Western Political Thought From Socrates to the Age of Ideology PDF

 s e c o n d e d i t i o n WESTERN POLITICAL THOUGHT From Socrates to the Age of Ideology Brian R. Nelson Florida International University WAVELAND PRESS, INC. Long Grove, Illinois For info...

 s e c o n d e d i t i o n WESTERN POLITICAL THOUGHT From Socrates to the Age of Ideology Brian R. Nelson Florida International University WAVELAND PRESS, INC. Long Grove, Illinois For information about this book, contact: Waveland Press, Inc. 4180 IL Route 83, Suite 101 Long Grove, IL 60047-9580 (847) 634-0081 [email protected] www.waveland.com Copyright © 1996, 1982 by Brian R. Nelson This book was previously published by Pearson Education, Inc. Reissued 2015 by Waveland Press, Inc. 10-digit ISBN 1-4786-2763-8 13-digit ISBN 978-1-4786-2763-0 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval sys- tem, or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America 7 6 5 4 3 2 1  To the Memory of CARL O. NELSON My father and MARY F. NELSON My mother Contents Preface xi Introduction 1 PART I CLASSICAL AND MEDIEVAL POLITICAL THEORY 1 Socrates 5 The pre-Socratics; being versus becoming; Socrates and the Sophists; empirical versus ethical knowledge; virtue as an ethical standard; virtue as happiness; the ethical and the political; virtue and society; virtue as knowledge and virtue as power; nature and convention; the problem of pleasure and pain; the unity of ethics and politics; philosophy and civil disobedience; the Socratic epistemol­ ogy and the Socratic method; the concept and a priori knowledge; opinion ver­ sus knowledge; the cosmic order. v vi Contents 2 Plato 23 Plato: the unity of philosophy and politics; the Academy and the trip to Syra­ cuse; the question of Justice; the ideal and the best possible state; Justice as the interest of the stronger party; the case for injustice; the Just state and the Just man; the unity of ethics and politics; Justice and the division of labor; the para­ dox of philosophic rulership; communism and education; the Good; the theory of form; Plato's dualism; politics and the cave; public opinion as sophistry; the decline of the ideal state and the unjust man; the myth of metals and the injus­ tice of politics; individual versus political ethics; the tyranny of reason. 3 Aristotle 51 Plato's influence; the Lyceum; political science as a practical science; the theory of immanent form; matter and form; actuality and potentiality; teleology; the unity of ethics and politics; virtue as reasoned action; virtue as a mean; virtue and opinion; the state and subordinate communities; the state and the good life; the private and public domains; form and constitution; the classification of con­ stitutions; constitutional types and social class; polity and the mixed constitu­ tion; Justice as the rule of law; Justice as proportional equality; the aristocratic ideal; the critique of Plato; the radical versus the conservative temperament. 4 Cicero 69 Cicero and the classical tradition; Alexander the Great and the age of empire; the Hellenistic age and the new schools; Skepticism and the New Academy; Cicero's eclecticism; individualism, subjectivism, and cosmopolitanism; universal equal­ ity and apolitical virtue; Cynicism, Epicureanism , and the theory of contract; Stoicism: natural law and the two cities; fate and the rational will; politics as duty; the statesman-philosopher; the res-pUblica; Cicero, Caesar, and Augustus; the concordia ordinum and the senatorial ideal; the Scipionic Circle and hu­ manitas; the commonwealth and natural law; commonwealth and civitas; Poly­ bius and the composite state; the theory of the ideal republic; natural law, civil law, and justice; Cicero as conservative; law as political philosophy; the unity of law and magistracy; consuls and tribunes; the Senate and the rule of wisdom; the people's assemblies and republican liberty; the failure of the classical city­ state model; the Principate and the end of the Republic; the rise of Christianity. 5 St. Augustine 103 The evolution of Roman law; Justinian's codification; the col/apse of the Roman Empire; the decline of political philosophy; political withdrawal and the Stoi­ cism of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius; Plotinus and neo-Platonism; philosophy, religion, and salvation; the rise of Christianity; St. Augustine and the origins of Christian political philosophy; St. Augustine's Maniclwen dualism; sin and the Christian concept of evil; the psychology of evil; the two cities; the value of peace; the state as convention; the displacement of the classical vision; the sep­ aration of ethics and politics; the decline of political theory; the theocratic the­ ory of the state; sin as a political solution; Augustinian political analysis and the theory of realpolitik.  Contents vii 6 St. Thomas Aquinas 123 The Church and the nation-state; the rediscovery of Aristotle and the synthesis of classical and Christian thought; John of Salisbury and the organic metaphor; St. Thomas's Aristotelianism; the monarchical ideal; teleological naturalism and Christian spiritualism; the natural and the supernatural; the hierarchy of law; human reason and natural law; natural law as participation in eternal law; the compatibility of political and spiritual life; human nature: the predominance of reason; the supremacy of the sacred and the legitimacy of the secular; theology, philosophy,faith, and reason; liberation from the metaphor of the two cities; the disintegration of the Thomistic synthesis; the disjunction of ethics and politics. PART II MODERN POLITICAL THEORY 7 Machiavelli 137 Machiavelli and the Renaissance; realism and empiricism; the decline of feu­ dalism and the emergence of the modern nation-state; Machiavelli and nation­ alism; the modern conception of human nature; the rules of power politics; the anti-Machiavellian tradition; the logic of violence and the art of manipulation; popular rule and political stability; Machiavelli's republicanism; civic virtue, pluralism, and equality; a political religion,a theology of action; power versus authority; the Platonic order inverted; modern sophistry; virtue as power; au­ thority as illusion; the divorce of ethics and politics; ethical naturalism; the state as an end in itself; the illusion of nationalism; virtue and fortune. 8 Hobbes 161 The Reformation and the nation-state; the Puritan revolution and the scientific revolution; the revolt against Aristotle; materialism and the new empiricism; body and motion; mathematical truth and nominalism; the physics of psychol­ ogy; knowing and willing; appetite and aversion,pleasure and pain; the will to power; the rejection of the Socratic conception offreedom; the modern theory of contract; consent versus divine right; the state as rationally constructed ma­ chine; human behavior and the state of nature; the compositive and resolutive methods; the state of war; the paradox of power; the modern theory of natural law; the theory of absolutism; the theory of sovereignty; the paradox of consent; law as command; the nominalist theory of justice; the language of power; mod­ ern Hobbesianism; the theory of the negative state; power and self-interest; Hobbes's sovereign and the weakness of power; Hobbes and the summum bonum; modern science and the theory of authority. 9 Locke 193 Locke and liberal democracy; the Glorious Revolution; radical individualism and the negative state; Locke and Hobbes: materialism, empiricism, and nomi­ nalism; the tabula rasa and the theory of toleration; Locke versus Hobbes and Filmer; paternal versus political power; the theory of contract reconsidered; the state of nature and natural law; the two-stage contract; popular sovereignty; the right of revolution; the state of nature reconsidered; the right of property; viii Contents natural right; money and the right of accumulation; the Protestant ethic and equality of opportunity; utilitarianism, naturalism, and natural law; the separa­ tion of powers; executive prerogative; Locke and liberal constitutionalism; the problem of social class; property and the right to vote; women, patriarchy, and the social contract; liberal democracy and capitalism; Locke's ambivalence and the paradox of liberal consciousness. 10 Rousseau 221 The loss of natural liberty; the Enlightenment; the psychopathology of a politi­ cal theorist; social inequality and the perversion of reason; the theory of con­ tract; Hobbes and Locke revised; the nature of natural man; a civilized misreading of the state of nature; the contract: justice versus instinct; the unity of sovereignty and liberty; popular sovereignty reconsidered; the unity of force and freedom; the general will; the unity of self-interest and public interest; lib­ erty as obligation; positive versus negative liberty; the positive versus the nega­ tive state; the ideal state and social equality; economics as a moral concern; censorship, civil religion, and patriotism; the theory of sovereignty revised; the will of all versus the general will; the problem of government; the theory of will and forms of government; the aristocratic ideal; the unity of ethics and politics; power versus authority; the conventional basis of morality; the rejection of nat­ ural law and natural right; the critique of the nation state; the ambiguity of the general will; the contradictions of Western political thought. PART III CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL THEORY 11 Conservatism 259 The French Revolution and the Rights of Man; Napoleoll and liberal democracy; Edmund Burke and the Holy Alliance; the Whigs and the Glorious Revolution; Burke as reformer; popular versus philosophical conservatism; the critique of liberalism; natural versus prescriptive rights; philosophy versus politics; pre­ sumption; prejudice and the reason of history; the organic view of society; pru­ dence or the art of statesmanship; reform versus change; the theory of virtual representation; the French Revolution and the destruction of authority; mass so­ ciety, tyranny, and the paradox of liberal individualism; Burke's Aristotelian­ ism; the critique of ideology; the sociology of ideology and the democratization of political ideas; ideology, war, and revolution; the limitations of Burke's vision; the historical problem; romanticism and reaction; conservatism as an ideology. 12 Classical Liberalism 281 Hume and u tilitarianism ; Bentham: the rejection of natural law and natural right; the ethics of utility; the greatest happiness of the greatest number; the in­ dividualistic conception of community; utility and majoritarianism; the science of pleasure and the felicific calculus; law as artificial consequences; the legisla­ tor as social scientist; James Mill: utility and liberal democracy; the reform of representation in parliament; property and pleasure; government and commu­ nity; representative democracy and the liberal theory of representation; Hobbes  Contents ix and Locke united; the economic theory of classical liberalism; the physiocrats, Adam Smith, and laissez faire capitalism; the unseen hand and enlightened self­ interest; Herbert Spencer and Social Darwinism; classical liberalism and the condition of the working class; the political failure of the middle class. 