Plato's Political Philosophy PDF

Secondly, what facilitates Plato’s politically slanted definitions is his earlier parallelism between the individual and state. His aesthetics emerged as politically motivated inthe sense that they are determined by what the guardians should believe concerning men and gods, and the character as indi...

Secondly, what facilitates Plato’s politically slanted definitions is his earlier parallelism between the individual and state. His aesthetics emerged as politically motivated inthe sense that they are determined by what the guardians should believe concerning men and gods, and the character as individuals toward which they must aspire. The definitions of the virtues of an individual as cited above comprise variously refracted facets of the same basic ethical model: the control and domination of the “multitude” by a unity. As applied to the individual, the “multitude” refers to the potentially endless variety of appetites and desires that need to be constrained by reason, which is a unity. In book X, it will emerge explicitly that poetry appeals to the “inferior” part of the soul, the appetitive portion (X, 603b–c). It is, in other words, an encouragement toward variety and multiplicity, toward valuing the particular for its own sake, thereby distracting from contemplation of the universal. In projecting this model onto the state as a whole, Plato aligns the mass of people with the unruly multitude of desires in the soul, 60 and the guardians considered collectively with the unity of reason. The individuality of the guardians is to be all but erased, not merely through ideological conditioning but through their compulsory existence as a community: they are to possess no private property or wealth; they must live together, nourished on a simple diet, and receiving a stipend from the other citizens (III, 416d–417b). Collectively, then, the guardians’ function in the city is a projection of the unifying function of reason in the individual soul. Hence, the political motivation of Plato’s aesthetics lies not only in the desired character of the guardians, but also in the nature and origin of the ideal city as a whole. It is here that Plato’s overarching disposition toward unity asserts itself most pervasively and at every level, from the point of origin of a city to its formally articulated bureaucratic structure. Just as what is ultimately achieved in the guardians is a harmonious unity of soul, so the ultimate political aim of the city is to attain and preserve unity. What needs to be observed here is how unity – even more than the alleged goals of justice or the Good – is the ultimate teleological principle informing the interrelation of elements comprising the city’s overall constitution. According to Plato, the originating circumstance of a city is that individuals are not self-sufficient. No person can adequately provide the total of his or her own needs (II, 369b). The deeper premise beneath this is a strict specialization of function whereby “One man is naturally fitted for one task” (II, 370b). Plato is adamant on this point, insisting that “it is 61 impossible for one man to do the work of many arts well” and that in the ideal city every man would work at “one occupation... all his days” (II, 374a– c). This rigid division of labor is the foundation of the entire analogy between the just individual and the just city. And this is perhaps where we approach the heart of Plato’s overall argument concerning justice and poetry. The definition of justice in the state is reached in book IV: justice is a condition where “each one man must perform one social service in the state for which his nature was best adapted.” It is also defined as the “principle of doing one’s own business” and “not to be a busybody” (IV, 433a–b). Socrates recognizes here that this “principle” for which he had been seeking had in fact already been laid down as “a universal requirement” in the very origin of a city (as cited above). If the definitions of the other virtues of a city and an individual, such as wisdom, courage, sobriety, and self-control, appeared semantically to coerce these concepts into vehicles of social order, the same strategy emerges all the more blatantly in Plato’s emptying of the concept of justice of all predicates even remotely recognizable as inhering in it by disinterested pursuit: fairness, impartiality, proportion, and all suchpredicates which might reasonably be invoked as necessary components of the definition of justice are effectively exiled from the concept, in what is perhaps one of the most high-handed attempts in the history of philosophy to overturn consensual language, and to reassign the semantic valency of words, in the name of a clarity accessible only to the epistemic elite. Justice “in itself ” is a phantom exorcised by its 62 very pursuit in the Republic: its function is reduced to pure circularity, acting at once as the origin and end of the state, with no intermediary logic connecting these extremes of its ostensibly structuring polarity. The circularity of argument is even more pronounced in Plato’s remolding of his analogy between the state and the individual. Socrates argues that since “the city was thought to be just because three natural kinds existing in it performed each its own function,... we shall thus expect the individual also to have these same forms in his soul” (IV, 435b–c). And, predictably, justice in an individual is defined as a condition of the soul where “the several parts... perform each their own task,” and where reason rules. He in whom this condition obtains “will be a just man and one who minds his own affair.” Such a harmonious soul will, of course, be fostered by a correct blending of gymnastics and music (IV, 441e–442a). Injustice, then, comprises “a kind of civil war” of the three principles of the soul, upsetting the natural