action preceding the conversation. The conversation about justice is not altogether voluntary. When Socrates and Glaucon hasten homeward, Polemarchus (the War Lord), seeing them from afar, orders his slave to run after them and to order them to wait for him. Not Socrates but Glaucon answers the slave that they will wait. A little later Polemarchus appears in the company of Adeiman-
* Lysias, Against Eratosthenes 4-23; Xenophon, Hellenica II 8.89, 4.19, 38; Plato, Seventh Letter 324c5; Aristotle, Politics 18303b10-12 and Constitution of ‘the Athenians 85.1. The Archon Polemarchus was the Athenian magistrate in charge of lawsuits in which metics were involved (Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians 68).
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tus, Niceratus and some others not mentioned by name; the name of Adeimantus, the most important man in this group, is put in the center as is meet. Polemarchus, pointing to the numerical and hence brachial superiority of his group, demands of Socrates and Glaucon that they stay in the Piraeus. Socrates replies that they might prevent the coercion by persuasion. Yet, Polemarchus replies, he and his group could make themselves inimune to persuasion by refusing to listen. Thereupon Glaucon, and not Socrates, cedes to force. Fortunately, before Socrates too might be compelled to cede to force, Adeimantus begins to use persuasion; he promises Socrates and Glaucon a novel spectacle if they stay: a torchrace on horse- back in honor of the goddess which is so exciting not because of the goddess but because of the horses. Polemarchus following Adei- mantus promises yet another sight for the time after dinner and still another attraction. Thereupon Glaucon, and not Socrates, makes the decision, his third decision: “it seems as if we should have to stay.” The vote is now almost unanimous in favor of Socrates’ and Glaucon’s staying in the Piraeus: Socrates has no choice but to abide by the decision of the overwhelming majority. Ballots have taken the place of bullets: ballots are convincing only as long as bullets are remembered. We owe then the conversation on justice to a mixture of compulsion and persuasion. To cede to such a mixture, or to a kind of such a mixture, is an act of justice. Justice itself, duty, obligation, is a kind of mixture of compulsion and persuasion, of coercion and reason.
Yet the initiative soon passes to Socrates. Owing to his initiative, all sight-seeing and even the dinner are completely forgotten in favor of the conversation about justice, which must have lasted from the afternoon until the next morning. Especially the central part of the conversation must have taken place without the benefit of the natural light of the sun and perhaps in artificial light (cf. the beginning of the fifth book). The action of the Republic thus proves to be an act of moderation, of self-control regarding the pleasures, and even the needs, of the body and regarding the pleasures of see- ing sights or of gratifying curiosity. This action too reveals the char- acter of the Socratic restoration: the feeding of the body and of the senses is replaced by the feeding of the mind. Yet was it not the desire to see sights which had induced Socrates to go down to the Piraeus and hence, as it happened, to expose himself to the compul- sion to stay in the Piraeus and thus to engage in the conversation about justice? Is Socrates punished by others or by himself for an
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act of self-indulgence? Just as his staying in the Piraeus is due to a combination of compulsion and persuasion, his going down to the Piraeus was due to a combination of piety and curiosity. His de- scending to the Piraeus would seem to remain a mystery unless we assume that he was prompted by his piety as distinguished from any desire. Yet we must not forget that he descended together with Glaucon. We cannot exclude the possibility that he descended to the Piraeus for the sake of Glaucon and at the request of Glaucon. After all, all decisions made prior to the conversation in so far as we could observe them were made by Glaucon. Xenophon" tells us that Socrates, being well-disposed toward Glaucon for the sake of Charmides and of Plato, cured him of his extreme political ambition. In order to achieve this cure he had first to make him willing to listen to him by gratifying him. Plato’s Socrates may have de- scended to the Piraeus together with Glaucon who was eager to descend, in order to find an unobtrusive opportunity for curing him: of his extreme political ambition. Certain it is that the Republic supplies the most magnificent cure ever devised for every form of political ambition.
At the beginning of the conversation, Cephalus, the aged father of Polemarchus and two other characters, occupies the center. He is the father in the full sense, one reason being that he is a man of wealth; wealth strengthens paternity. He stands for what seems to be the most natural authority. He possesses the dignity peculiar to old age and thus presents the order which is based on reverence for the old, the old order as opposed to the present decay. We can easily believe that the old order is superior even to any restoration. Although he is a lover of speeches, Cephalus leaves the conversation about justice when it has barely begun in order to perform an act of piety, and he never returns: his justice is not in need of speeches or reasons. After he has left, Socrates occupies the center. However lofty Cephalus’ justice may be, it is animated by the traditional notion of justice, and that notion is radically deficient (366d-e). The old order is deficient, for it is the origin of the present disorder: Cephalus is the father of Polemarchus. And assuredly, the metic Cephalus is not the proper representative of the old order, of the old Athenian order. The good is not identical with the paternal or ancestral. Piety is replaced by philosophy.
Since the conversation about justice was not planned, one must.”
* Memorabilia III 6.