13 Modern Liberalism 298 De Tocqueville: the sociology of democracy; the tyranny of the majority; equality and liberty; public opinion and bureaucratic despotism; pluralism, mass society, and the theory of association; the social structure of democracy; John Stuart Mill: utilitarianism revised; the quality of pleasure and the superior individual; simple expediency versus higher values; the revised theory of liberty; moral progress and the quest for truth; proportional representation and mass education; TH. Green and the Oxford Idealists; German idealism and modern liberalism; the classical view and the rejection of utilitarianism; the unity of will and reason; the theory of positive freedom; the social basis of rights; the right of property and the positive state; modern versus classical liberalism; modern liberalism in theory and prac­ tice: ambiguities and paradoxes; self-development as social engineering; democ­ racy: moral progress versus moral anarchy; liberal ideals and the civilized state. 14 Marxism 326 Marx: scientific versus utopian socialism; the materialist conception of history and the critique of idealism; the historical acts and the relations of production; property and the division of mental and material labor; history as class conflict; life and consciousness; substructure and superstructure; ideology as false con­ sciousness; idealism as ideology; the inevitability of communism; capital, profit, and surplus value; the labor theory of value; the theory of alienation; the law of the falling rate of profit and the anarchy of production; the dialectic; Marx ver­ sus Hegel; the historical significance of the working class; the unity of theory and practice; revolution as an epistemology; communism and the end of alien­ ation; liberalism as alienated theory; Marx as antipolitical theorist; Eduard Bernstein and revisionism; Lenin's theory of imperialism; the party; spontaneity versus consciousness; Marxism and nationalism; Marxism and the end of com­ munism and the rebirth of Marxism; Marxism as ideology. 15 The Age of Ideology 359 Western political thought and the critique of ideologies; ideologies and the unity of ethics and politics; the higher principles: classical and ideological; ideolo­ gies versus moral autonomy; Mazzini: nationalism and the subversion of ideol­ ogy; state centralization and the loss of moral autonomy; the sociology of ideology: industrialism and secularism; the nation state and the higher princi­ ples; ideology and the problem of authority; authority as science; ideology, the state of war, and the weakness of power. Glossary 371 Bibliography 377 Index 385  Preface The second edition of this book includes, among other changes, a new chap­ ter on Cicero. In fact, that chapter is more than its title indicates because it includes a substantial introduction to the major Hellenistic political philoso­ phies as well as a historical overview of the events surrounding the rise of the Roman Empire. Because of this expanded coverage of the larger Greco­ Roman tradition of political discourse, I have changed the title of Part I from "Ancient-Medieval" to the more inclusive "Classical and Medieval" Political Theory. I included the new chapter because of requests from instructors who have used the text as well as my own increasing sense that the brief discus­ sion of Hellenistic political philosophy in the first edition, and the even briefer references to Roman political thought, was inadequate given the basic intent of the book. The intent was to present the introductory student with a basic comprehension of Western political thought from the perspective of a limited number of key thinkers viewed in historical context and understood in terms of the changing relationship of ethics and politics in political philos­ ophy from Socrates to the contemporary period. The addition of Hellenistic political thought and its great transmitter Cicero, the most important and in- xi xii Preface fluential of the Roman political thinkers, enhances the book's objective. Not only is a considerable historical period in the evolution of Western political thought now covered in some detail, but important perspectives in the classi­ cal conception of ethics and politics are elaborated in the process. It is from this broadest historical and thematic perspective that the chapter on Cicero becomes a necessary addition to the book. Cicero is impor­ tant not because he is a great political thinker in the sense of a Plato or an Aristotle. Clearly he is not. But as a transmitter of Hellenistic thought and as a thinker who, more than any other, integrated it with Roman political ideas, most notably with the Roman emphasis upon law as the foundation of politi­ cal community and as the source of the classical unity of ethics and politics, he is crucial. But there is another, in some ways more fundamental, reason for adding a chapter on Cicero. This book was written with a pedagogical intent. As I noted in the preface to the first edition, the thinkers and themes chosen are those that seem most useful in encouraging the student to think critically about the subject of political philosophy, and about his or her own theoretical assumptions about the nature of politics. In this regard, Cicero is of particular importance, for he illustrates something that in my experience few students ever consider-that political ideas from one era are passed on and modified to meet the exigencies of another, and in this way become part of the political consciousness of later generations. To understand our own political assump­ tions is to have some understanding of the evolution and modifications of these earlier ideas that have implicitly, unconsciously, become our own. More than any other thinker, with the exception of Aristotle, Cicero modifies and passes on classical ideas about the nature of law, the political commu­ nity, and republican ideals that form the unconscious substructure of those political ideas and ideals most Western students value. For this reason alone, Cicero is important. There are, in addition, several other revisions and modifications of the first edition. The introductory part of the St. Augustine chapter now includes a discussion of some of the key political ideas of the Roman Empire as well as a more detailed analysis of St. Augustine's theocratic theory of the state. John of Salisbury, important as a late medieval pre-Aristotelian thinker, is briefly discussed in the St. Thomas chapter. In the Locke chapter I have added a section on patriarchy and the political exclusion of women in Locke's theory of contract. The obvious inconsistencies and paradoxes inher­ ent in Locke's and later liberals' treatment of women, their actual defense of patriarchy, are hardly dead issues and should not only arouse the interest of students but provide the instructor with a useful vehicle for explaining the theory of contract and for probing some of the issues raised by feminist crit­ ics of Locke and "patriarchal liberalism." Finally, the conclusion to the Marx chapter has been updated to reflect the demise of Soviet and East European communism and the current "death of communism" debate.  Preface xiii Given its pedagogical intent, the general format and style of the book continue to be designed with the student in mind. It is assumed that the stu­ dent has no background in the history of political thought. Hence, all special­ ized terms are clearly defined in the text and used in a variety of contexts to better enable the student to grasp their meaning. In addition, an expanded glossary of terms is provided at the end of the book. And insofar as possible, given the inevitable limitations imposed on any introductory textbook, each thinker is dealt with in detail; basic concepts are explained in depth; and the implications of various political theories are drawn out and analyzed. The ob­ ject has been to render the material understandable by writing at an appropri­ ate level, not by overly simplifying difficult concepts and issues. As for the specific thinkers discussed, although they do represent most of the genuinely important theorists in the Western tradition, at least those that the introductory student should be expected to have some comprehen­ sion of, there are some exceptions. Montesquieu is only briefly mentioned in passing. Hegel is discussed in conjunction with his influence upon modern liberal and Marxist thought; he is not given separate treatment. And in the contemporary period only those thinkers within the major ideological systems of thought who are intellectually important are analyzed in any real depth. Where appropriate, I have cited sources that are recognized as classics in their respective fields. The most current literature is not always cited, but some of the most enduring is. The object has again been pedagogical: to in­ troduce the beginning student to the mainstream of scholarship in political philosophy, not to the most current debates in the field. The bibliography in­ cludes some of the most important, or most useful, of the works cited. The last section of the book, contemporary political theory, covers the age of ideology from Burke through Marx and the rise of modern national­ ism. Although the term contemporary is usually employed to describe a more recent period of time, I have chosen to use it in this broadest context because the major ideological systems of thought that emerge following the French Revolution still constitute the major focus of political debate. Burke or Marx or Green are not contemporary political thinkers, but their respective philoso­ phies have remained the touchstones of contemporary political thought. This remains so even in this "post-modern" era when the boundaries of political thought have been stretched at times to the point of obliteration. Finally, I have made some changes in style and format that, I hope, will make the book more attractive and useful to both instructor and student. I have eliminated gender specific language wherever possible. I use the male pronoun only when it is necessary to keep the sense of the thinker being dis­ cussed, to maintain historical facticity, or when for other reasons substantive or stylistic it seems appropriate to do so. I have also reduced and simplified the index, which I believe was too long and complex in the first edition to be as useful to the student as it ought to be. It is traditional and appropriate to end the preface with a note of thanks xiv Preface to all those who have helped bring the book to fruition. Those thanked in the first edition for critically reading the original manuscript are thanked again: Joyce