relation of dominance (IV, 444a–d). This entire argument, based on strict division of function, is what underlies Plato’s earlier disparagement of poetry. In political terms, poetry’s greatest crime is its insubordination in respect of specialization of labor. Plato urges that the same man ought not to imitate “many things”: any poetic imitation involving “manifold forms” will, says Socrates, “be ill suited to our polity, because there is no twofold or manifold man among us, since every man does one thing” (III, 397b–e). Plato then arrives at the 63 renowned passage urging banishment of the “manifold” poet, a passage whose logic merits reconsideration: If a man... who was capable by his cunning of assuming every kind of shape and imitating all things should arrive in our city, bringing with himself the poems which he wished to exhibit, we should fall down and worship him as a holy and wondrous and delightful creature, but should say to him that there is no man of that kind among us in our city, nor is it lawful for such a man to arise among us, and we should send him away to another city, after pouring myrrh down over his head and crowning him with fillets of wool. (III, 398a) These lines have sometimes been held to harbor an ambivalent attitude to poetry, but book X appears to confirm that the falling down and worshipping of the poet is suggested in an entirely mocking and sarcastic vein. The central argument of this passage is not that poetry corrupts, nor that it expresses falsehood; rather, it is in its very nature a contradiction of the possibility of a just framework of social and political existence: a city consists of several kinds of people each through some specific function contributing to the welfare of the whole. The poet, however, is engaged in an activity which per se resists such specialization; it is important to appreciate here that what is at issue for Plato is not the disposition of any individual poet but that of poetry itself. This general charge against poetry is elucidated in book X. Once again, it is an index of how deeply poetry structures the entire discussion that this final book is devoted notto justice or polity but to poetry. Socrates, perhaps shaky in his conviction of 64 his own earlier arguments, returns to give second thoughts to the subject – with the biased intention of convincing himself more deeply. Using the dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon, Plato now presents the poet as a “most marvelous Sophist” and a “truly clever and wondrous man” who “makes all the things that all handicraftsmen severally produce” (X, 596c–d). The political implication of this claim that Plato attributes to poetry is that poetry can have no definable (and therefore limited) function in a state ordered according to a strict hierarchy of in exchangeable function. That poetry impinges indiscriminately on all areas of production and knowledge means that by definition it pervades all strata of the hierarchy, which it thereby undermines as a whole. It literally does not know its place and it can never be clear in relation to which activity or discipline it can be subordinated or super-ordinated. It spreads its influence limitlessly, dissolving social relations as it pleases and recreating them from its own store of inspired wisdom whose opacity to reason renders it resistant to classification and definition. In this sense, poetry is the incarnation of indefinability and the limits of reason. It is in its nature a rebel, a usurper, which desires to rule; and as such it is the most potent threat to the throne of philosophy, which is also the throne of polity in the state of the philosopher-king. There is, moreover, a further political valency in poetry’s indeterminacy of function. Plato sees poetry as pandering primarily to two types of constitution, the democratic and the 65 tyrannical (VIII, 568a–d). Tyranny, moreover, is viewed by Plato as somehow not opposed to democracy but a logical extension of it. The precise significance of this association of poetry with democracy may be evinced from a broader political context. Plato suggests that there five basic forms of government. His own ideal constitution can be conceived as either royalty or aristocracy (IV, 445d). The other four forms represent a progressive degeneration away from this model: timocracy (where the pursuit of honor is paramount), oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny (such an evolution, it might be added, has no basis in Greek history). In line with his earlier parallelism of individual and state, Plato sees five basic kinds of individual characters or souls, corresponding to the forms of government (VIII, 544e–545c). Even the ideal city, acknowledges Plato, will ultimately crumble. Its deterioration will be caused initially by flaws in the selective breeding of guardians, generating intermixture and dissension in the ruling class itself (VIII, 545d–547a). The timocracy eventually produced will retain some features of the aristocracy such as honoring of rulers and the abstention of the warrior class from money-making; but in admitting to office men of high spirit rather than reason it will hold itself perpetually in a posture of war, and “a fierce secret lust for gold and silver” and private gain will infect its rulers. Such will be a state guided by the coveting of honor (VIII, 547d–548c). This system naturally gives way to oligarchy where government office is attached to a property 66 qualification (VIII, 550c) and where the city is no longer a unity but divided effectively into two cities, between rich and poor (VIII, 551d). Owing to this inequitable condition, such a city will be marked by crime and the pervasive presence of beggars (VIII, 552d). What is perhaps most interesting here is the way Plato characterizes the “soul” of the oligarchic man. Though he prizes wealth and property above