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see how it came about. The conversation opens with Socrates’ ad- dressing a question to Cephalus. The question is a model of pro- priety. It gives Cephalus an opportunity to speak of everything good which he possesses, to display his happiness as it were, and it con- cerns the only subject of a general character about which Socrates could conceivably learn something from him: how it feels to be very old. Socrates surely meeis very rarely men of Cephalus’ age (cf. Apology of Socrates 23c2) and when he does, they do not give him as good an opportunity to ask them this question as Cephalus does. Cephalus on the other hand converses ordinarily only with men of his own age and they ordinarily talk about old age. Dis- agreeing with most of his contemporaries, but agreeing with the aged poet Sophocles, he praises old age with special regard to the fact that old men are free from sexual desire, a raging and savage master. Obviously Cephalus, as distinguished from Socrates, had suffered greatly under that master when he was not yet very old; and, as distinguished from Sophocles, who had spoken so harshly about sexual desire when he was indelicately asked about his condi- tion in this respect, he brings up this subject spontaneously when _ asked about old age in general (cf. already 328d2-4). The first point made by Socrates’ first interlocutor in the Republic concerns the evils of eros. Old age is then worthy of praise since it brings freedom from sensual desires or since it brings moderation. But - Cephalus corrects himself immediately: what is relevant for a man’s well-being is not age but character; for men of good character, even old age is only moderately burdensome—which implies that old age is of course more burdensome than youth. One might think of the weakening of memory and of the sense of sight but Cephalus does not say a word about these infirmities. How his final judgment on old age can be true if sexual desire, that scourge of youth, is such a very great hardship, is not easy to see. No wonder that Socrates wonders at Cephalus’ statement. Desiring that Cephalus should re- © veal himself more fully, Socrates mentions the possibility that Cephalus’ bearing old age lightly is due, not to his good character, but to his great wealth. Cephalus does not deny that wealth is the necessary condition for bearing old age lightly (he thus unwittingly advises poor Socrates against becoming very old) but he denies that it is the sufficient condition: the most important condition is good character. Socrates gives Cephalus an occasion to speak of another facet of his moderation—a facet which did not have to wait for old
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age to be brought out—his moderation regarding the acquisition of wealth; it becomes clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that Ceph- alus’ moderation in this respect is genuine. Socrates has only one further question (his third and last question prior to the question regarding justice) to address to Cephalus: What in your opinion is the greatest good which you have enjoyed through your wealth? Cephalus himself does not regard his answer as very convincing. To appreciate it, one needs the experience of old age which apart from him no one else present has, or at least an equivalent experience (cf. Phaedo 64a4-6): one must be close to believing that one is going to die. Once one is in that state, one begins to fear that the stories told about the things in Hades might be true: that he who has acted unjustly here may have to undergo punishment there, and one begins to ask oneself whether one has not done injustice to any- one in anything. In this scrupulous search one may find that one has involuntarily cheated someone or lied to him or that one owes some sacrifices to a god or money to a human being. Only if one possesses wealth can one pay those debts while there is still time. This then is the greatest good which Cephalus enjoys from his wealth since he has begun to believe that he is going to die. We note that the last point, just as the first, deals with Cephalus’ present state only: only the central point (his moderation regarding the acquisition of wealth) deals with the whole course of his life.
Cephalus’ reply could have given occasion to more than one question: what was the greatest good which Cephalus enjoyed from his wealth when he was of middle age and when he was young? how trustworthy are the stories regarding punishment after death? is involuntary deception an unjust action? is a man as moderate as Cephalus in regard to wealth likely ever to have acted unjustly? Socrates raises none of these questions for they ultimately lead back to the question which he does raise: is the view of justice implied in Cephalus’ reply correct? is justice simply identical with truthfulness and restoring what one has taken or received from someone? Soc- rates seems to narrow unduly the view of the pious merchant Cephalus who had spoken of paying what one owes to gods or men; Socrates seems to disregard entirely Cephalus’ reference to sacrifices to the gods. Could he have thought that bringing sacrifices means to restore to the gods what one has received from them, since every- thing good we have we owe to the gods (379cff.)? One cannot say that the restoration takes place naturally, by our dying, for in that
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case Cephalus would have no reason to worry about his debt to the gods, to say nothing of the fact that Cephalus leaves everything he owns to his children; but this fact shows also that bringing sacri- fices is not a special case of restoring what one has received or taken. Let us then assume that Socrates regards the bringing of sacrifices as an act of piety as distinguished from justice (cf. 33la4 with Gorgias 507b1—3) or that he limits the conversation to justice as distinguished from piety.
Socrates shows with ease that Cephalus’ view of justice is unten- able: a man who has taken or received a weapon from a sane man would act unjustly if he returned it to him when he asked for it after having become insane; in the same way one would act un- justly by being resolved to say nothing but the truth to a madman. Cephalus seems to be about to concede his defeat when his son and heir Polemarchus, acting as a dutiful son, rising in defense of his father, takes the place of his father in the conversation. But the opinion which he defends is not exactly the same as his father’s; if we may make use of a joke of Socrates, Polemarchus inherits only a half, perhaps even less than a half, of his father’s intellectual prop- erty. Polemarchus no longer maintains that saying the truth is un- qualifiedly required by justice. Without knowing it, he thus lays down one of the principles of the teaching of the Republic. As ap- pears later in the work, in a well-ordered society it is required that one tell untruths of a certain kind to children and even to the grown-up subjects. This example reveals the character of the discus- sions which occur in the first book of the Republic. There Socrates refutes a number of false opinions about justice. Yet this negative or destructive work contains within itself the positive or edifying assertions of the bulk of the work. Let us consider from this point of view the three opinions on justice discussed in the first book.
Cephalus’ opinion, as taken up by Polemarchus after his father had left both piously and laughingly, is to the effect that justice consists in paying one’s debts. Only Cephalus’ particular preoccupa- tion can justify this very particular view of justice. The complete view after which he gropes is none other than the one stated in the traditional definition of justice: justice consists in returning, leaving or giving to everyone what he is entitled to, what belongs to him.’® It is this view of justice with which Socrates takes issue in his dis-
“ Thomas Aquinas, S. th. 2 2 q. 58. a. 1. Cf. Cicero, Laws 119 and 45.