and Stuart Lilie, Lynn Berk, and Joel Gottlieb. I should also like to thank those who critically reviewed the new Cicero chapter and the entire manu­ script of the second edition; their criticisms and suggested revisions were most helpful. The reviewers of the second edition were Richard Franklin, University of Akron; Mark N. Hagopian, American International College; and W. Wesley McDonald, Elizabethtown College. In addition, I must now add to this list those who have used the text and have been kind enough to offer their criticisms and suggestions. Where possible, I have tried to follow their suggestions in this edition. Special thanks are due to Linda Pawelchak for her fine editorial supervision; the book reads much better because of her work. Finally, thanks to Linda Whitman for her much appreciated help in typing and manuscript preparation. I alone, of course, am responsible for the inevitable shortcomings of this work. Brian R. Nelson  Introduction Western political thought, from its inception to the present time, is the sub­ ject of this book. Not all of the political thinkers who have contributed to the historical evolution of that tradition of discourses are dealt with, but many of the most important are. Those who are discussed have been chosen for two reasons. First, they raise the perennial issues of politics and, as such, are most useful to the student who is just beginning to study political theory seriously. Second, they seem to best illustrate, or embody, the changing relationship of ethics and politics in Western political thought, the basic theme of this work. The precise meaning and implications of that theme will be developed in the following chapters, not here; but the reader should know in broad out­ line what to anticipate. In its simplest terms, the book will argue that all polit­ ical theories establish, explicitly or implicitly, some thesis about the rela­ tionship of ethics and politics. At a deeper level, it will be argued that the relationship of ethics and politics is a theme that defines key historical junc­ tures in Western political thought and, more importantly, that explains certain crucial dilemmas within that tradition of discourse. The organization of the book follows that theme: It analyzes, from the perspective of specific thinkers, the shifting relationship of ethics and politics from the beginning of Western political thought to the present time. Part I, the Classical and Medieval period, is seen as a time in which political theo­ rists conceived politics as an activity rooted in ethical considerations, and po- 1 2 Introduction litical theory, above all, as a moral science. Part II examines the breakdown of this presumed unity in the thought of key modem political thinkers and the corresponding development of those categories of political analysis that de­ fine the modem political perspective. Part III analyzes the major ideological systems as one response to the dilemmas arising out of the modem divorce of ethics and politics. The final chapter will attempt to explain the assumptions behind that response and some of the political dangers inherent in it. This brief synopsis, however, raises an issue, the first of many we will face in the following chapters, but clearly an issue prior to all others. To or­ ganize a book such as this around a theme is by definition to adopt a particu­ lar perspective, a certain "point of view," that will differ from the perspective of others within the field of political thought. This is inevitable, for there sim­ ply is no scholarly agreement that any perspective best characterizes the Western tradition of political discourse. Indeed, there is not even universal agreement that there is a tradition of discourse from which themes and per­ spectives can be derived. The issue is resolved in recognizing that it is precisely in disagreement, not consensus, that our understanding of political matters has evolved. What ultimately is significant is not whether or not a perspective is valid in some absolute sense, but whether or not that perspective enlarges our understand­ ing. This applies not only to questions of perspective and to scholarly inter­ pretations of political thinkers, but to those thinkers themselves. Political the­ orists are important not because what they say is necessarily "True" with a capital "T," but because what they say enlarges our understanding of politics. This is not always understood by the student beginning the study of political thought. Frequently, the initiate will make the mistake of attempting to deter­ mine whether or not a theorist's philosophy is "True" or "False" and upon that basis to accept or reject the thinker's arguments. Apart from the fact that the "Truth" cannot be so easily ascertained (just as there exists little scholarly agreement on matters of perspective and inter­ pretation, there will be even less on the question of "Truth") sophisticated stu­ dents of political thought will not raise the question of "Truth" at all. At least they will not do so in the manner of the initiate, for they will understand that some of the greatest political thinkers have arrived at conclusions and have employed methods of analysis that are profoundly important whether "True" or not. Indeed, it is often in pursuing a line of reasoning that may be erro­ neous, or that many consider to be so, that some of the most important insights into the nature of politics have been discovered and elaborated. The following chapters, it is hoped, will offer numerous examples of thinkers with whom students will disagree, but from whom they wiil also find new insights despite, indeed often because of, that disagreement. In the same way, it is hoped that the student's understanding of political theory will be enlarged and deepened whether there is agreement with the premises of this work or not. Certainly the theme of this book, and the interpretations and arguments that follow, are presented in this spirit. Classical and Medieval Political Theory Unless... political power. and philosopy meet together... there can be no rest from troubles... for states, nor... for all mankind... -Plato, The Republic  Socrates Western philosophy began in the sixth century B.C. in Greece. The sixth cen­ tury philosophers-the pre-Socratics-were physicists who directed their speculation to detennining what the universe is made of. The first of them, a man named Thales, claimed that the universe is made of water. He meant that water is the most basic substance out of which other elements are constituted. Those, who followed Thales argued that the universe is made of earth, or fire, or air, or some combination of these basic "elements." In the fifth century a thinker named Democritus finally solved the riddle; he claimed that all things are composed of atoms. But as time went on it became apparent to many thinkers that the most important questions were not being addressed. Even if everything is com­ posed of water, how does the water change into something else, they asked. How does anything change from one thing to another? And, even more im­ portant, what is the ultimate nature of the universe? Is everything in a state of change, or is there a more basic reality that is pennanent and unchangeable? Thinkers gave widely varied answers to these questions. Some, such as Heraclitus, argued that the basic nature of reality is change itself. Others, such as Pannenides, insisted that change is a deception of the senses, that re­ ality is ultimately unchangeable. Still others took positions between the ex­ tremes of Heraclitus and Parmenides. A thinker named Pythagoras, for exam­ ple, claimed that beneath the changeable universe that we see around us is a 5 6 Classical and Medieval Political Theory substructure of unchangeable mathematical principles. If you want to under­ stand the cosmos, Pythagoras argued, you must understand it mathematically. Yet, as varied as these different doctrines were, we can see, in retro­ spect, two general and opposing tendencies.' Those who continued to ask the kinds of questions that interested Thales and the early physicists (What is the universe made of?) tended to take the position that the cosmos must be un­ derstood strictly in terms of materialist principles. They claimed that reality is nothing more than material-nothing more, that is, than what we can see or sense. As such, they argued that we must assume that change is real, and we must assume, further, that there is no divine or spiritual principle behind it. Democritus, for example, argued that everything is made of material atoms that move and combine in different ways purely by accident. What ex­ ists, therefore, exists as the result of an unplanned combination of atoms, nothing more. Thinkers such as Parmenides and Pythagoras, on the other hand, in­ sisted that beneath the reality we sense is a more basic reality. Without this more basic reality, they argued, the universe makes no sense. Despite change and impermanence there must be an unchanging pattern and purpose to things. What exists must be the reflection of some underlying structure. The Greeks called these two tendencies in pre-Socratic thought philoso­ phies of being and of becoming. The materialists, the philosophers of becom­ ing, believed that all things change (become) without any inherent purpose or direction. Their opposites, the philosophers of being, believed that at the most basic level of reality things "be"-they exist perfectly and unchange­ ably. Pythagoras would argue, for example, that mathematical principles are perfect and unchangeable and that these principles constitute reality, not the imperfect world of our senses. For our purposes, what is important about this debate is that the doc­ trines of being and becoming are applicable to human beings' social and po­ litical life. Pythagoras was the first to grasp this. He argued that by intellectu­ ally comprehending mathematical principles, we instill within the soul that same mathematical harmony found around us and thereby change ourselves' and our communities for the better. In this way, Pythagoras showed the link that exists between metaphysics and ethics, between our basic notions about reality and our conception of how we should live as individuals and as mem­ bers of society.2 Those who found themselves in the materialist camp, how­ ever, drew radically different conclusions. And as we shall see throughout this book, the history of Western political philosophy can be seen as a debate between the theorists of being and the theOlists of becoming, although these particular terms eventually disappear in common philosophical usage. That debate begins with Socrates (470?