everything, he is “thrifty and laborious, satisfying only his own necessary appetites and desires... but subduing his other appetites as vain and unprofitable.” He is, in Socrates’ words, “a squalid fellow,... looking for a surplus of profit in everything” (VIII, 554a–b). These words anticipate, almost verbatim, Weber’s description of the mentality of early capitalists. Ironically, while Plato’s “ideal” account of the evolution from monarchy and aristocracy to democracy and tyranny has little basis in the actual history of Greek society, it might be read as a valuable idealization of the historical transitions in Europe from petty kingdoms through the vast edifice of feudalism to the hegemony of capitalism, each of these emerging, as Marx would have it, from internal discord within the previous system. In virtue of the “internal dissension” of the oligarchic man, whose control over his ebbing appetites is motivated by fear for his possessions, Plato characterizes him as not a unity but a “double man” (VIII, 554d–e). Again, this might be paralleled with the ironic self-division of human beings in modern bourgeois society, as theorized by commentators from diverse traditions, including some of the Romantics, Hegel, Lukács, de Tocqueville, and Sartre. When Plato describes the 67 evolution of democracy from oligarchy, we can begin finally to discern the depth of political motivation on which his polemic against poetry rests. Democracy comes about as a popular revolution against the rich oligarchs, the people being granted an equal share in citizenship and political office (VIII, 556e– 557b). What is worshipped here is individual liberty, leading to a number of undesirable consequences. Firstly, “every man has license to do as he likes” and “would arrange a plan for leading his own life in the way that pleases him.” Secondly, this constitution would generate all “sorts and conditions of men,” a greater variety than any other form of government. A democracy is thus “diversified with every type of character” and, shopping through the “bazaar of [individual] constitutions,” each person could “establish his own.” Thirdly, the government would be “anarchic and motley, assigning a kind of equality indiscriminately to equals and unequals alike” (VIII, 557b–558c). Moreover, the disorder of a democratic society extends into private life: the relation of authority is undermined between parents and children, teachers and pupils, freemen and slaves, men and women. The spirit of liberty waxes so strong that eventually even the laws are disregarded and a condition of lawlessness prevails (VIII, 562e–563e). And what kind of citizen, what kind of soul, would such a democracy foster? To begin with, the distinction between “necessary” and “unnecessary” appetites which constrained the desires of the oligarchic man is now abrogated. The “brood of desires” now “seize the citadel of the young man’s soul, finding it empty and unoccupied by 68 studies and honorable pursuits” (VIII, 560b–561a). The democratic man fosters all parts of the soul equally and “avers that they are all alike and to be equally esteemed.” His life will be run by “indulging the appetite of the day,” and “he says and does whatever enters his head.” In other words, “there is no order or compulsion in his existence” (VIII, 561d). Most tellingly, Plato affirms that the democratic man “is a manifold man stuffed with most excellent differences,... containing within himself the greatest number of patterns of constitutions and qualities” (VIII, 561e). We can see here, quite apart from Plato’s explicit association of poetry and democracy, that poetry is charged with the same fundamental traits as democracy. Like democracy, poetry fosters genuine individuals, “manifold” men who are “stuffed” with differences and resist the reduction of their social function, or indeed their natural potential, into one exclusive dimension. Also, like democracy, poetry nurtures all parts of the soul, refusing obeisance to the law of reason. By implication, then, poetry itselfis spurred by the “greed” for liberty which is the hallmark of a democratic society. Poetry is, in the sphere of ideology, the archetype of social disorder, individuality, emphasis rather than suppression of difference, and insubordination to reason. Like that of democracy, its nature is rooted in self-will and physical pleasure, in a refusal to acknowledge the hierarchy either within the soul or between the soul and body. From the disorder of the democratic state, 69 maintains Plato, tyranny will arise, with one man claiming to represent the interests of both social order and the downtrodden majority. In terms of the evolution of one system of government from another, Plato’s point is that tyranny, though ostensibly initiated as a reaction against the chaos of democracy, is in fact an extension of it. The tyrant, far from being king over his own soul, is in fact the most miserable of creatures, enslaved as he is to that “terrible brood” of lawless desires which have dethroned reason in his individual constitution. He gives full vent to the “mob” of his unconscious appetites and instincts which know no constraint. Accordingly, tyranny embodies the utmost depths of anarchy and lawlessness. Hence the degeneration from aristocracy through oligarchy to democracy and tyranny represents the collapse not only of the original unity of the state but also, equally importantly, of the unity of the individual into a lawless multiplicity. The unified, integrated person of the aristocracy who enjoyed a harmony between the various “classes” of his soul is fragmented first into the “double” man of oligarchy and then the “manifold” man produced by democracy; finally, even the vestiges of the soul’s structure collapse, in tyranny, into an uncontrollable proliferation of desires, an abyss of irreducible particularity, multiplicity, and relativity.