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cussion with Cephalus. In his refutation he tacitly appeals to an- other view of justice tacitly held by Cephalus, viz. that justice is good, not only for the giver (who is rewarded for his justice) but also for the receiver. The two views of justice are not simply com- patible. In some cases giving to a man what belongs to him is harm- ful to him. Not all men make a good or wise use of what belongs to them, of their property. If we judge very strictly, we might be driven to say that very few people make a wise use of their prop- erty. If justice is to be good or salutary, one might be compelled to demand that everyone own only what is “fitting” for him,!® what is good for him and for as long as it is good for him. We might be compelled to demand the abolition of private property or the intro- duction of communism. To the extent to which there is a connection between private property and the family, one would even be com- pelled to demand in addition the abolition of the family or the introduction of absolute communism, i.c. of communism regarding property, women, and children. Above all, very few people will be able to determine exactly what things and what amount of things are good for each individual, or at any rate for each individual who counts, to use; only men of exceptional wisdom are able to do this. We shall then be compelled to demand that society be ruled by simply wise men, by philosophers in the strict sense wielding abso- lute power. Socrates’ refutation of Cephalus’ view of justice con- tains then the proof of the necessity of absolute communism as well as of the absolute rule of philosophers. This proof, as is hardly nec- essary to say, is based on the disregard of, or the abstraction from, a number of most relevant things; it is “abstract” in the extreme. If one wishes to understand the Republic, one must try to find out what these disregarded things are and why they are disregarded. The Republic itself, properly read, supplies the answers to these questions.
Whereas the first opinion was only implied by Cephalus but stated by Socrates (and even by him only partly), the second opin- ion is stated by Polemarchus, although not without Socrates’ assist- ance. To begin with, Polemarchus’ thesis presents itself as identical with Cephalus’ thesis: undeterred by Socrates’ refutation, he appro- priates his father’s thesis while his father is still present, bolstering it by an additional authority, that of the poet Simonides. Only after
* Cf. 832c2 and Xenophon, Cyropaedia I 3.17.
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Cephalus has left and Socrates has repeated the refutation of Ceph- alus’ thesis does Polemarchus admit that the first opinion about justice is wrong and that Simonides’ opinion differs from Cephalus’ opinion: Simonides’ opinion is not exposed to Socrates’ powerful ob- jection. Simonides’ thesis as Polemarchus understands it is to the effect that justice consists, not in giving to everyone what belongs to him, bur in giving to everyone what is good for him. More pre- cisely, remembering that Socrates in refuting Cephalus’ view had spoken of what belongs to a friend (331c6), Polemarchus says in the name of Simonides that justice consists in doing good to one’s friends. Only when Socrates asks him about what justice requires in regard to enemies does he say that justice also requires that one harm one’s enemies. The view according to which justice consists in helping one’s friends and harming one’s enemies is the only one of the three views discussed in the first book of the Republic of which the discussion may be said to begin and to end with a So- cratic praise of the poets as wise men. It is also according to the Clitophon (410a6-b1 )—the dialogue preceding the Republic in the traditional order of Plato’s works—the only view of justice which is Socrates’ own. Justice thus understood is obviously good, not only to those receivers who are good to the giver but for this very reason to the giver as well; it does not need to be supported by divine re- wards and punishments, as does justice as understood by Cephalus; divine retribution is therefore dropped by Polemarchus who is fol- lowed therein by Thrasymachus. Yet Polemarchus’ view is exposed to difficulties of its own. The difficulty is not that justice understood in Polemarchus’ sense, as giving tit for tat, is merely reactive or does not cover the actions by which one originally acquires friends or enemies, for justice however understood presupposes things which in themselves are neither just nor unjust. One might say for instance that every human being has friends from the moment of his birth, namely his parents (330c4-6), and therewith enemies, namely the enemies of his family: to be a human being means to have friends and enemies. The difficulty is rather this. If justice is taken to be giving to others what belongs to them, the only thing which the just man must know is what belongs to anyone with whom he has any dealings or perhaps only what does and what does not be- long to himself. This knowledge is supplied by law, which in prin- ciple can be known easily by everybody through mere listening. But if justice is giving to one’s friends what is good for them, the just
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man himself must judge; he himself must know what is good for each of his friends; he himself must be able to distinguish correctly his friends from his enemies. Justice must include knowledge of a high order. To say the least, justice must be an art comparable to medicine, the art by virtue of which one knows and produces what is good for human bodies and therefore also knows and produces what is bad for them. This means however that the man who is best at healing his sick friends and poisoning his enemies is not the just man but the physician; yet the physician is also best at poisoning his friends. Confronted with these difficulties Polemarchus is unable to identify the knowledge or art which goes with justice or which is justice. His refutation takes place in three stages. In the central stage Socrates points out to him the difficulty of knowing one’s friends and one’s enemies. One may erroneously believe that some- one is one’s friend or that one has been benefited by him; by bene- fiting him one might in fact help an enemy. One might also harm a man who does not hurt anyone, a just or good man. It seems then better to say that justice consists in helping the just and in harming the unjust, or, since there is no reason to help a man who is not likely ever to help oneself and to harm a man who may have harmed others but is not likely to harm oneself, that justice consists in helping good men if they are one’s friends”° and in harming bad men if they are one’s enemies. It is obvious that justice understood as helping men who help oneself is advantageous to both parties. But is it advantageous to harm those who have harmed one? This question is taken up by Socrates in the third stage of his conversa- tion with Polemarchus. Harming human beings, just as harming dogs and horses, makes them worse. A sensible or just man will then not harm any human being, as little as a horse or a dog (cf. Apology of Socrates 25c3-e3 and Euthyphro 13a12~-c3). In this stage Socra- tes makes use of the premise that justice is an art, a premise which is discussed in the first stage but absent from the second stage. Polemarchus, we recall, was supposed to say which art justice is. Since justice is concerned with friends and enemies, it must be something like the art of war (332e4-6): justice is the art which enables men to become a fighting team each member of which helps every other so that they can jointly defeat their enemies and inflict on them any harm they deem good. Yet Socrates induces Pole-
*-Cf. 450d10-el with Gorgias 487a.