-399 B.C.), one of history's great personalities. Indeed, in the history of Greek philosophy Socrates plays a role almost equivalent to that of Jesus in the history of the Christian religion. Both men were great teachers. Both were brought to trial on false charges (Socrates was accused of corrupting youth and religious impiety by the au-  Socrates 7 thorities of democratic Athens.) Both died for their beliefs; Jesus on the cross, Socrates by taking hemlock. Aside from this, we do not know a great deal about Socrates; like Jesus, he wrote down nothing of his philosophy. What we do know about him comes primarily from Plato, his greatest student, just as we know about Jesus from his followers who wrote the New Testament. The new testament of Greek philosophy is the Platonic dialogues, a series of dramatic confronta­ tions that pit Socrates against a variety of protagonists, the most important of whom were a group of teachers known as the Sophists. The Sophists were roving teachers who began to appear around the early fifth century B.C. They went from city to city offering their services for a fee, and some of them, such as Gorgias and Protagoras (whose names be­ came the titles of two important Platonic dialogues), were famous and emi­ nent men. The Sophists taught young men from wealthy families who wanted to learn how to get ahead in life, and particularly those who wanted to learn how to get ahead in politics. Thus, the Sophists were the first political educa­ tors in Greece, and their teachings represented the first attempt to "philoso­ phize" about politics, although it is not until Plato that we can speak in any real sense of a political philosophy. Despite the fact that Socrates opposed the Sophists, they did have one thing in common. Both believed that the sixth-century philosophers' investi­ gation of nature was leading nowhere and, more importantly, was not dealing with the significant questions. Even if it could be shown that the universe is composed of water, or of atoms, or of some other substance, what difference would that make to human beings, they asked. For both the Sophists and Socrates the significant questions were questions of ethics: How should we live? What is really important in life? What is the good life? Of course, Socrates and the Sophists were aware of the earlier debate between being and becoming. The Sophists almost surely were influenced by Heraclitus. The link: between ·Socrates and the pre-Socratics is more tenuous, but his greatest student, Plato, drew upon the work of such philosophers of being as Parmenides and Pythagoras. The point, however, is that it was the concern with physical questions as such that Socrates and the Sophists re­ jected. They wanted to raise the ethical question of how human beings ought to live their lives. Here we must briefly discuss what we mean by ethics. Ethics has to do with values, that is, with whether or not an action or, more broadly, a way of life is good or evil, right or wrong. As such, ethical statements are immedi­ ately recognizable because they are always ought or should statements: "We ought not to commit murder" or "We should love our fellow human beings" are examples of such statements. When we make such assertions, we implic­ itly claim to have knowledge of what is right and what is wrong, what we ought or ought not to do. There is another kind of statement we can make about reality based upon empirical observation (empirical means knowledge attained by, the 8 Classical and Medieval Political Theory senses). Such statements are is or are statements: "The earth is round," "The flower is red," or "The material world is composed of atoms" are all empiri­ cal statements because they all assert knowledge attained either directly or indirectly through the senses. (We cannot directly see atoms, but we can indi­ rectly "see them" or "infer them" through special methods of observation.) Modem science is an empirical discipline because it claims to deal with the world as perceived by the senses alone, with objects of knowledge that can be directly or indirectly observed. It is concerned with what is, not with what ought to be. These distinctions between is and ought, empirical knowledge and ethi­ cal or normative knowledge as it is sometimes termed, are more clearly drawn in our own day than they were in Socrates' time. Our knowledge of these matters has expanded considerably since then. But we must bear in mind, and this will become clearer as our analysis of Socrates' philosophy proceeds, that Socrates did much to lay the basic framework of thought that eventually allowed these distinctions to be made. It is important at this juncture to emphasize again that Socrates and the Sophists were interested in ethical or normative questions, not with the em­ pirical questions that concerned the pre-Socratic physicists. And they real­ ized, although again not as surely and consciously as we do today, that an­ swering such questions required a way of thinking different from that needed to answer empirical questions of the is variety. For in the case of ethical mat­ ters, whether we ought or ought not to do something depends upon the ends we wish to achieve. (To employ an obvious example, we ought not to commit murder if our goal is to preserve life.) And in order to say that an end is good, we must first posit some ethical standard that establishes the validity of our end, goal, or objective. It is for this reason that ethical questions always deal with ends and, therefore, raise the issue of standards. Empirical questions do not do this since they are concerned only with what in fact exists. In the broadest terms, all ethical questions deal with how we ought to live our lives. As we have seen, the answer to this question depends upon what end, or goal, human beings ought to strive for, and this in tum depends upon what the standard of life ought to be. All the ancient Greek thinkers, in­ cluding Socrates and the Sophists, agreed that the ultimate end of human ac­ tion should be happiness. Their disagreement was oVer the larger question: What is the human standard of happiness? Even then, there was a superficial agreement. Both Socrates and the Sophists maintained that virtue, which they both claimed to teach, ought to be the standard of happiness. They even agreed on the meaning of virtue in a general sense because it was a commonly used term. Virtue meant arete or excellence. (Arete is related to the word aristocracy, which originally meant rule by the excellent.) The Greeks employed this idea of virtue very broadly and comprehensively to describe a variety of human activities. They would say, for example, that the virtue of a shoemaker is his ability to know and use  Socrates 9 his materials to produce a fine product; the virtue of an athlete is his ability to use his body to its fullest potential. Thus virtue presupposed some end (the final product of a craftsman, the winning of an athletic event, and so on) and a standard of excellence. In other words, virtue, or arete, was the measure of a person's ability to perform well a specific function in life. And, of course, the Greeks believed the ultimate end of virtue to be happiness. A shoemaker who cannot make good shoes or an athlete who cannot perform well will not be fulfilled, they would argue, and therefore will not be happy. While the Greek idea of virtue is a standard of excellence, it does not appear from these examples to be strictly an ethical standard. "Should I make good shoes?" may or may not be an ethical question, but to the extent that it is, it certainly does not raise the larger moral issues that people face. But virtue does become an ethical standard when it is used to judge how human beings should live, not simply in narrow occupational terms, but in terms of the goodness or evilness of their entire lives. This is why Socrates came to in­ sist that there is such a thing as moral excellence that will produce not simply the limited happiness of performing well a simple task, but the complete hap­ piness of living life well. More than anyone else, Socrates transformed virtue from a morally neutral term to one with moral connotations, because he discovered that being a good craftsman and being a good human being hold something in common. 3 Unfortunately, Socrates maintained, people fail to recognize this shared quality. Thus, while they can easily agree about what constitutes virtue or excellence when it comes to making good shoes, they cannot agree at all when it comes to the much more important matter of living a good life. In the first case, failure to know what virtue is simply means sore feet. In the second, it means an unhappy and unfulfilled life. That people should know how to make shoes and not know how to make their lives fulfilled is absurd and tragic Socrates argued. How, then, does Socrates define virtue, and how does his definition dif­ fer from that of the Sophists? Both definitions are, at first sight, quite simple and quite understandable. This simplicity is deceptive, however, because be­ hind the differing conceptions of virtue lie two profoundly contrary visions of humankind, of society, and of politics. And here we must add yet another dimension to our discussion of ethics: Ethical and political questions are inti­ mately connected. Before Robinson Crusoe met his man Friday, he had a number of problems, but not ethical or political ones. People do not live as individuals on deserted islands, however, they live among other human be­ ings in political communities in which political decisions must be made. And political decisions involve questions of the ought variety: Ought we to make laws against abortion? or Ought we to go to war? are typical political ques­ tions that directly affect people for good or evil. The point, given this ethical dimension to politics, is that how one de­ fines virtue will depend in large part upon one's understanding of the nature 10 Classical and Medieval Political Theory of society and polity (polity is the generic term for political community whatever form it may take, be it a clan, a tribe, or as in ancient Greece, the polis or small city state). Let us look first at the S ophists ' definition of virtue, specifically their definition of political virtue. Given the link between ethics and politics , we should be able to deduce their social and political theory from their definition. The Sophists argued that virtue in general is the ability to acquire those things that people agree give pleasure-wealth, honor, status, and so on­ and that political virtue in particular is the ability to acquire these things by the successful use of power. If this seems a shocking definition of virtue, re­ member that virtue originally meant nothing more than the ability to attain a given end. If the end of politics is the acquisition of power as the S ophists be­ lieved, then the virtue of a politician is s imply his ability to master the tech­ niques of attaining it. Interestingly, the Sophists were the first teachers of rhetoric, that is, of the art of speaking well. They saw it as a most important technique for gaining power because it gave the politician the means to sway public opinion to his side. For this reason, the political education of the young men who came to the Sophists included lessons in rhetoric, and rhetoric was considered a prime component of political virtue. The Sophist's definition of virtue clearly implies a particular conception of society and politics and a corresponding view of human nature. The Sophist view holds that society and the state are conventional , that they are nothing more than artificial arrangements (conventions) created to serve lim­ ited purposes such as providing security and maintaining order. There is nothing natural about society and polity, the S ophists argued, because human beings are not innately social creatures. They are, rather, individual egotists who are more concerned about themselves than about some larger social good. Behind the S ophists ' philosophy of society and politics lay an individ­ ualistic and egotistical psychology or theory of human nature. The conventionalist view of society and the state explains why the Sophists defined virtue as they did. If the social and political order and its tra­ ditions, customs, and laws are simply pragmatic arrangements between indi­ vidual egotists , then there is nothing intrinsically good or right about them. Hence, the S ophists taught their students to use the social order to their own benefit. Why be constrained by laws that are ethically meaningless? Not all the S ophists went so far as to say that anything goes , but the more extreme ones did. And in order to justify their teaching they engaged in a radical critique of state and society, which they saw as an unnatural con­ straint upon the individual. In nature the strongest rules, they argued, but the conventions of society stand in the way of this natural order of things. The laws of society create a false equality among human beings, while in nature the powerful are superior to the weak. Their argument is best summed up in a famous Platonic dialogue entitled the Gorgias in which a young man named Callicles argues the S ophist case :  Socrates 11... w e take the best and strongest of our fellows from their youth upwards, and tame them like young lions , enslaving them with spells and incanta­ tions, and saying to them that with equality they must be content, and that the equal is the honourable and the just. But if there were a man born with enough ability, he would shake off and trample under foot all our formulas and spells and charms, and all our laws which are against nature; the slave would rise in rebellion and be lord over us, and the light of natural justice would shine forth.4 It is evident that Sophists such as Callicles were preaching a doctrine of radical individualism at the expense of the larger society. Their political the­ ory glorified the individual and encouraged him to do what he wanted in spite of law and custom. They addressed themselves to the potentially "great man." Foreshadowed by the Sophists' position, as the great classical scholar Sir Ernest Barker has argued, was Nietzsche's doctrine of the "overman" or "superman" who tramples underfoot all social constraints. 5 It is easy to see why the Sophists became so popular with young men who were, so to speak, on the political make. Here were teachers who taught every adolescent what he wanted to hear; that he is a "superior man" who should let nothing stand in his way. And what young person does not suppose he or she really is superior and does not have an almost natural contempt for traditional authority? The adolescent is a ready-made Sophist in almost any society, and the Greek youth were no exception. It is equally easy to see why the Sophists were unpopular with the aver­ age citizen. Most people believe their traditions and laws to be socially nec­ essary, sacred, and above criticism. The Sophists attacked these deeply held beliefs and, so it seemed, thereby threatened the stability of the social order. 6 How did Socrates respond to the Sophists? He argued that their defini­ tion of virtue is wrong, and that the whole conception of man and society upon which it is based is erroneous. According to Socrates, virtue is knowl­ edge, not merely instrumental knowledge of how to attain power, but a larger ethical knowledge of how we ought to live our lives. Just as we recognize that knowledge is required to exercise a craft, says Socrates, so too must we recognize that knowledge' is required to learn the art-the arete-of living a good, that is, an ethical, life. This is why we find Socrates constantly making analogies between the good craftsman and the good man in his dispute with the Sophists. We all recognize, Socrates argues, that what makes a good shoemaker is his knowledge of how to make shoes. Why can we not recog­ nize, therefore, that that which makes a good or virtuous human being must be knowledge of how to live a good life? The Sophists say that political virtue is power, but power for what, asks Socrates. The Sophists claim that power gives men the ability to appropriate the goods of this world, and that the pleasures derived from these goods will make them happy. But in point of fact, Socrates argues, the ceaseless search 12 Classical and Medieval Political Theory for pleasure will produce just the opposite because all pleasure s , rooted as they are in our basic biological urges, are intimately connected to pain. Eat­ ing produces pleasure, for example , only if first we experience the pain of hunger. And this is true of all pleasures, says S ocrates. Thi s is why the desire for pleasure, which is as ceaseless as our biological drives, c an only lead to constant pain and unhappines s. Thus, when you give power to a man and tell him that political virtue is the exercise of that power to satiate his passions, you are really contributing to his unhappiness. The more successful he is as a politician, the more unhappy he will become. Moreover, S ocrates concludes , because h e is concerned only with his own self-interest, h e will fail t o rule society properly and therefore will produce unhappines s in the citizenry as a whole. In rejecting power and pleasure as the basis of human happiness and putting knowledge in their place, S ocrates proposes a theory of society and politics radically different from that of the Sophists. He argues that if people can know ethical truths, then these truths should be embodied within their so­ cial organizaii ons. Thi s means that society, government, and law are much more than conventions. They are, S ocrates would s ay, natural to the extent that they embody ethical truths. They are not simply artificial constructs; they are intimately connected to people 's moral well-being. This view that society and its political institutions are natural carries with it, of course, a radically different psychological theory than that of the Sophists. S ocrates insists that society is natural because he believes human beings are social animals, not egotistical individualists. No one is self­ sufficient says S ocrates; people need others in order to survive. And since hu­ mans are by nature social beings, there must be social and political arrange­ ments that are naturally good, that contribute to the harmonious functioning of the social organism. Clearly, given this view, the doctrine of the Sophists could only disrupt society and thereby the lives of all of its members. This distinction between nature and convention is perhaps the single most important philosophical dichotomy in the history of Western political thought. As a general, but almost invariable rule, those thinkers who hold to a conventional theory of society, as do most modern theorists, view ethical standards as purely relative. Those, on the other hand, who take the position that society is natural, as do most classical and medieval theorists, believe that there are certain knowable ethical truths that ought to be recognized so­ cially. We shall see this distinction between nature and convention raised re­ peatedly as an issue in the works of subsequent political thinkers. For now, it is sufficient to recognize that in showing that there are knowable ethical truths that will produce happiness if they are embodied within people 's social and political relationships, S ocrates was able to demonstrate what he believed to be the utter wrong-headedness of the Sophists. How, he asks , can the Sophists possibly teach virtue if they admit there is no ethical standard that can be known? What is there to teach? Noth-  Socrates 13 ing, beyond certain political techniques, says Socrates. It is as if the Sophists had the technical know-how to make shoes, but no notion of what constitutes a good shoe. They had the technical know-how to acquire power, but no knowledge of the appropriate end or purpose of power. Their assumption that the end is pleasure merely demonstrates their ignorance. Moreover, Socrates asks, how can the Sophists claim to teach virtue, and political virtue in particular, when their theory of state and society denies any real validity to the social and political order? In fact, they teach the indi­ vidual how to triumph over society's rules and thereby ignore the needs of all the members of that society. They forget the necessary unity of ethics and politics; they forget that political questions are always ethical ones that in­ volve moral relationships among people. The issue is not How shall the indi­ vidual live life simply as an individual?, but How shall he or she live it in community with other human beings? To teach political virtue is, by defini­ tion for Socrates, to teach people how to live together for a common good that transcends the individual. This is why Socrates responds to Callicles ' earlier paean to the "superior-individual" with a defense of social order. Philosophers tell us, Callicles , that communion and friendship and orderli­ ness and temperance and j ustice bind together heaven and earth and gods and men, and that this universe is therefore called cosmos or order, not dis­ order or misrule, my friend.? Socrates, then, defends the social order; the Sophists attack it. This is the explicit and obvious political difference that follows from their differing ethical, social, and psychological assumptions. But this political difference is more complex than Socrates' response to Callicles would suggest, for Socrates does not support the social order uncritically. Quite the contrary­ he is a greater social critic than the Sophists, but in a different way. W hat Socrates argues is that while law is natural, any given law may, and fre­ quently does, violate basic ethical precepts. For example, if the laws are made by men such as Callicles, they will fail to create that order and har­ mony that is essential to the well-being and happiness of the whole commu­ nity. Such laws are merely conventional. W hat Socrates proposes to do, therefore, is to reform the state and politics in accordance with correct ethical standards. In a sense, he wishes to mediate between nature and convention; to make the social and political order compatible with that which is natural (ethical). The problem was that in order to unite the social and ethical, Socrates was compelled to both defend and attack society at one and the same time. His contemporaries missed the subtlety. They thought he was simply another radical Sophist engaged in tearing down those values that hold society to­ gether. 