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marchus to grant that justice is useful also in peace, in peaceful exchange, in matters of money, but not indeed regarding the use of money but régarding the safekeeping of money or of other things; _ justice will then be the art of safekeeping; but that art proves to be identical with the art of stealing: the knowledge required for safe- keeping is identical with the knowledge required for stealing; the _ just man thus proves to be identical with the thief, i.e. with a mani- ' festly unjust man. The argument refutes, not Polemarchus’ thesis but the assumption that justice is an art; the identity of the honest guard and the thief follows necessarily if one considers only the knowledge, the intellectual part, of their work, and not their oppo- site moral intentions. Yet Polemarchus’ thesis was altogether amoral —this was also the reason why he had not provided for the differ- ence between the genuine friends and the merely seeming friends; therefore he gets what he deserves. The difficulty did not exist for his father in whose view justice was linked to the gods who know everything. This explanation is however not sufficient, for Socrates does not know of moral virtue as such: virtue is knowledge. In other words, one must raise the question: what is the intention or the will as distinguished from knowledge? is not a good intention based on a knowledge absent from the bad intention? is it not possible that the good intention is identical with knowledge of a certain kind? The good intention is based on an opinion absent from the bad intention. But every opinion on a subject seems to point toward knowledge of that subject. Prior to investigation we cannot even know whether justice is not an art comparable to the art of medi- cine, namely, the medicine of the soul or philosophy. Polemarchus’ first mistake in the conversation was his failure to stick to the identification of justice with the art of war: justice in “peace” is the allied individuals’ conduct toward neutrals; there is never simply peace. Secondly, Socrates’ refutation of Polemarchus is valid only on the premise that justice and stealing are incompatible, but at least the compatibility of justice with lying had been established in the conversation with his father, and the Greek word for stealing can also mean cheating and to do anything stealthily. But by far the most important point is the fact that the complete refutation of Polemarchus’ thesis culminates in the thesis that justice consists in helping the good men who are one’s friends and in not harming anybody: it does not culminate in the thesis that justice consists in helping everyone, and not even in the thesis that it consists in help-
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ing all good men.*! Justice is not beneficence. Perhaps Socrates means that there are human beings whom he cannot benefit: regard- ing fools only negative justice (abstention from harming them) is possible; justice consists in helping the wise and in harming no one. Remembering that according to Polemarchus’ original claim his thesis is identical with his father’s, one might say that justice con- sists in helpins the wise by saying the truth and giving to them what belongs to. them and in failing to do these things to the fools, to the madmen. However this may be, Socrates surely means also something much more immediately important. Polemarchus’ thesis reflects the most potent opinion regarding justice—the opinion according to which justice means public-spiritedness or concern with the common good, full dedication to one’s city as a particular city which as such is potentially the enemy of other cities, or pa- triotism. Justice thus understood consists indeed in helping one’s friends, i.e. one’s fellow citizens, and in hating one’s enemies, i.e. the foreigners. Justice thus understood cannot be dispensed with in any city however just, for even the justest city is a city, a particular or closed or exclusive society. Therefore Socrates himself demands later on (375b-376e) that the guardians of the city be by nature friendly to their own people and harsh or nasty to strangers. He also demands that the non-austere poets, a great evil for the city, be sent away to other cities (398a5-bl). Above all, he demands that the citizens of the just city cease to regard all human beings as their brothers and limit the feelings and actions of fraternity to their fellow citizens alone (414d-e). Polemarchus’ opinion properly understood is the only one among the generally known views of justice discussed in the first book of the Republic which is entirely preserved in the positive or constructive part of the work. This opinion, to repeat, is to the effect that justice is full dedication to the common good; it demands that one withhold nothing of his own from his city; it demands therefore by itself absolute communism.
The third and last opinion discussed in the first book of the Republic is the one maintained by Thrasymachus. The discussion with him forms by far the largest part of the first book, although not its central part. In a sense, however, it forms the center of the Republic as a whole, namely, if one divides the work in accordance with the change of Socrates’ interlocutors: (1) Cephalus-Polemarchus
* CE. Cicero, Republic I 28. Cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia IV 8.11 and 1 6.5.
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(father and son), (2) “Thrasymachus, (3) Glaucon and Adeimantus (brother and brother); Thrasymachus stands alone as Socrates does but his aloneness resembles rather that of the impious Cyclops. Thrasymachus is the only speaker in the work who exhibits anger and behaves discourteously and even savagely: his entry into the debate is compared by so gentle a man as Socrates to a wild beast's hurling itself upon him and Polemarchus as if he were about to tear them to pieces—one might say, Thrasymachus behaves like a graceless hater of speeches whose only weapon is force and savagery (336b5-6; cf. 41lel and context). It seems to be entirely fitting that the most savage man present should maintain the most savage thesis on justice. Thrasymachus contends that justice is the advantage of the stronger, that it is the other fellow’s good, i.e. good only for the receiver and bad for the giver; so far from being an art, it is folly; accordingly he praises injustice. He is lawless and shameless in deed and in speech; he blushes only on account of the heat. And, needless at it may be to say so, he is greedy for money and prestige. One might say that he is Plato’s version of the Unjust Speech in contrast to Socrates as his version of the Just Speech, with the understanding that whereas in the Clouds the Unjust Speech is victorious in speech, in the Republic the Just Speech is victorious in speech. One may go so far as to say that Thrasymachus presents Injustice incarnate, the tyrant, provided one is willing to admit that Polemarchus presents the democrat (327c7) and Cephalus the oli- garch. But then one would have to explain why a tyrant should be as eager as Thrasymachus is to teach the principles of tyranny and thus to breed competitors for himself. In addition, if one contrasts the beginning of the Thrasymachus-section with its end (354a12- 13), one observes that Socrates succeeds in taming Thrasymachus: Socrates could not have tamed Critias. But tameness is akin to justice (486b10-12): Socrates succeeds in making Thrasymachus somewhat just. He thus lays the foundation for his friendship with Thrasymachus, a friendship never preceded by enmity (498c9-d1). Plato makes it very easy for us to loathe Thrasymachus: for all ordinary purposes we ought to loathe people who act and speak like Thrasymachus and never to imitate their deeds and never to act according to their speeches. But there are other purposes to be con- sidered. At any rate it is most important for the understanding of the Republic and generally that we should not behave toward Thrasymachus as Thrasymachus behaves, i.e. angrily, fanatically, or savagely.
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If we look then without indignation at Thrasymachus’ indigna- tion, we. must admit that his violent reaction to Socrates’ conver- sation with Polemarchus is to some extent the reaction of common sense. That conversation led up to the assertion that it is not good for oneself to harm anyone or that justice is never harmful to anyone including oneself. Since the city as city is a society which from time to time must wage war, and war is inseparable from harming inno- cent people (47la-b), the unqualified condemnation of harming human beings is tantamount to the condemnation of even the justest city. This objection is indeed not raised by Thrasymachus but it is implied in his thesis. That thesis proves to be only the consequence of an opinion which is not only not manifestly savage but even highly respectable. When Thrasymachus has become dumbfounded for the first time by Socrates’ reasoning, Polemarchus avails himself of this opportunity to express his agreement with Socrates most vigorously. Thereupon Clitophon, a companion of Thrasymachus just as Polemarchus is a companion of Socrates (cf. also 336b7 and 340c2), rises in defense of Thrasymachus. In this way there begins a short dialogue between Polemarchus and Clitophon, consisting altogether of seven speeches. In the center of this intermezzo we find Clitophon’s statement that according to Thrasymachus justice consists in obeying the rulers. But to obey the rulers means in the first place to obey the laws laid down by the rulers (338d5-e6). Thrasymachus’ thesis is then that justice consists in obeying the law or that the just is identical with the lawful or legal, or with what the customs or laws of the city prescribe. This thesis is the most obvious, the most natural, thesis regarding justice.?* It deserves to be noted that the most obvious view of justice is not explicitly mentioned, let alone discussed at all in the Republic. One may say that it is the thesis of the city itself: no city permits an appeal from its laws. For even if a city admits that there is a law higher than the law of the city, that higher law must be interpreted by. properly constituted authority which is either instituted by the city or else constitutes a commonwealth comprising many cities in which commonwealth the just is again the legal. If the just is then identical with the legal, the source of justice is the will of the legislator. The legislator in each city is the regime: the tyrant, the common people, the men of excellence, and so on. Each regime lays down the laws
” Republic 359a4; Gorgias 504d1-8; Xenophon, Memorabilia TV 4.1, 12; 6.5-6; Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 1129a82-34.
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with a view to its own preservation and well-being, to its own advantage. From this it follows that obedience to the laws or justice is not necessarily to the advantage of those who do not belong to the regime or of the ruled but may be bad for them. One might think that the regime could lay down the laws with a view to the common good of the rulers and the ruled. That common good would be good intrinsically, not merely by virtue of enactment or agree- ment; it would be what is by nature just; it would be right inde- pendent of, and higher than, what the city declares to be right; justice would not then be primarily and essentially legality—con- trary to the thesis of the city. Since the thesis of the city excludes then a natural common good, that thesis leads to the conclusion that justice or obedience to the laws is necessarily to the advantage of the ruled and bad for them. And as for the rulers, justice simply does not exist; they are “sovereign.” Justice is bad because it does not aim at a natural good which can only be an individual’s good. The understanding required for taking care of one’s own good is prudence. Prudence requires either that one disobey the laws when- ever one can escape punishment—to that extent prudence is in need of forensic rhetoric—or else that one become a tyrant since only the tyrant can pursue his own good without any regard what- ever for others. Thrasymachus’ thesis—the thesis of “legal positiv- ism”—is nothing less than the thesis of the city which thesis destroys itself.
Let us now reconsider the first two opinions. According to Cephalus’ opinion, justice consists in giving, leaving, or restoring to everyone what he is entitled to, what belongs to him. But what belongs to a man is determined by the law. Justice in Cephalus’ sense is then only a subdivision of justice in Thrasymachus’ sense. (In Aristotelian terms, particular justice is implied in universal justice.) The first and the third opinions on justice belong together. The law determining what belongs to a man may be unwise, i.e. it may assign to a man what is not good for him; only wisdom, as distinguished from law, fulfills the function of justice, i.e. of assign- ing to each what is truly good for him, what is good for him by nature. But is this view of justice compatible with society? Pole- marchus’ view of justice, which does not imply the necessity of law, takes care of this difficulty: justice consists in helping one’s friends as fellow citizens, in dedicating oneself to the common good. But is this view of justice compatible with concern for the natural good of
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each? The positive part of the Republic will have to show whether or how the two conflicting views of justice—which are reflected in the two views that justice is legality or law-abidingness*® and that justice is dedication to the city—can be reconciled. Here we merely note that Polemarchus who had eventually abandoned his father’s thesis also turns against Thrasymachus: on the primary level Pole- marchus and Socrates belong together as defenders of the common good.
The brief dialogue between Polemarchus and Clitophon shows that the dialogue between Socrates and Thrasymachus, or at any rate its initial part, has the character of a lawsuit. The defendant is Socrates: Thrasymachus accuses Socrates of wrongdoing. It is a demand of justice that “the other party,” i.e. Thrasymachus, also receive a fair hearing. Everyone listens to what Socrates tells us about Thrasymachus. But we must also pay attention to what Thrasymachus thinks of Socrates. Socrates thinks that Thrasymachus behaves like a wild beast; Socrates is entirely innocent and on the defensive. Thrasymachus has met Socrates before. His present ex- asperation is prepared by his experience in his earlier meeting or meetings with Socrates. He is sure that Socrates is ironic, ie. a dissembler, a man who pretends to be ignorant while in fact he knows things very well; far from being ignorant and innocent he is clever and tricky; and he is ungrateful. The immoral Thrasymachus is morally indignant whereas moral Socrates is, or pretends to be, merely afraid. At any rate, after Thrasymachus’ initial outburst Socrates offers an apology for any mistake he and Polemarchus may have committed. Thrasymachus in his turn behaves not merely like an accuser but like a man of the highest authority. He simply forbids Socrates to give certain answers to his questions. At a given moment he asks Socrates: “what in your estimate should be done to you?” The penalty which Socrates thereupon proposes is in fact a gain, a reward, for him. Thereupon Thrasymachus demands that Socrates should pay him money. When Socrates replies that he has no money, Glaucon steps forth and declares that “all of us will contribute for Socrates.” The situation strikingly resembles the one on Socrates’ day in court when he was accused by the city of Athens of having given a “forbidden answer’—an answer forbidden by the
* For the understanding of the connection between “law” and “the good of the individual,” cf. Minos 317d3ff.