8 This is the real reason why Socrates was brought to trial and put to death. The specific charges leveled against him-"religious impiety" and 14 Classical and Medieval Political Theory "corrupting young people"-were simply the form in which the court gave legal expression to this, the real issue. The trial was in fact a political trial aimed at preventing S ocrates from continuing to teach his philosophy. When, in the name of a higher duty to follow his philosophic conscience, Socrates refused to abide by the court 's demand that he cease his teaching, he was condemned to death. That S ocrates chose to die rather than cease his teaching illuminates the real political meaning of his philosophical system. For S ocrates ' death was a political act aimed at demonstrating that philosophy is not simply a set of ideas, but a way of life superior to that of politics , at least politics as con­ ceived by the Sophists. The story of Socrates ' incarceration and death, and the events leading up to it, are told in several dialogues. One of these, the Crito, best illustrates S ocrate s ' position. In this dialogue S ocrates ' friend Crito comes to his j ail cell with a plan for escape. (It was a common practice to allow prominent citizens to escape rather than suffer the penalty of death.) S ocrates refused to flee, however, even though he knew that his sentence was utterly unjust. He based his re­ fusal on the argument that the state had raised him and nurtured him like a parent, and that he could not now tum his back upon it. He owed obedience to it, but only to a point. The state demanded that he stop teaching , and he could not do that without violating his conscience. He could, however, affirm the right of the state to make laws and impose penalties by suffering the con­ sequences of following his conscience. We would today classify Socrates ' decision as an act of civil disobedi­ ence. Civil disobedience is a political act that attempts to affirm the individ­ ual 's conscience as the highest law, yet at the same time recognizes the social necessity of civil law and order. This is accomplished by violating the law where it contradicts the urgings of conscience , yet affirming the necessity of law by suffering willingly the consequences of one 's acts. This was precisely S ocrates ' intent. In civil disobedience S ocrates had discovered a way, the only way in fact, to carry his philosophy into real life. By refusing to stop teaching, he affirmed the superiority of conscience and the philosophical life upon which it is based. By refusing to escape, he affirmed that the state is a natural and a necessary good, even though specific laws and institutions may be only conventional. Moreover, in choosing to die as he did, Socrates demonstrated the ap­ propriate relationship between philosophy and politic s. His teaching had been that the political sphere, the state, should be founded upon philosophi­ cal truths, but in his own case the relationship seemed to S ocrates to be breaking down. The men of thought and the men of action seemed to be of different minds. What to do? Given his situation, S ocrate s ' only solution was to die. To live would be to concede that the commands of the state are superior to philosophical truth. His greatest student, Plato, would propose another, and ultimately more radical, solution; but this is a subject for the next chapter.  Socrates 15 There will be those who take exception to Socrates' reasoning, of course. It might be argued, for example, that if Socrates is correct in what he teaches, he is correct whether he lives or not, and that had he chosen to live he could have had a continuing influence upon people. Crito made precisely these kinds of arguments , and others like them (What about your family, Socrates?-Your friends?) but to no avail. Socrates refused to do the prudent thing, because prudence is not philosophical. To be prudent means to act upon one's political judgment of the relative merits of a cQurse of action. To be philosophical means to act strictly on the basis of truth, regardles s of the consequences. This , at least, is what Socrates meant by philosophy. The philosopher must behave strictly according to knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. These abstract principles are linked with real life through Socrates' def­ inition of virtue. If virtue is knowledge, then to act upon any other basis than th t of knowledge would be unvirtuous or evil. And to lack virtue is to be un­ happy and unfulfilled. So Socrates' decision to remain philosophical and die was no mere posturing; it was the only action he could take that would be consistent with his completeness as a human being. Any difficulty one may find in comprehending Socrates' decision to die is most likely due to failure to consider seriously Socrates' definition of virtue. When Socrates says that virtue is knowledge, he means just that. This definition expresses the very essence of Socratic ethics, and it means exactly what it says. According to Socrates, if one knows, really knows , what is ethi­ cally correct, one cannot help but act accordingly, for no one would know­ ingly do something that produces unhappiness. The obvious objection to this line of reasoning, an objection that was raised against Socrates in his own day, is that our desire to do something may be stronger than the force of our knowledge that we ought not do it. We may know that it is wrong to steal, for example, but given the opportunity we might do it in any case. Socrates insists that this cannot happen. The fact that people steal is proof that they do not really know that it is wrong, although they may have thought they knew. It is ignorance of the real human conse­ quences of unethical behavior that compels us to misbehave, not the weak­ ness of reason in the face of great passion. 9 Can Socrates really mean, then, that because he knows dying is the eth­ ical thing to do, his death is the necessary condition for his happiness? This is precisely what he means. Had he chosen to follow Crito's advice and live, he would have admitted thereby that virtue is not identical to knowledge, that the philosophical life is a sham, and that his life of teaching was for naught. His life would have been thereby rendered meaningles s and miserable by not choosing to die. And Socrates would have immediately rejected the conven­ tional argument that an unhappy life is better than no life at all, for implicit in this objection is the idea that mere biological pleasure is the greatest good. This Socrates would never concede. Mere existence can only produce plea- 16 Classical and Medieval Political TheO/y sure in its narrowest sense. We may continue to eat, sleep, and procreate, but this is not the condition of genuine human happiness as Socrates defines it. To his mind, to merely live is not to live at all. This is why he denies that virtue is pleasure as the Sophists maintained. Moreover, he would argue that conventional wisdom is based upon an unphilosophical fear of death. To fear something means to know that there is something to fear. But since we cannot know for certain what death will bring, we have no basis to fear it. In fact, for Socrates the fear of death is a form of intellectual arrogance that he finds typical of men such as Callicles. Like Callicles, who thinks he knows what the purpose of life is without really knowing, the necrophobe thinks he knows death is to be feared without in fact really knowing. So confident was Socrates that knowledge is the real basis of a fulfilled life, so certain that, as he says, "the unexamined life is not worth living," that he was able to die as he lived-philosophizing. In the Phaedo , the last of the dialogues that deal with his final days, Socrates is shown discussing the meaning of death with his friends while waiting for the deadly hemlock to be brought to him. But was Socrates ' confidence misplaced? This is the real issue. If knowledge is the source of truth about how we ought to live our lives, and if Socrates possesses such knowledge, his decision to die makes perfect sense. The question is, "Does such knowledge really exist as Socrates claims, and if it does exist, does Socrates possess it?" In short, "How does Socrates know that he knows, and how does he know what he claims to know?" These are what we call epistemological questions. An epistemology is a theory of knowledge; it is a theory about what and how we can know. Every political theory, as with every other kind of theory, is based upon some kind of epistemology, if only implicitly. For it is impossible to assert knowledge about anything without first demonstrating that we know our knowledge to be a valid source of truth. This certainly is the case with Socrates whose epis­ temology is explicit and absolutely crucial to his whole philosophy of life. This is why the real dispute between Socrates and the Sophists is not simply over the purpose of life, but over how we know that we know that purpose. And this is why the really fundamental question here is epistemological : How does Socrates know that he has knowledge with such certainty that he is willing to die for it? Socrates' answer is given in a number of dialogues, but it is best to begin with the Apology, the dialogue that deals with his trial and conviction. In this work, Socrates explains by way of a story the basis of his claim to possess knowledge or wisdom. A friend, he says, was told by the Oracle of Delphi that he, Socrates, is the wisest man in Greece. Now, Socrates did not believe that this was so and determined that if he could find someone wiser than himself he could refute the Oracle. "Accordingly," says Socrates "I went to one who had the reputation of wisdom and observed him-his name I need  Socrates 17 not mention, he was a politician." lo And I found, continues Socrates, that I was wiser than the politician, because "he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know. In this one little point... I seem to have the advantage of him." 1 1 This same procedure, says Socrates, he fol­ lowed with others, and the results were always the same. He found that he was wiser than others because he alone seemed to know that he was ignorant. Socrates ' assertion that he is wiser than others "in this one little point" is not to be taken to mean that he believes knowledge is unattainable. It is simply that one must first admit ignorance in order to acquire knowledge. If, like the Sophists and politicians, one begins with the assumption that one is already knowledgeable, it will be impossible to engage in the quest for truth. The ignorant who think they are wise are unteachable; those who know they are ignorant are willirig to learn and, in this Socratic sense, are already "wise." It is of more than passing interest that Socrates initiates his experiment in wisdom with a politician. To his mind the politicians, like the Sophists, were not only the most arrogant in their ignorance, but the most dangerous. They were the teachers and leaders of society. Their ignorance, therefore, was a public concern. From the beginning, Socrates ' theory of knowledge was employed by himself and by his students in critiques of existing political practices. In such critiques the ignorance of the Sophists and the leading politicians in Athens was demonstrated. But the criticisms did not always have the desired effect. As Socrates wryly observes in the Apology, they fre­ quently caused him to be hated, a matter not wholly unconnected with his trial and death. But even had the leaders of Athens become aware of their ignorance, how could they have gotten beyond it? As we have noted, the admission of ignorance is only the starting point for Socrates. The next steps are to define knowledge and determine how it can be attained. Socrates does this in one manner or another in all of the dialogues because knowledge is the key to the whole Socratic system. But for our purposes the dialogue entitled the Meno is most useful. 