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city of Athens—and when Glaucon’s brother Plato among others vouched for a fine to be paid by Socrates. Thrasymachus acts like the city, he resembles the city, and this means according to a way of reasoning acceptable to both Socrates and Thrasymachus (350c7~ 8), Thrasymachus is the city. It is because he is the city that he maintains the thesis of the city regarding justice and that he is angry at Socrates for his implicit antagonism to the thesis of the city. But obviously Thrasymachus is not the city. He is only a caricature of the city, a distorted image of the city, a kind of imita- tion of the city: he imitates the city; he plays the city. He can play the city because he has something in common with the city. Being a rhetorician, he resembles the sophist, and the sophist par excel- lence is the city (492aff.; Gorgias 465c4-5). Thrasymachus’ rhetoric was especially concerned with both arousing and appeasing the angry passions of the multitude, with both attacking a man’s char- acter and counteracting such attacks, as well as with play-acting as an ingredient of oratory.2* When making his appearance in the Republic, Thrasymachus plays the angry city. It will become clear later in the Republic that anger is no mean part of the city.
That Thrasymachus’ anger or spiritedness is not the core of his being but subordinate to his art becomes clear as his conversation with Socrates proceeds, Socrates draws his attention to the difficulty caused by the fact that the rulers who lay down the laws with exclusive regard to their own advantage may make mistakes. In that case they will command actions which are harmful to them and advantageous to their subjects; by acting justly, i.e. by obeying the laws, the subjects will then benefit themselves, or justice will be good. In other words, on Thrasymachus’ hypothesis, the well-being of the subjects depends entirely on the folly of the rulers. When this difficulty is pointed out to him, Thrasymachus declares after some hesitation due to his slow comprehension that the rulers are not rulers if and when they make mistakes: the ruler in the strict sense is infallible, just as the other possessors of knowledge, the craftsmen and the wise in the strict sense, are infallible. It is this Thrasymachean notion of “the knower in the strict sense” trans- formed with the help of Socrates into that of “the artisan in the strict sense” which Socrates uses with great felicity against Thrasy- machus. For the artisan in the strict sense proves to be concerned,
* Phaedrus 267c7—d2; Aristotle, Rhetoric 1404a13.
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not with his own advantage, but with the advantage of the others whom he serves: the shoemaker makes shoes for others and only accidentally for himself; the physician prescribes things to his patients with a view to their advantage; hence, if ruling is, as Thrasymachus admitted, something like an art, the rulers serve the ruled, i.e. rule for the advantage of the ruled. The artisan in the strict sense is infallible, i.e. does his job well, and he is only con- cerned with the well-being of others. This however means that art strictly understood is justice—justice in deed and not merely justice in intention as law-abidingness is. “Art is justice’—this proposition reflects the Socratic assertion that virtue is knowledge. The sug- gestion emerging from Socrates’ discussion with Thrasymachus leads to the conclusion that the just city will be an association in which everyone is an artisan in the strict sense, a city of craftsmen or artificers, of men (and women) each of whom has a single job which he does well and with full dedication, i.e. without minding his own advantage, only for the good of others or for the common good. This conclusion pervades the whole teaching of the Republic. The city constructed therein as a model is based on the principle “one man one job” or “each should mind his own business.” The soldiers in it are “artificers” of the freedom of the city (395c); the philoso- phers in it are “artificers” of the whole common virtue (500d); there is an “artificer” of heaven (530a); even God is presented as an artisan—as the artificer even of the eternal ideas (507c, 597). It is because citizenship in the just city is craftsmanship of one kind or another, and the seat of craft or art is in the soul and not in the body, that the difference between the two sexes loses its importance, or the equality of the two sexes is established (452c—455a; cf. 452a). The best city is an association of artisans: it is not an association of gentlemen who “mind their own business” in the sense that they lead a retired or private life (496d6), nor an association of the fathers.
Thrasymachus could have avoided his downfall if he had left matters at the common sense view according to which rulers are of course fallible (340cl-5) or if he had said that all laws are framed by the rulers with exclusive regard to their apparent (and not necessarily true) advantage. Yet since he is or rather plays the city, his choice of the alternative which proves fatal to him was inevitable. If the just is to remain the legal, if there is to be no appeal from the laws and the rulers, the rulers must be infallible;
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if the laws are bad for the subjects, the laws will lose all respect- ability if they are not at least good for the rulers. This however means that the laws owe their dignity to an art; that art-may even make the laws superfluous as is indicated by the facts that accord- ing to Thrasymachus the “lawgiver” may be a tyrant, i.e. a ruler who according to a common view rules without laws, and that the rule exercised by the arts is as such absolute rule (Statesman 293a6-— c4). Not law but art is productive of justice. Art takes the place of law. Yet the time when Thrasymachus could play the city has gone. Since in addition we know that he is not a noble man, we are entitled to suspect that he made his fatal choice with a view to his own advantage. He was a famous teacher of rhetoric. Hence, inci- dentally, he is the only man professing an art who speaks in the Republic. The art of persuasion is necessary for persuading rulers, and especially ruling assemblies, at least ostensibly of their true advantage. Even the rulers themselves need the art of persuasion in order to persuade their subjects that the laws which are framed with exclusive regard to the benefit of the rulers serve the benefit of the subjects. Thrasymachus’ own art stands and falls by the view that prudence is of the utmost importance for ruling. The clearest expression of this view is the proposition that the ruler who makes mistakes is not a ruler at all. To praise art is conducive to Thrasy- machus’ private good.
If art as essentially serving others is just and if Thrasymachus is the only artisan present, it follows that Socrates has beaten Thrasy- machus soundly but must tacitly admit that Thrasymachus is against his will and without his knowledge the justest man present. Let us then consider his downfall somewhat more closely. One may say that that downfall is caused not by a stringent refutation nor by an accidental slip on his part, but by the conflict between his deprecia- tion of justice and the implication of his art: there is some truth to the view that art is justice. Against this one could say—and as a matter of fact Thrasymachus himself says—that Socrates’ conclusion, according to which no ruler or other artisan ever considers his own advantage, is very simple-minded. As regards the artisans proper they consider of course the compensation which they receive for their work. It may be true that to the extent to which the physician is concerned with what is characteristically called his honorarium, he does not exercise the art of medicine, but the art of money- making; but since what is true of the physician is true of the shoe-
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maker and of any other craftsman as well, one would have to say that the only universal art, the art accompanying all arts, the art of arts, is the art of money-making; one must therefore further say that serving others or being just becomes good for the artisan (the giver) only through his practicing the art of money-making or that no man is just for the sake of justice or that no one likes justice as such, Differently stated, Socrates and Polemarchus sought in vain for the art which is justice; in the meantime we have seen that art as art is just; justice is not one art among many but pervades all arts; but the only art pervading all arts is the art of money-making; as a matter of fact, we call an artisan just with a view less to his exercise of his art than to his conduct regarding the compensation which he demands for his work; but the art of money-making as distinguished from the arts proper is surely not essentially just: many men who are most proficient in money-making are not just; hence the essentially just arts are ultimately in the service of an art which is not essentially just. Thrasymachus’ view, according to which the private good is supreme, triumphs.
But the most devastating argument against Socrates is supplied by the arts which are manifestly devoted to the most ruthless and calculating exploitation of the ruled by the rulers. Such an art is the art of the shepherd—the art wisely chosen by Thrasymachus in order to destroy Socrates’ argument, especially since kings and other rulers had been compared to shepherds from the oldest times. The shepherd is surely concerned with the well-being of his flock—so that the sheep may supply men with the juiciest lamb chops. If we are not fooled by the touching picture of the shepherd gathering or nursing a lost or ailing lamb, we see that in the last analysis the shepherds are exclusively concerned. with the good of the owners and of the shepherds (343b). But—and here Thrasymachus’ tri- umph seems to turn into his final defeat—there is obviously a differ- ence between the owners and the shepherds: the juiciest lamb chops are for the owner and not for the shepherd, unless the shepherd is dishonest. Now, the position of Thrasymachus or of any man of his kind with regard to both rulers and ruled is precisely that of the shepherd with regard to both the owner and the sheep: Thrasy- machus can derive benefit from his art, from the assistance which he gives to the rulers (regardless of whether they are tyrants, the common people, or the men of excellence), only if he is loyal to them, if he does his job for them well, if he keeps his part of the
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bargain, if he is just. Contrary to his assertion he is compelled to grant that a man’s justice is salutary, not only to others, and espe- cially to the rulers, but also to himself. What is true of the helpers of rulers is true of the rulers themselves and all other human beings (including tyrants and gangsters) who need the help of other men in their enterprises however unjust: no association can last if it does not practice justice among its members (351c7-d3). This however amounts to an admission that justice may be a mere means, if an indispensable means, for injustice: for the shearing and eating of the sheep. Justice consists in helping one’s friends and harming one’s enemies. The common good of the city is not fundamentally differ- ent from the common good of a gang of robbers. The art of arts is not the art of money-making but the art of war. As for Thrasy- machus’ art, he himself cannot think of it as the art of arts or of himself as the ruler tyrannical or non-tyrannical (344c7-8). Yet this rehabilitation of Polemarchus’ view proves to have been achieved on the Thrasymachean ground: the common good is derived from the private good via calculation. Not Thrasymachus’ principle but his reasoning has proved to be defective.
In replying to Thrasymachus’ argument which is based on the example of the art of the shepherd, Socrates again has recourse to the notion of “art in the strict sense.” He is now silent about the infallibility of art but speaks more emphatically than before (341d5) of the fact that the arts proper become beneficial to the artisan only through his practicing the art of money-making which he now calls the wage-earning or mercenary art. Denying Thrasymachus’ asser- tion that the rulers like to rule, he asserts that if Thrasymachus were tight, the rulers would not demand, as they do, wages for ruling, for the ruling of men means service to them, i.e. concerning oneself with other men’s good and every sensible man would prefer being benefited by others to benefiting others and thus being inconven- ienced (346e9, 347d2-8). Hitherto it seemed that Socrates, the friend of justice, was in favor of sacrificing the private good, includ- ing one’s mere convenience, to the common good. Now it seems that he adopts Thrasymachus’ principle: no one likes to serve or help others or to act justly unless it is made profitable to him; the _ wise man seeks only his own good, not the other man’s good; justice
in itself is bad. Let us remind ourselves here of the fact that Socrates had never said that justice consists in helping everyone | regardless of whether he is one’s friend or one’s enemy or whether
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he is good or bad. The difference between Thrasymachus and Socrates is then merely this: according to Thrasymachus, justice is an unnecessary evil whereas according to Socrates it is a necessary evil. This terrible result is by no means sufficiently counteracted by the exchange between Socrates and Glaucon which takes place at this point. As a matter of fact, what Socrates says to Glaucon suggests this result as much as it contradicts it. It is therefore necessary for Socrates to prove immediately afterward that justice is good. He proves this in three arguments addressed to Thrasy- machus. The arguments are far from conclusive. They are defective on account of the procedure followed, a procedure proposed by Socra- tes, approved by Glaucon and imposed on Thrasymachus. It demands that instead of “counting and measuring” they should argue on the basis of premises on which they agree, and in particular of the premise that if something is similar to X, it is X (348a7—b7; 350c7-8, d4-5; 476c6-7), to say nothing of the fact that Socrates’ refutation of Thrasymachus’ assertion that no one likes to rule leaves some- thing to be desired (347b8-e2). The only argument of a different kind, of not so “simple” a kind (35la6-7) is the central one which establishes that no society however unjust can last if it does not practice justice among its members. When Socrates has completed the proof of the goodness of justice, he frankly states that the proof is radically inadequate: he has proved that justice is good without knowing what justice is. Superficially this means that the three views of justice proposed successively by Cephalus, Polemarchus, and Thrasymachus have been refuted and no other view has been tested or even stated. Yet through the refutation of the three views and the reflection about them it has become clear, not perhaps what justice is but what the problem of justice is. Justice has proved to be the art which on the one hand assigns to every citizen what is good for his soul and which on the other hand determines the common good of the city. Hence Socrates’ attempt to prove that justice is good without having previously settled what justice is, is not absurd, for it has been settled that justice is one of the two things mentioned. There would be no difficulty if one could be certain that the common good were identical or at least in harmony with the good of all individuals. It is because we cannot yet be certain of this harmony that we cannot yet say with definiteness that justice is good. It is the tension within justice which gives rise to the question of whether justice is good or bad—of whether the
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primary consideration is the common good or the individual’s own good.