1 2 In this dialogue, Meno engages Socrates in a discussion about whether or not virtue can be taught. Socrate s ' response is at first perplexing, for he ar­ gues that it can neither be taught nor, in the usual sense of the term, learned. It can, however, be drawn out, for knowledge of such matters is already within us. We need simply learn to know what we already know-a paradox that Socrates explains by way of a demonstration. He borrows one of Meno 's slaves, a young boy who has had no formal education, and by a process of questioning gets him to discover for himself the Pythagorean theorem that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Now, Socrates asks, how could the boy have discovered the theorem without in some sense already knowing it? He had had no mathematical training; there was nothing in his experience tl)at could explain his knowledge. How, then, did he come by it except that he already 18 Classical and Medieval Political Theory knew it? And, S ocrates continues, what is true of mathematical knowledge is true of other branches of knowledge, including ethics. Just as the slave boy discovered for himself a principle of mathematics , in the same way we can discover for ourselves the principles of leading a good life. We need only look within ourselves. Concealed in this simple analogy between mathematics and ethics is an epistemological discovery of momentous import in the development of West­ em thought. Socrates had discovered the concept. which is a generalized, ab­ stract idea by which we classify and organize particular ideas about the world around us. 13 For example, the slave boy in the Meno is able to recognize all three-sided polygons as triangles when he sees them, Socrates would argue, because he already has within him the concept-the generalized idea or ideal--of "triangleness." In the s ame way, according to Socrates, people rec­ ognize courage, or temperance, or justice, or any other virtue because they have prior conceptual knowledge of what constitutes virtue. Philosophers would call this a priori knowledge. It is this conceptual knowledge, then, that is already within us (not, of course, empirical knowledge). And because this knowledge is general and "ideal" it must be universal and unchanging. That is, it must always be true, and it must be the same truth for all. There is only one Pythagorean theorem, and it will be as true an infinite number of tomorrows from now as it is today. In the same way, S ocrates asserts, since ethical knowledge is also conceptual, it must be universally true and unchanging. It cannot be merely conventional as the S ophists claim. It is clear that conceptual knowledge must be arrived at in a particular way. Since this knowledge is within us, it needs to be drawn out; it cannot be imposed. It does no good, S ocrates would argue, to lecture to students about virtue. People already know what virtue is but must be helped to know that they know. This requires a form of questioning the Greeks c alled the dialec­ tic. Through dialectic the student's initial definition about what constitutes virtue (or some equivalent conceptual issue) is countered on the part of the "teacher" by critical questioning that demands a more inclusive definition. Seeing the inadequacy of a first opinion, the student will attempt to modify it in light of the teacher 's questioning. The process continues until a definition is reached that is complete, inclusive, and genuinely conceptual. But it is the student who ultimately recognizes the inadequacy of the initial opinion and who, by the very logical structure of the mind, is forced to learn the truth. The Socratic or dialectical method of questioning is designed to tap this logi­ cal structure, not to impose the truth upon it. The dialectic, then, is a method that begins with opinion and ends with knowledge. And herein lies a crucial distinction in Socrates' debate with the S ophists. For Socrates, opinion is the precise opposite of knowledge because it is not conceptual. Everyone has opinions, but the philosopher alone has knowledge, that is, a conceptual grasp of the underlying order of things. He  Socrates 19 alone has an understanding of the nature of being, as opposed to that of be­ coming, which is in the realm of opinion. Now it is Socrates ' claim that the Sophists teach opinion, not knowl­ edge. This is so, he argues, because they do not understand that opinion is simply ignorance masquerading as knowledge. And the reason they do not understand, S ocrates insists, is that they have no concept of the concept. Hence, they never teach more than commonsense opinion about virtue. Their theory that virtue is pleasure is, in reality, an id.ea that has been accepted by every Philistine throughout the ages. And the Sophists never go beyond this general and mistaken theory of virtue. For example, they never adequately define the essence (the concept) of virtue as such, says Socrates, but have as many different opinions of what virtue is as there are virtues. When they define courage, or justice, or any of the other virtues, their definitions have nothing in common. It is as if, to re­ turn to the analogy in the Meno, they have one definition for an isosceles tri­ angle, another for a right triangle, and others for the whole variety of trian­ gles, without ever having a concept of trianglenes s as such. It is now clear why the Sophists taught rhetoric instead of dialectic. Rhetoric has to do with swaying public opinion, not with the acquisition of genuine conceptual knowledge. The Sophists taught their students how to change people 's opinions ; S ocrates taught his students how to rise above opinion. Clearly the Sophists had the easier j ob of it. They only had to tell people that which they wanted to hear. Socrates taught what they should but would rather not hear. People do not willingly give up their opinions, as Socrates discovered. The dialectic works only if the student first commits to the quest for truth. Then, and only then, will the logical structure of the mind come into play and the conceptual knowledge within' emerge into full con­ sciousness. This leads us to the culminating point of Socrates' theory of knowledge, and to his ultimate criticism of the Sophists. It was apparent to Socrates, and it became even more apparent to Plato, that the logic of the mind must be part of a larger cosmic order. It seemed inconceivable to them that truth exists in the mind only. It must be, they thought, that the concepts in our mind reflect some real order and purpose in the universe as a whole. This idea, in fact, was discovered before Socrates by some of the pre-Socratic thinkers, most notably Pythagoras. He claimed, you will recall, that mathematical principles undergird the empirical world. Hence, Pythagoras came to believe that the whole universe works upon logico-mathematical principles that are reflected in the mind. Socrates did not adopt the Pythagorean view; the kinds of ethical ques­ tions he was interested in led him in other directions. But Socrates did be­ lieve, as did Pythagoras that the universe is orderly and purposeful, and that our ideas are reflections of this fact. And, most important for Socrates, this purposefulness went beyond the physical dimension. It included the ethical 20 Classical and Medieval Political Theory as well. Since human beings can attain ethical knowledge, Socrates believed the universe as a whole must have an ethical purpose. It is easy to see why classical thought, which begins with Socrates , was so easily absorbed by medieval Christianity. Clearly Socrates ' moral universe could be construed as the mind of God, and his idea of inner knowledge could be seen as the illumination of God 's divinity within the soul. In fact, S ocrates believed something very much like this. His epistemology indicated to him the existence of God, of a soul, and of life after death (although of this he was not certain). 14 And his belief in the immortality of the soul was linked to a theory of reincarnation. It seemed to Socrates that since knowledge is within us, we must have learned it somewhere in another life. Hence, he came to view learning as a recollection of that which we have forgotten in the process of being reborn. But Socrates' theology is no longer of real importance to us. We now understand that his religious theories were a reflection of the fact that the rules of logical thought were not yet fully developed. We no longer need to rely on such notions to explain conceptual knowledge. On the other hand, the question of whether or not human reason is a reflection of some larger order and purpose is by no means a dead issue. And in retrospect we can see that it is precisely this larger order that Socrates wished to structure into people 's social and political relationships. I s this not ultimately Socrates ' criticism o f the Sophists? They recog­ nize no order or purpose to anything, whether it be the universe, the state, or the individual. Hence their idea of virtue: Where no ethical purpose or order exists, "virtue" reduces itself to a struggle for power and nothing more. But the other side of this inability to see order and purpose, Socrates maintained, is the Sophists' inability to understand the nature of knowledge. They have no concept of the concept. As a result, they have no conception of an inner order that would clue them to the existence of an outer order. And their polit­ ical theories simply reflect this inability to conceptualize order. This is why they justify a politics of chaos and disorder. Socrates' insight into the nature of knowledge transformed Western consciousness. The central role accorded to reason in Western philosophy, and the idea that human institutions ought to reflect a larger rational order­ ideas that have become almost the sine qua non of Western thought-we owe to Socrates. But in political philosophy, Socrates only laid the foundation. He was not a political philosopher as such because his concern was primarily with the individual (although he did emphasize that the individual could not be conceived apart from politics). And while he was, from all we can sur­ mise, a ceaseless critic of Athenian democracy, he never created a thorough­ going political philosophy as an alternative to existing political practices. Plato did. He picked up where his teacher left off. He united Socrates' insights with those of pre-Socratic thinkers of being such as Pythagoras, who claimed that beneath everything we see is a perfect and unchangeable order.  