When Thrasymachus begins to speak, he behaves according to Socrates’ lively description like a raving beast; by the end of the first book he has become completely tame. He has been tamed by Socrates: the action of the first book consists in a marvelous victory of Socrates. As we have seen, that action is also a disgraceful defeat of Socrates as the defender of justice. It almost goes without saying that Thrasymachus has in no way become convinced by Socrates of the goodness of justice. This goes far toward explaining Thrasy- machus’ taming: while his reasoning proves to be poor, his principle remains victorious. He must have found no small comfort in the observation that Socrates’ reasoning was on the whole not superior to his, although he must have been impressed both by the cleverness with which Socrates argued badly on purpose and the superior frankness with which he admitted at the end the weakness of his proof. Yet all this implies that Socrates has succeeded perfectly in establishing his ascendancy over Thrasymachus; from now on Thrasymachus will not only no longer try to teach—he will not even be a speaker any more. On the other hand he shows by the fact that he stays on for many hours unrelieved by sights, food or drink, to say nothing of satisfactions of his vanity (344d1), that he has become a willing listener, a subordinate of Socrates. From the beginning he regarded his art as ministerial to rulers and hence he regarded himself as ministerial. His art consists in gratifying rulers and especially ruling multitudes. His opening statements in which he imitated the city revealed him as a man willing and able to gratify the city. He gradually came to see that by gratifying the political multitude he would not gratify the multitude assembled in Polemarchus’ house. At least the vocal majority of the latter multitude is clearly on Socrates’ side.?* While Thrasymachus is more outspoken and less easily restrained than Polus in the Gorgias, he is less daring, less outspoken than Callicles, and this is surely connected with the fact that he is not an Athenian citizen.”* From a certain moment on he shows a curious hesitation to become identified with the thesis which he propounds. Given this restraint,
*337d10, 345a1-2. Cf. 350e6; 351c6, d7; 352b4; 354a10-11 with Gor- gias 462d5. * Cf. 848e5-349a2 with Gorgias 474c4~d2, 482d7-e5, and 487a7-bl.
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the discussion between him and Socrates is in a sense a joke (349a6-b1 ). We may say that in the conversation between Socrates and Thrasymachus, justice is treated in a bantering and hence unjust manner. This is not altogether surprising since Thrasyma- chus, in contradistinction to the characters in the Euthyphro and the Laches for instance, does not take seriously the virtue under discussion; he does take seriously his art. In all these matters we must never forget the rhetoric used by Socrates in his description of Thrasymachus; it is very easy to read his discussion with Thrasy- machus in the light of that description. The powerful effect of that description illustrates beautifully the virtues of the narrated dialogue. What Socrates does in the Thrasymachus section would be inexcusable if he had not done it in order to provoke the passionate reaction of Glaucon, a reaction which he presents as entirely un- expected. According to his presentation Glaucon, who was respon- «ble for Socrates’ staying in the Piraeus (not to say for his descend- ing to the Piraeus), is responsible also for the bulk of the Republic, for the elaboration of the best city. With Glaucon’s entry, which is is lepeciately followed by the entry of his brother Adeimantus, the ¥.the sion changes its character profoundly. It becomes altogether Atheuxian. In contradistinction to the three non-Athenians with whom Socrates conversed in the first book, Glaucon and Adeimantus are not tainted by the slightest defect of manners. They fulfill to a considerable degree the conditions stated by Aristotle in his Ethics which participants in discussions of noble things must fulfill. They belong by nature to a nobler polity than the characters of the first book, who belong respectively to oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. They belong at the very least to timocracy, the regime dedicated to honor. Being an intelligent lover of justice, Glaucon is thoroughly displeased with Socrates’ sham refutation of Thrasymachus’ assertion that injustice is preferable to justice or that justice taken by itself is an evil, if a necessary evil: Socrates had merely charmed Thrasy- machus. Being courageous and high-minded, loathing the very suggestion of a calculated and calculating justice, he wishes to hear Socrates praise justice as choiceworthy for its own sake without any regard to its consequences or purposes. Thus while Socrates is re- sponsible for the fact that justice is the theme of the conversation, Glaucon is responsible for the manner in which it is treated. In order to hear a solid praise of justice itself, he presents a solid blame of it, a blame which could serve as the model for the praise.
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It is obvious that he is dissatisfied not only with Socrates’ refutation of Thrasymachus but with Thrasymachus’ statement of the case for injustice as well. He would not have been able to surpass Thrasy- machus if he were not thoroughly familiar with the view pro- pounded by Thrasymachus; that view is not peculiar to Thrasyma- chus but held by “the many,” by “ten thousand others.” Glaucon believes in justice; this authorizes him as it were to attack justice in the most vigorous manner. For an unjust man would not attack justice; he would prefer that the others remain the dupes of the belief in justice so that they might become his dupes. A just man on the other hand would never attack justice unless to provoke the praise of justice. Glaucon’s dissatisfaction with Thrasymachus’ attack on justice is justified. Thrasymachus had started from the law and the city as already established: he had taken them for granted. He had remained within the limits of “opinion.”