Socrates 21 The result was not only great political philosophy, but the beginning of a tra­ dition of political thought that extends to the present day. Notes 1. See W. K. e. Guthrie, The Greek Philosophers From Thales to Aristotle (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), for a brief but excellent discussion of these two tendencies in early Greek philosophy. 2. Sir Ernest Barker, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle (New York: Dover Publications, 1959), pp. 19-21. 3. See Laszlo Versenyi, Socratic Humanism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963) , pp. 83-86, for an excellent discussion of Socrate s' transfor­ mation of virtue from a morally neutral to an ethical tenn. 4. B. Jowett, trans., "Gorgias , " in The Dialogues of Plato, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968) , II:577. 5. B arker, Political Thought, p. 96. 6. Francis MacDonald Cornford, Before and After Socrates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 43. Cornford frames the issue in its simplest and most human tenns : "In this philosophy of individual self­ assertion parents... [recognized] something analogous to the spirit of ado­ lescent reaction against the authority of the home.... To the boys, on the other hand, it... [came] as [a]... welcome expression of the rebellion against those stupid rules. " 7. Jowett, "Gorgias, " p. 606. 8. Cornford, Before and After Socrates, p. 43. 9. There is more to Socrates ' insistence that evil is ignorance than the failure of evildoers to grasp the real human consequences of their actions. Ulti­ mately, for Socrates, to know the truth is to be so moved by it that the per­ sonality itself is altered such that the desire to do wrong no longer exists. [See Arthur Kenyon Rogers, The Socratic Problem (New York: Russell & Russell, 1971), pp. 135-36. ] This idea that philosophical knowledge leads to a radical psychological reorientation will become more understandable in the chapter on Plato. For now, it is sufficient to note that Socrates ' ethical system involved a whole new vision of humanity, one of great power and beauty, and that his almost saintly reputation is based on the fact that others could see in him that psychological transfonnation, that actual embodiment of virtue, that he claimed inherently followed from the possession of philo­ sophical knowledge. 10. B. Jowett, trans., "Apology, " in The Dialogues of Plato, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969) , 1:345. 11. Ibid. 22 Classical and Medieval Political Theory 12. See Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. I, pp. 252-63, for an analysis of the connection between the Meno and the development of Plato's thought, particularly of his doctrine of Form, which will be discussed in the next chapter. See also Norman Gulley, Plato's Theory of Knowledge (London: Methuen & Co. , Ltd., 1962), pp. 4-23. 13. See, for example, B arker, Political Thought, p. 47; and B. Jowett, trans., "Parmenides, " in The Dialogues of Plato, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford Univer­ sity Press, 1969) , II: 640-41. See also Max Weber, "Science as a Vocation, " in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, trans./eds. , From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946) , p. 141. In this clas­ sic essay on the scientific life, Weber points out the enormous importance of Socrates' discovery of the concept to the whole development of Western science and to those rational modes of inquiry that define the Western world view. 14. There has long existed a dispute regarding Socrates' position on the ques­ tion of life after death. No definitive answer to this issue can be given. See w. K.C. Guthrie, Socrates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 153-64, for a discussion of the issue, and for an interesting analysis of Socrates' religious beliefs in general.  Plato Plato (427-347 B.C.) was born into an aristocratic Athenian family. His life spanned the period of the Peloponnesian War, which began in 431 B.C. and did not end until 404 B.C. The war involved the whole Hellenic (Greek) world, with Sparta and Athens the chief antagonists, and it resulted in the common ruin of all concerned. It marked the beginning of the end of that glo­ rious period in Greek history when in art, literature, philosophy, and politics the Western world was given its enduring form. The disintegration of the Hellenic world was paralleled at home by ceaseless political discord. Different classes with irreconcilable disagree­ ments engaged in bitter struggles for power. Some members of Plato 's own family seized power and created an oligarchy in 404 B.C. only to be deposed shortly thereafter in 403 B.C. by the democrats. It was this democratic regime that tried and executed Socrates. Common t o all these political struggles, a s both Thucydides (the great historian of the Peloponnesian War) and Plato observed, was people 's unwill­ ingness to look beyond their immediate self-interest. They seemed incapable of conceiving of any kind of larger good beyond themselves. The result was common ruin and common misery. Surely, Plato thought, there must be a bet­ ter way. And, for Plato, there was: He became Socrates ' student. Socrates transformed Plato's life. As an aristocrat, Plato was expected to go into politics , which was then considered an honorable and noble profes- 23 24 Classical and Medieval Political Theory sion for members of the upper classes. But the politics of that time appalled Plato, and Socrates showed him that the philosophical life is superior to the life of a politician. With S ocrates ' death, however, Plato came to recognize, more intensely than had his teacher, that philosophy and politics cannot be kept apart. This recognition compelled Plato to think philosophically about politics in a deeper and more radical sense than had his teacher. Thus Plato became the first real political philosopher in the Western world. Now Plato 's political theory is but a part of a much larger philosophical system based upon Socrates ' initial insights. As such, Plato 's political theory, like his larger system, resembles a huge building in which each part has its place, and in which neither the parts nor the whole can be understood apart from each other. His political theory, therefore, includes a theory of ethics, as well as of psychology; economics , and sociology. ' The current separation of modem social science into discrete subfields would have struck Plato as ab­ surd-like a building made of parts that did not fit into an integrated whole. Plato 's political theory is based upon Socrates ' teaching in another way also. It was intended to change existing conditions, not to be merely an exer­ cise in abstract thinking. Unlike his teacher, however, Plato was not content simply to wander the streets of Athens discoursing upon his philosophy. Plato founded the first university, which he called the Academy, the function of which was not only to teach young men philosophy but to reform Greek pol­ itics. Teachers were sent out to train political leaders in the philosophical truths learned at the Academy. The results, however, were rarely what Plato would have desired, for the same irrational politics prevailed no matter what the philosopher taught. This was a cause of great dismay to Plato and the source of much of his hostility toward the political domain. Plato himself went on some legendary teaching expeditions, all of which turned out disastrously. The story of these trips is worth recounting be­ cause it will help us understand Plato's basic hostility toward politics. 2 In 387 B.C., when Plato was in his early forties, he visited Sicily. There he met Dion, the brother-in-law of Dionysius I, the tyrant of Syracuse. Dion was im­ pressed by Plato's philosophy and, according to legend, persuaded Plato to teach Dionysius I. Unfortunately, Dionysius was not enchanted by what Plato had to say and reportedly sold him into slavery. Plato escaped with the aid of friends and returned to Athens. Upon his return he founded the Academy, where he remained for twenty years, glad to be rid of politics. But when Dionysius I died, Dion summoned Plato back to Syracuse to attempt with young Dionysius II what he had failed to do with his father. Initially Dionysius II was quite enthusias­ tic and spoke of reforming Syracuse's politics in light of Plato's teachings. But he soon wearied of philosophy and became distrustful of Plato 's relation­ ship with Dian. Dion was banished and Plato was put under virtual house ar­ rest. Eventually he managed to secure his release and once again returned to Athens.  Plato 25 Several years later he returned at the request of Dionysius II with the hope of reconciling the young tyrant with Dion. The reconciliation failed, and the trip turned out as disastrously as the first two. Worse, events went in a direction designed to utterly disgust Plato with politics and to ensure his final withdrawal from public activity. Dionysius II became increasingly tyranni­ cal, and Dion eventually overthrew him. Then Dion himself was assassinated by one of Plato 's own students who, in tum, established himself as a tyrant. Later he too was assassinated. What had begun many years earlier in philo­ sophical enthusiasm ended in cabals and intrigues and, for Plato, utter de­ spair. Here was the paradox and agony of Plato 's life. His attempt to teach philosophy to tyrants indicates his unflagging belief that politics could be ra­ tionalized by truth. Yet the attempt failed utterly; Plato barely avoided the fate of Socrates. No matter how loudly and insistently the truth was pro­ claimed, the same irrational element in politics prevailed. Even though over the years the reality of politics slowly chipped away at Plato's bedrock belief in the power of philosophy to transform the human condition, the belief was never destroyed. It was modified in Plat